WHAT IS ART? BABY, DON’T HURT ME; DON’T HURT ME, NO MORE.

               Well here we are again; it’s always such a pleasure. So, what is art? Is this art? Well, you could argue so, since it does disrupt and challenge the ideal methods of formal assessment. But, to focus on that question again; “what is art?” Defining this has proven quite problematic in the past, but I’m sure it’ll be easy now Google’s here to do our thinking for us! So, art is (as defined by Google) “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” As I’m sure you’ve deliberated, this is quite a broad definition. Apparently, anything is art, so long as it’s manmade and required imagination to make. But, hold on, surely EVERYTHING we do requires some level of imagination, be it getting dressed, writing blogs, or deciding whether or not you should put the toast on before you heat up the spaghetti hoops.

            So, do those things classify as ‘art’? Evidently, the popular answer is “Umm, NOPE!” despite the fact that, from a technical perspective, these things seem to fit the definition. It’s this kind of thinking that sums up the “dada” movement. Artists like Marcel Duchamp really pushed the boundaries of what we consider ‘art’. One of his particularly famous pieces was simply a urinal with “R MUTT” scrawled on the side. Needless to say, this proved to be rather controversial back in the early 1900’s. Many believed it wasn’t art, that it no right to be in a gallery, but the fact that people were thinking about that proves that it is art. His piece prompted people to challenge their beliefs of what art is, in a sense, the art was not in the urinal itself, the art was in the question “What is art?” This lead to the creation of ‘anti-art’, art created specifically to provoke that famous question, and, of course, poke fun at traditional art. And, in turn, this created something called 'anti-anti-art'. The worst part is; I'm not even joking.

And here it is; Marcel’s (in)famous “fountain”, still controversial nearly a century after its creation.

                These days, we are all well used to conceptual art; it has actually proven to become quite fashionable, but Marcel Duchamp was the pioneer. His fountain was one of the first notable examples of conceptual art, the art being in the concept of a piece of art challenging our perceptions of art (Inception, much?). So, thanks to Marcel, we are now swimming in art that would not traditionally be classed as art. It seems for every genuine, wonderful idea (e.g. A Score for a Hole in the Ground- Jim Finer), we get some rubbish churned out by some money-wasting pseudo-artists (Interior Semiotics, anyone?). Needless to say, I enjoy the Finer things in life.