When is Something Art?
Human imagination is such an abstract concept that there is no conceivable way of quantifying it. It is so incredibly undefined that there are no limits to what it can conceive. Mankind in its collective wisdom found a way to split the atom and the first thing we did with it was kill over 2 lakh civilians with its immense potential. If there’s one thing that humans know to do by instinct, it’s to kill each other in the most annihilatory fashion possible.
However, there’s a flip side to this — people have been creating art in multiple forms, and they can be wondrous in their own way.
Here is an example — this is a sculpture by Italian classical artist Francesco Queirolo. Those nets that you see are not draped externally, it was painstakingly carved out of the same marble block the sculpture was carved out of. The level of craftsmanship required to execute such an intricate carving is something that has literally been lost to time — to this day, we do not know how Francesco carved something so delicate with his bare hands.
This is poles apart from other forms of art such as painting, that rely on the skill of visually transcribing three-dimensional beings and objects onto 2 dimensions, hence radically changing the dynamics of the art form. This is, once again, completely different from performance arts such as music or dance. We have so many different films on love, with the same basic hero’s story arc, and yet we love 500 Days of Summer, 96, and Hridayam, depending on how the story is being told. So, digging deeper, something much more basic emerges — what makes art… art?
Defining What an Art Piece is
What do you call art? Would you consider leftover remnants of used machines art? Gear levers, bits and pieces of metal, a barely functioning carburettor, a broken arm of a clock — would you consider these art pieces? No, of course not. They’re just useless pieces of junk, aren’t they? That’s not how Zak Miskry sees scrap metal. He turns otherwise useless pieces of metal into intricate works of art through soldering and welding.
Now is that an art piece, or is it still just a piece of scrap metal? You could argue that this is like comparing paint to a painting — the scrap metal itself isn’t art, it’s the meaning that we ascribe to it that makes it a work of art. Fair enough. Zak himself calls his creations sculptures, and I assume a lot of people would agree too. Perhaps, symmetry also plays a role. Zak’s sculptures are always of animals and insects, things you wouldn’t think of as being made of metal. So, if you think scrap metal moulded into the shape of a spider or a butterfly can be called art, is this art?
This video is rather disturbing, but for all the wrong reasons. It is a video montage of some pretty crazy animated images that makes no sense whatsoever. Would you consider that art?
The video itself doesn’t make sense, true, but isn’t there a conscious effort to create something unique in this particular piece of work? Is this not, dare may I say, an animated short film? The animation is crude, the blood is orange, and it gets served as soup to rich elite people in a posh restaurant. I mean, if you wanted to, you could infer meaning from it, and if you can’t, you can call that a conscious decision as well.
Maybe aesthetically pleasing elements make something art. Take the following image as an example.
This picture is by Moroccan surreal photographer Achraf Baznani. The interesting thing about his work is that all of his pictures are heavily desaturated and they all feature elements of surrealism. Whether it is a man inside a jar or reading a book while sitting on a pile of them while he sits leaning on a tea cup, the images are rather interesting to look at and really quite imaginative. So it is aesthetics then? Does that make something art? Wouldn’t that make the animated video…. not art?
Let’s put that into perspective through the example of documentaries. Are documentaries works of art? They definitely don’t have a fictional element to them. A movie is a piece of work that revolves around characters that have either lived (like a biopic) or are entirely fictional but are still considered art because they have been created with the intention of telling a story narrated through the eyes of the director. There are several pieces of equipment involved and a lot of hard work is required to be put into its creation. Isn’t a documentary, therefore, but also a work of art, because it too requires a lot of people to put together and it is narrating a story through the eyes of a director. With that sort of understanding, what we arrive at is a definition of art that goes something like this — art is the narration of a story through various forms of media that explains an event or occurrence through the eyes of an observer or a group of observers. That is a rather long-winded definition, but would it encompass all forms of art? No, it wouldn’t, because through this definition we leave behind stoic poetry, the entire art form of sculpting, still life art and a lot more — things we usually do consider art.
Let’s take a step back and view this from another angle — what is it that all these things have in common? Sculptures (made of marble or metal), paintings, music, videos, photography, poetry — what is the common factor here?
Well, let’s look at it from yet another angle — the angle most people view art from. What practicality does it offer? That’s right, think about it. In what situation does art help you, with the exception of maybe jobs (although that’s only because the market demands it at the moment, and you don’t even feel like you’re writing/creating art, you just feel like a corporate drone)?
