What is art?
I recently encountered a discussion of this on the podcast Brain in A Vat, which I have listened to extensively and highly recommend. And what interested me the most was that the philosophers discussing the topic (which was actually “Can Animals Create Art?”) weren’t artists themselves. And much of their discussion kept coming back to what it means internally to an artist to create art.
I find that my own perception of this has changed a great deal over my life, especially as I become more experienced. And I don’t doubt it will change again later in life.
As of now, with over 40 published books, innumerable paintings and drawings, photographs and video, social media, blog posts, essays, and dog knows what else I’ve created, I decided to attempt my own definition of what art is, to me, as an artist with experience in a wide range of mediums.
And I keep coming back to equations.
In the podcast, they asked: is art defined by the intention of the creator or by the perception of the consumer? Or by an institution? Or some objective force or concept?
Or none of the above?
Or all of the above?
Or some combination of the above?
My mind immediately was drawn to a specific memory.
Once, I was teaching at a writing retreat. I arrived on Day 3 to spend the second half of the week with the participants. One older woman (70s, close to 80, I'd guess) had been making people uncomfortable all week. She was reserved and quiet most of the time, but when she had the opportunity to speak, kept pushing her books on people, which contained some very un-common beliefs associated with Christianity (such as that the Bible and science prove one another and the erath is much older than 6k years, etc.).
During an evening check-in session, she opened up and told us that twice in her life she had met the devil, and the way she had rid herself of him was by blessing him with the power a seraphim had given her.
As you can imagine, the other participants had no idea how to respond, because, well, to put it bluntly, it sounded absolutely batshit. But she was dead serious. She even started tearing up at one point, sharing the depth of this trauma.
And she told us that her husband (who was also there) was the only person she'd told of this particular thing, but she was telling us because it was related to the project she was trying to make progress on, trying to overcome her writer's block.
We also learned that before retirement, she had worked as a codebreaker for the NSA and was a mathematic genius, except she believed her mathematical prowess was angels giving her messages that were her responsibility to translate for all of mankind.
During this exposition, I sat frozen, wondering how I was supposed to react, and wondering what I was supposed to say. Already an agnostic exvangelical at a writer's retreat run by Episcopalians, I felt very out of my comfort zone. And now this woman was saying, with intense fervency, a lot of things which were directly perpendicular to everything I personally believed.
In addition to freezing my outside, I decided to freeze my insides too. I mean, not my internal organs, but my thoughts. I just listened, letting my deep-internal self run around in panicked circles, but simultaneously, held myself open to the idea that even if I didn't believe her, she believed her.
I'd been working on this idea that I could "let someone else's perspective be real/true even if I perceive it differently."
I learned that from an old therapist.
This was a huge test of that concept.
I went to bed that night with my brain swirling. Could I discount what she said as obvious mental illness? No. I'm not a psychiatrist. Was it likely? Sure. But was it equally as likely that she'd had some experience that felt like the devil and seraphim? Definitely. And if you were a genius and your brain could solve extremely complex equations without a calculator, could that feel like an angel giving you messages? One hundred percent.
So the next day, she attended my lecture. It ended up being a very small group, only about six of us, so I ran it like a small group rather than a lecture.
The talk was on finding your voice as a writer.
After I went through my material, she confessed that no one had ever told her she had her own voice.
Her whole life, she'd been speaking on behalf of others. Translating for angels and demons.
And here I was saying, "You have your own voice."
Throughout the conversation, I held this one thought in my head: It doesn't matter what I think is true. It only matters what she thinks is true.
I wasn't her therapist. I wasn't a psychiatrist. I was basically a writing coach. And what she needed was someone to help her though her writer's block.
Whenever she made a statement, I agreed with it. I didn't try to argue that it wasn't an angel giving her messages. Instead, I said, "Why do you think the messages are blocked? What do you think you need to do to release them?"
I made my whole approach structured in a way to express that I believed her.
I didn't believe her, but at the same time, I found that I sort of actually did.
I didn't believe in the devil she met, but I believed in her belief that she met the devil.
It was so real to her! How could I deny the power and intensity of that experience she had?
However she came to grapple with and understand her experience was unusual, sure. But who was I to say she was wrong? Maybe she really did meet a devil.
And so, I slowly carved out a gray area within myself, where I was able to allow both my opinions and beliefs to exist at the same time as her opinions and beliefs. I could hold onto my own ideas without shutting hers down.
Both could exist at the same time. I didn't have to brush her off, ignore her, or deny her experiences just because my own experiences were different. I could let her exist as she was, and let myself exist as I was, at the same time.
I think this gray space is necessary to understand art.
There are so many variables to consider when attempting to define what qualifies as art and what doesn't.
Medium, for starters. There's drawing, painting, music, writing, collage, poetry, photography, AI, glass-blowing, metallurgy, sculpture, movies, printmaking, dance—and that's only a fraction of the mediums that exist. There are forms of expression for every sensory experience and every combination of senses. There are static and changing forms of art. There are forms of art that are comfortable and familiar, and forms of art that are completely foreign and alien. There are new and modern art forms and ancient art forms that have survived through history.
It is also worth considering the intention behind the art. Was it made by nature or a human or an animal? Then of course, we can consider the viewer's perception of the art. If I look at an object and think it is art, but you perceive it as trash... is it art or not? And not to mention, surely there is some qualifier of good and bad art. Where is the line between bad art and not art?
There are institutional definitions, cultural definitions, familial definitions. Is the drawing your 5-year-old made art? What about the painting my cat did?
There are copyright and ownership considerations.
There are ethical and moral considerations.
There are so many variables that go into defining and understanding what art is.
How can we know?
The short answer is: we can't. We can believe, but we can’t know.
The long answer is: it's an equation for which we get to decide the variables.
Art = (my perception + artist intention + medium + institutional definition + moral/ethical relevance + x+y+z)*(subjectivity + objectivity)
Instead of numbers, my equation is simply categories of more and less on a scale of 0 to 1. If I believe something is art to the maximum, but all the other categories are 0, it's still art.
We each get to decide if something is art. Individually, as a group, systemically, culturally, institutionally—however you want to slice it. Something can both be art and not art at the same, depending on the lens through which you view it.
We can exist in the gray area.
