Response to Jake's "What is Art?"

            My first high school art teacher told the class something on the first day of school: everything is art.  No one really took that seriously, we just filed that information in the back of our heads for future tests or exams.  Not until my freshman year of college did I truly understand the phrase “everything is art”.  There is an art to creating a pen, a shirt, a rug, and a chair just like there is an art to making a beautiful painting, photograph, drawing, or sculpture.  While most people do not fully appreciate every object in their environment, each and every object was designed by an artist, such as the blue chairs with desks made by Emilio Ambasz and Giancarlo Piretti.

            You are right, Jake, “most people have different opinions about what should or should not be considered art”.  Everyone has their own opinion about art.  For those less educated in the arts they hear the word “art” and imagine the Mona Lisa or a painter’s pallet and a paintbrush.  For some, art is fleeting and takes place in the moment, like a theatrical or musical performance, while others’ ideas of art are limited to 2 dimensional images on paper and canvas.  The concept of art is similar to the concept of a hero; they are both relative terms.  A hero is determined not by his character or strength; he is determined by someone recognizing him as his “hero”.  One cannot be a hero without having a “heroee” to say “he is my hero”.  Art is not art when no one can recognize it as art.  While that seems contradictory to my first message, everything is art, the truth of the matter is there will always be someone somewhere out there who can look at an image that no one else likes and see something good in it.  There will always be a handful of nut jobs who love the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, likewise there will always be someone to love every terrible piece of artwork ever made.  Everyone has a different taste in everything.  My dad prefers funny Hallmark cards while my mother enjoys heartfelt letters.

            You bring up a valid point about art that “it is almost unanimously agreed upon that it needs to express something or have an emotional impact”.  We try to find meaning in artwork and the most famous pieces we are shown come with notes about a certain message in the piece or collection.  However we have no way of knowing if these analyzed messages are really what the artists were going for when they made their work.  Maybe Jackson Pollock just got bored and really liked annoying art critiques in his time, we have no way to really know his goal for making art.  Like I said before, everyone has a different taste in everything.  Some may experience the feeling of peace when viewing Morandi’s still lifes while others are bored and insulted by their lack of proper compositions.  You’re right, no one can be objective about an art piece because an artwork can be expressive for some and not for others.  It’s all a matter of opinion, so there is no one person that can judge what art is good or bad.

            I believe that as students studying art we do not study what is art and what is not, we study what is good art.  Good art is just another phrase explaining one’s opinion of a work.  We can break a piece down into different aspects and judge them based on set guidelines such as line quality, realism, composition, etc., but we seem to learn most about the people that break the rules of art.  I agree that there is value in discussing the credibility of a work of art, and I also agree that there is no point to become aggressive about art upon which people may disagree.

            It is easy to rant about this subject; some say you must follow the rules, others say some rules can be broken, and still others say that only those who learn to break rules in new ways are true artists.  No single opinion is correct, when you take all the differing opinions and add them up everything is given the status of art.  I think what matters most isn’t what our professors tell us is art, but what we view as meaningful to us.  You can look at Mondrian’s work for a few seconds and walk away bored, then look at Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings and feel inspired.  All that matters is how you relate to artwork that inspires you.  At the end of the day you won’t even care about Mondrian’s work because Leonardo’s work is what spoke to you.

Dirty Tables

            When you’re in kindergarten everyone doodles, everyone colors, and everyone is at a similar level of artistic talent, but you really like drawing.  You write “Wen I grow up I wanna b a artist” on letters to show mommy and daddy at the dinner table.  You start to try drawing things differently and you ask everyone if they like your work.  When you’re mad you press the crayons as hard as you can and swirl it around across the paper.  When you’re happy you make small careful marks to get the “prettiest” picture in class.

            By fourth grade everyone knows you’re the girl that draws, you sell doodles for a quarter, and you make the stuff kids want to bring home to their parents for the honor of a spot on the refrigerator.  You may be awkward, you may be shy and quiet, you may even be big, but it doesn’t matter- you can do something they can’t, and that makes you cool.

            Fast-forward to middle school, people have better things to worry about, your doodles aren’t awesome anymore.  Time to step it up, no more teachers who sit there and say “Draw…something!”  Others don’t like the challenge; they can’t handle the pressure of making a piece of paper actually resemble something in the real world, but you’re determined to make something look good.  You google every art term you’ve heard, search any famous name you can remember, and skim every art book in the library.  You find a style that’s sparks your interest and immerse yourself in it.  You buy movies with this animation, copy characters and images, study the leading artists in the field, and fill notebooks with your own twisted sense of it.  It doesn’t matter that no one cares about your art anymore- you couldn’t be more obsessed with it.

