By Ron Evans
What is art?
I hate the question on some level. But it comes up a lot in the arts community, at coffee shops, galleries and late night semi-drunken ramblings over Negronis. And while I don’t love the question itself, I do like how the answers tend to steer the dialog into a thought-provoking discussion on creativity.
When RadarStation was still in my house in East Wenatchee several years back there was an incident that has stuck with me concerning this question. It was during the second opening for our Forms: Invasion of The Naked Humans show which was an eclectic showcase of nude sketches, paintings, photography and even a few live nude humans hanging around. Literally. Toward the end of the evening a local artist walked into the show. After a perusal of the creative offerings on exhibit this person began to (rather noticeably) chastise the show, the artists involved and the gallery itself.
At first I tried to ignore this seemingly passionate voice of dissent. Any collection of art is fair game for criticism after all. But the tone seemed to be getting a bit more spicy - at one point he used the word vacuous to describe the show and I almost stepped into the conversation. Although I had to look it up to see if them was fightin’ words first.
vac·u·ous
/ˈvakyooəs/
adjective : having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence; mindless.
Why, them are fightin’ words!
But then I noticed some of the artists gathering around this person to engage in a discussion about art so I held back and let it play out. Ultimately the discourse ended with a bit of an agree to disagree settlement. But not before the conversation had gotten quite deep and philosophical on the topic of art for art’s sake, and the exchange ended up being one of my favorite memories about that era of running the gallery.
Some of the artists felt attacked and defended the style, subject and technique of their works. Some felt compelled to defend and explain RadarStation itself. Some of them were simply curious what this person found so objectionable about the show - the nudity didn’t seem to be a factor. But they all calmly engaged in a chat about what art even was.
At some point the young man turned to me and asked “Why are you even an artist?” It’s not the first time I’d been asked this and I gave my usual answer which is “I don’t know if I am an artist. I just like to make shit.” I realize this is a bit of a copout answer, but it also happens to be a true (albeit simplified) account of how I look at my creative output. I’m a maker. A designer. A curious tinkerer of miscellaneous mediums. And maybe an artist. He seemed satisfied with that response and moved on. But it got another round of conversation going. Why are you an artist? Why make art? But most of all...what even is art?
As it’s a frequent point of conversation amongst artists and art enthusiasts alike, I wanted to delve a little deeper into this question. Rather than wax on about the topic myself, I reached out to see what members of our local arts community had to say on this. Some of them responded immediately with a thoughtful but succinct mission statement. Some took several days to ponder such a vague yet grand question. And a few admitted they couldn’t really find the words to sum up their thoughts on something so ethereal. What I love most about the responses is they almost read like a collection of poems. Maybe this is poetry? What is poetry? No, no...that’s for another article.
“What is art? I picture a panel of academics and historians deliberating all sorts of ideas here, but I think it’s quite simple. Art is the language of the collective experience. Art is found in a million places every day...it could be how you cut the banana for your kid, compose an e-mail, or prune the tree. Some of us make a practice of expressing how the world feels to us (we’re called artists) but all of us communicate what we’re experiencing in some way - and we experience much, much more than we’re conscious of. I prefer the question, ‘What is art for?’, to which I’d answer, ‘Art creates empathy.’”
- Lindsay Breidenthal painter, muralist
“To me Art is natural as speaking. It’s the necessity to communicate. It’s an urge to create. I believe it is a genetic function of the human brain. We are all artists, we are all creators. As children we draw sometimes before we talk. But as we grow up our creativity is truncated, erased, stopped, usually we become embarrassed by our drawings or someone made us feel inept, stupid disenfranchised by our own visual expressions. Even though our dreaming mind continues to form images and colors but we forget or disown when we are awakened. Art is an expression of our feelings. I called myself an expressionist because my feelings are affected by the events going on in the world and that becomes my images, my color, my forms. I don’t deprive my art of the significant and natural means of expression. I sell my art for very little because to me the joy of expressing the transformation of my feelings into images and the power of awakening these emotions and inventing color is worth gold. To take a blank canvas and start a journey into the unknown brings me great joy, calms down my busy mind, it brings me into a meditative stage which I love.”
- Martha Flores painter, poet, sculptor
“Art can be many things. It can tell us who we are, or make us question why we are. At its best it can bring joy and wonder, at its worst it can be boring or invoke anger. Art has no membership, no invitation or exclusion. There is no reason to make art, to look at art, to care about art. But we surround ourselves with it, formally or not. And even though we could live without it, why would we?”
- Chad Yenney collage artist, owner/curator Collapse Gallery
“If I told you there was a lens in which to view the functionality of the world, would you pick the most useful one? The most economical? The prettiest? Perhaps one rich in your own personal history, making everything jaded and dysfunctional to prove a point? Art is vocabulary. You might choose to sow corn in rows for the highest yield, or maybe we throw the old washing machine out in the front yard out of laziness, but it nevertheless displays a message. Art is the tangible conversation of that message. Everyone does it, some people just have enough time to think about it.”
