I am taking a (free) class over at Coursera titled History of Art for Artists, Gamer, and Animators by CalArts. If you are at all interested in creative things, I highly recommend it. This is my sketchpad response to the first assignment- thinking about what art is to us; what art is to the word and providing two images that reflect that for us.
Mostly I think art is a medium for communication.
We want to connect; we want to share; we want to feel; we want to take emotions or difficult to understand things and make something other outside ourselves that we and others can interact with or dialogue over. It can be something created (a book, a painting) or something that simply exists (the sculptural quality of iris leaves under snow). The specifics of what that “art” looks like change based on where the viewer/receiver is in their personal journey.
For myself, as a story-teller, I am in the phase of learning to mine the art/story out of myself and to somehow figure out ways to get it out onto the page, so the art that draws me now generally focuses on either capturing something or transforming something.
The piece Transformations #4 by Karen Thiessen is an example of this kind of work.
She started with what she had (a cultural heritage of thread/fabric/quilt; scraps of “failed” earlier attempts at art; a darker emotional thought or issue with which to wrestle). The resulting piece is something finished and beautiful. As evocative and visceral as the majesty and mystery of the night sky.
For how I think the world views art… that is too big and too varied. And fragmenting more every day as art and line and form step out of the more traditional forms of work hanging at an art gallery or a sculpture in the park to take up residence in many other places of our lives. Ads on television. Brand. The covers on our phones. A printed book of hundreds of our own personal photos.
For me a great example of this kind of art, where beauty and story and brand and advertising and film and installation piece and whimsy and emotion and...basically several different individual kinds of art all come together in one to evoke something in the viewer, would be the Starbucks holiday commercial from last year with music (snow day) and snowflake kites over NYC. It is also an interesting juxtaposition of the temporary (discardable commercial; set outside at a particular moment in time) and the permanent (film).
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