What is Art?

Our ‘conscious’ selves are only a part of who we are. The unconscious is programmed by what we sense and perceive and it can be programmed intentionally by our conscious mind…it then runs most of our lives. The unconscious will assert itself when it’s ignored or repressed. It manifests itself in our dreams, in our language and in our movements. But perhaps it’s greatest manifestation is in our art.

The art of a civilization is often all that remains when it’s people are gone. Their art can tell us what was important to them, what they valued.

I’ve spent hours pondering the questions: ‘What is art?’ and ‘Why is it important to us?’ I have come to the conclusion that art expresses something in us that’s beyond our conscious mind, it's beyond logic. Sometimes it represents what we see, sometimes what we dream, and sometimes it represents the moments in between. Art can take the daily and mundane and uplift it to the eternal and the ideal. Art represents our inner self, pressing itself out. At its best, it is the evidence of our striving for perfection. Just like our conscious and unconscious minds together make us complete, I believe we need art to feel whole.

Art is what flows out of us when we’ve wrestled with ourselves to understand something. When an artist feels love, pain, beauty, redemption, or any of the feelings common to man, in coming to understand what those feelings are, and if he or she has the tools, the answer can flow out of their unconscious in color or form, music or movement.

It takes a great deal of discipline to let something flow, unobstructed, out of you. It takes mastery. Some people take shortcuts, thinking they’re doing the same thing because it looks or sounds the same. To the untrained eye or ear they can appear similar, but they’re not… Anyone can scribble ink on a page, throw globs of mud together, squirt paint on a canvas, bang the keys of a piano, or move to music. But to truly be an artist takes discipline. After learning the skills and techniques of past masters to the point where they become a part of us, we can let them go and let our unconscious use them to express what we feel. Our creative impulse needs the tools to express itself just like we need language to communicate. To simply grunt and hope to be understood isn’t the same as having the tools of language at our command. Like language, the goal of art is to communicate what an artist sees or feels to others.

Art isn’t just one thing, it's many. There is a kind of art even in a daily routine. There is beauty even in the mundane. But it is the the art that transcends the daily and mundane that I'm speaking of...great art. Great art is beautiful and uplifting. Great art has a timeless quality, one that can be sensed centuries after it's produced. It comes from within us and helps us to understand something about ourselves and each other. Great art can be figurative or it can be abstract.

I didn’t used to like abstract visual art. I thought it was just, random meaningless shapes and colors thrown together. I didn’t see any logic or skill in it. Then I walked into a Mark Rothko exhibition. I had never heard of him and, had someone described his work to me, would not have expected to be impressed. Would I have been so wrong! Rothko found a way to use color without form to express emotion and he did it in such a way that a very deep part of me ‘gets it’.

While I believe that much, maybe even most abstract art, is produced by artists with no discipline, I have found in the last few years that some of it is the essence of discipline. I’ve come to love some of it. It occurs to me that, while it doesn’t necessarily represent something in my logical, conscious mind, it seems to be more akin to what goes on in my unconscious mind. Those images that float across the screen when nothing else is in focus. They represent being at ease, being comfortable, to me. I’ve decided they don’t have to make any logical sense, they just have to be allowed to ‘be’ a part of me.

We, human beings often hear several inner voices. Those that we ignore will just get louder until they’re heard. Those that are allowed to express themselves can be uplifting in many ways. They can help us to come to inner peace. If we listen to ourselves and to each other we can all be uplifted. Art can be one such voice…