What is art?
Seems like a simple question, but those are often the most difficult to answer.
It’s like trying to describe what salt tastes like without using the word salty, or, to paraphrase St. Augustine.
“What is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him that who asks, I do not know.”
And so we are stuck in this situation in which each of us feels we have a decent idea of what art is, but when push comes to shove, coming up with a definition feels impossible.
Musicologist Karol Berger writes in his book “A Theory of Art” that
“I may not be able to explain very clearly what art is yet still I know, roughly, what to do with the word and recognize appropriate occasions for its use.”
Does that sound like you? It’s a ‘you know it when you see it’ kind of situation.
But that doesn’t make for a very interesting essay, so let’s barrel recklessly into murky waters of definitions and see if we can’t find one that satisfies.
As you might imagine, lots of people have lots of opinions about what exactly art is.
So, let’s ask this question to some famous artists and thinkers and see what they have to say.
Afterwards, we’ll get back together and make our own evaluations.
I’m going to break this section into 5 parts.
ONE
What is art? Well, our first group of respondents says that art is the practice of expressing things beyond words.
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
“I found I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way.”
“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”
This idea extends beyond simply painting.
Consider story, for example.
A work of fiction has the ability to reveal truth that otherwise would have been inaccessible. What can’t be said directly, can be expressed through the medium of story.
TWO
Moving along quickly and closely linked to the first on our list, is the exploration of mystery.
And this exploration means different things to different artists.
Let me show you.
Georgia O'Keeffe, featured again:
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.”
Okay, so we’ve got that perspective. Art is meant to make the unknown a little less mysterious.
But consider this line from Francis Bacon:
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
We’ve got a contradiction here. Is art meant to help us feel comfortable in the darkness, or to shine a light on it?
Famous artists fall on either side of this debate.
John Cheever says:
“Art is triumph over chaos”
And yet John Keats famously describes an artist’s genius as being comfortable in
“uncertainties , mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
We know art is meant to explore the unknown, but what that means is not a settled account.
THREE
We must move on to the next item on our list, which defines art, as French playwright Honoré de Balzac says, as “nature concentrated.”
There is a lot of support for this definition.
“Nature distilled by man.”
“Great art picks up where nature ends.”
“Is the grandchild of nature.”
FOUR
Next up is the definition of art as that which pulls wonder out of the mundane.
Emerson, once again:
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”
“What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of the machine.”
In this view, the purpose of art is to shake us from the drudgery of life, or at least to find the beauty in the ordinary.
FIVE
And now, we are on to the final consideration on our list.
Art, as a vessel of self discovery.
“Art is a way of recognizing oneself.”
“All art is autobiographical”
“The activity of art is based on the capacity of people to infect others with their own emotions and to be infected by the emotions of others.”
Okay, we’re done with the list now.
That was a lot of opinions thrown out all at once. A lot of people telling you what art is, but all saying different things.
After all that, have we gotten any closer to the answer? How do we sum up all we’ve heard into a concise definition?
It turns out, at least for me, that hearing simplistic–if poetic–definitions of art by our favorite artists can make the whole situation more confusing.
So I suggest we tackle this problem from a different angle.
If we want to figure out what art is, maybe we need to consider first the why.
Why do we care about art? Why do we make art?
Why is it that I can hardly imagine a world without art – certainly not a world that is worth striving for – and yet it evades definition? How can something that is so essential be so undefinable?
So let’s take this road a while and see what we find.
Why do we make art?
“It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create.”
Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Art is the proper task of life.”
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way for your soul to grow.”
“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance…and I know of no substitute for the force and beauty of its process.”
There is, it seems, some internal drive inside every artist that pushes to the surface. Some need, almost outside the person themselves, that requires creation like the body requires oxygen.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “It is in me, and shall out.”
It is a thing almost separate from us, using us as a vessel for creation.
But this, as true as it may be, and as much as it emphasizes the importance of art, does not bring us closer to a definition.
So let’s try yet another angle.
So far, most of these definitions have used lofty, poetic language that puts art on an almost ethereal plane.
All these attempts to define art have used their value as the measure, to some extent.
They say art is art because it deepens mystery, it concentrates nature, it grows our souls, it shares emotion, it brings wisdom, it expresses what otherwise could never be said.
But, as professor of philosophy at Oxford Catharine Abell writes,
“By so closely associating what it is to be art with its value, they preclude the possibility of bad art.”
In other words, sometimes art is bad. It sucks. It makes you feel nothing. It’s poorly composed, carelessly done. It’s bad. Simple as that.
And just like we all know art when we see it but find it hard to define, so too can we all identify bad art, at least to our tastes, but have equal trouble defining that either.
So how do we determine bad art from good?
Maybe if we figure this out, it will lead us closer to a definition.
How do we become art critics?
For the answer, we’ll turn to 18th century philosopher David Hume.
Right off the bat he tells us that there are certain people better suited to judge art than others.
If you want a medical diagnosis, you go to a doctor–an expert in the field.
If you want advice on good art, you go to an art expert.
In other words, the person who can count the number of books they’ve read on one hand, who’s never been to a museum, and listens strictly to the Star Wars film score is less qualified to judge art than someone who has studied art extensively – at least to Hume.
This may bristle some people, I know it did me when researching this topic, but let’s stick with it and see what we can learn.
He says there are three main reasons we fail as art critics.
First up.
Nostalgia.
