When does something become art?

Alright, a blog without "w" bashing? Well since he is pretty much gone, then I will move on too.... for now anyway.



When does an "object" become art? As I am sitting here in the northern NC mountains during my two weeks of imposed solitude to make art, I am creating something that I question to be art. It is a beautiful object. It has a historical reference (Pollack's "Blue Poles"). It is "spiritual" lines of chaos forming a signified picture through Buddhist imagery. It is intellectual - giving into nature, pondering repetition, questioning minimalism and defining the "work of the hand". But I keep viewing it as decorative. At what point does something become art? Whether it is me or anyone else making an object, what makes it exist outside of that person? Is it the reaction it receives from a viewer? It is a likeness, as in a portrait? Is it art if you know the artist and they are inclined to make things? I know I stand before a Rembrandt and I tingle inside - someplace intangible (and understand, that is NOT my aesthetic) and I have utter sadness and absolute energy in front of a Rothko (more of my taste but he committed suicide), I gasp in front of Cy Twombly and I weep in front of a Deborah Butterfield.

In this day and age when we are about to dip into frugal ways once again, does art matter? Of course my education, the time and the passion I have spent making objects screams yes, but I have to go back to the point of need vs desire. Art is not a need. It is not shelter it is not food nor is it health. But throughout history it has been held in high esteem. It has ranged from historical recording, spiritual, narrative to community service. Andy Goldsworthy makes beautiful objects outside in the elements, takes photos for documentation and lets nature consume it back into the earth. So what is the art? The original piece of work or the preserved photo of the work that viewers will consume? At what point does making something go beyond the maker and reaches the consumer? There was a statement in a book written by Anita Politzer about Georgia O'Keefe. In her early years as a teacher in Amarillo, TX O'Keefe worked hard at her drawings. She put out piece after piece, drawing after drawing. Politzer gave some of these drawings/paintings to Steiglitz and he deemed them art. O'Keefe felt that it was at the point that her personal language became universal. When it was consumed and felt by another, it was art. But this was not instant. There was a trandscendance that occured. It went beyond the technical and it crossed over to another existance, a place that all artists understand inatetly.

I have no answer to this question and this is a rambling message but I wonder if we are part of a collective concious and we use our own symbolism as a language to communicate with others, is this art? When we are no longer the individual in the studio but the salesman with our wares that others respond too, are we making art? It takes isolation, individualism, quietness and observation to record something that trandscends the individual and makes it out into the larger world. Ironic, isn't it?