An art piece has no practical function. It exists for the sake of existing, and it is created with that intention in mind. It has no functional value attached to it. However, that’s not all. There are two more things that distinguish an art piece from an ordinary piece of equipment, although both of them may not always be applicable at the same time. One is the aesthetic aspect of the piece of work, which can be argued to be subjective, I agree. The second is the intent behind its creation. For example, a robot that cleans its surroundings constantly might not seem like something that merits praise, but when you look into it, the idea behind ‘Can’t Help Myself’ is quite dark, harrowing, and well thought out. This video neatly describes the art piece, I highly recommend watching it till the end.
Now, I did not pull all of these aspects about art out of thin air — I inferred it from expert opinions and the definitions given by Merriam-Webster, Oxford, and Cambridge.
So, to sum up, an art piece, irrespective of the medium, is something that communicates or evokes emotion, expresses itself in a tangible or digital form, has a definitive thought process behind its creation, and exists only for the sake of itself with no practical functionality other than express the idea it intends to.
Now, that definition might raise some eyebrows — and some queries. I shall give you four different case studies, proving my definition of art works in almost all scenarios.
Case Study 1 — The Banana Taped to the Wall
We’ve all seen the banana taped on the wall being memed into the mainstream, and as an artist, it can be quite frustrating to see that on a wall with a price tag of $120,000 slapped on it. It seems stupid, right? However, the question is — is it art? More importantly, does eating it make it less valuable?
Let’s see if it fits the definition I gave. Let’s break it down systematically and on a conceptual level. The art piece, named Comedian, was created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. He is a very famous (or rather infamous) proponent of the conceptual art movement, where the idea or the concept behind the art takes precedence over the aesthetic of the art itself. His previous art piece, titled America, was a fully functioning toilet made of 24-karat gold. Now, these may be seen as superficial, shallow, and even nonsensical, but there is no denying that it was a very polarising piece of work. People raised a lot of objections to seeing a banana taped to a wall as a work of art, and it does make sense — the idea behind the art piece is the work itself rather than it being a tangible entity. This is why despite being mocked and even eaten by another artist, it was sold at a dizzying auction price of $150,000. Replacing the banana or the tape doesn’t affect the art piece because the idea is not being tarnished.
Now, you could argue that even by my definition, it shouldn’t be art because it’s a banana — it can be eaten, and the duct tape can be used for other uses as well. That doesn’t make a difference though. The buyer isn’t buying the banana, they’re buying the idea behind it, and the value, therefore, is self-referential.
Case Study 2 — Are Memes Art?
I bet you didn’t see this coming. A screenshot or GIF of a movie clip with some text on it wouldn’t classify as art, right?
To understand that, we need to get into the semantics of the word meme itself. The word meme was coined by evolutionary biologist and militant anti-theist Richard Dawkins. He described a meme as “an element of a culture or system of behaviours passed on from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.” This is a pretty self-explanatory definition, but if you didn’t understand it, it simply refers to the things that we inherit as part of culture through non-genetic means. I have done a lot of research on this, but I still wasn’t able to find a link between its use in biology to its use in modern pop culture today. However, unlike the use of the word ‘literally’ in scenarios where it is not supposed to be used in that context, the use of the word meme to represent these images & videos was spot on. It was born out of internet culture and has been a staple of it ever since. It is one of the most recognizable forms of media in the world today, and it has helped many people wade through tough times by putting a smile on their faces.
Now, let’s see whether it fits in with the definition of art. Does it represent an idea envisioned by the creator? Yes, it does. Does it invoke an emotional response? Yes, it does. Does it have a practical application? Not really. So, in essence, memes are, by definition, works of art.
Well, that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? That’s like putting an Alfred Kubin painting side by side with a Pepe meme with text on it and looking at them through the same lens. Well, not really.
Kubin’s paintings are the emotional distillation of his troubled childhood, a window into the trauma he faced as a child. We do not know a lot about his childhood, but what we do know is that he attempted suicide on his mother’s grave at the age of 19, which later led to a complete breakdown of his mental faculties after he joined the Austrian Army. When he was 21, he joined the Munich Academy to study art, where he was influenced by the likes of Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch, James Ensor, Henry de Groux, and Félicien Rops. However, the painter that struck a chord with him was Max Klinger, with him remarking on the latter thus:
“Here a new art was thrown open to me, which offered free play for the imaginative expression of every conceivable world of feeling. Before putting the engravings away I swore that I would dedicate my life to the creation of similar works.”
Alfred Kubin was a pioneer of the Surreal Art movement decades before it caught on. It was so ahead of its time that the Nazis labelled it degenerate art and cast it into the shadows, and his expressionist and symbolist style of art was tucked away in history before it resurfaced again several years later as one of the most unique works of art of the early 20th century. I read a comment somewhere that Alfred Kubin is the art version of Franz Kafka, and I couldn’t agree more. So, how does a painting like Man compare to, say, a doge meme?
