Art elevates and endures, it displays the beauty of human creativity. I've been thinking much lately about why there's so much angst and anger in the USA. I believe a lack of art in our everyday lives is contributing and has disconnected us from the beauty in human history. I live in the rural southeast and rarely do I see any beautiful artwork or architecture unless I go to town (Pensacola) and get to see some restored Spanish buildings. I mostly see monotonous suburbs, strip malls, large malls and parking lots. Then I think of Europe, the UK, and Japan where there's human creativity and art displayed in many places and in much architecture. We have a small sheep farm and we kept 3 of our 15 acres wooded with a trail through it. I'm considering turning the 3 acres of woods into a display of classic Italian and Greek sculpture that people can visit. If most can't go to the mountain, then bring the mountain to the people. Love your music pics!
Thank you! I totally get what you mean about the debased architecture in American towns. I really do think that living surrounded by ugly things takes a toll on the spirit.
Great idea! Also rural Southeast here. Luckily this town has a beautifully preserved downtown and a beautiful college campus (largest in area in the USA) with miles of trails to get out into nature. It's a really pretty area.
I don't think I have a definition for art, but I would think of creating food as a skill that could become a craft. Like you, I wouldn't call it art. I'm not entirely sure I even know why. Perhaps craft has a more practical element to it, whereas art can be utterly impractical but just exist for beauty.
Like you, I think creating food is a craft. It is to be enjoyed as a part of everyday living. Art is separate from the everyday, tho clearly there is a gray area.
My definition of art is "what comes from one's heart and soul and reaches out to another's heart and soul." It's "deep calling to deep." For me, an excellent meal, beautifully presented (crafted by someone who "cooks from the heart") and sourced from farmers and gardeners who grew and raised these sources of food from their hearts can most certainly be a form of art. It's all about the human heart--where the flow of heart is and where it goes.
"No matter how much talent, how much genius, and how much labour go into creating a delicious meal, it’s over in a matter of minutes, never to be experienced again."
If one accepts repeatability as being a precondition for art, that would imply that acting (for example) was not art prior to recordable media, but became (or at least gained the potential to become) an art once a specific performance could be played back and experienced over and over.
I'm not saying that's wrong, but it does strike me as an odd consequence of this definition.
That occurred to me, too. A stage play, ballet, opera, concert--any performing art not committed to recording--is an ephemeral event. It can be repeated by the same people, but will never be exactly the same, twice.
It's so ephemeral, it's essentially mimicry, it's transient. It's definitely powerful and beautiful, but is it art? It's the words that are being expressed that are the art, not the person saying the words.
I happen to agree with you that music is the highest art form, because it merges form and function and, most important of all, is capable of moving living creatures, not just people--animals are capable of an emotional response to music. There is no other art form that can induce either great joy, or great sorrow.
When my daughter was little, I used to put her down at bedtime or for naps during the day, teeing up a wide variety of soothing music on a tape player. Disney tunes, opera, classical music. She usually loved all the music I tuned up. But she thought the clarinet in Peter and the Wolf was a "sad music." One time she called for me, crying inconsolably, telling to me through her tears "stop the sad music, Mama!" It was Nessun Dorma, from Turandot. My little girl was not some music prodigy at age 3. She didn't speak Italian. She was simply responding to the music and the emotion in the tenor's voice --which reached her on a level that didn't require language, sophistication, or education. It went straight to the human heart. Great composers have tricks they use to cue emotion--rising notes on a scale, or key changes in the middle of crescendo. That is great art. The late, great Ennio Morricone was a master at this : from Cinema Paradiso https://youtu.be/WSkyoyyvnAY (and note the sad sound of the clarinet.)
I would not put food in this category, however, food can be beautiful, artistic and bring joy. But it cannot bring deep emotion unaffiliated with memory. So, I'd say it can be art, but more sensual than the higher art forms--the written word, graphic art, or the most perfect form of all--music.
As far back as I can remember--to when I was a toddler in the mid 1950s--my dad would play his extensive 78 rpm record collection of swing music from the 1930s and 1940s, along with classical music LPs. It was the background of my childhood, and I loved it, without a shred of technical musical knowledge. It reached my heart and ingrained itself in my mind. That was definitely art. Skillful cooking and baking is a wonderful craft, and a soft, warm chocolate chip cookie or perfect crust on a hot loaf of sourdough can make me happy, but I don't think it's art, any more than skillful plumbing or mechanical work is.
"There is no other art form that can induce either great joy, or great sorrow." I might argue that Film/Cinema may be the best at moving people, or has the most potential. I'm a stills-photographer and while I am working either shooting or post-processing and editing, I am always listening to music or have a classic film running in the background.
