#10 What is art?

Art.
What is it?
Who has the right to decide?
How is art defined?
Can it be controlled?

Art is "the quality, production, expression or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance"...eh? Basically, art is art.
No one has the right to decide.
Art is defined by the eye of the viewer and the artist themselves.
Art is uncontrollable; art is everywhere, and art is everything.


I find it quite ironic how those artist who were unique and their eccentricity translated into their artwork, who wanted to show that one difference could be appreciated, are now mass produced so that their work becomes almost regular/normal/understated...

Andy Warhol; a leading figure in the visual art movement. His work is well known, and rightly so. However, I feel his work has lost some of its original 'wow factor' due to the fact that it isn't unique to one place, one gallery, one person. I understand and agree that talented works such as his should be seen by everyone, but I also feel that when something is so unique, it should be left to be unique, it should be allowed to be original and not have zillions of copies of it flying around! Sure, advertise it until people are sick of seeing it, but why reprint something so impressive? Then everyone can have it, so no one will want it. Isn't it better to be admired and sought after rather than something that everyone can have a piece of?

Pablo Picasso; co-founder or the Cubist movement, co-inventor of collage, regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th Century as well as being one of the artists who defined the revolutionary developments in plastic arts. Impressive? I think so; the man invented collage! Imagine putting that onto a CV!
He once said "Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth". Think of your favourite novel, it's fiction, so it isn't true, therefore a lie. But it has meaning to you. Why? It forms a realisation of a situation in your life reflected somehow, no matter how obviously, in that novel, so it becomes true to you. It's the same with art; the colours may reflect you mood, the shading may imply the darker and lighter side of your personality, the textures may interest you and make you realise how you were feeling at a certain time. It's all "may" this and "may" that, because it depends on you as the viewer. I advise you not to look at the painting, but to see the painting. See the story behind each part; the colours, the shades, the tones, the texture, the shape. Everything.

Only then will the art become true for you.