So What the Hell is Art?

Oh boy, here we go. Your stereotypical “too deep for you” “critical” blogger’s first post being yet another argument on what art is. Just as a forewarning, you’re going to be encountering the word “art” quite a bit in this post. There’s unfortunately not really another word to describe it.

But seriously, what the hell is it?

If you look up art, or search the phrase “what is art” onto Google, you’re sure to find an endless slew of potential answers. I know, because I have, and I’ve also had lengthy discussions on what ‘art’ actually is. But I’ve never really found myself agreeing with what definitions I have read or heard.

Most descriptions of the term art tend to enunciate similar ideas. There is the common theme of, “art is the application of human imagination, portraying their feelings or ideas,” or something whereabouts. Or maybe, “art is communication”, “art is catharsis”, “art is emotion”, et cetera. The list goes on, but I’m sure you get the idea, even perhaps based on your own idea of what art is.

Those are all beautiful descriptors for art. But I think that those definitions stem from a romanticized viewpoint on art, from those who haven’t seen the full extent of what art truly is. I think art can be far simpler than that.

Let me start off with giving my personal definition of art. Then I’ll start building that definition from scratch, and the reasons for which I think of art the way I do.

Art is unnaturally created with the purpose of being art, claimed by whoever created it.

Seems simple and vague, which is exactly what I think art encapsulates. I’m sure we’re all aware that art comes in various different forms; I’m not sure that we’re all aware of how many forms art can possibly have.

Let’s start off with a fairly tame example. Many of you are aware of abstract art– that is, art created not from subject but rather from art methods: colors, lines, shapes, and various other like entities.

Most people would see a painting such as this and, while they may not be impressed, deem it to be art. While it isn’t particularly identifiable, there’s still the idea of structure– a use of color, a use of shape, and a use of imagination, fitting quite a few definitions of what art is.

How about this? At this point, we might start to diverge from what many would deem art. “Art isn’t so mindless,” one might say, or “anyone could paint a canvas fully black”. But the point of a painting such as this, is that it is still a painting, and it is still entirely art. So what about it is the art? Surely it can’t be the subject, given that there is none. It can’t be a use of color or shape, since the painting is simply a single color, and the shape is simply an art canvas.

No, it’s the art itself that is art. The use of shape in this painting is the canvas itself, the use of color in this painting is the color itself, and the subject of this painting is the painting itself– a property shared amongst monochrome paintings such as this infamous example.

Let’s step back a bit. Here’s another piece of abstract art, and, as you may have noticed, is digitally made. I think it’s safe to say that any work made digitally can still confidently be called art. It’s simply another form of creating art. While you may call this something other than a “painting”, the general principles still lie the same.

Now that we’ve taken a step back, let’s take three forward. Similar to Malevich’s Black Square, as you can probably see, this too is a black square. Similar to Walsh’s Neon Rain, this was made digitally, as I went into Paint and created a black square using the shape tool and the bucket tool.

So. Is this art?

“Whoa now, Quartapple, I think you’ve crossed the line there,” you might say. You’re right, but our reasons for it are different. If you go back to my big, bold definition of art, you can see that I wouldn’t consider this art because I never claimed it to be so.

Let’s bring up another example. Let’s say there’s a company that makes tennis balls, as tennis ball companies do. Of course, I cannot buy a tennis ball, hold it, and claim it to be art. What I can do, however, is make a sculpture of an exact replica of a tennis ball, then claim that to be art.

So why stop at tennis balls? I could do the same thing with a lobster, with a telephone, with a chair, with a fridge, with a bottle, with a tissue, with a sunflower seed. The key distinction here is that I am creating these to be art– a very significant difference that separates these from being something that I simply just made.

“This is good and all, but these still fall within my realms of art. I know about abstract art, and I know about surrealism.” Sure, sure. Let’s move onto another topic, one that focuses on a different type of art– or more accurately, the lack thereof. But before we delve into that, I’d like to talk about something else, to set the stage.

