When I was younger, I lived in the country on 10 acres of land just outside a town of about 4,000 people in rural Ontario. The fresh air was wonderful; lack of traffic noise and pollution was too. This allowed my family and myself many opportunities to wander through nature and commune with it, spending quality time together, discussing. We talked about  everything under the sun and the topic of Art came up more than once.

During one of our jaunts through the dazzling colours of the fall foliage, my Mother put forth the idea that the sugar maple at the bottom of our driveway, which had turned a vibrant flame red in the autumn season, was actually a piece of art. I thought about what she said for a moment and countered with my own comment stating that the tree couldn’t possibly be Art. She asked me to explain.

I said, “Well, if we say that tree is a piece of Art then can’t we easily say that about anything in nature? And what about everything else in the world that we find beautiful or spiritual or inspiring? Why stop at just that one tree? Doesn’t it follow then, once anything can be designated as Art that the subject of Art ceases to have any type of meaning at all? Once everything is Art, nothing is. ”

I’ve always agreed with the idea that the only way to define something is by stating what it isn’t. The tree’s leaves were red because they weren’t blue or green or yellow. It was a tree because it wasn’t a fern or bush or hedgehog. This got me thinking about why the tree couldn’t be Art. What defined it as not being Art?

We kind of let the conversation drift from there and continued our walk discussing other topics of interest, but the thought that Art must be definable, nay, demanded a definition to give the concept any kind of meaning always stuck with me.

Now, as a more experienced gentleman and Artist, I believe that not only is it my profession to create Art, I feel it’s also my duty to think about it, discuss it, improve upon it and write about it. There’s quite a lot that goes on in the mind when you’re immersed in creating  new works of wonderous, visual communication. I think a lot about Art, about what it might be and how to define it so that we can give this uniquely human expression some kind of meaning. Defining it gives it worth.

First and foremost, as I just stated, Art is a uniquely human practice. No other creature on the planet expresses themselves in such a variety of visual extrapolations external of their own select physicalities. Some creatures are visually stunning, that’s true, but it’s in their nature to be that way. Art is created. We’re not born with it. This would be my initial defence as to why nature is not Art.

Nature is not uniquely human. The tree that my mother considered to be Art was not uniquely human. It grew all by itself and although we could argue that human developments around the tree had affected the way that it grew to some degree, our impact on its growth was minimal at best. Better not to get bogged down in trivialities. The seed that grew the sugar maple came from another sugar maple which came from another sugar maple ad infinitum. We didn’t create it.

So Art is a human endeavour. Let’s run with that. If Art is a human construct then surely Art must be a reflection of what makes us human, right? In this sense, Art wouldn’t be a reflection of what makes a tree a tree. We could paint a picture of a sugar maple in full autumnal splendor, record it in charcoal or sculpt it in bronze, but the finished piece would be a reflection of our human response to the tree. It wouldn’t reflect the qualities of the tree directly, only our interpretation of them.

If Art is a reflection of our humanity, then what makes us human must help to define Art. I’ve thought a lot about this concept over the years too. What makes us human? It seems to me that the overwhelming understanding in society through discussion, literature, movies, music and just about every other media available to us is that humans are made up of at least two basic things, Body and Mind. There are many other things that we could add to the list such as Heart, Soul or Knowledge just to name a few. I’d posit that factors outside of Body and Mind guide us toward the pursuit of Art or define for us why we should and often do, engage in the pursuit. For the sake of simplicity lets stick with Body and Mind as the two human traits that go in to defining Art.

Body and Mind. We learn about both. We train both. What affects one usually affects the other. One informs the other and the two work in tandem to create the reality we see around us. Body and Mind need each other. It’s a symbiotic relationship. To quote Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus from the Matrix, “The body cannot live without the mind”. Whether or not the mind can live without the body is yet to be seen. On the day of my physical death, I guess I’ll find out. Let’s let the philosophers worry about that for now.

In this sense, Art should also reflect these two basic units of humanity. Art should have a portion of it’s reality based in Body and another based in Mind.

To put it in terms directly related to Art, Body boils down to the physical reality of Art, that it was created by a human body and Mind becomes the concept behind the creation of the artwork — becomes the human thinking that led to its inception. Without these two partners working together, I don’t think any artwork can be considered successful as ‘capital A’ Art. It will be undeveloped and will continue to remain so until both Body and Mind are working in unison as equal partners, working together to bring forth a truly unique form of human expression and communication.

For me, this definition, that Art is a uniquely human form of communication and that it is a reflection of the mind and body that created it, is what helps me to decide on what to depict in my artwork and how to depict it. It informs the materials I choose to employ and how to deploy them on canvas or paper to breathe life into my concepts succinctly and successfully so they communicate properly with viewers of my work.

One final note — I love nature and my Mother was right to be moved by the blazing colours of that sugar maple. It was beautiful, spectacular, an object of great inspiration – but it wasn’t Art!

For now, that is all. Goodnight.

Article of Interst: Why Art NEEDS A Definition

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Articles, on ART . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.