After yesterday’s blog we have come to the conclusion that a mere word or image does not have any intrinsic meaning accompanying it. As weird and illogical as this might seem, we must never forget that every time we look at a painting or hear a word, we might forget about the most important part of the equation; us.

If you are reading this blog, but have not read the first two, I do propose you take a look at them first, as they will give a bit more context to today’s writing. If you’ve been reading all of them — thank you, I appreciate it!

Now back to the wonders of perception:

To paraphrase the first statement, we are faced with an interesting problem; an art work doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning. Bummer right?! But still, if I make a painting of a white dove carrying an olive laurel, make it pretty and show it to people I’ve never meet — so they have no prior knowledge of me or my work — magically most of them will know that my work of art symbolises peace.

Does this mean we just over-philosophised ourselves into a ditch?

To find the answer we have to go all in and drop the proverbial A-bomb. We have to ask the big question. The one you can read about in 50€+ books, written by prominent and knowledgeable art historians and theoreticians, whose answers are mostly written so thoroughly, so extensively, that one needs a dictionary to find their point.

Ready?

What is art?

Boom.

Unlike most other questions like: “What is carpentry?”, “What is music?”, even “What is philosophy?”, we artists and other creative souls seem to have an enormous problem — none of us really seem to know what the heck we are doing in our lives. Not because we are confused, undisciplined or too spontaneous, but because no-one actually seems to know what art is.

If you ask a bunch of different people, you will find that most academic professors will give you an academic answer. If they’re more on the liberal side (believe it or not, there really are conservative artists too), it will surely have to do with the freedom of expression and the lyrical power of images, movement and just the rawness of it all, man.

Ask a person in the street, anyone you want really, and they might tell you it’s something pretty, something that looks good. And probably also something that is quite expensive.

For a wealthy collector it might be freedom; a way of expressing themselves without the need to actually learn how to paint or draw or sculpt.

A tattoo artist will tell you it’s tattoos. A barber will tell you it’s an exquisite haircut. An IT technician might tell you it’s a perfectly sorted and laid collection of ethernet and electrical cables in the server room. 

Just don’t ask an aesthetician — the branch of philosophy that researches art — and they might tell you a lot. Truth be told, they might tell you too much while saying very little. A wonderful example surely is Tiziana Andina’s prominently titled book: “The Philosophy of Art: The Question of Definition: From Hegel to Post-Dantian Theories”. Read at your own peril.

Art seems to be everything. And we all know that something that is everything is consequently nothing at all, so no real answer can be found in what we have for now.

We have to take a closer look into the production of art; the making of paintings, sculptures, videos and maybe even haircuts and tackle the question by investigating the process of making something an art piece.

Let’s see if we can’t fix this mess of tattoos, pretty pictures and ethernet cables into a more workable definition by asking a better question: What makes something become art? Maybe we will get lucky with this one?!

Find out more in tomorrow’s blog.