ARTOPIA

John Perreault's Art Diary

Why Is It Art? Or What Is Art?

1. The real question here may be, why do we want to know? So you know where to 
put your money? So you won't step on it? So you won't laugh at or throw stones 
at some future Gauguin or van Gogh? So you know what stuff you foolishly thought 
was art to throw out or hide under the sofa?

2. Making art is always about redefining art.

3. Art is anything - good, bad, or indifferent - that is considered as art, 
treated as art, made as art, shown as art, bought and sold as art, saved as art, 
thought about as art, seen as art. This is basically a social definition of art 
and it allows us to look at the objects in question without value judgments and 
preconceptions. Then perhaps we can decide if we want to keep the stuff around 
for awhile.

4.  Art is anything informed artists, critics, curator, collectors treat as art. 
This is the consensus theory of art. This is another social, and therefore 
descriptive, definition of art -- perhaps merely a refinement of the previous 
definition.

5. Art is anything an artist makes. See the reference to Warhol above, or, as 
more than one Dadaist must have said, art is anything the artist spits out. This 
works as a definition only if we revere artists as antennae of the race, as 
fallen angels, as visionaries.

6. Art is whatever looks like other art, through a family resemblance of one 
sort or another. To use another figure of speech, the "Chinese menu" mode 
sometimes used by psychologists to diagnosis mental illness, can come in handy 
Anything that has five traits from column A and five from column B is art.

7. Or, if we are talking about Artopia-type art (which, of course, is the 
highest and the finest of all art), it looks as little like other art as 
possible. In fact, as the founder of Artopia used to preach to his students: if 
you come across something in the street and you don't know what it is, it's 
probably art.

8. Art is research, a search for understanding and consciousness and/or a 
technique for attaining such. It is not about feeling safe and comfy; it is not 
about harmony. Important art doesn't at first look quite like art; it redefines 
art.

9. How can you define a practice that is in the process of constantly defining 
itself, other than by saying that art is never how it is currently defined.

10. Art is a metaphysical game. Each move creates a whole new set of rules.

11. Art is a discourse. Art is the dialectic between the intertextual and 
intratextual. In other words, although an artwork might materially be about 
relationships among its parts, it is more significantly about its relationship 
to other artworks, art history, the world. It is not about form unless form is a 
motif or a symbol. It is not about self-expression unless self-expression is a 
motif or a symbol.

12.  In Artopia -- which according to its founder is about "art as it should be" 
-- art is disturbing, disconcerting, bracing, and calculated to wake you up and 
make you see.

Visit John's weblog at http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/