"I'm an artist." The words roll off my tongue as smoothly as a mouthful of gravel. "I'm a musician," says the man at the coffee shop in Williamsburg. And we, reflexively, think "no, you, my friend, are a
waiter." But what is it about art that makes us humans so uncomfortable? What is art anyway?
It's a tiresome question, I know, but it's been brought to my attention again recently upon reading
Alberto Ruiz's recommended Practice and Science of Drawing, by Harold Speed (available, by the way, for
free download from the Gutenburg Project). Here's what ole Harold has to say about art:
"Here is a savage, shouting and flinging his arms and legs about in wild delight; he is not an artist, although he may be moved by life and feeling. But let this shouting be done on some ordered plan, to a rhythm expressive of joy and delight, and his leg and arm movements governed by it also, and he has become an artist, and singing and dancing (possibly the oldest of the arts) will result."
"Or take the case of one who has been deeply moved by something he has seen, say a man killed by a wild beast, which he wishes to tell his friends. If he just explains the facts as he saw them, making no effort to order his words so as to make the most telling impression upon his hearers and convey to them something of the feelings that are stirring in him, if he merely does this, he is not an artist, although the recital of such a terrible incident may be moving. But the moment he arranges his words so as to convey in a telling manner not only the plain facts, but the horrible feelings he experienced at the sight, he has become an artist. And if he further orders his words The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Practice & Science Of Drawing to a rhythmic beat, a beat in sympathy with his subject, he has become still more artistic, and a primitive form of poetry will result."
"Or in building a hut, so long as a man is interested solely in the utilitarian side of the matter, as are so many builders to-day, and just puts up walls as he needs protection from wild beasts, and a roof to keep out the rain, he is not yet an artist. But the moment he begins to consider his work with some feeling, and arranges the relative sizes of his walls and roof so that they answer to some sense he has for beautiful proportion, he has become an artist, and his hut has some architectural pretensions. Now if his hut is of wood, and he paints it to protect it from the elements, nothing necessarily artistic has been done. But if he selects colours that give him pleasure in their arrangement, and if the forms his colour masses assume are designed with some personal feeling, he has invented a primitive form of decoration. And likewise the savage who, wishing to illustrate his description of a strange animal he has seen, takes a piece of burnt wood and draws on the wall his idea of what it looked like, a sort of catalogue of its appearance in its details, he is not necessarily an artist. It is only when he draws under the influence of some feeling, of some pleasure he felt in the appearance of the animal, that he becomes an artist. Of course in each case it is assumed that the men have the power to be moved by these things, and whether they are good or poor artists will depend on the quality of their feeling and the fitness of its expression."
Clearly art is a very personal thing indeed, which is probably why my rote reaction is to vomit a little in my mouth. But since we're talking about the subject, I might as well offer up my own personal definition. Upon reflection, I am struck by the similarities of the
feeling of creating art and of viewing it. Both cause one to be thrown with such force into almost an alternate dimension of visual experience. So to me, art is the experience of swooning at life. It may be more rudimentary than Harold's more technical, two-pronged Feeling and Execution, but for me it's that moment of breath catching in your throat, of your heart suddenly dropping into your stomach. Whether walking down the street looking for things to photograph, sitting slack-jawed before the
Dying Slave at the Louvre, or experiencing the divine curve of the model's back at drawing class, to me anything that causes one to step outside the mundanity of the everyday and just
swoon for a moment at life is truly an act of art.
Your milage may vary, of course, and really, since we're speaking of such personal things, I wouldn't have it any other way. So
Dave McKean, I love you dearly, but I cannot agree with you that design is not art. The rhythmic curves of
Pierre Paulin's orange slice chair, a work of design, are just too swoon-worthy to me.
And me? I'm no artist. I'm just a Swooner at Life, thanks.
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