What is Art?

What the frack are Art and Artists? How to find them?

1. Art is what artists do.

• Art is the finished product of an Artist.

Art is the end product of a complex and complicated system, that has the Artist at the center as the one materializing, breathing life into, the whole process of that system. It is complex because the interdependent factors affect and change each other, while being themselves changed from outside. It does not need to even be complicated, it can be astoundingly simple, yet retain its high degree of complexity. This results in a completely new structure of the process that feeds back, both internally and externally, to reconfigure itself as a new system, with a similarly adaptive process, keeping itself recognizable even when seen by others outside the system and process.

When considering an art piece, we identify it with a person, as his work, his production. There cannot be Art without the conscious production of a person. When we see computer generated graphics from a complicated, computer generated equation, it is certainly very Art like, but cannot be entirely described as Art, as there is no personal effort behind that graphic ¹.

• Art is something to be interpreted freely, i.e., experienced without the need to adhere to a conventional, utilitarian view of what we consider (as we do with everything else).

We lead everyday lives that are heavily dependent on how we interpret and use both the material world around us, and the complementary mental world inside us. We sense the material world and interact socially based on the mental world complementing that physical environment. We navigate a sea of previously agreed meanings which themselves serve a purpose. For practical, and pragmatic reasons, we convene, we agree, on what things mean and what they are, mainly driven by their function as tools, identifiable end products of need or problematic things and situations requiring adaptive solutions. Although one could see a parallel, if not identical process in producing Art, the main driver is Utility – the need to find a solution to commonpace situations, using tools.

An Art piece is completely free of any Utilitarian purpose, it does not originate in, nor does it address, any commonly occurring problem that needs to be solved. Although it does use the very same elements and similar problem solving processes as the non Art end products, it has no purpose, in Utilitarian terms, and could be seen as the conclusion of a mind working out abstract psychological or philosophical questions with no evident answers nor use.

• Passive Art is one that just is. Each observer takes it in as he does.

Imagine people walking in a park and suddenly coming across a huge sculpture. Chances are that this intrusion of a finished Art piece will leave them wondering and thinking for at least a minute on what it is and means. There would hardly be any other interaction, apart from the visual manifestation of the sculpture itself, to influence the reaction the observers display inwardly or outwardly. This is passive Art, and has the conceptual, perceptual limitation to be considered in countless combinations of variables, like socio economic background, culture, age, state of mind, and mood. It is in this limitation that the unborn seed of real freedom lies – liberty from any preconceived notion of what it actually is, for the observer. But it would not bear fruit, as the real limitation is the understanding of the whole artistic process that ended in the ready made sculpture. And in this very important consideration there is no freedom of interpretation, from the observer´s viewpoint, since the whole process could only be one way and no other. This remains invisible to the observer, thereby rendering this form of Art as passive.

• Active Art is one that interacts or even dominates the observer, guiding or determining for him how he is to perceive the art piece.

There are Art objects that immerse the viewer into themselves, allowing him to experience the Art object in deeper ways than what passive observation can allow. Every time this is repeated, with the same viewer, the experience may be different, and certainly no two people would have the same experience, when comparing afterwards. This could be clearly seen in performance pieces, where for example, a male and female model stand facing each other exactly in a doorway where the observer has to pass. This interaction will jolt the whole range of psychological, cultural and physical variables of the viewer into crossing the doorway. As the experience is repeated, it would ultimately stabilize towards a more consistent appreciation of the Art object, maybe even reaching the passive observation stage described earlier.

• Psychological factors and external variables play an essential, basic, role in appreciating Art.

As with passive and active Art forms, there is always the viewer contributing his perception to the Art piece, completing it. There would be no meaning in an unobserved Art piece, outside of metaphysical considerations (such as „...nobody in the woods, is there noise?“) and so it would remain sterile, incomplete. Once the viewer appreciates it, and aprehends it, it is complete, its essence as Art, as a recognizable, cognitivelly tangible thing materializes. This is not to be confused with purpose, or effect. There is none, it is one of two states that exist with every Art piece: being and non being. If the Mona Lisa is seen by one tourist and not another, it is both completed in its artistic essence and not at the same time. When we think about an known art work, it is snapshot in time, when it is its „being in the world“ state.

This completion via observation can be any combination of conscious or unconscious, rational or intuitive acts. Just as everything else, there is a predetermined baggage of mental and physical actions that will determine the way the observation is done. Again, consider that of the two tourists in the Mona Lisa room, the one not seeing her is a blind art historian, while the one seeing her is an illiterate artist, that perception will be completely different. Even the same person, say a boy of 15 and many years later, that same person with 45 years, will see the same picture in very different ways.

