what art is and what art isn't
Thank you for visiting the web site! Research indicates
that more than 90% of the people in this country have never bought art.
So this article is to bring you up to date on what it means to buy art.
My views are shared by many artists. I developed an intuition about this
subject because I was being surrounded by art all the time in Europe.
From the many ways art could be defined, I like to define
art loosely as a vehicle to express the meaning and significance of an
experience. The art making I am referring to
is not decorative. So, not every paper or canvas
that has been covered with paint is art!
Art is our cultural heritage.
Art may be viewed centuries later, and still evoke feelings and reactions.
The greatest among artists are the ones who are a few
decades or more ahead of their time, in how they see things and express
them in an artistic way. For this reason artists may be misunderstood
or ignored by the people of their own time. No wonder they are sometimes
referred to by society as "the prophets of our time."
The following may be one of the greatest distinctions
between art and crafts. Both may be meaningful and beautiful, but art
stands the test of time. Of course public opinion may change. What
we now perceive as art people may centuries later refer to as a decorative
or domestic object.
A trend differs from a time
period in art. Right now big flowers or fruit is a popular way
of portraying the subject in the watercolor medium. That is a trend. Trend
setters may be popular in their own time, but they also may very soon
be forgotten! Oppositely, in Rembrandt's time it was a "given"
(read: trend) that people were portrayed uniformly and orderly, somewhat
like an army. That is why the commissioned painting, "The Night Watch,"
was considered so scandalous. It looked very disorderly for his time,
some people were portrayed in the dark, and why does the little girl get
the full spotlight? Yet, after several centuries "The Night Watch"
is still considered a great painting.
In a time period of art several major artists seem
to move parallel to each other in the same direction. Often this becomes
more clear towards the end of an era, or when a new era begins.
If shapes, lines and colors are pleasing to the eye,
this does not necessarily constitute art. In this culture and in our time,
"cute" and "funny" are overrated in value. Cute
and funny does not necessarily make something artful. There are
gray areas. Who knows... a few thousand years later, cartoons will be
classified legitimately as art, because cartoons tell something about
this culture in this time period.
Art has something to say that has not been said before in this or that particular way. Chagall painted flying people to convey certain emotions. Mondriaan conveyed his message with colors and with location, not so much with shapes. Many people confuse the technical drawing and painting skill with an artistic rendering of the subject. Some may be excellent in drawing or painting flowers, but if they do it in a way that is common place, it is called cliche. Art is not cliche. Art goes beyond the common and beyond a look-alike.
Art has a different way of
looking at things. The flowers painted by Georgia O'Keefe have
a startling intimacy. Many even make a connection with female reproductive
organs. The Irises that van Gogh painted were technically not that skillful
at all for a painter. I wonder if they became famous because no one ever
thought of painting them as if they were in a field instead of a vase!
All of these factors cause paintings and other works
of art to be in a different price range than a decorative painting in
a department store or an outlet.
Another mark of art is that is one of a kind. On my vacation in Athens, I was looking for an artful coral necklace. All the tourist shops on the main street had the same coral necklace, made from the squiggle endings of coral. Then I found a shop in another part of town where I saw the color of coral, although it did not look like a coral necklace because the coral was shaped in round, oval, and disk-like beads with silver beads in between. It was a "one of a kind" necklace. I would have happily paid three times as much as the retail price shown. Why would I pay more for this necklace than the others? Because I immediately recognized the artfulness of this necklace. This young female artist had used the coral in a very different way than all the other jewelry shops in the main street! To me, she was the artist.
Art keeps its value, like gold. Art does not become boring. Art is timeless. Art keeps its meaning and goes beyond the sentimental value of an old family heirloom. Many paintings even go up in value with time.
