What is Art?

An art novice's lifetime's pursuit of this ultimate question - a living document.

Photo by Mike Dorner on Unsplash

Before I tell you more about me and my ideas, let me first publicly ask this question:

”What is Art?”

“What is art?” I have asked this question ever since grade school peers and adults alike repeatedly indicated that I had talent, and that I should grow up one day and become an artist. I had long attributed art as that to having the skill to portray visual representations of an idea, or perhaps capturing the effect of light with paint or an emotion with an honest stroke of the brush. I was trained in traditional Chinese calligraphy, and taught how to enjoy beauty through the eyes of simplicity. I dabbled in acrylic, and mixed media, just to witness how colors and shapes can take place on the surface of various materials. My paintings were good, but always full of unintentional strokes. And for that reason, I only pursued my art practice as a personal venue for pure expression with no true intention of ever sharing my work in public. I did not quite at the time understand why anyone would want to purchase and hang a piece of my own private moment of self expression. Why live vicariously, when they too can pick up a brush and experience that journey of stumbling through the humble beginnings of self expression until fully expressed? I can understand when something I express is aesthetically beautiful, but what if I don’t want to always express the beautiful? Is my honesty truly worth hanging in the living room? (maybe the answer is yes!)

”What is art?” I asked once more later in life when I saw paintings and sculptures traded and sold in galleries across New York City, at Art Basel, and eventually digital images sold as NFTs on Open Sea. Has the value of “art” become a vehicle for our greed, and is our greed based on a fear that we’ll run out of resources? Have we become territorial as a result of our scarcity mindset, and have we trained ourselves to become addicted to validation by collecting tokens of our ability to identify “value” rather than create it? Why again is our relationship to art in that we must “own” it? Have we become so jaded that the only value we believe in is our own self deception? Is our desire for material goods related to our need to fill that crevice that is called our lack of developed self worth?

*After further evolution of the above train of thought, the format of collecting art in order to support it is a traditional model for the patronage of the arts. I’m interested in expanding our options, but I can also understand now that sometimes the art we connect with are symbols that can validate a point of view that we must express EXISTS. If an artist speaks to us, our natural inclination is to keep that symbolism close in order to be reminded of the presence of those values in our own existence.

Thankfully I had the beautiful experiences of visiting places that embraced art with a different light in the forms of Perez Art Museum Miami, The Met, Dia Beacon, Storm King Art Center, Art Omi, Magazzino where ideas were celebrated in collections that stayed open for public access rather than focused on efforts of retail. Classical places such as Musée Rodin, The Met Museum, and Smithsonian offered extensive collections of histories and context to educate the public about how culture has continued to express itself through time. Additionally, I was soothed to witness projects preserve heritages in places such as the Forge Project and international entities such as the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts that preserved what was was once erased.

That is when it occurred to me: I value art when it becomes our shared heritage of wisdom in the language of humanity, left behind for us to continue to understand this thing called life across generations and generations.

From this, I formed my initial theory about the value of art, and felt a drive to reverse the way we’ve been funneling culture and value in the world of western art where a lot of money and resources reside which have the potential to help unlock pathways to peace for our world if directed to proactive action. I want to be a part of the return to the “WHY” we do art in the first place.

In an existential fervor during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was motivated by a moment of realization that “all we have is time” and that whatever we create in this lifetime is all that we must leave behind. It is not money that we’re after here, but the freedom of our precious time that money promises but that we’re unable to enjoy when it is obtained because we simply forgot how to do so.

Time is a limited resource, and money is an imaginary tool to translate trust in order to create something of our time together.

In order to believe in the value we can create, we must believe in the value of our time. Rather than waiting for what someone else could have created, how do we begin to practice believing once more in ourselves and each other? What can I do, to remind people, that we already have the opportunity to live our most beautiful lives even if in the face of adversity? How will you create a beauty so resilient that it can continue to shine through fire, and hopefully wake us back up to our own potential for a kinder humanity?

I want us to believe in each other again, fearlessly. How do I communicate to the world that we are enough? Words and poetry can wake us, but maybe art is designed to become us.

On that note: the most beautiful thing about thinking, and asking these questions, is that thoughts are meant to evolve and change with time. For a long while, all I wanted was the sunlight to land on my tea.

Now I want to share. And I want to hear how the sunlight lands on you.

So tell me what you think, and leave me a comment.
I welcome your thoughts.