More generally, it overlaps with the whole topic of consciousness and memory. Were we have permanent amnesia, we would still function in the world, though fictitiously rediscovering aspects of it with surprise. It would be no surprise to somebody watching us, as they would see similar reactions in us every time our latest discovery takes place. In a more subtle way, and perhaps even camouflaging the big subjective differences each one has between any two given time frames, is the persistance of memory. This memory will have us approach the same Art piece with, what would feel like, the same expectation as last time (how erotic was that hardcore Venus) and even impress on us, after the observation of the Art piece, that our expectation was met. This happens on somewhat shortly spaced intervals and we don´t see the Art piece very often. But two situations show how wrong this predictable appreciation is. A person that either observes the Art piece very often, say daily, or that same person looking at the Art piece 3 or 4 times in a span of, say, 50 years. Completely different expectations and after-the-observation thoughts and feelings. Donald Duck may no longer be as funny at 50 years old, as when we were 5 years old.

• The common ground for all viewers is the impossibility of appreciating the process that created the Art.

The appreciation of Art, even the whole subject of Art, can be thought of as focused almost entirely on the finished form, the end product, with hardly any considerations approximating to the how and why the Art piece was created. And this is the critical aspect of the Art piece. The piece is almost unimportant, trivial, even, within the broader scope of the artistic creative process. The process can be bounded by conventional ways of analyzing any system that undergoes dynamic change, but that is a mirage, a very imperfect solution that will yield only guesses on the true nature of that very artistic process. In the lyrics „...I need you, like the poet needs the pain“ is the example of this. A poet will only produce poetry when confronting a situation that he is moved to address for multiple reasons, embedded in his very self. This self is not just internal (mental, intuitive, psychological), but exists with external feedback loops (training, culture, age, society) that guide the shaping of the poetry. This is evident in two things: the apparent repetitive nature of Art pieces, and the „evolution“ of Art in time, as artists seem to emulate other artists. A simplistic opinion would explain that these two things are just that: repetition and emulations. They are, however neither, and are the glimpse we have of the person in action, giving life to that process, going through the process, affecting it, being affected by it.

2. Artists do Art.

Real artists are not more concerned with the finished work, the end product, the material display of achievement, than the whole artistic process. They may be affected by it, as any other person would be, as it is critized, praised, or ignored. The tension arises when artists do not understand that no matter what the reception the finished piece has, it will invariably address just the finished piece, and almost never the perhaps more significant, important, process and energy devoted to producing the piece. Sure, Van Gogh´s ill mental health is almost a part of observing his extraordinary colors and technique, but this is entirely missing in most Art pieces being observed, through no fault of the viewer, either. It is impossible to submerge oneself, even with a lifetime available to do it, in that process. Only in works of fiction, like Borges, does one write the same book, word for word, without copying what one considers to be the original. That means that even if we could somehow get into the conscious, intuitive, experience of the artist and follow through every step of the process, we would still not have the understanding of exactly how and why the artist achieved that first, original piece. Just like the impossibility to determine where an electron is, without changing where it is, so also can we not understand the whole process of Art making, without changing the end result that we actually start off considering at all.

And this is what we mean when we think of Artists. Artists are defined by what they do. An Artist not doing Art is just another person. And doing an Art piece is also not what an Artist does – that would imply a steady focus on a utilitarian end, the creation of something. A real artist does something entirely different, he does Art, and not Art pieces.

3. What Artists do.

Anyone that can create Art never do it, except to close the circle in the process that that Art forces them to do so. An artist needs to produce his art piece, as a safety valve giving off steam. To deny the artist the chance to do this is to kill him, to have him lead a Zombie life: neither dead nor alive. This is what artists do: they are the masters and subjects of their own artistic processes, which they can both not control and control. They are like cowboys riding and taming wild horses, part of the animal, while remaining separate. The docile, well behaved stallion is but an almost footnote to the whole process, which in itself is for the artist the whole reality of doing Art.

When a very skilled person creates an Art piece out of purely contractual obligation or need, the skill itself can mask the lack of Art, and the observer can be left not a bit wiser to the difference. To the sensitive observer, however, there is a big difference, though this is many times lost in the sad world of paid Critics, artistic impersonators, and misguided public.

To the extent that art finds itself having monetary value, the problem of understanding Art and differentiating it from non Art is almost always lost, except to the very few Artists toiling away in spite of this storm, and the even fewer people seeing through the black gales of rain and lightning. Art that is truly Art fetches millions in money terms, and is used as investment, collateral, tax saving, and above all just that: a piece to be transacted. This leads everyone even further away from the real nature of Art: as a whole process, integral to the Artist within it, without which the Art is just an „art“ piece.

Epilogue

Through all the consideration of what Art is, what it is not, and how money travestizes it, Artists will continue to do Art. People will continue to appreciate Art. In spite of all the ebb and flow easing or making it harder for the Artist to do Art, it will remain a need for the Artist, who may even not to produce a finished piece at all, or even burn it.

The important thing is to remember that just as with all of us, Artists do Art because they need to, not because someone else wants the finished Art piece as an object with a defined purpose.

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Bad Homburg, 18.05.2014

1 Arguably, one could say the computer´s creator is the artist, but that is not the scope of this more narrower view of Art and Artists, since everything created by Man would end up being an art piece, which would be a far too generous conception that renders the usual meaning we ascribe to Art as senseless. An exception could be made here for industrial design, that does actively incorporate, from the onset, Art in the functionality and appearance of what are basically tools made for a given purpose – that is, utilitarian objects.