I tried to figure out what art is, where it comes from and how to find it, experience it and create it, to make my own philosophy of art. Not just fine art, and also not just the drawing arts, but rather the feeling of experiencing something intrinsically interesting no matter which field or in which form it comes. It can even be completely outside the fields of art & entertainment or not in the form of an intentional artwork made by a human at all. It became this, enjoy!
Why figure out what art is? It's less about defining the boundaries of a word
1, and more about figuring out what moments in life are actually worthwile and interesting. In my mind, if we think about the highest moments in the world and our lives we arrive at art, and that's how I approach it instead of starting with the common idea of art and trying to understand and describe that idea (that will make our description very limited and too dependent on culture and elitistic ideas about fine art vs non-fine art).
I often see art as the highest moment in the world and our lives, and if we could narrow down the idea of what art is just a tiny bit more, we could exclude some things we previously thought were worthwile but actually aren't, and by widening the idea to some new places we could bring to us some things we previously didn't regard as worthwile but actually are. To be more honest about our experiences in life, and distinguish not only good things from bad things but also things that seem good from things that actually
are good. Like learning to appreciate food that is good for you in a more pure way compared to how fast food feels good but really isn't good in the highest sense. If we have more knowledge behind what we do, we won't deceive ourselves or be deceived by the general public's opinion. If we know what moments are worthwile, how they work and where they come from, we could get better at finding those experiences, at experiencing them more honestly, and at creating such experiences for others.
Of all the things you can do, some of them you do as a means to some other end - like how healthcare is built for saving people's lives and not for us to just enjoy and contemplate the healthcare institutions themselves - and others you do for their own sake, like how you can watch a truly great art piece or a beautiful sunset and feel that you've arrived at the final destination, where there's no need for the artwork or sunset to give you anything else than simply the experience of them. Some things in the world make you stop and contemplate and just take in the moment, and you find it interesting for no other reason than the fact that you can't resist being interested in it.
You could call these intrinsically worthwile moments "art", but many other things than art can create these moments - it can be an incredible football goal, a brilliant idea or just seeing how someone lives their life in a truly unique way. The word "art" will also bring in lots of things that to me aren't great art just because they're traditionally called art. Lots of bad art, and simple mainstream entertainment without significant artistic value, could be called art by the traditional definition. John Dewey used the word "aesthetic experience" to separate such intrinsically interesting moments from products used to transfer these moments. To him aesthetic experiences are everywhere and not only in art, and art is more of an attempt to create a product of these experiences, transfering aesthetic experiences to other people. This is not only to make aesthetic experiences span various fields and a larger range of our lives, but also to point out that experiences are the main part of art, not objects. He didn't call them intrinsically interesting moments, but his separation of aesthetic experience from art products is pretty much what I'm going for here.
2 But after all, I still think art is the best word for all these types of intrinsically worthwile moments, regardless of which field we're talking about. It's just a good word.
We all know when we experience an artistic moment like this, when something is just interesting and inspiring, and also often unexplainable and confusing. Great aesthetic experiences aren't necessarily beautiful in the traditional sense, ugly art can be interesting too, but they're definitely always interesting. Art is more close to the feeling of being unstoppably interested towards something, than it is close to the feeling of visually pleasing proportions. It's more like a confusion that resonates with you, than something perfect. It's also not about hedonic pleasure at all, it's something that makes you more fulfilled deep in the soul and not just on your surface-level needs. Things can be entertaining, funny and thrilling, but these aren't necessarily what we're looking for here either. Experiencing great art is like stumbling upon an interesting question and trying to find an answer, realizing that there is no answer, and still wanting to answer it more and not less because of this.
Art is when you don't have a further reason for feeling interested in something other than just being interested. Art is when you explore something for the sake of itself. It's similar to knowledge, curiosity and insight, in how you're never supposed to reach the end, find the definitive answer, create your masterpiece or become the best. You just continue exploring.
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Poetic descriptions aside, one thing great art ironically enough seem to have in common is that they're all different. Art could in a way be seen as a loose phrase for the various diverse human experiences where we have to handle things that are new and different in a meaningful way. "Unique" would be a close-to-home word to use to describe great art, but many things can be unique without being meaningful or interesting. "Irreplaceable" is more what I'm trying to convey here. Great art seems to come from doing something that no one else can do. And not just by coming up with a completely random long sequence of numbers that out of pure statistics could not be done by anyone else, but when it actually requires a certain effort and/or a unique point of view that no one else than you has in them. Then it's new and different in a meaningful way. I think this is why great art is often seen as honest, genuine, unique, and feels like it tells some truth about the world, either by literally telling a truth or by giving you some kind of intuitive feeling of truth. Because that's what comes out of doing what only you can do and no one else can do, that's an honest, unique and true way to live. You kind of have to be true to yourself, in some way, to make truly great art.
