Defining art

Ad Reinhardt

When i was teaching I tended to respond to what was going on in the studio by developing blog posts that added to the issues being discussed. This meant I had several in reserve, so that if it was a quiet week in terms of issues raised, I had posts I could simply make live. I have quite a few of these saved and ready to go, so rather than leave these extra posts un-posted, I shall occasionally make what I think are interesting ones live. This reflection on defining art would have begun as part of a debate emerging from a critique. As these I'm sure still go on, I'm therefore throwing some old thoughts back into the ring.

In James Geary's book 'I is another' he explores how metaphor shapes the world, this is something every advertising designer knows all about, but do artists? When I talk to other artists I'm often told that they like to leave their work open ended, that they are not wanting to direct an audience's interests and that their work is open to interpretation. They shy away from the commercial world's use of persuasive rhetoric and would rather wait for the 'truth' or 'value' of their endeavours to be discovered by some discerning member of the public. This ambivalence is fine if the work exists on a level playing field, but in competition with other media images, I think that a lot of very good fine art just gets missed or lost under the sheer number of visual images that pervade our society. A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. A visual metaphor is similar and can often reveal hidden similarities between two different ideas. The fact that metaphor was taught as an aspect of rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, reminds us that historically art was made to have an effect on people and that it was clear to some aspects of society that the better you were taught to understand the art of rhetoric, (yes it was considered an art), the better you were going to be at convincing others that your viewpoint was right. At this point I might put forward the idea that the work of art is a metaphor for our mental life. But even as I do I can see its limitations and realise that in doing this I forget the huge impact my hands have on who I am and what I think. Therefore I change my mind and suggest that the work of art is to externalise thought. This is a slippery slope. The defining metaphors of our global society are I believe only gradually emerging and new metaphors are going to be necessary if we are to get to grips with the complex chaos that surrounds us. 

Nietzsche stated, "Tropes are not something that can be added or abstracted from language at will—they are its truest nature." I.e. that there is "no real knowing apart from metaphor."

We all need techniques for problem solving and learning; we need ways of encoding experience so that it become more understandable. Our behaviours are limited by the patterns we have learnt from experience and the available range of new experiences can be opened out by the generation of more connections between things and this can be where artists can help us all.

Artists are often engaged in a dialogue with the idea of what art is. It often feels as if before you can make any art you need to find out what the business of art is. Especially when I was at college back in the late 60s and early 70s, we had seemingly endless debates as to what it was we were involving ourselves with and the work some of us ended up making was designed to extend that debate. Looking back it seems rather simple and I'm not sure it advanced anything, except to widen our collective reading list. 

But as it is something that I know always interests at least a few students every year, I shall return to the debate if only for a short while. So I suppose I ought to try and define it, to attempt that thing that should never be attempted, which is to try once again to put forward my own idea of art, but here goes; 

'Artworks are human conceived things that illuminate relationships between themselves and other things'. 

It helps me if no one else to have a definition, because I can always when stuck ask myself, 'so what things are you relating here? I like this definition because it avoids the words 'understanding' or 'expression' or 'meaning'. 

Probably at some point in the life of most artists they will attempt to define what art is and this post gives me an excuse to list some of these: 

Below is a haphazard collected together list of artists trying to define art in no particular order and with no particular ranking as to success or failure. 

The first one, 'Judd's dictum' is by the artist Donald Judd and is probably the most boring as it doesn't really say anything we didn't already know and it isn't funny.

Judd's dictum

(art) The position that anything is art as long as somebody calls it art.

The second definition by Ad Reinhardt is similar to Judd's but it is slightly funnier. 

'Art Is Art and Everything Else Is Everything Else'. 

Reinhardt was also a cartoonist, so he was very aware of the funny side of art.  

Ad Reinhardt

Cartoons are always interesting because they reveal all sorts of prejudices and fixed ideas about art and they are often made during the period when one sort of art or another is becoming popular. In some ways they are also definitions of art, here are a few.

Richard Olden, March 20, 1971

William O’Brian, August 19, 1967

Both the cartoons above are comments on Ad Reinhardt's 'Ultimate paintings, which are at first glance simply black fields of colour. The cartoons represent the fact that most people's idea of art is something that is made from a direct observation of reality and that artists learn from copying the work of other artists, the master/apprentice system. 

Kovarsky

However the copying of the work of other artists has its own problems. Kovarsky's image is a comment on art education in the 1950s in New York. Educators like Hans Hofmann had a powerful influence at the time. Kovarsky believed that the education of the visual languages of expression led to the standardising and therefore weakening of the very expressive languages that were being taught.  

