What is art?

Patrick Bostian

Thomas Hammond

Visual Literacy

September 13, 2010

What is art?

There is a joke that begins with, “Every hot chick with a camera thinks she’s a photographer.” Photography is more than just taking pictures and art is more than any expression of feeling. A work of art in most any field takes effort. Occasionally great photography can be created through luck and timing but everyone with a camera phone is not a photographer. Art certainly needs to be something. A license for creativity does not mean it can be anything.

Art is not universal. That is unless you believe that God created the Universe, in which case the Universe would be a work of art but that is another issue entirely. I don’t mean to be negative but when we call everything that is beautiful or everything that is an expression of some sort art, we really devalue that which has been worked on tediously. That is not to say that only paintings are works of art. Music, movies, still photography, etc. all of those are works of art. They express feeling and have been created to show that feeling. In all honesty art is in the eye of the beholder. Not to sound cliché but it is true.

Someone might find heavy metal to be a great work of art while in my opinion it is just noise. Throwing junk together is not really art. There may have been expression but it needs to form something. Many would say that anything that isn’t beautiful cannot be art. I think beautiful things are more artistic but there are dark and sad things that carry much expression of an artist.

To me art requires skill. True art cannot be stumbled upon. Beautiful occurrences like a lucky photo or a song that seems to pop into the musicians mind can seem like accidents but these opportunities need skill to be taken advantage of. That fleeting moment that would have been a great picture only becomes art if someone takes that photo. A gorgeous sunset only becomes art when someone takes the time to set up the photo. The famous picture of Muhammad Ali towering over a fallen Sonny Liston comes to mind when speaking of chance occurrences. That photo was taken in a split second when Ali motioned at Liston to get back up and take more of a beating. The photographer was sure lucky to have caught the classic pose, but it was also taken perfectly.

While on occasion art can occur by chance, most great art is created by a skilled professional who puts time and detail into their work. Artists like Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol are praised for their artwork but to me art is more than a simple picture of a can or a splatter of paint. Sometimes I think we find art where there really is none. If there is one thing I have learned in considering the legitimacy of art it’s that quite possibly there is no steadfast definition of art. What we need to remember is that not everything is art, but we need to keep an open mind as to what art can be.