There’s the old idea that if you want to guess a person’s favorite song, throw a dart at the top 40 chart from their senior year in high school and you’ve got decent odds of getting it right.
We love music because of the way it makes us feel. The same for other forms of art. Remember the first book you read that really carried you away, where you read into the depths of the night? That book is elevated in your mind from that day on.
We attach emotional importance to art based on the circumstances in which we experienced it, which has nothing to do with the art itself.
And this makes us a bad critic of art.
Next up,
Perceived Novelty.
We get really excited when we see or hear something new.
But the issue is, it may be new to you, but probably isn’t that new in the grand scheme of things.
That chord progression that felt so unique has been done hundreds of times before. That style of brushstroke you find mesmerizing has been passed down from teacher to student over centuries.
If you’ve never seen a watercolor painting before, you may be floored by what you believe is unprecedented originality. How did they make the painting look that way? You’ll ask, thinking you’ve seen something fresh and new, only to realize you were simply ignorant of a style that’s existed for years.
Third and finally,
Complexity.
Just because a piece of music or a painting or a novel is complex does not mean it’s good.
We could get into a whole debate on whether it's better to master a basic skill or to pile on less perfected complexity.
Is it better to master the perfect omelet, or make a six course meal from scratch?
We’ll shelve that debate for now, but the point stands: complexity does not equal quality.
All right, we’ve determined why, to Hume, we are not cut out to cast our judgment on what makes good art and bad art.
But say we wanted to try, what metrics should we use to determine good art?
First,
Delicate Taste.
This just means the ability to see the pieces of the puzzle.
When I listen to a piece of classical music, I think it sounds nice, but I have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes.
I don’t know what time signature they’re in, what chords they’re playing, what complex combinations of sounds are producing such pleasing music.
I just know it sounds nice.
A true art critic understands the medium enough to recognize its individual pieces.
Next up,
Practice.
I like this one. So far this section might be making some people feel defensive about their own taste in art, I know I was feeling that way.
But this requirement softens the blow.
Critiquing art, like any other skill, takes practice.
And the reason this makes me feel better is that a true art critic, to Hume, does not approach a piece of art with a pompous air, ready to cast their great and mighty judgment and declare it good or bad.
No, they are simply looking for practice, trying to improve their perception of art.
If someone is watching a basketball game on television and is shouting at the screen about how terrible the players are at shooting, they seem like a jerk.
But if someone sits quietly, watching that same game, and takes notes on what kind of shooting form seems to work best, what areas their form could improve, what habits lead to the most made shots, they are students. They want to learn. Nothing wrong with that.
Both are judging, but only one is learning.
Third,
Comparison.
This means they have a knowledge of the history of art. They understand the way art styles come and go. They recognize the old art that inspires the new art. They are scholars of the world of art.
Fourth, and this is the one where almost all of us get tripped up,
Free of Prejudice.
Whether or not you like the artist doesn’t matter. Your background doesn’t matter. The influence of your nostalgia doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the art itself, to Hume.
And last but not least,
Strong Sense.
By this he means that they are physically able to experience the full range of senses intended by the art.
If you watched a movie meant for a movie theater on your phone on the bus with one headphone in while texting, you have no grounds to cast judgment on it.
You did not experience it with a strong sense.
And so, to Hume, there is such a thing as good and bad art, and there are certain people better suited than others to make those determinations.
That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy whatever art you want, just that we should maybe think twice before we declare the latest song we hear on the radio as the best ever written.
But now, after all that, what do we have to show for our efforts?
We’ve heard from great artists across time and space, we’ve discussed the purposes of art, we’ve considered good art and bad art and in the end, do we have a definition?
Here’s my attempt, bear with me.
Emerson wrote that art is “beauty visualized, then expressed in creative action.”
Pablo Picasso said that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
And from these two quotes I gather a common theme.
Art is in the action. If everyday life is stagnant, piling up with dust, then art is the motion that shakes the dust off and sets us free.
In other words, art is the thing that moves you.
To return one last time to Karol Berger and her theory of art, she writes
“We know what something is when we know what it can be, should be... When someone asks, what is a hammer? There is nothing better you can do than to take a hammer and drive a nail into a board with it.”
And so I offer to you, listener, the humble opinion that the best way to discover the meaning of the word art is not to read quotes or debate syntax or scour the dictionary.
The best way to understand what art is?
Make it.
Pick up a paintbrush, a pen, an instrument, and set yourself in motion.
Then, when you are swallowed by the force and beauty of the artistic process, the need for a definition fades away.
In researching for this essay I came across the institutional definition and had a reaction more visceral than expected.
Something about handing the reigns of art to an institution felt sad to me, so I avoided it in the essay, for better or worse.
But that cognitive dissonance I felt is likely evidence it’s a theory worthy of more consideration
I think of another great quote, Wordsworth's definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" originating in "emotion recollected in tranquility."
And Keats' definition of poetry as that which strips away "the veil of familiarity from the world."
The Romantic conception of art and what it can do is closest to my heart.
As for an exact definition of what art is, I have to go to the institutional definition -- art is what the art world defines as art. I think this definition, which has stayed with me since my art history undergraduate days, helps us get beyond two potential conceptual issues:
* the porous boundary between art, entertainment, kitsch, etc. and the way in which a Mozart opera or a Dickens novel can, over time, ascend from popular entertainment into art; and
* the way in which, say, a museumgoer can aesthetically enjoy things that were originally created not as works of art but as objects with a specific purpose, such as coins, ikons, amphorae.