What is Art?: Response to “A Story in Pictures”
In my essay at the beginning of the year, I stated that “art is a form of expression used to tell a story or communicate a greater message interpreted by the viewer, art is opinion.” While I still agree with this to a certain degree, I think that throughout this course, my definition has changed just a little bit. I currently think that while art is opinion, there are some restrictions to this; art needs to be altered in some form. For example, Duchamp’s Fountain isn’t art, until Duchamp flips it over and writes “R. Mutt” on the base. A natural forest cannot be art, it can be artful, but technically, since it has not been altered by the human hand, it is not art. However, something like the gardens of Versailles can be considered art, because each bush and tree was strategically placed and sculpted by a person intending to create art. Art can still be opinion, but personally, I think that in order for something to be considered art, it needs to be created and changed, it can’t just be naturally occurring. A person can go to a nature reserve and consider it to be beautiful, but since there was no intent, or statement, it cannot be art; there is a difference between beauty and art, because art can be beautiful, but something beautiful wouldn’t necessarily be art.
Art can be traced back thousands of years, since the beginning of human civilizations, to be used for information, aesthetic needs, worship, etc. However, from prehistory to Modernism, the depiction, style, and technique of art has changed drastically. This results in the viewer’s opinion on art to change, and this alteration of the artistic process has allowed society to pick and choose what styles they like and dislike, giving not only the artist more artistic freedom, but the viewer as well. As our possibilities have expanded, so have our horizons, giving us the ability to recreate past works, combine styles, or create our own. Art was created to make a political statement, to strike emotion into people’s minds, to inspire people; art is a way to communicate without words.
Looking back at my observations from the beginning of the year, I explained that “one person cannot define the entire concept of art, because they don’t have the same taste as the rest of the world.” Now that I have almost completed this course, I think that this statement is much too broad. I say this because, this is giving art such a vague definition, in the sense that literally anything can be art if a person thinks that it is artful. For example, the sky, basically untouched by the human hand, is not art just because it is beautiful. We have not altered the sky. We have not changed it, or shaped it, or molded it into something we envisioned (this is excluding the impact of pollution). Once again, I will restate that just because it is beautiful, doesn’t mean that it’s automatically art. I think this was part of my previous essay because, I could not find a way to define art, I mean, it is such a huge phenomenon, and it has so much meaning, and so many varying effects on people, that I felt I needed to encompass all of it into one statement, but I realize now, that it is basically impossible to squeeze art into one sentence; that is basically equivalent to cramming the world’s history into one sentence, or shoving every person who has ever walked the Earth’s emotions into one sentence. There is so much that goes into art, that it cannot be contained or defined. Art is amazing, because everyone has encountered it in some form or another, and it has never gone out of style, nor will it ever. Before people could write they had art, before science was widely accepted, there was art, before religion there were cave paintings that showed information, as opposed to religious propaganda. Art has been with humanity forever and it’s never going to desert us.
In my essay at the beginning of the year, I stated that “art is a form of expression used to tell a story or communicate a greater message interpreted by the viewer, art is opinion.” While I still agree with this to a certain degree, I think that throughout this course, my definition has changed just a little bit. I currently think that while art is opinion, there are some restrictions to this; art needs to be altered in some form. For example, Duchamp’s Fountain isn’t art, until Duchamp flips it over and writes “R. Mutt” on the base. A natural forest cannot be art, it can be artful, but technically, since it has not been altered by the human hand, it is not art. However, something like the gardens of Versailles can be considered art, because each bush and tree was strategically placed and sculpted by a person intending to create art. Art can still be opinion, but personally, I think that in order for something to be considered art, it needs to be created and changed, it can’t just be naturally occurring. A person can go to a nature reserve and consider it to be beautiful, but since there was no intent, or statement, it cannot be art; there is a difference between beauty and art, because art can be beautiful, but something beautiful wouldn’t necessarily be art.
Art can be traced back thousands of years, since the beginning of human civilizations, to be used for information, aesthetic needs, worship, etc. However, from prehistory to Modernism, the depiction, style, and technique of art has changed drastically. This results in the viewer’s opinion on art to change, and this alteration of the artistic process has allowed society to pick and choose what styles they like and dislike, giving not only the artist more artistic freedom, but the viewer as well. As our possibilities have expanded, so have our horizons, giving us the ability to recreate past works, combine styles, or create our own. Art was created to make a political statement, to strike emotion into people’s minds, to inspire people; art is a way to communicate without words.
Looking back at my observations from the beginning of the year, I explained that “one person cannot define the entire concept of art, because they don’t have the same taste as the rest of the world.” Now that I have almost completed this course, I think that this statement is much too broad. I say this because, this is giving art such a vague definition, in the sense that literally anything can be art if a person thinks that it is artful. For example, the sky, basically untouched by the human hand, is not art just because it is beautiful. We have not altered the sky. We have not changed it, or shaped it, or molded it into something we envisioned (this is excluding the impact of pollution). Once again, I will restate that just because it is beautiful, doesn’t mean that it’s automatically art. I think this was part of my previous essay because, I could not find a way to define art, I mean, it is such a huge phenomenon, and it has so much meaning, and so many varying effects on people, that I felt I needed to encompass all of it into one statement, but I realize now, that it is basically impossible to squeeze art into one sentence; that is basically equivalent to cramming the world’s history into one sentence, or shoving every person who has ever walked the Earth’s emotions into one sentence. There is so much that goes into art, that it cannot be contained or defined. Art is amazing, because everyone has encountered it in some form or another, and it has never gone out of style, nor will it ever. Before people could write they had art, before science was widely accepted, there was art, before religion there were cave paintings that showed information, as opposed to religious propaganda. Art has been with humanity forever and it’s never going to desert us.