            In the last few days of eighth grade you whip out a scrap of paper.  There’s no homework, nothing to do, and you’re daydreaming about attaining the power of the Human Torch.  You snap your fingers as you try to think of what to draw and suddenly your thoughts collide- your thumb holds a flame from the nail up till you snap, and then it’s out again.  Suddenly the cartoony styles you’ve religiously practiced are meaningless to the conceptual idea of your thumb mutating with a lighter.  You begin to draw what’s in front of you: the desk, chairs, white board, and your hand.  Feverishly you add stylized flames to the tip of your thumbed-up finger, the drawing is complete.  You look down at the paper and suppress the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment; it’s good, it actually looks like a real hand.  Nothing but lines on a piece of paper have somehow transformed themselves into a convincing image with the guidance of your cheap mechanical pencil.

            That summer you decide to study people.  Drawing faces has been your weakness so you find the best pictures of celebrities you can and imitate every trait.  The blurry shading of your graphite-stained fingers looks just like Ne-yo’s skin and the sharp lines curving up show Jesse McCartney’s hair perfectly.  Likeness becomes less like the Peter Pan to your Captain Hook and more like the common cold to your winter experience; you can catch it more easily than SpongeBob can catch a jellyfish.  Hopefully it’s enough for high school.

            It’s not enough.  There are two, count them, TWO boys clearly better than you in your first art class.  Granted Matt is a senior planning to study art in college, but it doesn’t matter.  You have to improve, you have to be the best, you’ve always been the best, and Dad doesn’t accept anything less than the best.  You listen to Mrs. Scharpf as intently as you did trying to hear “Good teenagers, have sex” in Aladdin’s balcony scene.  You read and reread every packet.  When she says do four exercises you do eight.

            The work paid-off; when she needs an example for the class she holds up your work, not Chris’s or Matt’s.  You haven’t beaten them yet but you’re at their level.  Consequently the egomaniac hates you now; he misses when his pictures were held up to show the class.  He doesn’t understand that it’s not about just being good- it’s about getting better.  Too bad, you could have been close…you still kind of are, but not in a good way.

            Renkun.  Renkoon.  The Renkunator.  She’s rude, she belittles your work, and she doesn’t expect you to succeed.  She thinks you’re here for an easy A.  She’ll see, you’ll beat her, you’ll show her she’s wrong.  The work is boring and it doesn’t feel like your own but out-of-class doodles get you through it.  Three years of her, at least you can bash her to Chris, friends, and Mrs. Scharpf.  You’re still learning, but not from her, you’re teaching yourself from the books she has in the room.  You’re pushing yourself to beat her waiting game to see when you’ll quit.

            Senior year, the shrew gave up.  She lets you choose the most idiotic subject matter you could possibly think of for a concentration.  You use this easy yet fun choice to experiment with the materials, try new styles, and form a presentable portfolio for college.  It’s the slacking year but you might as well draw a picture about Ariel’s disposophobia (hoarding) while you still can.

            You want a stable and financially promising career, but you have no other skills so you might as well settle for art.  After visiting every college website for schools in the area you narrow the search to four.  Mom wants you to have at least five schools applied to so you search for one more random school in Connecticut.  The Hartford Art School has free online applications so you quickly fill out the form and send it in.  You rule out the university immediately though- the others seem promising.

            They weren’t promising, they were terrifying.  With more regret than Ron Burgundy when he jumped into the bear pit after Veronica Corningstone you turn to your last option.  The drive was not a good one.  Down Albany Avenue and through the brick and barred-windowed neighborhood you imagine being raped on a walk to the trashiest McDonald’s you’d seen in years.

            You listen to the long-winded speeches administrators present at the beginning of the tour, and then you follow Jeff, or as you’ll probably remember him, the blue Mohawk guy.  He shows you a spotless printmaking shop and you breathe out slowly, fearing that this school will be just as horrible as the rest.  You follow the tour up the stairs and Jeff opens the door to what he calls “the average freshman classroom”.  The tables were dirty.

            You could have cried with the amount of happiness flowing through you.  Dirty tables mean real work; the kind of work UCONN and Emmanuel couldn’t offer, the kind of work Southern wasn’t good enough for, and at a price that Emerson couldn’t give.

            You’re going to attend the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford.