But is it Art?

I recently found myself in a heated debate with a good friend of mine over that subject I’m always banging on about,

“What is Art?”

She remained unconvinced that a piece of found art such as Duchamp’s “Fountain” or, to some extent, Damien Hirst’s “Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” could be considered art.

The main crux of her argument was that it showed no skill or artistic merit to just place an urinal on a stand or place a shark in formaldehyde. It takes skill to place paint on a canvas and represent what the artist sees embodied with their spirit. Her equation for art.

It always saddens me when peoples minds are narrowed by this sense that art must involve the use of motor skill or hand eye coordination, when most of the magic that is to be found in art is cerebral. The greatest art I know is from creative minds not necessarily great painters. Dali, of course, being the best of both worlds.

Artists are not simply Draftsmen who create images for us to look at. Illustrators do this every day so that we know what a block of flats is going to look like or so that the menu we are holding has an interesting floral design on the front, but artists, true artists, grab you by the imagination, by the psyche and they shake you.

A piece of work like “fountain” takes an object you know and makes you question it. What it can mean or represent in a different environment. It is as if it takes on a new shape and a new life becoming an alien relic or a mysterious memory you can’t quite place your finger on.

That piece in particular has been one I have loved for many years. It sang to me, Made me see that art isn’t just about canvas or sculpture, but so much more. The world is Duchamp’s canvas and this simple every day object his paint.

Although I like Hirst’s work less than Duchamp’s it is still as much brilliant art as anything by Leonardo Da Vinci or Monet. I sometimes think that arguments, like my friends, seem to rely too much on the sentiment “If I don’t like it, then it isn’t art.”

I recently sat and watched the front window of a cafe opposite my local. There with all the different faces, the swirling steam, the reflections of cars on the glass.

That is as much art to me but I’ve yet to see an artist put their name to it.