Yes, cinema definitely is the most powerful at stirring emotions in people, but creating a piece of cinema is so complex and requires so many people that to me it's more of an industrial process, a military campaign. It takes the equivalent of an army, like a public works project!
I’m not sure I could put it better that you have Jenny! Except to say that without art & the human urge to create beauty in all its forms, life would be a dull flat affair. Through art we gain an insight into the human heart & mind outside our own and to experience ‘the ineffable’.
My thoughts are perfectly aligned with your thoughts. Music, then writing. It's a close race when one encounters a gifted writer (how I see you) but I also know that listening to an opera, or Dolly Parton, or a banjo playing on the porch moves me in ways I can't describe. Nor would I want to.
I wonder if Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond" would be as good if not for the steel of his instrument (not to mention the steel of his words).
In summary, an art is that which gives us an "art experience." An art experience is one in which we encounter a discontinuity that changes how we experience the world.
- John Lobell
What is art, from my books, Visionary Creativity: How New Worlds are Born"
In which we look at art and see how it presents us with unanticipated experiences—“discontinuities”—-that continually recode our neural connections, restructure our consciousness, and advance us into unfolding futures.
"Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week... The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time."
~ Richard Huelsenbeck, First German Dada Manifesto What is Art?
In a book about creativity, of course we will want to address art, and while we will not be able to fully say what art is, we can look at some of the things art might be able to tell us about Visionary Creativity.
Let’s begin by noting that understanding beauty will do little to help us understand art. There are things that are beautiful that are not art, for example a sunset or an Arabian stallion. And many works of art are not beautiful, for example, Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War, or Munch’s The Scream. Or Damien Hirst’s Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark in a tank of formaldehyde, which is just weird. So while some art is beautiful, beauty is not defining of art.
You stand in front of a painting, read a novel, watch a movie. What do you experience? Of course, the object itself, the craft and attention to detail. The layers of understanding that are embedded in the work. And something about the people in the culture of the artist and something about the human condition. There are many inspiring descriptions of the role of art—let’s look at one given by William Faulkner in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which he titled, “I decline to accept the end of man.”
"I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before....
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
An entire book could be devoted to the concept of art implied by Faulkner’s speech, but here we are interested in something else about art, how it alters our structures of consciousness, and in so doing, how it disrupts the dominant culture, changes the spirit of the times, brings to an end old worlds, and brings into existence new ones.
I can look at a painting by Goya, and even if it depicts tragedy and misery, it also displays a high level of skill, and is beautiful. But "art" that is solely intended to shock me or piss me off, with no aspiration to beauty and no exercise of great skill, is mere pretension--a suit of emperor's clothes for the self-impressed "intelligentsia" to ooh and ah over, always worried their peers will catch them hesitating for one rational instant. As the great critic Arlene Croce wrote, "I never saw a good ballet that made me think." Today, the rule seems to be, in Marshall McLuhan's words, "Art is anything you can get away with." An unmade bed? An empty room? A crucifix in a jar of piss? Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence? Sorry, not art, only pure BS, and an embarrassment (though they don't realize it) for the suckers who fall for it.
The problem is that there are many things that display skill that are not art. And there are many things that are beautiful that are not art. So what distinguishes art? That is the question I am answering. And dismissing the past 100 years of art does not help with such understanding,-- John Lobell
To be able to cook or bake well is a wonderful skill, but I think the same is true of being able to restore a 1939 Ford coupe, grow a beautiful rose bush, wire and plumb a house perfectly, write a detailed and accurate technical report on an archaeological survey, or ride a bicycle to victory in the Tour de France. If a high level of skill at some activity is art, then a high level of skill at any activity is art. We can't cherry-pick cooking and a small handful of other things, then dismiss others as mere jobs, or crafts. A line has to be drawn someplace, and I think that line falls somewhere above cooking.
I was a regular reader of John Simon's blog (until his death in 2019 B.C. [Before Covid] at age 94), and recall him pronouncing upon what Art is, and at other times posting about hifalutin foods, but don't know if he ever put them together in a way that would address Jenny's question. I'm not quite sure I can guess where he would have fallen on this question.
I think ephemerality is a false distinction. All forms of art--acts of human creation--are ephemeral in some way. Some works of art have a more durable physical form, but every individual experience of art is fleeting and personal, whether one is viewing an image, listening to a live or recorded piece of music, reading words on a page (or screen), or consuming a meal. Art that is shareable, including performances (such as cooking) that are repeatable, enjoy greater reach across time and space and populations, but as Gary Null posted here before me, art is an experience (potentially interactive) between artist and audience. When the moment of performance is complete, the art experience echoes indefinitely as memory.
