Name: アートの定義 (The Definition of Art)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T11:22:30.000Z
Duration: 14 min
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

転換語

We've long resisted offering any definition of art on this channel.

程度の副詞

In my mind, Abrose Bierce was really onto something when he offered this entry in his

1906 Devil's Dictionary: “art, n. This word has no definition.”

It's not that there aren't plenty of definitions out there, it's just that I find them lacking

in some way, or incomplete, or so watered down that they're meaningless.

“The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically

in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily

Do we really want to say other animals are incapable of making art?

And there are definitely artworks that I appreciate for neither their beauty nor their emotional power.

Like a Thomas Hirschhorn installation I can find thought-provoking, but not beautiful

To me, saying how you're supposed to respond confines the experience.

For a while now, I've been gathering quotes about art from a range of writers and artists

I'm going to share some of these with you in the hope that we might gain some understanding

of this nebulous idea called art, or that you might find a definition that resonates

I tend to be a fan of the ones that are intentionally enigmatic, like James Baldwin's:

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers.”

I like that it leaves the boundaries really wide.

Like for me the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers confine art too much, like Seneca who said:

“All art is but imitation of nature.”

Which he could maybe get away with saying about the art of his time, but just doesn't

hold up for me now, when I see, let's say, this wonderful work by Nam June Paik, Magnet

Aristotle set his terms a little more broadly, when he said:

“Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish.

The artist gives us knowledge of nature's unrealized ends.”

Which I like for its proposal that art does something nature alone does not.

That art works from nature and extends it outward.

Because, let's face it, if there's a competition between the power of art and nature...

I'm sorry, art, it's just not really a contest.

I'm reminded of a quote often attributed to Marc Chagall:

“Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.”

But of course not all art is trying to compete with the beauty of flowers, nor simply reproduce

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

It's the world-building aspect of art that many of us greatly enjoy, be it Toyin Ojih

Odutola's fictional portraits of aristocratic Nigerian families, or the immersive installations

of Helio Oiticica, or any other work whose new reality compels you, be it realistic or

Artists have put forward objects and experiences that are unlike anything naturally occurring

I like Chinua Achebe's description of art as “man's constant effort to create for

himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

Because art after all, is not just a transporting device for those who experience it, but for

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”

In the delightfully titled book Vague Thoughts on Art from 1911, John Galsworthy explains

“... What is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves,

And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching,

a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.”

And that brings us to my favorite explanations of art, which focus on this idea of art as

John Dewey wrote extensively about this, calling art “the most effective mode of communications

“The actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience.”

An astoundingly skillful painting is great and all, but for me it becomes fully what

And I don't even just mean human others, I think even penguins count!

You don't just throw it out into the world-- someone has to catch it.”

Through art, we have the remarkable opportunity to step into the shoes of someone else for

a while, to see the world as they see it, or want to see it.

And in that process, we discover things about our own lives and worlds.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

“Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.”

For me, this means that not only can the artist recognize themselves in making the thing,

but that the appreciator can find some aspect of themselves in their experience of the thing.

Even an artwork that is centuries old can be made modern in the way it is recognized

And that brings us to one of the most famous aphorisms of all time: “Art is long, life

Or in it's Latin translation from the original Greek “Ars longa, vita brevis.”

Now in its original context it's often thought to mean that life is short and technique or

But it's most often invoked to say that art can last longer than the artist.

And art is usually designed or at least hoped to have a life independent of the artist.

I like the way Kerry James Marshall described his own aims in making:

“What you're trying to create is a certain kind of an indispensable presence, where your

position in the narrative is not contingent on whether somebody likes you, or somebody

knows you, or somebody's a friend, or somebody's being generous to you.”

Like, there's the hope that any person's art “works” without them being there to

字幕リスト動画再生

アートの定義 (The Definition of Art)

conscious

recognize

aspect

effort