If you asked me a few months ago what art was, I’d probably tell you “the stuff that collects dust in museums, duh.” But now, truly faced with that question, I find it infinitely hard to give an answer. Of course, temptation drags me back to museums, but the stuff that collects dust in museums isn’t the only art out there. Anyway, who says the stuff in museums is the best art out there? What makes paintings made in the sixteenth century any more valuable than a chalk painting made by a child on a sidewalk? Who puts value on art?
Museums and their curators have a large influence on what we consider art. Aspiring artists dream of having their work hanging in a gallery because to them, being in a museum means they’ve made it. However, this kind of institutionalized snobbery prevents us ordinary folk from appreciating the art all around us. When I visited Paris, outside the Church of the Sacred Heart, a tourist started having an impromptu piano concert on a purple piano out on the summit. Was that not art?
So, can’t art be anything? But art isn’t everything. And depending on who you ask, art isn’t always art! If you took me to a modern art museum, I’d argue twelve ways from Sunday that four dots and a line on a white canvas isn’t art. Why? Because any child with a crayon can do that. But now wait, art isn’t defined by skill, is it? Well, I guess not. So does that make modern art “real” art? And if someone said that graffiti is art, I’d say that it was vandalism. Does art have to be legal? Well, I guess not, some artists painted things that were banned from museums or were otherwise met with controversy. Even old statues of naked people were censored by future curators and then uncensored again.
So now we’re in a pickle. What’s art? Art is subjective. Art is anything, but it can’t be everything. Someone is always going to be there saying pieces can’t be hung in museums because it’s not “real art.” But if a grown man can glue a pen cap to a plastic cup and call it art, then why can’t I draw a scribble and call that art? Shouldn’t art have a meaning behind it?
What is art? Here’s my serious answer: art is something with an aesthetic value to someone, it typically has some meaning behind it, and it was made to please the artist and its commissioner if there was one. Whether or not it hangs in a gallery or is out on display isn’t important. You’ll know art when you see it.