Some of you may have heard of the term “deconstruction”, and from those that have, some of you may even have an idea of what it means. Sadly, especially in many online communities, the term is often used quite incorrectly.

Thankfully, the concept isn’t so alien. To put deconstruction bluntly, it is essentially a bunch of rhetorical word games you may have played with yourself in the past. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of it, but here are the two key points I want to focus on:

1.) Everything has meaning only from its alternative.
This is the idea that there can be no “good” without “evil”, there can be no “hot” without “cold”, et cetera. Words and ideas themselves do not hold any intrinsic value– it is only because we take their alternative and conclude a meaning from their comparison.

2.) Meaning is never absolute; We can only assume meaning from context.
This is the idea of, “at what point does a ‘hill’ become a ‘mountain’?”, or “what separates a ‘shack’ from a ‘house’, or a ‘house’ to a ‘mansion’?” Our meanings for words and ideas are quintessentially contextual, and not absolute.

So what about art? What would a deconstruction in art be like? For that, let’s get back on track and take a look at our next example.

I hoped you didn’t feel too attached to the tame examples above, because this time we’re going to be talking about something a tad more extreme (volume and general unpleasantness warning):

Welcome to the wonderful world that is harsh noise. Yes, that is a genre of music, or as you may be thinking right now, “music”.

Noise as a concept in music isn’t super foreign, nor is it new by any stretch. Its origins are found as far back as 1912, which of course means it got its roots in the analog world. You can find noise in music across plenty of common genres, including rock, hip-hop, pop, and electronic, found primarily in the form of distortion. (For an example of a more tasteful use of noise in music, check out Asobi Seksu – New Years at the 2:10 mark, or Astrobrite – Radiofriendly at no specific time.)

What is foreign to many, however, is music that challenges what music is generally thought to be. Unlike common forms of music, there is no melody, rhythm, harmony, or even tone. Harsh noise is, quite punctually, exactly that. While the exact choreography of harsh noise is dubious, there is no doubt that this was recorded and created with the intention of being music (and even performed, but I’ll let you look that up yourself).

Here’s another, more famous example:

John Cage’s 4’33” is a music piece that is written to specifically not include what people consider to be music. Again, there is no melody, rhythm, harmony, or tone. It is performed, and created as music. The only difference between 4’33” and harsh noise, aside from the obvious, is that 4’33” is actually written– there are legitimate music sheets for the piece, and have legitimate musical direction (including comedic crescendos and decrescendos). Some versions of the piece even include more literal direction, including: “In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action”.

So are these examples of art? These examples may seem a tad oxymoronic when compared to deconstruction, which I used to precede them. Some may think from the first point that there can be no ‘music’ without ‘silence’, which 4’33” absolutely is (silence), and some might think from the second point that harsh noise crosses the line from ‘music’ to ‘noise’, which again it absolutely is (noise), but I would say to go past the simple examples found in those points, and look onto the sentences ahead.

Words and ideas themselves do not hold any intrinsic value– it is only because we take their alternative and conclude a meaning from their comparison. It is because ideas do not contain any intrinsic value that these remain music– they would only be perceived otherwise through the comparison of an unchallenged, argumentative alternative.

Our meanings for words and ideas are quintessentially contextual, and not absolute. Similarly, it isn’t that the examples have contextually gone past being music, but rather that the contexts in which we hold our comparisons, and therefore meanings, are thought of as absolute, and therefore are thought of as unbreakable axioms.

Ergo, the issue does not lie with the music itself, no matter the form it appears in. The issue lies within our seemingly perpetual dichotomy between “music” and “not music”. Luckily, that is the entire idea of deconstruction: breaking so-called truths thought of as permanent and unmovable.

This, of course, can apply to much more than just music. In order to better understand art, it might be useful to apply the ideology of deconstruction towards a definition of art. It isn’t the art that we should challenge, but instead our denotations and connotations for which we see art as.

So far, we’ve gone through various mediums of art: painting, sculpture, and music. We’ve touched on both analog and digital forms of media. The one thing all of these have in common is that they were all created, and created with the intention of being art. “But why stop there? Surely couldn’t everything be art?”

