How I Define Art
By William F. Zieske
If I am going to be writing about art, even the law concerning art and the art world, I feel obligated to tell anyone who might read my blog what I think about art generally.
Where to start in defining art? Philosophically, it can be anything that’s not nature. Nature vs. art, like fact vs. fiction – if it came out of the human mind, it’s art. But looking at the mass-produced mug in my hand this morning (with BRYAN CAVE on the side, and “M Ware® China” on the bottom), it’s hard to say that’s art.
It’s a month after writing this blog the first time, and I just deleted all but those first paragraphs. This morning, as I set the same mug on its ceramic disk – which also reminds me that this is, in fact, Bryan Cave – the litigator inside me cried out, “strike that!” and scuttled the abstract philosophical approach.
In the meantime, I’ve avoided looking up any definitions of art (although I’m sure I have been influenced by opinions I encountered in life), and concentrated on what art is to me. My first thought was to define it by how it is created, then by the artist’s intent in creating it, then decided it really had more to do with how something reacted on my own mind than what the artist’s mind intended. It took me way too long to realize that art is determined by its relation to both the artist and the viewer – that, like all the best things in life, art really depends on two people.
So here’s my latest definition: Art is an abstracted communication – the creation of one mind, the artist’s, while freed of practical concerns, that when communicated helps other minds, the audience’s, to be freed from practical concerns. But this is one form of communication where a total disconnect is perfectly fine. What’s meant by the artist, if any one definite thing is intended, doesn’t have to be picked up by the audience, and everyone in the audience can take away completely different things from the work, without demeaning it in the least.
There seems to be an artistic continuum, from fine art to the merely artistic, based on how free the artist’s mind is in the art of creating the work, how broad an audience it speaks to, and how much it transports the viewers’ minds.
It’s the best I can do. If you disagree with my view of what art is, that’s great. I’m a lawyer, and I eat disagreements for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Disagreements aren’t art, but they are, like art, part of what defines us all as human and keeps the world infinitely interesting.
So as we enter the New Year, here’s to art, artists and audience, and to dialogue, disagreements and disputes. To Art, and Law.
Cheers!