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I think doing what only you can do and no one else can do can either come in the form of effort, or in the form of your unique point of view, or both. You don't need both to create great art - many of the truly great artworks probably took huge amounts of effort to make, like the Sistine Chapel, but some of the greatest songs were probably written in under an hour. In those cases, effort from past times probably poured through in that moment, but sometimes you also just have something unique in you from birth that lets you see things differently and create a song that was really unique and therefore resonated with lots of people. Or you've by chance ended up in unique situations that you can tell about. We get that intrinsical interest from people doing something no one else can do. That's why we're eternally fascinated by things like Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings and inventions, unique life stories, the pyramids, the great wall of china, Einstein's field equations and Wayne Gretzky's hockey goals (at least I am).
So that's what I think the best art is. Almost annoyingly simple and familiar as a definition and "recipe", but it excludes a lot of descriptions we could have used, and that's what lets us focus on the right things.
I do think there is a way to make better art, but there is no step-to-step guide. Since the whole point of art is to bring something irreplacable to the world, something only you can do, I obviously can't tell you how to do that. You probably don't even know exactly what you do when you do that thing you do that no one else can do. Maybe you can explain parts of it but not all of them. Being too conscious about what you do will probably damage more than help great artists anyway. But I do think it helps to know what art really is, so you can recognize when you stray too far away from it and start becoming commercial, superficial, pandering, self-conscious or anxious. If you know exactly what is great art and not, you can more easily redirect back to where you should be. I made an attempt at collecting common traps when doing creative works that stand in the way of the actual creative work in my post
"Meditations for creating things", which is somewhat outdated but may still hold up decently.
But you can get better at tapping into those things that only you can do. You can either do more than everyone else, or do things differently than everyone else. There are definitely ways to do impressive things, great art can't always be entirely about chance and intuition, I don't think you should
only sit around and wait for inspiration. There are methods for finding what you can do much of and do greatly, so with all the talk about the "soft" values of art, which are undoubtedly a big part of what makes art special compared to the more logical fields, you can with discipline, effort, planning and habit also approach great art.
Here is my idea on how to do things in general, which could be helpful for this (or maybe it's just helpful for me).
Doing things differently can come from your unique point of view: What you're born with, what you've been through in life, where you are in time and culture right now, etc. The total that is you, and not just the parts that feel the most "unique" to you, but also all the normal things, all the boring things, all the things you didn't want to do, all the things you've been through where you haven't felt like the "true you" - those are all also part of your unique perspective. I suspect that
especially those things you don't think of as interesting about yourself could be those that are actually the most interesting. Those things that don't seem to give you any particular advantage over other people, those things that don't fit any specific purpose in society, those things that feel pointless if you try to explain them rationally. Those parts of you are probably where you try the least to be like everyone else. While those times when you try to be interesting will ironically make you more like others, less unique and less interesting, because you will fill your head with ideas about how to be and how not to be and won't be natural.
Your unique point of view isn't necessarily what you think it is, and it's difficult to really grasp it yourself. The parts of you that feel obvious and not special could hide really interesting sides of you, but you don't think about them because they're normal to you. Both the normal parts of you and the outstanding parts of you, both the visible parts of you and the hidden parts of you, both the exciting parts of you and the dull parts of you, together create your unique point of view. Your unique point of view isn't something you drag up from deep within yourself, it's there all the time, but you may not see it.
So far I've talked about those things we can actually theorize about at all. But sometimes that irreplaceable thing that only you can do and no one else can do, is more mysterious and seems to come from some unknown place. We could call it intuition, creativity, timing, luck, chance, the unconscious, the universe, the spiritual realm, etc. Ideas don't come randomly to you (because different people have different ideas and some seem to be meant for you) but they come to you without knowing their source. You can't rationally create these ideas by instruction, you can only get better at recognizing these ideas and knowing which ones are worth to listen to and which ones to filter out. How do you "tap into" this intiutive source of ideas? This question is probably both too big and too small to give a concrete answer to, but books like for example Rick Rubin's "The Creative Act" at least try to explain how to better be in tune with that source. One thing that 100% blocks that creative source is constantly being occupied with things, like working all the time and not taking breaks to let thoughts flow naturally in the mind. So there's at least one thing you can stop doing to be in a better place for those ideas to arrive.
Another thing you could do is look for the same feeling as you get when you watch great art. That feeling is often similar to the feeling you get of a creative idea that intrigues you and inspires you. I'm not sure if I want to go so far as to say that creating art and experiencing art are the exact same thing, but the concept of "inspiration" at least points in this direction. Especially if you're a person who gets inspired to create by watching your favorite artists' works. This is another case for really understanding which moments, experiences and works are truly worthwile and interesting, so you know what to look for both in your own creative act and in others' art.
The best art could be said to be objectively great because they touch something deeply human and timeless, and not just something specific in one person. Even if art is a subjective experience, many people like the same thing because we are as humans similar in many ways.