Now it’s my turn to say, “Whoa, hold on, reader, I think you’ve crossed the line there.” No, not everything can be art. Going back to that big, bold definition all the way up there, you can see that one of my criteria for what makes up art is that it is claimed by whoever created it. This holds two meanings.

The first is that someone created it. Something I do agree with in other definitions of art is that there is an artist. A forest cannot be art. Saturn cannot be art. What can be art are photographs taken of such things, as a photographer must have had to take the photograph. You can think of photographs akin to digital paintings, but focused more on ideas of framing, lighting, subject rather than the actual methods used to ‘paint’.

The second is that whoever created it must claim to be the artist, and claim it to be art. As mentioned before, I cannot buy a tennis ball and claim it to be my art. I couldn’t even really claim it to be art, because whoever did create it did not claim it to be so. This is the key distinction that separates art from something that has been created. While it is true that anything created can be art (technically, almost anything created can be categorized under some factor of painting, sculpture, photograph, and/or music), it is not true that anything created is art.

So where do we draw the line? Or rather, perhaps more appropriately, where can we draw the line?

Let’s talk about animals. This is Suda, a member of a fairly well known Asian elephant population trained to paint while being held in captivity.

I use “train” lightly. Elephants are not trained to paint in the same way you teach your dog to sit. I won’t delve too much into the controversy here, but a quick Google search on “elephant painting” should tell you much of what you want to know.

What I will focus on is this: elephants are not trained to paint– they’re trained to repeat strokes to create paintings. During the actual painting process, a mahout (elephant trainer) often directs their strokes via pulling on their ear or prodding it with a nail. In the video, you’ll see Suda sign their name on the painting. While it may seem neat, Suda didn’t learn English– they were trained to make specific strokes that resembled English letters.

So is this art? I’d say that answer is a matter of perspective. From the elephant’s perspective, this isn’t art. This painting wasn’t created with the purpose of being art, nor was it claimed by the elephant to be so. The elephant isn’t painting– it’s simply doing what it was instructed to do.

In a rather cruel fashion, from the mahout’s perspective, one could call it art. The elephant is akin to a camera, where it is used as a tool to create something, and certainly with the intention of being art. But personally, I’d take the elephant’s perspective, which is not something you can do with a camera.

So where do we draw the line? Depending on perspective, even that line will change. Wherever you put that line, the way you define art will move along with it. Even if the change to that definition only changes slightly, you can see that there is no rigidity. This suggests that there isn’t a line to draw– something not being art in one perspective can easily be art in another.

Of course, I’m not saying that if you were to show others the paintings Suda created, and they were to say that it is art, that they are taking the perspective of the mahout. Whoever you show it to is taking it in with the perspective of someone who hasn’t read this article, and of someone who most likely hasn’t looked into elephant painting much in general. What you can ascertain from an answer like that, however, is that their line is rigid (which isn’t a bad thing, mind you!). If you ask them what art is, they’ll probably give you an answer that looks nothing like my definition.

Let’s move on to something much tamer. You might notice that I never mentioned art being created out of one’s volition, which, if I had, would have been quite convenient for discussing Suda’s paintings.

That’s because that isn’t always the case (some of these examples are much better than others). You can certainly accidentally make art– as long as you created the outcome, and claim it to be art. You could say, “well, from what you’ve told me so far, isn’t it just the photos that is the art?” Well, yes, if you’re going by the post I linked, but it isn’t limited to just that. While it probably won’t happen, nothing is stopping someone from ripping out their oil-spill sink mess and turning it into an accidental sculpture. The motive with something like this is far less fancy than what someone might describe art as– there’s no emotion, no message, et cetera. Someone spilled something and thought, “Wow, this looks nice”. Honestly, that’s all you really need.

Yes, it’s true that art is usually the culmination of human imagination, of idea, of communication, of skill, of catharsis.

But not always.

(Also, I have a digital painting I’m titling Digital Black Square I Made In Paint, if I’ve got any interested bidders.)