All of us have seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched art--much of it mundane, some of it profound--and we have created it, too. It is what makes us human. What makes us artists, I think, is when we actively attempt to move beyond the mundane and create something new, giving our work a personal touch. There is space in this definition for art that strives to reinterpret/revive/reproduce/recreate something old. Thus it is that the fictional Pixar chef, Remy the Parisian rat, created culinary art with his reproduction of ratatouille, a "peasant dish" that shook the snobby restaurant critic, Anton Ego (what a name!) to his core. Even cover bands are artists, if nonetheless often very forgettable ones.
This is interesting but I don't really agree with it. I appreciate the democratic spirit, but I'm old fashioned and I think art expresses truth, and truth is not ephemeral, nor is it fleeting or personal. It's not new, either. Back to the Old Testament I go!
For the maker: it is giving, doing and an expression and manifestation of thinking
I have to admit, I started your essay thinking cooking is not art and I was in agreement with your position and also the way you explained but by partaking in your exercise and actually forcing myself to write what I believe art is, it made me instantly change my mind and I now do believe cooking is a form of art.
Thank you for suggesting we all write what we think. As always, great essay and I am so enjoying everyone's thoughts.
On one last note, please Jenny do listen to "Chanting in the language of Christ" by Seraphim Bit-Kharibi-it will blow your mind, I promise...and I am someone who listens to System of a Down at full blast-but you will hear some of the most powerful transcendent sounds.
Also do some research into the Solfeggio scale if you're not familiar. I am also very, very affected by music and sound. This morning when my daughter wasn't feeling well for female reasons, I had her listen to this chanting and some Solfeggio music to relax her body. It took some time and focus, about 40 minutes, but yeah she felt better and went off to the beach.
Thank you so much for your music recommendations. Brilliant and agreed.
Thank you so much for listening and sharing with me that you did. It is so kind of you. For some reason I knew when you suggested Tom Waits and Mozart together in one recommendation that you would get it.
Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography in a Supreme Court concurrence, "I know it when I see it." That is kind of the way that I feel about art. As far as food goes, a beautifully and originally decorated birthday cake that gives a child joy is art, while what we had every day in the high school cafeteria long ago was not.
My email client has a built in ChatGPT feature. I asked it to define art. Here is what it produced:
"What is art? I am writing to express my concern and frustration regarding the question you posed: "What is art?" While I appreciate the curiosity and desire to engage in intellectual discourse, I find it disheartening that such a complex and subjective topic is being reduced to a simple and vague query.
Art, by its very nature, defies a singular definition. It encompasses a wide range of forms, styles, and expressions, each with its own unique purpose and meaning. To attempt to confine art within a rigid definition not only undermines its inherent diversity but also limits our understanding and appreciation of its transformative power.
Rather than seeking a definitive answer to the question, I encourage you to explore the multifaceted dimensions of art. Engage in conversations, delve into art history, and immerse yourself in various artistic experiences. Only through active engagement and open-mindedness can we begin to grasp the intricate and ever-evolving nature of art.
I urge you to approach the topic with a more nuanced perspective, one that acknowledges the complexities and subjectivity inherent in defining art. By doing so, we can foster a more inclusive and enriching dialogue that celebrates the diversity and boundless possibilities of artistic expression.
Thank you for considering my perspective. I hope this email encourages you to approach the topic of art with greater depth and appreciation."
Art elevates and endures, it displays the beauty of human creativity. I've been thinking much lately about why there's so much angst and anger in the USA. I believe a lack of art in our everyday lives is contributing and has disconnected us from the beauty in human history. I live in the rural southeast and rarely do I see any beautiful artwork or architecture unless I go to town (Pensacola) and get to see some restored Spanish buildings. I mostly see monotonous suburbs, strip malls, large malls and parking lots. Then I think of Europe, the UK, and Japan where there's human creativity and art displayed in many places and in much architecture. We have a small sheep farm and we kept 3 of our 15 acres wooded with a trail through it. I'm considering turning the 3 acres of woods into a display of classic Italian and Greek sculpture that people can visit. If most can't go to the mountain, then bring the mountain to the people. Love your music pics!
Thank you! I totally get what you mean about the debased architecture in American towns. I really do think that living surrounded by ugly things takes a toll on the spirit.
Great idea! Also rural Southeast here. Luckily this town has a beautifully preserved downtown and a beautiful college campus (largest in area in the USA) with miles of trails to get out into nature. It's a really pretty area.
