What is Art? part 3–the end

In the broadest sense, art is not always a physical thing. As I stated before, it is also the process of creating though you may have to use physical objects. For instance, a play uses physical things like people and props to get across non-physical ideas and concepts.

Both imagination and creativity play a part in art making. What you want your product to “look like” is a function of the imagination that went into it as well as the creative process used to produce it. We use art for a variety of reasons. We use it to learn about our creative expressions, and to learn from our past. Art holds further value for us such as material, intrinsic, religious, patriotic, and symbolic.

The difference between creating and making is origin. Creating suggests originality while making suggests that you reorder or copy. To create is to bring forth something heretofore not observed (ex nihilo). [Secretaries make copies, not create them.]

Art is the process of creating, recreating, and/or redefining animate or inanimate objects or ideas into an observable form.

What is Art (part 2)

We know that art exists because it does. However we choose to define it, man has and will continue to use different ways to tell his story (be expressive). She will continue to interpret the world and reactions to that world. Even children from an early age seem to manifest a creative impulse through drawing in the sand, stacking blocks, and making mud pies. They do this even before they write or speak. In fact, children are taught in school to distinguish between colors and shapes before they can read and write.

According to Webster’s, aesthetics is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. We have always heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder– what one person finds beautiful or appealing, another simply does not. Therefore, aesthetics can play a part in art making only subjectively. The artist has to decide from a variety of angles how to create or recreate the product. From there, the artist has to decide how to get to his artistic destination (the process).

What Is Art?

Part 1

One of my favorite quotes regarding art is by Ralph Waldo Emerson who says, “Art is the path of the creator to his work.” Another is by Elbert Hubbard who philosophizes that “Art is not a thing: it is a way.” As I began to reflect on what I “know” about art, I realized that art was at once a process as well as a product. As a life-long participant in various aspects of the creative arts (school art classes, museum visits, community actor/director, etc.), I have been involved in both the process of creating art ( material gathering, material preparation, media manipulation) , and the product itself (an ashtray, a play, a greeting card, an interpretive dance, etc.) In a way, the artist is a part of the media used to create art. This is especially true in dance or live theater where the human body is the medium of expression.