Hey guys. Happy Wednesday! I’m very excited to be hosting a post by my brother today.

But I’ll leave the introduction to him. 🙂 Take it away, bro!

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Hello. I am Noah Litle, from Noah Litle Writes. Today I’m going to talk about what is not art.

Before we go on, I want to say that I’m going to try to do this without actually defining art. I’ve seen it done so many times where people explore the meaning and existence of art by defining art. In fact, you can find a really good video about that here: What makes something art?

The reason I’m not going to define art, is because this post is not about art. I hope you enjoy it.

Totally Not Art!

While it seems people often find it hard to define art, they seem to have no problem deciding what isn’t art. for example, people often denounce abstract artwork:

Abstraction

“That’s not art!”

“That’s just a bunch of boxes!”

“My five-year-old could have drawn that!”

“What… even… ?”

Okay. So, maybe this isn’t art. Maybe you feel like it’s just too far gone; It’s not accessible to the common man, so to speak. It’s too… abstract.

But does artwork have to be understood by the common man to be art? I suppose an argument could be made that if someone doesn’t “get” a piece of art, then they don’t really recognize it as art. But what if just one person does? Could it be considered art for the sake of one person? What if that one person is the artist?

One thing that I’ve observed is that if something is true for myself, it’s likely true for others. Even if that thing is very specific to me. It’s the specifics about myself that make me relatable. Not the generic things that could be true of everyone. As a writer, this observation is very important to me. But I think it could also apply to art.

If an artist thinks a certain piece makes them feel a certain way, odds are, someone else will feel very similarly about that piece. Maybe most of us feel out of our depth when looking at that piece, but does that matter? If the artist is able to connect with one other person with their art, then who cares if the rest of us don’t understand it?

Okay, so maybe abstract art is your thing, and you love to look at all of the above. Maybe you have a thing against other kinds of art… or not-art…

Reality

“It’s too realistic!”

“It takes no creative effort!”

 

“They just copied the picture!”

Maybe this isn’t art either (don’t kill me, Chalice). Where the abstract was too… abstract to be understood, this is the opposite. It’s too specific. We don’t feel for it because it doesn’t obviously express the artists feelings toward the subject.

But maybe we don’t have to know how an artist feels about something to appreciate their artwork. On the one hand, it feels like an exact copy of the photo, so where’s the feeling for that? On the other hand, the artist wouldn’t spend the endless hours on it if they didn’t have some level of dedication; you wouldn’t do that if you didn’t feel for the subject at all.

So, is it art? Or not?

Must art be experienced and appreciated by the viewer to be art?

What if we take this a step further?

Snapshot

Is this art?

You can’t say that the photographer put endless hours into any of these photographs. But they’re all pleasing to look at. Maybe they remind us of how a certain place might feel if we were there.

Here we have almost the opposite reaction. These pictures are pleasant to look at, but how do we know the photographer feels the same way about them? What if they just snapped a picture? Is it art if the artist creates it on accident?

Admittedly, these pictures didn’t happen on accident, but still… The photographer didn’t necessarily have to put any work into making these scenes.

The advantage of photography that painting/drawing can’t do, is that a camera can show us exactly what the photographer saw. Without altering it. Some might say that that is proof positive that it isn’t art. But what about framing? Composition? Lighting? All the things that a photographer has to think about when they go for a walk with their camera. Are we discounting that expertise? Simply because we would rather analyse how an artist felt about their work?

But that’s the thing. Everything a photographer wants us to feel about a photograph is within the frame. They’re showing us what they see. They’re giving us an opportunity to see the same thing and decide how we feel about it. Perhaps that idea shows us a better way to think about art.

And here we are again: does the fact that an artist is behind the work make it art? If an artist brushes a yellow stroke across the canvas, can he call that art? If a photographer does a simple point-and-shoot, can that be called art?

Do we have to appreciate the work put into something to recognize it as art? What if little, to no work is put into it?

Let’s take this another step further.

Creation

What if there’s no human behind it?

Are these natural wonders art?

Certainly they are beautiful. They inspire us. They make us feel, and ponder life’s mysteries. But… are they art?

Maybe a better question would be, are they not art?

Let’s take this even further.

Image

Are people art?

I know. The idea sounds ridiculous. We don’t react to people the way we react to art at all. So why does it matter if people are art?

Well…

Would you say that these people are not as carefully crafted as those hyperrealistic paintings we were looking at earlier? Would you say that they don’t have that abstract element that makes them hard to understand, but relatable to a select few? And can we really judge any of that from the snapshots that we see here?

What about the people we meet every day? What about the people we see every day? What about the people we think about every day?

How do they make us feel? What kind of work is going into them right now? Maybe they’re unfinished. Maybe only one person will be able to connect with them on a meaningful level. Who are we to say they’re not worthy of the title just because they don’t measure up to our standards? Maybe we just haven’t seen them in the right light yet.

One thing is certain: people are beautiful, regardless of whether or not they’re art. I hope you can appreciate that more now.

See? I told you this wasn’t about art.

Afterword

It seems when people really get into something, I mean really obsessed with it, then they start seeing it everywhere. And they delve deep to find it in places where the common man would never go.

And as I was writing this post I kept thinking, “To the musician, everything is music; to the artist, everything is art.” And I can’t remember if I heard that somewhere or if I just made it up.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little journey of a post. Don’t be afraid to dive deep.

End

If you liked this post and want to see more like it, definitely go check out my blog: Noah Litle Writes. I don’t usually write such abstract posts, but art is kind of an abstract concept (ironically), so I thought I’d play into that.

See you next time.

A little disclaimer: If you see a picture that you took in this post, or if you see a picture of yourself, be sure and contact us, so we can credit it, or take it out. I just pulled most of these pictures from Google Images. No copyright infringement was intended.