What Is Art?

On the first day of class, we viewed a music video that was carefully constructed to merge visuals with music. It was not a typical music video that many may expect where the artists are displayed performing one way or another while there are scenes that interpret the meaning of the song. Those who created the music video decided to interpret the beat of the song in a visual manner. I found it very interesting how the video went perfectly with the beat of the song and how they calculated each visual aspect to interpret each beat through repetition and pace.

Apart from the music video, we were asked to draw out “how we got here.” This was a way to see how different people in the class interpreted the question. I personally drew myself walking from my dorm to the college center where our class is located, while others drew their journey from their hometown to Loyola or the way we were brought into this world. I first thought the assignment was to test our drawing capabilities but I then realized it related to the class in a different way. The way people interpreted the question correlates with the way people interpret art. Everyone has their own opinion and interprets things differently. This now brings us to the question, what is art?

Everyone has a different definition of art, but what comes to my mind when asked what is art, is a concrete definition that describes it as a tool used to express emotions, thoughts, and ideas to others that reflect one’s views of society or oneself. But art is more complex than what meets the eye. It is everywhere, and it can mean nothing or it can portray a variety of things. One does not have to be classified as an artist to create art and something does not have to be displayed in a gallery or a museum to be classified as art. To quickly go back to the topic of the music video, I would have not viewed the music video as a work of art but it is clear that it is a piece of art since it is something that captures an audience.

The Whole Ball of Wax, an article by Jerry Saltz, expressed that “art is a cat” when describing the different ways dogs and cats may interact with their owners. What I believe Saltz was trying to convey was the notion that art is based on the way the subject makes one feel and the reaction that is given from the one experiencing the subject. The way people experience art may be different and differ from the way the artist intended the audience to interpret it. Saltz uses the example that Andy Warhol and Donald Judd never intended to make their art political, yet they have changed the way the world looks and the way we look at the world. But this also brings up the question on whether or not it is possible to give the term art a concrete definition when there are so many different interpretations.