Well, the thing is, they are both telling a story — a human one. Internet memes, however bad or absurd they are, evoke different emotions in different people in the same way Alfred Kubin’s work does. Some may find it offensive, some may find it funny, some may find it ridiculous — and isn’t that the essence of art? I find the work of Alfred Kubin so moving because of an abstract attraction I have towards the uniqueness of the monochromatic world he creates. It invokes a sense of awe in me that I feel a lot of you would not share. Ultimately though, isn’t your perception of that piece of art what really matters rather than what another person like an art critic sees or perceives? People will always have different opinions of what art is and the direction society is headed in, but that is just a concerned disappointment seen when retrospectively analysing the world they grew up in compared to the new age. Micheal Stevens explains this phenomenon, known as juvenoia, in detail in the video given below.
So, in conclusion, I’d say the internet meme is a new wave of post-modern art that has taken the form of cartoons, movie screenshots, and out-of-context videos to provide political commentary, entertainment value or valuable insight into the mind of coevals (as in the case of the old teenager post memes).
Yes, I know I just defined what an internet meme is — I’m a boring person, I’m aware.
Case Study 3 — Vehicles
If you’re a petrolhead, you probably saw this coming. If you’re not one, let me explain.
Car enthusiasts are often at odds with the art world because the latter believes that cars can never be art simply because they are machines and are not created for the purpose of being art. Even though the first part of that can be refuted with the example of ‘Can’t Help Myself’, the latter part of it is sadly true — they were never created with the intention of being a work of art. A car is manufactured with the intent of being driven, to commute as well as to revel in the experience of driving that machine in harmony with the road. I can romanticize it all I want, but the ultimate truth is this — cars are not works of art.
That is quite a saddening thought, especially because I love cars and motorcycles. However, I have to let my bias through and argue a case for the car because I believe that the design of cars should not be boxed in as ‘not art’ just because they were created with a non-artistic intent. Allow me to tell a story — the story of the most beautiful car ever made.
The year is 1964. Italian automaker Alfa Romeo put its racing foot forward with the Giulia TZ, but it was clear that they had to come up with an upgrade pretty soon. So, they worked on it under the code name 105.33, which they later started calling the 33, and that name sort of stuck. However, there was a little problem. Since Alfa Romeo was a state-owned company at the time, the company wanted to outsource the racing division to a third party because Giuseppe Luraghi, the president of Alfa at the time, felt that it wouldn’t be great optics for the state. This resulted in the creation of Autodelta headed by Tuscan engineer Carlo Chiti.
Although close to their heart, this also meant that the Alfa team had to hand over their precious 33 project to Autodelta as well. This way, if they won, all the credit would go to Alfa and if they lost, the blame would be on Autodelta. However, in 1967, the Tipo 33 won at the Belgian Hill climb Fleron, which earned that car the nickname, the 33 Fleron. However, alterations were made to the chassis and under the bonnet, and two iterations later, the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale was born.
Now I must say that this is quite a subjective matter because beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but there are certain things that just stand out as beautiful simply because they are. The stripes of the Royal Bengal Tiger, the feathers of the peacock, whale songs — these are just inherently awe-inspiring elements of nature that have no parallel in conspicuousness. The 33 Stradale has a unique set of features that make it not just a marvel of engineering but also, in my opinion, the most beautiful car ever made.
The title of the first supercar is often attributed to the Lamborghini Miura, and rightfully so, it was the first mid-engine car ever built. Its styling and the placement of the engine were so revolutionary that it became the very template that came to be followed by every supercar manufacturer ever since.
However, the arrival of the Miura, even though a blessing for petrolheads & supercars in general worldwide, meant that the 33 Stradale was greatly overshadowed, primarily because it was a front-engine rear-wheel drive car, just like any other sportscar. However, its 2-litre V8 engine produced 227 BHP & 206 Nm of torque. For context, the Mahindra Thar which is supposed to be an offroader with 4-wheel drive produces 130 HP and 152 Nm of torque, and this is the 2023 version. The 33 Stradale went out of production in 1968.
However, we will always have faster and more technically sound cars, but what makes the 33 Stradale so unique was that it was the first car ever to have butterfly doors. In fact, even before the Lamborghini Countach came up with the scissor door configuration (which they use for all their V12 cars), Alfa Romeo came up with the innovative idea of putting a door that opens upwards that allows for easy entry and exit because of the lowered-down nature of sports cars.
