What is Art?

Notice: This story is mostly fictional, and no art was damaged while illustrating it ;-)

Decorative art

When I was a child, I thought art is something one is not supposed to taste, touch, interact with, play with, use, or break. It is only something to look, and most often look it as something hanging up on the wall, or item placed on some rather high platform. And even if art was a decoration on some useful item, it still was something to be handled with great care.

Representative art

When I grew older, I sort of got that art is often representative, supposed to make something or someone look as an icon. And again art was something one should look up to. Art looked like it is used only as a status-symbol.

Illustrative art

When I learned to read (all forms of texts), I understood art can also illustrate stories. Or the other way round, I understood the images in books, movies, music and theater plays are also art. That was the first time I understood art can be somehow useful and entertaining.

Modern art

As a teenager, I began to comprehend art as something I can also do with my own hands, to express my own feelings. I learned there are various isms to copycat in order to mimic those feelings.

Ideological art

During the years in university I poisoned my mind with the idea of using art for making statements. Well, that is of course a noble goal what many belief as being the ultimate goal of art, to change the world into a better place.

Graffiti art

When trying to find my place in society, I started to think art is indeed supposed to be used to get some status and acknowledgement. Being an author and become a respected copyright owner seemed just as important as pissing onto corners in order to draw the lines of my own territory.

Art as (f)art

A short period of time inspired by Malevich and Pollock, when art suddenly started to look as something that can have a life of it's own, free from authors, owners, representations, time and space...

Contemporary art

When I finally saw myself as a grown-up, I learned to see art as a process. It is the path, a trip, a road, experience and experiment, voyage, a moment in time, meditation, way of life, and what is most important, it is interactive and useful. Art is everywhere, and in it's best forms it is an example of an extreme beauty, usability and design, and definitely supposed to be touched, felt, smelled, heard, played with, and even tasted. In other words, experienced in every possible way.

Unfortunately photography does not give much possibilities for physical interaction, unless you print it on a cake. However, photographs can be used for play, to challenge each other to take shots on certain themes, to guess what's in the picture, or to play domino.