Scrabble #7 ART – 1992 – 2025 ©
Of all of these ‘Scrabble Board Games’ this one has been the one that I have put off for the longest, and have been the most cautious of doing. The idea of defining Art has been fermenting in my mind since the early 1990’s, and even after all of this time I am still not certain that I won’t decide to edit it in the future. My first formal decision to work out what art is happened when I visited Norwich library to do some research in about 1992. Amongst all of the art books I spotted the ‘Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms’ which I excitedly sat down to read. It did indeed have a comprehensive selection of terminology but when I flicked to the Art page……there was nothing there …… no entry …… ? I realised that this was an even bigger problem than I had thought – not even an art dictionary had embraced defining it – so a very long quest of sorts began. Over the years I have made many notes whilst pondering the subject on long walks climbing mountains, and I have proposed a variety of definitions which I have not been entirely happy with, as they have all either missed out important aspects or added in unnecessary ones.
Eventually I have seem to have decided that Art doesn’t in fact exist as such in a material, audible or any other format, as it is the process of the observation or experience that makes the art, and the quality of it – without any observation then there is no art there is just stuff or noise. This is to say that Art is a language of the emotions and that art is not actually inside any of the stuff, it is inside of the mind – the mind of the observer makes the art – be they the artist themselves or not.
I think we have become accustomed to using the word Art as shorthand to describe the work done by artists as being art, which I don’t really agree is correct, so this has confused the issue of definition and made it difficult to untangle it.
So, what is the point of this quest? Firstly I am intrigued by the fact that it is so hard to define such words and I’m also intrigued by other peoples reluctance to try and do so. Secondly I think we have sometimes rather lost our way in the art world of recognising the difference between high quality art and desirable art. Desirable art is often desirable for its monetary value, and kudos of ownership, whereas quality can be exempt from connection to money and kudos as quality is linked to truth. The real value of art is in how it resonates with you and I believe that if we can better define what art is then we can better ascribe a truer value to it. I wonder what your definition of art would be, and indeed if you think this is art?
Some of the working out process
