We may ask, “What is art?”

It could be….

Art as a Verb

At the core of ideas about art as a way to explore and express personal experience, this is of central importance. We are talking about working with art as a verb.

A verb is a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence. We are focusing on art as an active state of being and doing. If you look up the word ‘art’ it is only ever expressed as a noun, the name of a thing. This means we tend to think of art mainly through it being an object, a painting or a sculpture, and not the process or the experience of making the art. For art as a noun, the act of making can get overlooked. The art object has a name, but the act of making art does not.

Could I Ever Be ‘Arting’

A person can describe themself as a ’Traveller’. This could be a description of a discrete cultural group. This could be the name a person calls themself if they practice independent travelling to remote settings. For both, their experience of being a traveller could be ‘travelling’, a description of an experience, a verb. They could say their favourite experience is to ‘travel’. But a person describing themself as an ‘Artist’ would not describe the experience of being an artist as ‘arting’. They could not say their favourite experience is to ‘art’.

Art as Change

But this factor is not lost in the world of fine art. Yoko Ono is a fine artist and was part of an art movement called Fluxus. Yoko was once quoted as saying, “I thought art was a verb, rather than a noun.” Wiki describes Fluxus as ‘…an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasised the artistic process over the finished product.’ The name derives from flux, a state of continuous change. An object like a painting does not change. But an artform like music or theatre can exist in a state of change. Unsurprisingly, Fluxus had a manifesto here, of which the first line was ’To affect, or bring to a certain state, by subjecting to, or treating with, a flux.’ and equally unsurprisingly included a goal to ‘Purge the world of bourgeois sickness’. Art as revolution….

I thought art was a verb, rather than a noun.

Yoko Ono

Art Making as Performance

So, given what Fluxus extolled, a performance sensibility could be applied to art making. Richard Schechner is a theatre director and Professor of Performance Studies. He asserts we can understand any human action ‘as if’ it were performance. From the point of view of performance studies the performance is the thing that happens between things, with one thing being a view of the spectator, the other being the thing viewed. So a painting can be seen to be performed as much as a play, if the painting or the play is seen by somebody. It becomes art if it is observed in such a way as some thing happens for the person who sees the painting or the play. The object does something. It becomes subjective. It goes beyond being just a passive object.

This suggests that we may make art out of anything we do that we pay attention to if we attend to it in a particular way, with a particular attitude. When we write in a journal about our experience. Or when we draw in a sketchbook some thing we saw. When we make a representation through words or image of some thing we experience, we can see our words or our drawing as art.

A Definition of Art as a Verb

It is tempting at this stage to seek a definition of art. But given a definition of art will necessarily refer to art as a noun, as an object, even if that object is theatre, a performance, I wondered for ages about a definition of art as a verb, a doing thing, an action. In the end, I figured one definition of art as a verb could simply be ‘Art is defined as anything you make as art.’ For me, this works. This renders the definition subjective. This makes the making the definition. It does not need words. What you do is the definition of what you do. This makes art recursive, a theme I will return to.

But. You may well paint a garage door with high-gloss exterior paint and call it art. And you may well be laughed at and be shown the door if you seek to sell it to Sotheby’s. However. If in painting it, you learn how to paint it better next time, if you find a way to make it be flatter and shinier in a way that pleases you aesthetically, then for the purposes of Moving Space, you have made art if you say it is art. You may have to accept that your subjective definition has little or no objective value beyond your subjectivity, hence Sotheby’s declining to put it up for sale alongside the next Banksy or Breugel. Sorry. It’s back to work for you buddy.

Art is defined as anything you make as art.

You the reader…

I think once we see art as process and activity in a state of flux, art as a noun, art as an object becomes less important. The art object as ‘Fine Art’ however, never becomes irrelevant. The fine art object made by a fine artist can become a source of ideas and inspiration for your own art making. And ‘art’ as a subjective definition, art by your definition, as a thing you make as art, may be just a garage door to someone else. Seriously, get over it. But Andy Warhol, an artist equally loved and scorned, once said, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” I can tell you I have thought a lot about all this, but art making has tempered the value I place on thinking. Art can help you to avoid thinking too much. This is a health benefit.

Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

Andy Warhol