What Is Art?

18Dec06

There is plenty of ‘art’ in the world which literally anyone could do. Huge amounts of money are paid for some. What people call art and how much they are prepared to pay for it is entirely up to them. We live in a reasonably free world and we are all entitled to our views. Here I am merely expressing my views.

In 1917 a French ‘artist’ by the name of Marcel Duchamp took a urinal designed by an anonymous person, signed it ‘R. Mutt’, and presented it as a work of his art (entitled ‘Fountain’). He claimed that anything the artist produces is art. The fact is this man wasn’t ignored, dismissed as a nutter, and forgotten. It is claimed that he has had the biggest influence on twentieth century art of any artist.

If we say art doesn’t have to be made, or if it is, then it doesn’t have to be made by the artist him or herself, then anything is art and everything is art. In musical terms this would mean that any sound, including no sound, is music. An outcome of such a loose definition of art (or music) is that anyone can lay claim to anything as art – even if someone else made it! Moreover, they can claim it as their art! So we are all artists and everything is art. For reasons that are beyond me, some people don’t think this is absurd! Some gallery and museum curators seem to think this definition of art is not only acceptable but that this sort of ‘art’ is superior to what may be called commonsense art. Art for them, it seems, must be new: it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it has not being done before or doesn’t look like anything that has gone before. That sounds like a perfect definition for the word ‘new’, but do we want to confuse this with the word ‘art’…?

Some people seem to think that being absurd or shocking is what art is all about. I think the art world is confused and in disarray. When you can walk into an art gallery like Tate Modern, London, and literally not know what is meant to be art and what is just normal reality – like chairs, bins, ladders, scaffolding, fire extinguishers, a room being decorated – then the purpose of going to a gallery in the first place gets lost. It’s a giggle. Is it a game…?

What do I think art is? Art is something totally unnecessary and non-functional, that is made, and made for a specific purpose. The purpose depends on economic, cultural, and historic factors. Is it for a particular patron or is it aimed at a specific market? The culture in which the work is done could affect the subject matter (scared or secular for example), politics (for example war art), norms and styles of art. The period in which the work is done could affect the materials and techniques available, as well as the norms and styles of art. Generally art is to express specific ideas or emotions, and generally, although not necessarily, to provide an aesthetic experience.

The artist is in control to a very large degree. To make art you start with nothing and intentionally produce something – using only raw materials and skill. For example, starting with a blank canvas, or block of Carrera marble, or blank musical score, or blank pages of a book – this for me is a precondition of art. But it is not the whole story. A blank starting point is necessary for complete freedom of expression.

Art is also about what you choose to express, and your control over the medium/s you are working in. There is a skill element: how well you have mastered the medium/s you have worked in (could a craftsperson have done better?); how much time and effort has gone into it (more is generally better than less); how easy would it be for someone else to do (difficult is generally better than easy)? Most people can paint a child-like picture of a horse, but can many people paint horses as wells as the great English artist George Stubbs (1724-1806)?

There is a thin line between art and craftsmanship (or craftspersonship to be politically correct?!). An artist should be a craftsperson. This is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. A craftsperson is not necessarily an artist. A good craftsperson should be able to make, copy, or reproduce something in their medium/s very well, and it is quite simple to determine how well it has been done. On the other hand an artist is a person who comes up with the original idea, the whole reason for doing it in the first place – all the emotions, inspiration, angst, love, aspiration, aesthetics, composition, scale – indeed the artist usually makes all these decisions because he/she should ideally be free to do so, and freely chooses to do so. This is in stark contrast to the craftsperson – where the process is quite mechanical, albeit possibly very skillful.

A great deal of work is called ‘art’ – when I think it is really craftsmanship: there has been no artistic process, the ‘artist’ has merely copied something to the best of their ability – for example painting or drawing a landscape or a bowl of fruit, performing a piano recital, or acting a character in a Shakespearean play. Or if this reproductive activity is to be called ‘art’ then I think we should have a special word for the original, imaginative, inspired art – a much more scarce and interesting human endeavour…

How do I judge art? I have a few criteria. How skillfully has the piece been created? How well have the materials being used and expressed? How beautiful is it – does it have any aesthetic merit? Does it give pleasure? Generally simple is better than complex. How original is it? How interesting are the ideas expressed within, and how eloquently have they been expressed for the medium used in relation to other works in the genre? How well has the finished product or performance been received? Does it evoke the kind of response it was intended to? Finally, does it have anything new to say? That is new in its place in history. For many of these criteria we have to judge art in relation to its history, culture, and geography – the time and place it was created in.

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Michael Autumn
Cambridge, UK
January 2006

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