What IS Art?

At times we see ourselves looking with skeptical eyes at what is right in front of us: a canvas with unoriginal bright paint splatters covering it for five grand; another auto-tuned song from a Disney Channel star; a college student-made film that shows an embarrassing lack of personal experience in his craft. We may want to label these things as anything but art, but does that take away its artistic value or relevance to the artistic movement of the now? That painting could have been an expression of the artist wanting to create ‘anti-art;’ the mass produced teen pop could have been intended to be a marketing tool instead of high-art; though the cinematography of the student film was a little below average, the writing was fantastic. In short, art is only art to the observer.

In our class, the majority of students including myself felt that artwork is something that inspires emotions—touches us, if you will—and is personal in terms of appreciation. What one person may find as artistic, someone else might describe as obscene or unoriginal. While a majority of people may lean one side or another on how much a work is art, personal opinion is the cornerstone of what makes art unique, meaningful, and valuable. An example would be Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters’ “In Search of America,” a film that Tom Hammond mentioned to me. This film was made in the 60’s and featured Ken Kesey and his group of friends called The Merry Pranksters, who decided to take psychedelic drugs and tour rural America with a video camera, scaring Midwesterners from the sound of it. The movie was reportedly in limited circulation, and there is barely any evidence of it on the Internet. While the movie, being more than 10 hours long, sounds like it would be nothing more than a couple of high young adults fumbling around with a camera, seems like an interesting experiment of the drug counterculture of the time spitting in the face of puritanical America. While antics of that nature are commonplace now, a move like that could have been very edgy and daring at the time, making it more contemporary art.

A great span of media, from music, to literature, to comic books, to video games are all forms of art in their own right, and some gain more notice from the general public than others. The Statue of David by Michelangelo is an easily recognized statue, and is considered by many to be one of the most famous Italian statues in the art world. In many videogame circles, the Japanese-produced game Final Fantasy Seven is considered to be the greatest game ever created because of it’s intricate and well written story, along with the first 3D graphics ever to be features in the franchise. While Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs is praised for being the first American feature length animation, Fantasia is regarded by many Disney fans as being the most artistically ambitious and avant-garde animation of it’s time, and is held to the status of a classic film. These four examples of art are well known through the world, even though their origins are from separate countries and cultures. This proves that art is indeed universal.

In the end, artwork can be related to people: some are more interesting than others, some are more original than others, but they should always be judged on their own merits instead of in comparison to each other.