What is art?

What can we expect from art? Aesthetic qualities, of course, but perhaps also challenge. Not every artwork offers challenge, however.

Artist and audience
A task of the artist is to notice what is not always seen.

When an artist succeeds  in getting through to someone, there is communication. A spectator can also contribute by giving en extra chance to an artwork which seems incomprehensible at first sight.

The audience can also contribute as co-creators. Such co-creation primarily takes place by the audience projecting their own thoughts and fantasies into an image. However, if the audience has to do all the work, I believe the artist has not done his/her.

Art speaks to the conscious as well as to the unconscious mind. Art also speaks from both of the two.

Recognizing what you see
When looking at a picture, you may recognize something immediately. A human figure can, e g, be recognizable. But even if you can see what an image "is", it may take more to see what it is about.

Challenge
To challenge can be to impose something unexpected on you. Facing something unexpected can be unpleasant or pleasant (humour). In Norway I believe we have lost the freedom to challenge each other in ways that are not pleasant, except when doing this as part of a professional role. If non-professionally challenged, a person is free to withdraw, and may even feel entitled to an apology. However, I believe society as well as individuals depend on challenge for growth and development.

Understandable and not understandable
What is in fact nothing, can sometimes be presented as if it were an extraordinarily fine piece of work. We know the tale of The Emperor's New Cloth, by the Danish writer H C Andersen.

Artists should, of course, refrain from artificial mystification of artworks. There is, however, a zone between what is clearly understood and what is not at all understood. This "borderland" can be a fertile area, be it difficult.

The Norwegian artist Håkon Bleken says that an image discharges its contents to its audience over some time. Some images discharge quickly, others have more to give. Change the art at display in your surroundings in due course.

Children and grown-ups
Picasso stated that "it took me three years to learn to paint like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like a child". The immediacy of an expression by a child is hard to copy.

Releasing the spontaneity of the child is sometimes seen as important in art training. Moreover one tries to combine a childlike approach with a systematic approach. A piece of art with childlike traits may look like rubble. But good art is always well organised. It may be difficult to point out by what rules it is organised. However with some training a spectator may discover unconventional forms of order. He/she can distinguish between what looks like rubble just because certain everyday rules for order are broken, such as rules for making a work-chart or for orderly setting up a dinner-table, and what actually is just rubble.

Any rule in art is likely to be broken, sooner or later. Any particular way of expressing human experience and concern inevitably grows older and eventually becomes obsolete. You may still admire the works of e g Edvard Much, but it would not make sense painting like him today. Art breaks rules and at the same time creates new rules. "Artists" breaking rules only, are probably not artists.

"I am a piece of art"
Should an artwork, e g an image, "look like art"? The question may seem banal, but I will make it a starting point for discussing truthfulness in art.

If an artist makes an image, and makes sure it looks like art, in my opinion he/she is off track. If the audience looks for the same, the audience could also be off track.

For inquiry we could compare with something completely different, like asking what should a waiter be like? As we know, waiters are found in restaurants and cafes, and a waiter is expected to be polite and friendly. However under given circumstances doubt as to what a waiter should do, may arise. Doubt cannot then be alleviated by the waiter behaving extra "waiterlike", e g by being conspicuously friendly or by overdoing motions like putting the plates on the table with an impressive sweep. That would remind us of Chaplin, not of a real waiter.

Returning to art, doubt may arise as to whether an image is good or not. A good image contains substance and is focussed on its contents, or otherwise to the point. Doubt over quality cannot be alleviated by recognizable, let alone conspicuous,  traits of this image being art. An image does not convince  e g by being made diffuse in order to distinguish it form other image expressions like logos and advertising.

Art should, in my opinion, convey life, express truth, and perhaps challenge. If an artwork manages to do so, it will stand out as art and need no further signs of genuineness. Better with a piece of art which is limited in contents and intention, but honest, than a piece of art which bribes your uncertainty by boasting "I am art".

© Arild Brock

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