What is art?

In a recent blog post, I started thinking about software as performance art, linking it back to my life as a violinist. I realised that, although I felt very definitely that software and violin are both performance arts, I couldn’t really define performance, art, or performance art. So I’m going to start by thinking about what art is. (Note that this is a deliberately self-reflective post: it’s what art is to me, not what others have thought and written about it.)

I find it’s easier to think in concrete examples rather than abstractions — so when I think of art, the first words that come to mind are sculpture, music, drawing, light. These words have an inherent sensuality: when I think of sculpture, I imagine a marble statue, but mainly by touching it and feeling the cool, smooth, slightly textured surface. When I think of music, I think of my violin: dark honey-coloured wood with mesmerising patterns that I could stare at for hours, and the scent of a luthier’s workshop. Drawing: I think of the feel of a pencil on rough paper, creating a slight ridge in the paper and the vibrations transmitting up my arm. Light: the shaft of light through a window hitting the marble sculpture, or even more heavenly, the filtering of sunlight through green leaves. There is nothing more blissful than this.

So art is physicality, sensuality — a way of experiencing the world that is deeply linked to the physicality of my body.

I haven’t said much of smell and taste, which to me are the most intimate and evocative of senses. Maybe another time — my experience of smell and taste are too personal for me to share.

How does art come to be? Is it deliberately created? By humans? Is a field of bluebells art, or is it nature? I would have said art is created by humans, but then the sunlight filtering through the green leaves…is that nature or art? Does it matter?

I think I will be broad and say that the sunlight in the green leaves is art.

And maybe this a characteristic of art: it expands and deepens our experience.

I leave you with this suggestion: find something you have never smelled and inhale its scent deeply.

Related posts:

For my amusement and inquisitive nature, I like to start random conversations with strangers. Especially when I traveled for work, I enjoy sitting at the hotel bar by myself. After attending long…

We are surrounded by myths. Shared beliefs about things that don’t exist. Things that have proven to be untrue but that our minds have a hard time letting go of. The existence and potential…