'Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities'
Too vague, too pseudo-intellectual, too wikipedia.
'Art is what I find what is art'
Forest Gump art maybe.
'Art is what I think is pretty'
No, that's bling bling.
'Art is form and content'
There are forms without content, and what 'content' are we talking about? I've framed a 'nothing' once; a piece of art without form or content. Was it art that was framed? Fill a garbage bag with something and close it. Here we have form and content; until it starts reeking...
'We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.'
-Henry James
'All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.'
-Fellini
'I've read a lot about art, I've seen, heard and experienced a lot of art. But I still don't know what it is. Also, I don't know what it is not...'
-Robotklaw
The nature and purpose of art
-A tiny essay-
by Robotklaw
July 2013
Art is always a product. A thought is never art, unless it has been worked out to become a product. Art then becomes an expression, either transient or solid. I've once put a pencil on the floor of a museum, until a child came and took the pencil. That was solid art, until it became transient. I make it solid again by writing about it. It was some sort of expression. But then again, it could be that I’m lying and there never was a pencil, put on the floor of a museum by me. Art is in the mind of the beholder, thus art is not objective, always subjective.
Art in itself is transformation of vision, thought and other perceptions. Art is always a human process.
Art is transmission of the transformed product. Art itself is not about beauty, meaning, good/bad, truth, esthetics, etc. These are human, cultural values and they are meaningless in that they are not universal. Culture is sometimes the culture of one, mostly seen as the culture of a group, never a universal culture of man.
Culture thus is limited and a limited vision of art is unwanted. Art can express moral values, can express anything it wants, but it must know that it is limited. Limited by the culture of one (the artist) and the culture of many (the observers), art is shared by both the maker and observer, but what is learned of this process is different every time. Art thus has not one message but many (or it can have just one message or no message at all) and here we see that art can be experienced as a solid AND as a transient piece.
In the end, art is no more than shape, color, vibration and other sensible artifacts. There is recognition in these artifacts by the observer, which evoke pleasure, sorrow and other emotions. Some say, art is form and content, but content can be totally lacking, and art is not just about form.
We can come to a pitiful conclusion. Art is everything which evokes emotions. Thus lovemaking can be art, food can be art, bling bling can be... Is it time to lie down in the gutter and die, for art has become meaningless, or do we have to change the way we think about a subject like 'art'?
