Art Is... (By Nelson Salgado)

Shorter than the most of the acronyms, the three-letter word “art” has been the reason of debates among scholars who have tried to give it a definition. In this respect, it is not a simple task to reach an agreement considering that everyone has her or his own point of view influenced and determined by his or her own experiences.

From my personal point of view there are three inherent aspects that belong to anything considered as “art”: First, the necessity of expressing one’s own emotions feelings, beliefs, fears, hopes, etc. Artists in a wide variety of artistic disciplines have been inspired by their first love, their hate toward an enemy, their political ideologies or their anxiety of facing a war, to cite some examples. Even though the motivations of the piece were merely utilitarian at the beginning, as it happens with folk art, the elaboration process itself involves choosing a source of inspiration, no matter how small and trivial it could seem. The following aspects also suits with the idea that folk art deserves to be considered as art.

Another aspect that I consider as an important element for making this definition is the fact that art involves the act of an arduous creation. This means that the work behind a painting, a sculpture or a song was very thoughtful, involving a stage of thinking and was followed by a laborious completion stage. In this regard, one might think about famous and popular singers declaring on cameras that their albums were the results of a “crazy night” only, what is certain is that the final result involved a lot of work and preparation.

It is also essential that the work must be representative of its creator. Although artists are influenced by trends or movements, a piece of art should always be able to be linked with its creator or at least with the trend that form part of. For instance, the Mississippian writer and novelist William Faulkner is internationally recognized by the distinct stream of consciousness that characterizes the narrative style in his novels and short stories. Little details or an entire hallmark, the purpose is that this new creation be as much representative of its creator as possible. As Marie Hull declared in an interview with Virginia McGehee Elias, “… Most artists are essentially students trying to arrive at some creative form of art that expresses their own individuality.” (qtd. in Batton Beth, Curator of the Collection and Public Programs, Mississippi Museum of Art).

Considering these three different aspects, it is clearer to identify what is art and what is not. Throughout the semester, my classmates and I made some handicrafts such as mosaics based on movie clips. Although we tried to add our own personal touch, as we were restricted to several guidelines, in my opinion, it made that those works lacked of the first assert: necessity of expression. For me, it avoids breaking the barrier between a handicraft and a piece of art. Totally different is what happened with the paintings based on Theora Hamblett’s style. In this case, even though we were trying to use Ms. Hamblett’s technique, we could still use our own source of inspiration in order to express ourselves through this work, which completely suits with the essence of art.

In summary, that meaningful and and full-of-effort expression involving the creation of something that is representative of its author in any discipline is the real essence of art.