What Is Art?

If you've ever read a judicial ruling on the question of pornography, then you are aware of the difficulty in defining art.

The most common response, after forays into long-winded philosophical proofs or fanatical diatribes on rights, is, "Well, I know it when I see it."

In fact, those judicial screeds often spend thousands of words trying to draw a line between the pornographic and the artistic.  What they are really trying to do is describe the separation between the mundane and the sublime.  Pornography appeals to the base senses, while art is transcendent and elevates the subject and the viewer above our daily existance into a realm of beauty and harmony.

In the coming series of articles, we will endeavor to develop the tools not only to recognize true art, but to articulate the specific tests that define it.  The reader will be able to attend a gallery showing and know instantly whether one is in the presence of the Creative Spirit, or being sold a pile of tripe, and more importantly to be able to say precisely why.

Imagine you are doing your weekly grocery shopping and the aisle is blocked by an exasperated mother and her toddler in full tantrum mode.  No one would call this scene art, of course.  But put the situation in the hands of Norman Rockwell or Frederico Fellini, and it is transformed into a Mirror of Truth reflecting back to us the profundities of the human experience.

In recent decades, all manner of grotesque sensual assaults have been committed in the name of "self-expression."  Talentless court jesters humor the rich and senseless with vile contrivances of paint, junk and magazine clippings, declaring their expression of some deep-seated Freudian nightmare that they are now exorcising on canvas.

This is not art.

The screaming child is expressing himself.  The sterno drinker yelling at Morpheus is expressing himself.  The truck driver hanging out of his window and displaying his dexterity in your face is expressing himself.  This is not art.

Art is defined as elevating the mundane into the sublime using the language of art.

I can image the reader folding her arms and thinking, "What the hell does that mean?"

To put it visually, as art should, a painted ceiling is mundane - everyone has one.  The Sistine Chapel is sublime - it is one of a kind and leaves a lasting impression on the viewer.

Thus, art should elevate the senses of the viewer and reveal some universal truth about one's condition and place in the Grand Scheme of Things.

If it does not, then it is not art, but could meet the basic criterium for self-expression.  However, self-expression does not imply or require art in order to have its effect.  The screaming child in the grocery store certainly affects those around him, but it very likely does not lift the viewers out of their daily routines and inspire introspection and fascination.  More likely, it causes revultion and anger.

In viewing what passes for art in our contemporary culture, we must consider the effect it has upon us.  Are we confronted with negative emotions and revultion?  Or are we inspired to examine ourselves and our environment in new and positive ways?  The former is self-expression, and the latter is art.

Let us examine some examples.

Indonesian artist Hendra Gunawan (1913-1983) is best known for his blend of Western and Indonesian aesthetics that portrayed daily life in the islands in a way that elevated mundane daily activities into unversal experiences of all humans.  He used bright primary colors and romanticized features in stylized and idealized compositions that lead the viewer to see the inherent nobility in even the most mundane subject.

Most of us would not pause to consider the wonder of a mother and child together, but when viewing Gunawan's Mother and Child, we see the two characters captured in a moment of feeding a sea bird with a fish carcass.  The vibrant colors, traditional costumes, intense focus of the characters, the bird's supplecant posture all combine to make this moment unique and radiant.  The viewer pauses to reflect on the interaction of humans with wild nature.  We consider the learning moment in the child's mind and the mother's support and encouragement.  Then we are struck by the thought that something as mundane as tossing food waste is a magical act multiple interacting parts.

There are multiple dynamic lines of action: the mother's and child's intense gazes cutting diagonally from upper left to lower right; the anticipated motion of the fish carcass from top to bottom; the bird's rapt attention focused from bottom to top; the perceived breeze stirring hair and fabric; the color relationships of the light food bowl and the child's dress, and the mother's dark dress and the bird's dark color; and the re-enforcement of the diagonal through the bright blue upper right corner and darker lower left corner.

