Art

by Yukito Yoneyama / 米山ゆきと


I am going to put a hold on my exchange student insanity for a moment.
Instead, I am going to blog on Art.
(If you have Art problems, please close your browser and contact your assigned philosopher immediately.)



"What is Art?"

This seemingly simple 12-letter (including space and a question mark so that they don't feel left out)
question has been haunting me for years, since I stared to "study" Art at educational institutions.
I had encountered countless situations where this very question was raised, when I was working with other artists at a starting co-op Art gallery, and later opened my own place for artistic interactions and exhibitions.

Everyone seemed to have different opinions on the subject, whether they are Artists or not.
Some of them had strong opinions, and the others seemed to be in the process of forming their own ideas/opinions on the matter. 

It is my impression that many of the opinions usually included the word "beauty" or "beautiful".
I have heard in many occasion, "if it's not beautiful, it is not art."
Perhaps, general interpretation of the word "Art" always involve the concept of beauty.
Some would even proudly judge the Art around them according to this measure stick, as if to say, I know Art, and you don't."


From my point of view, this is due to the history and development of "Art".
Prior to the emergence of photography, drawing/painting or sculpting was the only methods to depict the surrounding world. Since the beginning of major civilizations, the rulers or the wealthy patronized the Artists to depict themselves, usually for the purpose of displaying their realm and power.


I personally believe that Art was with us since the origin of human race, however, the general definition of Art mostly was attached to the patron-Artist relationships.
Since there were only handful of people who were able to depict the nature precisely, and Artists had their own lives with things they want to do or had to do to make a living, it is only natural that creation of these portraits of the powerful or divine/deity required patronage = money.

It is easy to guess that if you are depicting the powerful people in the given civilization, you gotta make them look nice. If you don't you might piss them off.

Beauty = money = vanity.

I think Art was put on the pedestal since the dawn of civilization for this reason.
Millenniums later, I believe this formula is still around.

Thanks to the rise of modernism, now Art can freely swing her arms in many different forms.
Conceptual Art is one of them.
Today, it is truly a challenge to define what Art is, since in the modern era every person's perspective is respected, well, somewhat mostly..

Protagoras stated, "man is the measure of all things."
Definition of "Art" may be different for everyone.

To me personally, I believe that word "Art" points to all spectrum of creative processes or acts.

Ideas, are the source of all existing things that are man-made.
Everything around us, I mean everything from chair, train, shirt, donuts, power plants, to computer chips, and everything man-made, including factory machine made, since machines were made by us, began from an idea in someones head/mind.

In this world, there are two types of things, artificial things, and natural things.
natural things were here before the dawn of civilizations, such as us humans, trees, animals, insects, water, and such. Everything else, most things we see, or pretty much everything if you live in the city, are artificial.

We fall into an illusion that these things came into existence on their own sometimes, probably due to the existence of medias.
However, each single one of them, what you see around you started from an idea in someone's mind, then came into existence by Artist's/craftsman's hands, or the idea went to the conference room of some corporation and came out of factories.


Without ideas, there is absolutely nothing other than nature.
No iphone, no house, no shoes, no restaurant, no pavement, no buildings, no city, no stock market, no space stations, no government, no toilets, no McDonald's, no Starbucks, no Facebook, no Internet, and most importantly, no money, no economy. nothing.

Now where does ideas come from? I don't know.
What I know is that ideas derive from creativity.

Then,
Without creativity, there is nothing artificial.

From this perspective, I believe creativity is the highest form of intelligence.
Without creative act, there is no corporations, (the entity seems like the most important existence in modern world, at least from economical point of view), because they would have nothing to sell, no ideas to make commercials.
No fashions, no culinary arts, no cars, no music, no books, no nothing.

It is my firm belief that Artists are the most crucial existence of our civilizations.
That's why I have been capitalizing A in Art.

Without creative people = Artists, there is no business.
No patents, no inventions to sell on as seen on TV, no electricity no TV.

So why are these business people with suits running around like they own the world?
What have they come up with? really.

Man, oh, man, human, all too human.

It is interesting that Plato placed Artists at the bottom of hierarchy in his Ideal City.
He viewed artists as the ones who were disillusioned by images.
Matrix, Plato's cave, I get it.
But hey, if "Art" can = creativity, he may say the otherwise.

So I chose to be an Artist.
If you are gonna spend your life trying to climb a mountain, why not go for the tallest and the toughest?
It is a nature of things, when it is closer to the truth, the path is harder to walk on.



My brain is goo, can't write anymore. (2:27am)


definitely don't come back because Hogwarts goin' Yosemite.

fhasjdglk...zzz


love.

y


At one occasion, I had an opportunity to talk about this with someone who holds profound educational background. Although he was creating Art (I sincerely enjoy his creations, personally), he was hesitant to call himself an Artist.  I will call him Nartist, since he is an Artist in my eyes, but a big "No, I'm not sure about that" was written on his face. So, Nartist told me that