What is Art? - Penn State School of Visual Arts Faculty and Staff
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What is Art?
We never ask what an orange is.
Art blows your heart right open.
Art is about being in the moment.
Art is about opening a dialogue.
I couldn't find an answer so I asked my roommate, who's a geography graduate student
and she said if you inverse the word
"art" you get
"rat."
I thought that was great.
Art. Rat. Tar.
Art smelled the rat
in the tar pit.
Art is being playful and
being a kid again,
making mistakes, making messes.
It keeps me young.
Art is coming to know different things,
but coming to know them differently.
Art is magic.
Art. Human Nature.
Art is hard work.
Art is. My lifeline.
Art is the fuel that spreads
the fire of social justice.
Art is proclamation. It is putting the insides on the outsides.
Art makes life meaningful.
Art is like a jungle gym.
Arrrrrrr (long tongue trill) rrrrrrrt
Art is born, not made. Art is uncanny and shrewd.
Art speaks in the present tense.
Art is a hallucination
from the ancient past.
Art is a conversation between the
artist and the viewer.
An exoteric manifestation
of esoteric ideas.
So it gives
us ways
to communicate
across cultures and generations.
Art is Both [pause] And.
It is a singular point in any medium
that allows significance
to radiate out
as an agency for contemplation and change.
Effective communication
of a particular human experience.
Art is absolutely necessary
to change the world's conversation
to ecological justice and social justice.
Art can save the world because
it's about the wonder of life itself.
Not just for
the artist who is a productive artist,
who's producing, but for
those people partake
of the art.
For me art is the reason
that I wake up in the morning.
Art was my favorite subject in school.
Siri, what is art? [ping noise] Here's what I found.
Art was my grandfather's first name.
I was introduced to Art
at a very early age.
Art, or photographing for me, is about
Opening up a space
for what most people would consider
silly little questions but
are important for me
to explore.
It is important because it really inspires us to ask questions about the world around us
and the more questions that we ask
the more we understand.
Art is a way
of responding to, inquiring about, and understanding
the world, and what it means to be human in ways that
privileged equations and numbers can't. And probably shouldn't.
What is art? The fact that I don't know what art is I think is what makes it interesting.
[under credits]
OK, whenever you're ready. What am I supposed to do?
[laughter] Kind of whatever you want.
I mean, what's the -
What's the thing?