I don't think I have a definition for art, but I would think of creating food as a skill that could become a craft. Like you, I wouldn't call it art. I'm not entirely sure I even know why. Perhaps craft has a more practical element to it, whereas art can be utterly impractical but just exist for beauty.
Art endures, sometimes over thousands of years.
Like you, I think creating food is a craft. It is to be enjoyed as a part of everyday living. Art is separate from the everyday, tho clearly there is a gray area.
Yes, to me the endurance is the key.
My definition of art is "what comes from one's heart and soul and reaches out to another's heart and soul." It's "deep calling to deep." For me, an excellent meal, beautifully presented (crafted by someone who "cooks from the heart") and sourced from farmers and gardeners who grew and raised these sources of food from their hearts can most certainly be a form of art. It's all about the human heart--where the flow of heart is and where it goes.
Interesting! I don't necessarily agree, but I do get where you are coming from.
"No matter how much talent, how much genius, and how much labour go into creating a delicious meal, it’s over in a matter of minutes, never to be experienced again."
If one accepts repeatability as being a precondition for art, that would imply that acting (for example) was not art prior to recordable media, but became (or at least gained the potential to become) an art once a specific performance could be played back and experienced over and over.
I'm not saying that's wrong, but it does strike me as an odd consequence of this definition.
Would a great recipe and plan for the meal be art and the meal be the performance?
As a great play is art, and the actors performers.
That occurred to me, too. A stage play, ballet, opera, concert--any performing art not committed to recording--is an ephemeral event. It can be repeated by the same people, but will never be exactly the same, twice.
I'm not sure I think any acting is an art. 😬
It's so ephemeral, it's essentially mimicry, it's transient. It's definitely powerful and beautiful, but is it art? It's the words that are being expressed that are the art, not the person saying the words.
Theater is art. Every performance is live. Unrepeatable.
I happen to agree with you that music is the highest art form, because it merges form and function and, most important of all, is capable of moving living creatures, not just people--animals are capable of an emotional response to music. There is no other art form that can induce either great joy, or great sorrow.
When my daughter was little, I used to put her down at bedtime or for naps during the day, teeing up a wide variety of soothing music on a tape player. Disney tunes, opera, classical music. She usually loved all the music I tuned up. But she thought the clarinet in Peter and the Wolf was a "sad music." One time she called for me, crying inconsolably, telling to me through her tears "stop the sad music, Mama!" It was Nessun Dorma, from Turandot. My little girl was not some music prodigy at age 3. She didn't speak Italian. She was simply responding to the music and the emotion in the tenor's voice --which reached her on a level that didn't require language, sophistication, or education. It went straight to the human heart. Great composers have tricks they use to cue emotion--rising notes on a scale, or key changes in the middle of crescendo. That is great art. The late, great Ennio Morricone was a master at this : from Cinema Paradiso https://youtu.be/WSkyoyyvnAY (and note the sad sound of the clarinet.)
I would not put food in this category, however, food can be beautiful, artistic and bring joy. But it cannot bring deep emotion unaffiliated with memory. So, I'd say it can be art, but more sensual than the higher art forms--the written word, graphic art, or the most perfect form of all--music.
I love the story about your daughter. I remember feeling like that over certain pieces of music as a kid.
As far back as I can remember--to when I was a toddler in the mid 1950s--my dad would play his extensive 78 rpm record collection of swing music from the 1930s and 1940s, along with classical music LPs. It was the background of my childhood, and I loved it, without a shred of technical musical knowledge. It reached my heart and ingrained itself in my mind. That was definitely art. Skillful cooking and baking is a wonderful craft, and a soft, warm chocolate chip cookie or perfect crust on a hot loaf of sourdough can make me happy, but I don't think it's art, any more than skillful plumbing or mechanical work is.
"There is no other art form that can induce either great joy, or great sorrow." I might argue that Film/Cinema may be the best at moving people, or has the most potential. I'm a stills-photographer and while I am working either shooting or post-processing and editing, I am always listening to music or have a classic film running in the background.
Yes, cinema definitely is the most powerful at stirring emotions in people, but creating a piece of cinema is so complex and requires so many people that to me it's more of an industrial process, a military campaign. It takes the equivalent of an army, like a public works project!
Yes, but note: movies include music scores. Some great ones. Forrest Gump. Cinema Paradiso, my guy, Morricone. He scored a lot of movies. John Williams. The 50 best film scores of all time @classicfm www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/film-tv/best-film-scores-all-time/
I’m not sure I could put it better that you have Jenny! Except to say that without art & the human urge to create beauty in all its forms, life would be a dull flat affair. Through art we gain an insight into the human heart & mind outside our own and to experience ‘the ineffable’.
