Excerpt from "What is Art?"

Vol. 1 Issue 8

So this week we get an excerpt from a paper I'm writing about Catalan painter Joan Miro. Next week there will be more about Miro himself. There is very little here, and I'll post some of his artwork. For now....


“What is Art?” A question almost as grand as “Why are we here?” or “What is the meaning of life?” I do not intend to proclaim my own answer to this question. In this paper I intend to investigate some of the most popular definitions of art within Art Theory, a branch of the Philosophy of Art, by two philosophers. Taking these theories in account, and offering plenty of counterexamples, I intend to hopefully prove that the work of Catalan artist Joan Miro is in fact “art,” and if I fail to prove this, I will surely make a good case for Miro’s superiority as a creative genius.

Artists that continually develop as artists, pushing the boundaries of form, content, and possibility yet retaining popularity in mainstream culture, there is something about these types of artists that I am intrinsically drawn to. The ones, who over their careers push the boundaries of their form, yet still manage to maintain a wide public appeal. The essence of this favoritism lies in their ability, if not their exceptionalism, to push forward as artists over the entirety of their careers, and not root themselves into any one contented niche.

Some artist might find they have a very limited, or even single creative concept or idea to offer to the world. This idea or concept might even sell. If their concept sells, but their creativity dwindles, few artists it seems take this as their cue to exit the art scene. The British rock band The Police would be a classic example of a group that did find themselves in this position. At the height of their success in 1983, after touring laboriously for Synchronicity, they called it quits. Biographers of the band would surely argue that break-up was due to personal tensions, but I believe they had hit at a creative brick wall, and made a gracious exit at the end of their creative primes. Acts like Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and the Red Hot Chili Peppers would be blazing examples of the opposite, having one or two creative statements to make, they make them over, and over, and over. Enjoyable for some perhaps, but art? Maybe once, but every at every instance? 

To pay for this dinner, there are now legendary myths of Picasso signing napkins for waiters, therefore conferring arthood upon them, and presumably making them very valuable (the napkins). In the case of Picasso, within his socio-historical context, within this overall body of work, and within his status as an artist at the time, it may have been as simple as this. Picasso signs something, it becomes art. This fits into Jerrold Levinson’s institutional definition of art. Luckily, under Levinson's definition, if Billy Ray Cyrus were to sign a napkin, ontologically, it would be nothing more than a napkin with a signature, much less an artwork.

Now, the previous three musicals act I mentioned- Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and the RHCP- undoubtedly perform at exceptionally high levels. It could be said they perform with excellence. “Excellence” is an important element in Robert Stecker’s disjunctive definition of art, which will soon be identified, but first, one more tangent.

Writer John Grisham would be an example of someone who does what they do with excellence, but exemplifies the trope of “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” in the exact same fashion as the previously mentioned musicians. While undoubtedly a great writer and storyteller, literary critics rarely consider him an artist. A writer like Grisham, artist or not, has been extremely successful at what he does, and continues to repeat the same procedure over and over, ad nauseam perhaps. Assumedly he wants to keep food on his table, vintage sports cars in this multiple garages, and private jets on his personal runways.