- Kristen Acesta mixed-media artist, owner Salt Creek Apothecary
“Art is a way of being; thinking, seeing, making, doing, and is the outcome of those efforts. It is the sum total of thousands of little decisions applied to, and translated within a chosen medium by a maker. It is the interpretation of experience and ideas that are formalized within the defined content of medium and setting. Art results from deliberate acts of human intervention in the gathering, arranging, organizing and presenting discrete parts into new perceptions of objects and experiences that can be measured by the six senses of touch, taste, smell, awareness of space, sound, and sight. Done well, art challenges those senses to see and experience something fully, differently in a manner that transcends medium, time, content, context and setting. Good art asks something of the viewer and acts as a bridge between the efforts of the maker and the perceptions of the receiver.
Or at least that's what I think this three millionth day of the first year of the Covid19 Pandemic and the twelve millionth day of the friggin trump regime. Given that, I may not be thinking clearly. Art may just be throwing paint at a canvas or wadding clay into a lump.”
- karendawndean multi-medium artist
“Art Stands witness to the Dream in me.”
- Jan Cook Mack painter
“Art to me is one of those few things that separates us from animals. The act of intentionally creating a visual work of art goes all the way back to the Paleolithic cave paintings discovered in France. Humans are drawn to create, especially as children, it is an innately human activity. Only as we grow older do we complicate this urge by our fickle modern way of life. Art is like a Rorschach test to help us better understand ourselves and the world around us. All art forms seek to express that unexplained essence of the soul connected to source energy and the collective consciousness. I also believe it is in the eye of the beholder. If a person creates something, it can be art. Anything less than that unnecessarily convolutes things. But it doesn’t mean all art is ‘good.’”
- Bryant Goetz painter
“Art is the human response to circumstance with concern for aesthetics. It is the fascination or bliss made manifest by skilled hands in the medium du jour. It is the compulsion we have as artists to exorcise the current fixation into form and the risk we take in baring it to the audience.
From the viewer’s perspective, art is something made by skilled hands to express an idea, emotion or point of view. The artist's intention may not always be apparent to the viewer but that is part of the beauty. The viewer has the freedom to interpret what he sees and so the act of viewing art can change its meaning. Art always invokes a feeling in the viewer, adoration or abhorrence, either way the artist has succeeded.”
- Kasey Koski multimedium artist, Curator of Exhibits - Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center.
“Unadulterated, unapologetic, aimless creation. Art is not a means to an end, the means is the end. People craft creations to acquire money, praise, or prestige, this is not art, it’s contrivance. Art has no end, a scratch-less itch. It’s genuine, authentic vulnerability, the doing of something for no reason, purely because you’re compelled to. It’s intuitive, evolving, and cathartic. It’s manifesting thought, the actualization of an unsolicited idea. Art is without adequate definition. Ask, why do you make that? The answer should, in truth, be, ‘I don’t know.’”
- CG Dahlin poet, painter, publisher
I don’t know about you but reading these made me wanna make some art. To look at some art. It also made me miss being out and about at art openings, swirling a fine (or proudly cheap) glass of red wine and getting deep about the works we were surrounded by. To some, that may seem like a pointless exercise in arbitrary pontification. But as you can see in these responses, the philosophy and reasonings on the practice of creativity are not only inspirational and insightful - they can be works of art themselves.
I like to think that the young artist that walked into a nude art show in a kookie little make-shift gallery back in 2016 was simply traversing his own path to find meaning and connectivity in art. Maybe his frustrations came from not getting what others saw in the show. Maybe it came from the school of thought that not everyone should be allowed to play in the art world. That this inclusive spirit somehow lowers the bar concerning consistency and quality. Maybe he just found the whole thing to be tacky. Whatever it was, I’m glad it happened for all the reasons mentioned above and I respect his passion and willingness to engage in a discussion, rather than scoff it off and walk out. Although, I would have preferred the dialog to have stayed out of the insult lane. Because while all art is fair game for criticism, in the proverbial words of the late (man I hate saying that) Robert Wilson, “There’s no room for snobbery in art.”
Of course there can’t be one simple answer to the question “what is art?,” but there do seem to be some connecting themes in all of the responses. Some look at art as an almost religious (they’ll kill me for using that word) practice with its own disciplines and structure. Some free-wheel it and find the deeper values in those accidental moments of experimentation. Some just like to make shit. Whatever the philosophy, all of us are deeply affected by the creative efforts of others in ways we often don’t even notice. You may see the print of Monet in the frame bin at Goodwill but miss the intricate patterns on the Persian rug rolled up next to it. You may notice a vibrant mural on the side of a building but miss the hand painted letter work on the sign just above it. We have crafted an entire civilization out of art but we tend to only truly see what speaks directly to us. So maybe the better way to phrase the question is, “what is art to you?”