What is Art?
To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of ‘art’. What one person considers to be ‘art’ is often not ‘art’ to another. ‘Beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only ‘kitsch’ is not art – we’re all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is ‘kitsch’? If only I knew! -M.C. Escher
Art is beautiful, thought-provoking and mysterious, simple. It is interesting because some of the most simple things can be the most complex and mysterious for humans to understand. Escher (also quoted above) once said ‘how terribly complicated and shapeless beauty really is’. As I have stated before, art is beauty. This idea of beauty and art is subjective, as Escher himself states, so while one may call another’s ‘art’ ugly, would they call something they deem as art ugly? Sure, the painting might be splattered with blood, smelling of rotten fish and emitting shrieks, but isn’t the concept beautiful? I find the song ‘Anthem’ by Leonard Cohen, beautiful, mainly because the meaning is so profound. However my sister dismissed it immediately as she found the tune wasn’t so. Beauty in my opinion, doesn’t just exist in sensory experience (nor does it just exist in meaning) it exists in everything, in our opinions, it is both subjective and objective (and we don’t just need language to tell us this).
A terrible or sad thought can be beautiful. Art does not need much (in terms of what people have). It needs a mind (or two) and the ability of expression. Though even this is controversial, some think that art does not need a mind, robots in their opinion make perfect poets; and does one really need the ability to express themselves? Can’t one produce art in their own minds? For example, are dreams a type of art? A member of my class postulated that the creation of art is really just the combination of already created things, for example a painting is a mixture of colours already discovered, using concepts that have made an impression on the artist, but have nevertheless existed before, perhaps even objectively. Therefore, we could be no better than robots, reproducing the already produced.
However, surely at some point the colour blue was discovered by humans. The ancient Greeks had no word for blue, they used the same word to describe both the metal, bronze, and the sky. Nowadays it seems ridiculous that the same word should be used. The question that comes out of this is: why does modern society deem blue a separate colour to bronze? And does this defy the idea that we are robots? It seems so, for why would a robot create a new concept that doesn’t seem to have any significance? If it kept on reproducing in its deterministic manner, it is reasonable to state that this wouldn’t occur. Maybe art is a defiance of determinism. An act of individuality.
In addition, there is certainly something about art that is social, it depends on other’s opinions of it. Many artists have often worked in seclusion, perhaps because they were worried of people being too dismissive of their art, however I have yet to find an artist who never publicised their art in one form or another. Emily Dickinson, for instance, despite hardly ever leaving her house, and never publishing her poems, shared them between family and friends. Why would robots programmed by evolution ever be programmed to publicise themselves in this way?
Of course there are arguments against this, but I ask you, will art ever be explained empirically?