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However, the experience of art will always be combined with your own perception of it, and other contextual circumstances like life experience, what you know about the artwork and its creation, what you know about other things, how it fits in your current life, etc. In a way you as a viewer does a big part of the job when experiencing art (especially so if we're talking about interactive artforms such as video games, performance art or standup comedy). Your favorite artist probably isn't your favorite artist only because of pure artistic qualities, but because of an intertwined mix of different qualities, both the highest awe of art and the lowest forms of parasocial relationships and everything in between. There will never be a pure feeling of artistic excellence, it will always be mixed with other feelings, and if you tried to remove all the other "lower" feelings in art, maybe you'd be left with nothing at all. Like if you tried to remove all brushstrokes from a painting to find the true artistic quality deeper within (spoiler alert: The artistic quality isn't in any single separate brushstroke, but appears when they're combined. In a way like how consciousness is said to "emerge" from the atoms in the brain, without any of the single separate atoms having any consciousness in them). We shouldn't leave these human "less than art" feelings behind just to find something objectively artistically fulfilled - these human feelings may be all we wanted in the end. Maybe this is what I'm trying to say with my slogan "art & entertainment", the two always seem to come together in some way.
Just because art is subjective doesn't mean "anything can be art". I believe the feeling of experiencing artistic excellence is a real feeling that can't be faked. It's subjective and doesn't arise at the exact same moments for all people, but it is an absolute feeling you can't override with opinion. Like how we all know the feeling of hunger and can talk about it, and if you'd say you feel hunger when you don't you would 100% be lying - the same goes for the feeling of art. It is a real feeling, and you're probably more or less good at recognizing it. This is where my idea of art gets elitist, because I believe many people out there talk about art but don't know very much about this feeling and therefore have a "wrong" opinion on what is art and not (although this may also be a disagreement over the
word art, which doesn't always represent this exact feeling I'm talking about).
With a theory of art like this we can more easily find great art and filter out worse art. And while I don't think we should look only for the most purely artsy art that isn't contaminated with lower forms of entertainment and commerce (great art is often hidden among these), I think we should watch out for things that don't have any art in them at all. With enough knowledge about what art is and isn't, you'd easily see that a really bad sitcom has no art in it, but a decent sitcom may have some in it. But it's a bit trickier to see through things that people generally see as art. I'm still not sure if long-time fame of an artwork can be a sign of artistic quality (if people talk about it generation after generation it should have some true artistic value?) or if it's almost the opposite. Group think, insecurity and ego can lead to wanting something to be art while it really isn't art. This means you can become better at experiencing art just like you can get better at creating it. You may sometimes think you feel great art when you really don't, your ego can trick you into believing the most popular art is the truly best, for example, and this is something you can get better at avoiding. I would recommend the chapter "Error" in Paul Graham's
"How Art Can Be Good" for some ideas on how to learn to see through "tricks" of art and experience it more honestly, he pretty much put to words what I've been thinking about this but didn't have the words for.
Another crucial part of experiencing great art is actually finding new things that you didn't know you liked. All good things are new unkown things, that you probably didn't think you would like, in the beginning. If you're decently interested in some type of art you'll probably check out what's popular, stick with what you like, and maybe find some new stuff adjacent to the things you already like. You'll travel a bit away from your previous taste but not very fast or very far. This is probably better than just liking what's on social media, on TV and on the radio, and than being closed toward new things at all.
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Of all methods you could use, it's hard to say which one is better or worse. Being too specific would leave out some good methods I haven't thought of, so I'll refrain from doing so. I for example am very interested in finding systems for good recommendations, like finding blogs who often give tips about other good blogs, to give many new recommendations but with some type of quality filter, more focused towards actual artistic quality and not just audience engagement as in current Tiktok:ified social media. But this still depends on some notion of what is a good filter, and truly interesting changes happen when you check out something you have no reason at all for checking out.
So the only thing I can fully recommend is doing what you don't want to do, every now and then. When opportunity rises to check out something you actually wouldn't check out usually, take that opportunity and do what feels wrong. You don't even have to look for these opportunities, because they always appear occasionally no matter what you do. When someone you know and whose art taste you trust tells you about something that sounds really bad, give it the benefit of a doubt and see if you'll change. If something sounds really good you probably wouldn't need me to tell you to check it because you'd do it anyway, that's why I'm mentioning this specifically. It may even be someone who's taste you don't trust at all. It may be someone you hate, your mortal enemy and nemesis in life. A surprisingly effective way to find new interesting things has to me been when searching for something and checking out other things with a similar name. Like, why should I like another song just because it has the same name as a song I already like? Because great things appear when you check out completely new things, and this is almost as random as something can be, while still feeling like you're checking out something familiar and have a thought behind it. It's weird enough to work.
That’s it. That’s the whole post. Even if this is my current best attempt at explaining art, all the "normal" posts on kbrecordzz.com where I just talk about art I like without ever reaching a conclusion is probably an even better description of what art is. Because this post is just a path to art, and what's actually interesting is always the art itself.
I'm still not sure about the word "art". Even if I mention multiple times that art isn't just paintings and sculptures in museums and galleries but is about all types of intrinsically interesting and worthwile experiences, I'm still afraid that people only think about old paintings when I use the word "art" throughout this post. Maybe "art & entertainment" is a good phrase after all.
Footnotes:
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