art is... when we run around screaming

"Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses,emotions, and/or intellect."


That is the opening sentence of a wiki article on "art". I decided to google "art" and see what happens - this is the second link that came up. I wonder who wrote the article about art on wiki? Isn't that a lot of responsibility? It seems to me that to define art you have to be opinionated in some way, there isn't a single explanation of art that is not biased.

Joseph Beuys - How to Explain Picture to a Dead Hare (1965)

So then, let's talk about art, in the broader sense. I guess that is what my lectures and seminars are teaching me, or at least making me think about. At first I rejected it, I hated it, but now I'm starting to enjoy it. I really like thinking about art, about the meaning of art, about the future of art, and the past. I think art is the reason I am living. I have no other purpose in life anyway. It makes me happy, it makes me jump out of bed and shower and eat breakfast. It makes me go to Hanbury St to buy art materials, and it makes me sit for 2 hours writing non-stop till my hand falls off, just to produce a beautiful piece of some sort of scroll. It makes me buy magazines so I can use photos from there, it makes me cry sometimes, it makes me doubt myself endlessly. It makes me send crazy emails to my friends about a project I have in mind, and would they like to help. It makes me travel to the cemetery, it makes me look for disposable Kodak cameras, it makes me go to deviantart and question what is legitimate art. Speaking of deviant, I looked for images on the website that amused me, and I found these:

Also I went to the website art.co.uk just for the hell of it. I went to "best sellers posters and prints" and the first two (most popular) are both Van Gogh. How is it that an earless half crazy previously devoted to God Dutch artist who was extremely poor and unrecognized, even by Teo, became as big as the Mona Lisa?

So, the question is, where does one go to understand art, especially someone who knows nothing about it and suddenly wants to know? Does one need to go see old art before discovering contemporary art, or does it even matter? Isn't art meant to be understood just by itself? I don't think so. I think there is a lot of art which has so much heavy context that by itself it can never function. But then again, even heavily conceptualized art can still be viewed without any knowledge. It then becomes something else entirely, but it still maintains itself as a piece of art. I don't think it matters if the function of an art piece changes, as long as it never fails to amaze, amuse, get a reaction from people. As long as it's still art. But can an art piece stop being art? I don't know the answer to that question.

Mark Leckey's performance piece, I am not sure what it's called.

Thomas Hirschhorn - La Série des Antalgiques (2005)

Guillermo Ramos Flamerich - Soto Sphere (2007)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres - Untitled (Beginning) 1994

Hannah Wilke: S.O.S.Starification Object Series,1974-82

Stuckists - The Death of Conceptual Art

Stelarc - Stretched Skin (2009)

Jeff Koons - Aqualung (1985)

None of these images really reflect what I like in contemporary art, they are here as mere examples. I can't say I either like or not like them - that will be reserved for another discussion.

I think in order to start understanding art, to start discovering art, one simply needs to go out and see it. Don't start reading about it until later. Little by little, I think anyone could get sucked in to this wonderful dark and scary place. It's so uncomfortably delicious.