There is strong balance, rhythm, feelings of anticipation, and a sense of the miraculous in a frozen moment of time.

In contrast, we look at a very famous photograph taken during the Spanish Civil War of a soldier at the moment of his death.  We have a very dynamic composition, with multiple subjects hanging in mid-air about to fly in different directions: the rifle to the left edge, the soldier back and down, the implied path of the unseen bullet.  We witness the extinguishing of a life and are repulsed by the horror of war and are forced to confront mortality and the cruelty of our species.

To the casual viewer, we don't know the circumstances or why this man is fighting.  We know that to some he was a hero, and to others an enemy.  How many lives did he take before his was taken?  Was this sacrifice worth whatever goals were sought?  What pain and anguish did he feel at this precise moment?

While the image is iconic, there is little rhythm or balance, either physically or conceptually, in this image.  It does not inspire the viewer, but rather repulses.  Our thoughts are negative and we reflect on the darker side of ourselves.  While the sponteneity of the scene is well noted, it is not composed or deliberate - it is nearly accidental instead.

The image is unique as photo-journalism.  We marvel at the photographer's skill and nerves to be that close to death and still capture the image.  It tells us information about a real conflict and shows us real pain caused by it.  It won well-deserved awards and is famous worldwide.

It is not art; craft yes, but not art.

There is nothing deliberate about the composition.  The photographer did not arrange the subjects in a meaningful way.  It is just a recording of a single moment in time with no context and it does not elevate our senses, but dulls them.  We are repulsed by both the image and the perceived/implied events around it.

The final example is a woman named Millie Brown.  She is a contemporary "self-expressionist" who drinks colored liquids and regurgitates on canvas, which is then sold as "art".

In this case, we find similar features to the Spanish soldier photograph: randomness, lack of deliberate composition, lack of context, and a lack of up-lifting message.  We are repulsed and revolted.  There is no rhythm, balance or aesthetic value here.  Most of us would rather avoid this mess, or at the very least want to clean it up.

Certainly, there are few - if any - of us who would proudly display this in our home.

In contrast, we can clearly call Mankind's earliest artworks aesthetically pleasing and up-lifting.  In the caves of France and many other locations around the globe, cave paintings meet all of the criteria for art: they are deliberate compostions; they tell us a story about our ancestors' daily lives but in a stylized and idealized way; they contain balance, rhythm and context; they are dynamic and emotive of hopeful and positive themes.  We detect a reverence for the subjects, a desire to convey wonder and a desire to elevate the mundane into the sublime.

The images are dynamic, with implied motion and controlled focus and a relationship between all of the subjects in the frame.  There is non-random placement of objects in order to convey hierarchy and tell a story.  We come away feeling refreshed and positive, and that emotion spills over into our own mundane lives.

That is art.

As we go forward in this series of articles, we will examine true art.  It is a universal language of hope and wonder.  It has its own vocabulary, syntax and grammar.  It is hardwired into the human condition.  It has expressed itself throughout our history and continues to be among the most powerful tools we possess to create beauty and harmony.

It is this writer's desire to fill in what has been lost in our cultural education - the ability to recognize, decipher and internalize art, and most importantly, how to distinguish true art from self-expression and why that is so vitally important in our modern world.

We will examine the entire spectrum of art, from the oldest cave paintings to the modern cinema, from music and literature to sculpture and symbolism.

The reader is duly warned, though.  Art Is Dangerous.

The Creative Spirit speaks a very loud message in a very quiet voice.  It abhors the dominance of authority and the silence of complicity.  Learning how to "read" art opens a vast world of communication swirling around us in every aspect of our world, and the messages are rarely friendly to ruling classes.  Not only does it reveal to us their constant messages of conformity, but it allows us to subvert their censorship without saying a word.  There is a reason why art is so rarely taught in our schools now.

By continuing, the voices of a thousand subversives spanning the totality of human existance will soon be heard again.

The reader has been warned!