Over the course of a week I learned a huge lesson. You can’t force art. I rode miles and miles from day to night going from Brooklyn to Manhattan, popping two tires and bending my handle bar just to make art. The story behind the photos, that’s the art. Art is what you make it to be. It can be fashion, music, colors, history, literally whatever you see as art, it is art. It’s based on such a certain perspective, that if I say a photo of my shoes is not art, someone can shoot right back and argue with me. Let’s begin with a simple bike. Yeah, it’s yellow, it has stickers, it’s cool and the photo is kind of nice too, but that’s not the art. In my eyes, this photo tells a story. This photo shows me the art of riding 36 miles, crashing into the side of a car, hitting a pothole and popping both tires. The art of this photo isn’t in the scenery or in the bike. The art is in the history. However, not many people can tell what this bike went through unless they went on that journey. That’s why the simplest things to describe such as art, become the most complex to create. Despite the story being the art to me, the other art I see in the creation. The wheels, the brakes, the carbon frame, all combine together into what man created. How we went from a wheel, to a pulley, to the invention of a bike. The insane mechanics and true elegancy of the bicycle is art because it speaks to you not only in the aesthetics but also in the complex creation of it.
When I say art cannot be forced this is what I mean. I agree, the painting behind the boy is beautiful and the boy himself is almost posing for just a quality photo that he can post on Instagram but still, where is the real significance? I would argue that this might not be art because it doesn’t tell the full story. We know nothing of this boy, nothing of the painting and nothing of the idea behind the whole photo. Then again, I can also argue that it represents a sense of fashion, painting and true NYC culture. All of those forms of art add up to create a beautiful image that depending on the viewers’ eye, may or may not be art. Isn’t it just so crazy to think of how one perspective can change the whole purpose of a photo?
Lastly, I apologize to all the teenage snap-chatters that instantly share a photo of their new shoes to social media. It is not art; it is not anything in my honest opinion. Yeah, I guess it can be described as “fashion,” but even that would be extreme. It shows no significance and in all honesty fashion, a form of art, needs to be appreciated through the story of the person. In other words, a man wearing 89’ Chicago 1s and a Michael Jordan Jersey will be seen as a retro kind of person with huge amount of appreciation for basketball and it’s message, but a man whowears Raf Simons, takes a photo of just the shoe behind a crude SoHo sidewalk, isn’t giving them the true recognition and message that they deserve. It’s not art; it’s just a picture of your nice shoes with absolutely no significance. Last time I check, art signifies the true beauty of anything whether it is an animal or just a piece of chalk. It gets your mind working double overtime trying to connect the imagery and tell a story as well. Art can be a story, a photo, a painting, music, fashion and the list just goes on and on. Art is what you make it to be. It is less of what your eyes see and more of what your heart feels.
I liked how you mentioned that the boy in the picture might’ve been posing for an instagram photo. It made me think, are instagram posts art? Is noticing something and taking a photo just to get likes art?
I also like how you analyzed the idea of engineers being artists!
As I look at the second photo you posted, I think to myself, “Hey, why can’t this be art?”
In your post about your bike, you mentioned how what made the photograph art was the history behind it. You explained how not every viewer would understand the history of the journey behind the bike, but there was still a story/history behind it’s presentation.
Therefore, I feel that this photo of the boy in front of the graffiti wall must tell some sort of story. The wall, the boy or the graffiti behind him must each posses their own story.