However, that’s not all. Scissor doors, while they look premium, are also very easy to implement, so this has resulted in people putting aftermarket scissor doors on Golfs, Civics, and even Suzuki Swifts. However, there is a lot more engineering that goes into butterfly doors because, unlike scissor doors that go straight up, butterfly doors open upwards and inwards to allow for better mobility while getting out. This makes them a lot more exclusive than scissor doors. To add to the 33 Stradale’s exclusivity, there were only 18 that were ever built, which made them almost like an art piece. At a time when cars were being sold at 2000 to 3000 dollars, the price tag of 17,000 dollars also meant that the 33 Stradale was the most expensive car in the world in 1968, even beating the mighty mid-engine Miura.
I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who is herself an artist, and she gave me a rather comforting conclusion to my vague definition of art. I was going on about how the 33 Stradale should be considered art and that denying it that category would be a grave injustice to the most iconic creations of all time, including but not limited to the Concorde, the Bugatti Veyron, the Taj Mahal, the Panama Canal, and the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge — manmade masterpieces that revolutionized the way people lived their lives knowingly or unknowingly. She responded with a simple elegant answer,
“Of course, they aren’t art pieces, but how does that stop them from being works of art?”
That was exactly the explanation I had been looking for. The 33 Stradale was in fact built for the road (Stradale translates to ‘road going’) which means that it was built for use as a car. Of course, it is not an art piece. However, it cannot be denied that it is not a work of art in itself.
That’s not all though. There are a few stylistic decisions that also make the 33 Stradale unique. If you look at the evolution of car designs over the years, you will see that the face of the car has consistently become more and more ferocious. Even Porsche’s designers have tuned the 911’s innocent round faces to make them look more sporty and aggressive. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of the design specifics because I’m not a car designer, so here is someone who is explaining it pretty perfectly -
This brings up an interesting juxtaposition — art cars. Can art cars be classified as art? Well, if you go by my above-mentioned definition of an art piece, the car itself is not an art piece, but the art that goes on it is — or as I like to call it, Schrödinger’s art piece.
Case Study 4 — AI Art
This is a very contentious issue in today’s art world, and there is a good reason for it. Does a poem composed by ChatGPT really mean anything to the Ai that generates it? Does an article created by AI actually draw factual information from the internet to process it? As it turns out, AI doesn’t exactly understand what it is that it is doing. I could go on and give you a long dreary explanation as to how it is, but this article is long enough as it is and I have already written a pretty detailed article on the same. Kyle Hill can explain better:
However, the focus here is not on whether AI understands what it is creating or not, but rather on the premise of whether or not the end product is art. Well, firstly, is there a creative process involved in the creation of AI art? Well, if you type the prompt ‘Genghis Khan having a lightsaber dual with Batman in the art style of Claude Monet’ into Midjourney, it would probably give you a pretty accurate image of it in the art style you specified. However, is that art? Let’s look at it through another lens — is a collage a work of art?
For those of you who didn’t read my previous blog, here’s how AI derives conclusions — it uses natural language processing and identifies the keywords that are relevant to the user. Then, using the images in its database, it generates an image layering relevant images together on top of each other. However, if you take a step back and look at it from the standpoint of its creative process, you’ll see that it is simply creating a collage of images. Now, a person who is pro-AI would retort with, “But isn’t creating art the same thing? Didn’t Quentin Tarantino admit to stealing Reservoir Dogs from a Hong Kong movie? Didn’t Pablo Picasso say that bad artists copy and good artists steal?”
Well, yes. Great art is always inspired by experiences, events, images, or other forms of art itself — but the difference is that it is filtered through the sensory mesh of a human being’s perceptions. All of their experiences up until that point have culminated in the creation of that particular art piece. That is why art has no inherent function — it was always meant to be a showcase of an individual’s individuality, the corporeal essence of a person’s creativity, a physical manifestation of an artist’s brain goo. Yes, AI-generated art exists for itself, has a person’s creativity put into its creation through the prompt, and it may evoke an emotion, so it can be classified as an art piece — but I refuse to call it a work of art simply because it doesn’t have a soul behind its creation. The lens through which it passes towards its creation is an electronic one, the mind that formulates the image a virtual one — devoid of emotion, devoid of feeling, and devoid of free will.
So, When is Something Art?
These 4 case studies weren’t chosen at random. The first one was to help you understand that art doesn’t have to have a set aesthetic, the second was to explain that art isn’t out of reach of anyone and that everyone has an artistic side, the third was to show that not all works of art have to be art pieces, and the fourth was to show that not all art pieces are works of art. So when is something art? The conclusion to this article is quite a counterintuitive one — there isn’t a single answer. We simply cannot define art. However, what we can do is find the commonalities in these examples and come to the conclusion that it is the human that makes the art, art. It is the human lens that is shaped with the chisel of experience that moulds an artist and through them,` the work of art itself.
