DefineArt

Once and for all:
The definition of ART

by Phelyx for SexyWithin.com
March, 2007

That’s right, ladies, gentlemen, and those in between, I, Phelyx, have mustered the testicular
fortitude to publicly tackle the perpetual debate of what Art is and how to define it. Now, of course, I
am writing for my dear friends here at Sexy Within, so there’s clear segue from this subject to one
more appropriate for this forum. We’ll get there.

So, what is art? As a visual artist who has done work in the music industry for nearly two decades, I
feel I am at least qualified to weigh in on this sensitive subject. I don’t believe any wars have been
waged over the question, but I can offer that, historically, lives have been lost and blood has been
shed. This is one touchy subject and has been debated, daily, across this spinning sphere for as
long as it has been determined that art has value.

Within the last few centuries, the term, “art” has encompassed a variety of creative disciplines and
mediums to include visual arts, music, and performances. Painters are artists and dancers are too.
Magicians, sculptors, writers, and essentially everyone else who produces a creative product for a
living are all considered artists. Of course, the more tortured their soul, the more qualified they are.
So is art the beautiful byproduct of this horrible condition called human? Not exactly.

Does art have to be beautiful to be art? Well, what is beautiful? I met a stunning woman last week.
Is she art? I have a buddy whose mind is so complex, and whose outlook is so positive, that beautiful
is the most accurate description. Is he art? What if his name was Arthur? Alright, alright, let’s
narrow it down by referencing the term “work of art”. If either of these lovelies drew a stick figure on
a cocktail napkin, would that be art? My answer: no.

In the 1860s, Monet stirred things up, with a few painter buddies, by launching a new movement in
painting called Impressionism (the term was actually derived from his work called, Impression
Sunrise). The effect was to leave broad, brightly colored, thick licks of paint across the canvas in
what, up close, appeared to art connoisseurs as a chaotic and random mess. Further, these anti-
scholar, rogue, Parisian bastards had the audacity to paint their subjects, en plein air, outdoors.

It took some time to convince anyone that this controversial style of painting was art. The public
squinted their eyes and stood back a few feet, and eventually became quite excited about it. This
happened long before the critics accepted it. In our time, Claude Monet is universally considered, by
critics, historians, and laymen, a master painter. What he created was definitely art. Does this mean
that if he shit in a jar, that this too would be art? No, but it would still net a hell of a lot on eBay.

Zurich, 1916: a group of kooky artists gave up on our culture, just as many of us are tempted to
today. These nuts, however, wrote a manifesto declaring their disgust and their anti-culture, anti-art
movement called “Dada”. The evolution of this movement saw public exhibitions of everyday objects,
like a wadded sheet of paper, prominently displayed on a marble pedestal. There were endless and
nonsensical public “readings” of poetry, mindless demonstrations in cabarets, and the movement
spread across the continents, in some competitive pee-pee contest, just like everything else
controversially human. Today, but only in retrospect, anti-art, or true Dada is arguably considered
art.

More recently, Warhol stirred things up in grand style. The twentieth anniversary of his death was
last week, and the mere mention of his work still inspires heated debates that are as passionate as
they would have been in the 1960s. It is commonly known that I am a Warhol historian (or
“Warholic”), so I will avoid temptations to go into numbing details, but allow me to define Andy’s work
as art.

The controversy surrounding Warhol’s work began in 1962 with the series of paintings of Campbell’s
soup cans that were painted in a semi-mechanized process of silk screening, and merely looked like
advertisements. These were offered by the gallery for $100 each and the collection of 32 is valued
in the millions today. The gallery across the street retorted with a stack of real soup cans and a sign
that stated they could be purchased for a lot less than the hundred dollar price tag there.

Warhol had a statement as an artist, but this is not what made it art. The statement he made was
done with a more-than-respectable level of craftsmanship. It was clear that he cared about his
statement and about his product. “Craftsmanship” is the very word I use to define art.
Craftsmanship is art. We would have never known the name Warhol if he didn’t produce a product
that was expertly crafted. The same goes for Monet, and I feel a need to add that the name Ball, the
founder of Dada, is not a household name due to the absolute absence of craftsmanship in his
humorously lazy work.

Other uses of the word “art” support this. A few days ago, my best friend and I had a discussion
about the phrase “state of the art”. I was struggling to explain that it means the technologically best
available, but we got into a debate about the origin of the phrase. I suppose I could just bloody
Google it, but where’s the challenge in that? We challenge each other because that’s our thing.

There’s the term “con-artist”, too. This helps me reference craftsmanship again and supports my
single-word definition. A con-artist is not producing a product, necessarily, but he must be a true
craftsman to maintain his freedom. A con-artist without craftsmanship is an inmate.

Craftsmanship, then, can be applied to anything we do, and most easily to those things about which
we are passionate. Therefore, I offer you this: be an artist. In some meaningful way, choose to be
an artist. You can be an artist about your family or an artist about your housecleaning (though some
call this obsessive-compulsive behavior). You can be an artist at work. You can be an artist in the
way you love. Just remember that it only takes passion and craftsmanship to turn a can of
condensed soup into a million dollars.

What can be done if you turn your romantic relationship into a work of art?

Phelyx