Currently in my fourth year at HSU, I am majoring in Art History and Dance. In my youth I was raised in what at the time seemed to me almost like a little museum. My grandparents, who had become avid collectors in the late 60s filled their house with paintings, prints, pottery, wood and clay figurines, abstract sculptures, musical instruments and jewelry. My grandfather would take me around as a little girl and tell me about the objects - their origin and history, their functionality, and their visual qualities (I first learned about basic composition from him: line, pattern, texture, balance, etc.). This environment is probably what made me interested in looking at art early on, and is most likely what lead me to declare a major in Art History.
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Nearly five years ago today I sat in my AP Photography class confronted with this very same question, "What is art?" While I wish I could say that I have long since fully comprehended this complex word, it would be an exaggeration to say that I can entirely define it. As most of you have probably found out from trying to answer this question, the term "art" is rather ambiguous and even personal at times. One of the very first characteristics we want to use to define art is that it is subjective - in meaning and in experience. But as I feel like we have heard this before, I will try to stay away from defining art by only its emotive qualities and will instead once again confront this question by considering the relation of art to its specific origin and culture, as well as by identifying the role of the artist in relation to their trade.
I think its pertinent to first admit what is perhaps an obvious, yet essential, fact about art, and that is that art has its own culturally specific definitions. An apparent assertion is that various cultures create art by and for different purposes, and give art objects varying degrees of value. This is clear not only today, but also throughout the course of art history. In class as we discussed whether or not the woven vessels were art, and I could not help but ask myself, “How would we know?” Do we value these art objects more because they are foreign to us? Because they are handmade whereas in our culture mostly everything is mass-produced? I would also like to add that “good art” and “bad art” are culturally defined as well.
This leads me to address another aspect vital to the definition of art – the artist and, more specifically, the artist’s intent. I fully believe that the artist’s purpose is to intentionally create art for an audience to react to, and without this, you cannot define a creation as art. This definition would then separate art from artifact. I would also go further, for purposes of narrowing the broad definition of creation, to say that humans create art not as a tool for the most basic means of survival (set aside the fact that many artists create to make a living).
(Side note: I failed to mention music, dance, poetry, literature, etc. : / )
Kelly I really like that you acknowledge that the whether art is "good" or "bad" is usually determined within its own culture, and that opinion is typically held in esteem by all subsequent studies of the art. However, is a creative work still art if the artist meant for only himself to be the audience?
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