What is art?

What is art?

So, I have asked myself this question over and over ...and over. It makes sense for me to ask it! In fact, it wouldn’t make sense for me not to ask it. The answer defines everything that I will do, and if you know me at all you’ll know that I have to know the “defining” factors of everything. 

So, what is it? What is art; what makes something a piece of art vs. a piece of junk? There seems to be a fine line between the two and sometimes almost no line at all. Just ask Robert Rauschenberg. His art quite often litter-ally was garbage (That was a trashy joke I know …oh, Blake you still got it!) But really, thanks Robert! You just made the question a lot harder.  What makes the spilt paint of Jackson Pollock art and the spilt paint from a painter’s accident a mess?

 It hit me! Maybe that is the magic word I needed that will bring understanding to this mystical world of art; “accident”. What made the garbage on Robert Rauschenberg’s work art and the garbage on the floors of New York trash? One was discarded carelessly and randomly while the other was placed purposefully together for a reason; the painters spill has no place within his job and but spilt paint fit perfectly within the purpose of Jackson Pollock’s art. So, may the question “what is art is?” is the wrong question. Paintings are just pigments, resins, solvents and additives spread on a piece of paper, drawings is just graphite scratched across paper, sculptures are just lumps of clay or chunks of rock chipped and molded, and photography is just reflected light ... I don’t really know how camera works I will get back to on that one, the point is we know what paintings, drawings and photography is but the right question is what purpose do they have; what makes the arrangements of paint special, the trash in the hand of an artist meaningful, and the camera in my hands important?

Think about!

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Author's Note

Again, I just want to know how intriguing this is, how the structure of the essay is, how sentence structure is, and whatever else you can think. ...and if you have any thoughts on the actually subject matter that would be cool.