What is art?

Story was published in Free, The Nation on May 2

At a press briefing about an art exhibition two years ago, the attendees were given a number of leaflets and printouts, most of which carried information about the exhibition. However, there was a large yellow paper that was folded in a triangular shape. This contained quotes and questions for the attendees. I still have mine, and my favorite is one that contains two simple questions, one of which requires a yes or no answer.

The first question is, ‘should art be always beautiful?’ The second question is, ‘if so why are you not an art work?’

If you go with the answer that yes, art should always be beautiful, besides the second question, one is also forced to ask what beauty is. Isn’t beauty subjective? What I find beautiful will not be beautiful to you. And this is especially so with regard to people. There have been just too many times when the men my females friends find good looking and worthy of a second look seem quite ordinary to me. So what they consider beauty isn’t what I consider beauty. I choose an outfit, decide it looks good and then have to deal with all the criticism and comments that my outfit just doesn’t look good on me. What is beautiful to me isn’t beautiful to other people.

So, if art should be beautiful, then who decides if something is beautiful enough to be art or if it just doesn’t make the cut?

And if art need not be beautiful, wouldn’t that make everything a work of art? And if you are of the belief that everything, including people, is art, then can I draw a dot on an otherwise blank canvas and exhibit it as art? Would you call me talentless and a fake? Would you laugh at my work of ‘art’ and tell me about great artists like Picasso or Monet? Can my stick figure be called art, along with Mona Lisa? If everything is art, aren’t words, gestures, thoughts art too? Doesn’t being alive alone make us all artists?

Isn’t the moment of conception art? Isn’t giving birth art? Isn’t death art?

A carcass is art. Pus is art. Quite simply, even excrement is art.

Is this taking the matter too far? Is this like the vegetarian who doesn’t eat meat because life is precious being asked the question, ‘don’t plants have life, too?’ Then, where do we draw the line? How do we decide what is art and what isn’t?

Is nudity perversion or art? Is drug use addiction or art? Is this a rant or art?

This also makes us question why any of this is important. Why are we questioning what art is, and if art should be beautiful? What’s the use of these labels? Isn’t artist, poet, writer, beautiful, ordinary, ugly mere labels we wear like masks or shields?

What are we protecting ourselves from? Ourselves? Are we our own enemies? Are we out to get ourselves?

Is this why we can look at another and call them beautiful but never look at ourselves and call ourselves beautiful?