From Hans Hofmann's life class

Sam Feinstein: A drawing done in Hans Hofmann's life class

The point Kovarsky was making was that an art style could become a fixed and very restrictively focused lens through which life was looked at and when that happened it became almost impossible to see life for what it was. There was of course another aspect to Hofmann's teaching and that was that the dynamics of seeing were as important as the object being looked at and that these dynamics were what gave 'life' to the image. As Paul Klee stated, 'Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible'. As with most arguments there is a middle ground where things make more sense, binary thinking leading to conflict rather than consensus. 

A much more contemporary cartoon view on art is Anna Haifisch's 'The Artist'.

From: Anna Haifisch's 'The Artist'

Dean Vietor

John Deering

Beauty and truth have often been aspired to by artists. Ideas of perfection and the belief in ideals that transcend the everyday are also often found to be what drive artists to continue to search for that wonderful artwork that will transform our lives. As Keats put it in the last two lines of his poem, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', 

    "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

The relationship between truth and beauty has been somewhat tarnished over the last few years, and some would argue that we now live in a time of 'post-truth'. Keats would if writing now be seen as a very naive man, far too romantic for his own good. Definitions of art are still emerging and some seem to hang around more than others. 

Here are some famous artists speaking out on what art means for them:

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers and never succeeding. Marc Chagall

Art is filling a space in a beautiful way. Georgia O'Keeffe

Art is harmony. Georges Seurat

Art is a lie that makes us realise truth. Pablo Picasso 

To draw you must close your eyes and sing. Pablo Picasso

To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this, and only this, is to be an artist. Jacques-Louis David

Ideas alone can be works of art….All ideas need not be made physical.…A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind. Sol LeWitt

Art is a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. Henri Matisse 

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. Edgar Degas

Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. Andy Warhol

Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. Ai Weiwei

What is art? Art grows out of grief and joy, but mainly grief. It is born of people’s lives. Edvard Munch

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography. Federico Fellini

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus. David Hockney

Art is everywhere you look for it; hail the twinkling stars for they are God’s careless splatters. El Greco

Art is a harmony parallel with nature. Cezanne

Art is a mad search for individualism. Gauguin

Art is a line around your thoughts. Gustav Klimt

Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. Duchamp

Art is an experience, not an object. Robert Motherwell

Art is an effort to make you walk a half an inch above ground. Yoko Ono

So as you can see a lot of artists have had a go at trying to define what it is that they are involved in. My earlier definition, 'Artworks are human conceived things that illuminate relationships between themselves and other things', already feels out of date, perhaps this is more like it, 'Art is a ritual designed to attune us to the ever unfolding act of creation'. It's ok but nowhere as poetic as Picasso's advice to those of us who love drawing; 'To draw you must close your eyes and sing'.

Roy Lichtenstein: Brushstrokes

I have had to rethink my ideas on manifestos recently because I have been undertaking a course on permaculture. Therefore I am looking at writing a manifesto for art practice based on permaculture's 12 principles. I did have a stab at that a while ago, here, but now that I have completed the course feel that I have a bit more understanding of what the original principles were about. So in a time of global warming and potential climate chaos, it would seem not inappropriate to attempt to define these principles again, especially if they are designed to be planet aware. So I'm afraid I shall return to the subject again, perhaps attempting to link awareness of permaculture principles with the idea of an artist being a sort of dream crafter for the collective and that the nature outside of ourselves, is in fact the same as the one inside of ourselves. 

You might want to try writing your own manifesto. If so there are a few books to look at that might help.

Michalis, P. Editor (2019) Publishing Manifestos: An International Anthology from Artists and Writers New York: The MIT Press. This is a great book as it covers a wide range of contemporary art practices. Manifestos by artists, authors, editors, publishers, designers and zinesters, reflect the fact that old boundaries between the arts are breaking down.

Deepwell, K. (2022) Fifty Feminist Art Manifestos: An Anthology, 1965-2021 London: KT Press

Eidson, A. (2018) Anti-Art Manifesto Kindle Edition A manifesto outlying methods by which we can destroy art as we know it.

Danchev, A. (2011) 100 Artists' Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists London: Penguin

Van Doesburg 1918

See also:

Trying to define the empty page before creation begins

What it might be all about

Drawing it all together

Why do I draw?

Training the eyes

The fate of cartoonists