What is art?
A fine artist isolates himself for a year in a desert, he takes a big canvas on a wooden frame and painting materials, food, and water. He sits there secluded from civilization, painting from sunrise to sunset the most marvelous masterpiece. At the end of that year, he digs a big hole in the ground and buries the canvas with its wooden frame, then covers it with the desert soil and walks away.
Is it art?
100 years later a group of archaeologists dig around the oasis the artist worked in; they reveal a rotten wooden frame with remains of torn fabric.
Is it art?
We can agree that a canvas with colors and shapes on is art, even if it is on a pedestal, but let’s assume the painter just accidentally spilled a red bubble in the middle of a canvas, he went away, a thieve grabbed the canvas from the pedestal and hide it with many other canvases and art objects he stole when all those treasures were found they were auctioned. The red bubble gained 18800$ with the title: Untitled by Unknown, definitely art, isn’t it?
I’ll try to refer to the question by its letters:
A — Audience, art needs an audience, art is a matter of sharing, expressing, evoking feelings, and thoughts. Art kept in the drawer is self-expression, it becomes art when revealed and discussed
R — Repetition and Recognition, by repetition I mean an ongoing process of making, a sum-up of trial and errors of efforts to spill out the artist's wraith on the canvas or whatever chosen material, and by the recognition I don’t mean a gallery or museum recognition but another human being that would communicate with the artist about its creation.
T — Time, the more relevance through time the more artful it is. The Ancient Greek’s statues are timeless, they conjure the magic of human life that would be relevant forever. There is relevance in time and site-specific venues that raise questions about human life, but still the more universal and more relevant it is the more artful it would be considered to be.
So, in order for an artwork to be considered as such, we need a repetitive effort recognized by other human beings over time. This definition might sound strange in the epoch of social media in which everything is instant and passing by, but if we pose and think what art should be it has to do with dialogue and sharing otherwise it would be like the rotten wood and torn fabric.
The ultimate piece of art for me is a small painting exhibited in the MoMa, it’s called Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth, I was so moved by this artwork that I went to Knox county in Maine to visit Cushing, the place this painting was created in. This is the first painting I visit when I arrive at the MoMa and the last one I see before leaving the museum. I often asked myself what draws me again and again to that artwork. I think the first powerful connection is the emotion it evokes, a paralyzed too skinny woman in a vast empty field. It is so sad, every time I look at Christina I am on the verge of crying. Wyeth had exposed his art to large audiences he made original local art describing places and people in Maine and Pennsylvania, and definitely his works are timeless, what a great art.