Exactly! 💚
My thoughts are perfectly aligned with your thoughts. Music, then writing. It's a close race when one encounters a gifted writer (how I see you) but I also know that listening to an opera, or Dolly Parton, or a banjo playing on the porch moves me in ways I can't describe. Nor would I want to.
That is extremely kind of you to say, but I am definitely more artisan than artist! Even that's a bit grandiose for my liking. 🤣
Also what is it about the banjo that is so damn good??
It’s the porch, the hound dog, and the moonshine that makes the banjo very special.
I wonder if Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond" would be as good if not for the steel of his instrument (not to mention the steel of his words).
A banjo often has the connotation of relaxation, and stressed-out people (and we have plenty in this world) need relaxation.
In summary, an art is that which gives us an "art experience." An art experience is one in which we encounter a discontinuity that changes how we experience the world.
- John Lobell
What is art, from my books, Visionary Creativity: How New Worlds are Born"
https://www.amazon.com/Visionary-Creativity-How-Worlds-Born-ebook/dp/B00Y9HOAD8/ref=sr_1_5?crid=14QVGPPJT5NOQ&keywords=john+lobell&qid=1691335806&sprefix=john+lovell%2Caps%2C105&sr=8-5
ART, DISCONTINUITY, AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGY
In which we look at art and see how it presents us with unanticipated experiences—“discontinuities”—-that continually recode our neural connections, restructure our consciousness, and advance us into unfolding futures.
"Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week... The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time."
~ Richard Huelsenbeck, First German Dada Manifesto What is Art?
In a book about creativity, of course we will want to address art, and while we will not be able to fully say what art is, we can look at some of the things art might be able to tell us about Visionary Creativity.
Let’s begin by noting that understanding beauty will do little to help us understand art. There are things that are beautiful that are not art, for example a sunset or an Arabian stallion. And many works of art are not beautiful, for example, Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War, or Munch’s The Scream. Or Damien Hirst’s Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark in a tank of formaldehyde, which is just weird. So while some art is beautiful, beauty is not defining of art.
You stand in front of a painting, read a novel, watch a movie. What do you experience? Of course, the object itself, the craft and attention to detail. The layers of understanding that are embedded in the work. And something about the people in the culture of the artist and something about the human condition. There are many inspiring descriptions of the role of art—let’s look at one given by William Faulkner in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which he titled, “I decline to accept the end of man.”
"I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before....
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
An entire book could be devoted to the concept of art implied by Faulkner’s speech, but here we are interested in something else about art, how it alters our structures of consciousness, and in so doing, how it disrupts the dominant culture, changes the spirit of the times, brings to an end old worlds, and brings into existence new ones.
The Dada Manifesto--a real eye-roller. What a crock. Sounds like a teen's essay after his first art appreciation class.
I can look at a painting by Goya, and even if it depicts tragedy and misery, it also displays a high level of skill, and is beautiful. But "art" that is solely intended to shock me or piss me off, with no aspiration to beauty and no exercise of great skill, is mere pretension--a suit of emperor's clothes for the self-impressed "intelligentsia" to ooh and ah over, always worried their peers will catch them hesitating for one rational instant. As the great critic Arlene Croce wrote, "I never saw a good ballet that made me think." Today, the rule seems to be, in Marshall McLuhan's words, "Art is anything you can get away with." An unmade bed? An empty room? A crucifix in a jar of piss? Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence? Sorry, not art, only pure BS, and an embarrassment (though they don't realize it) for the suckers who fall for it.
Was just having a discussion with an artist friend about 'dark' and 'disturbing' art and why it is still beautiful.
I lean toward the view that most 'art' of the last 100 years is provocative or banal but not beautiful and, for me, not art, or least not artistic.
The problem is that there are many things that display skill that are not art. And there are many things that are beautiful that are not art. So what distinguishes art? That is the question I am answering. And dismissing the past 100 years of art does not help with such understanding,-- John Lobell
My definition of art: Art is an imitation of life that takes on a life of its own.
To be able to cook or bake well is a wonderful skill, but I think the same is true of being able to restore a 1939 Ford coupe, grow a beautiful rose bush, wire and plumb a house perfectly, write a detailed and accurate technical report on an archaeological survey, or ride a bicycle to victory in the Tour de France. If a high level of skill at some activity is art, then a high level of skill at any activity is art. We can't cherry-pick cooking and a small handful of other things, then dismiss others as mere jobs, or crafts. A line has to be drawn someplace, and I think that line falls somewhere above cooking.
WWJSS?
I was a regular reader of John Simon's blog (until his death in 2019 B.C. [Before Covid] at age 94), and recall him pronouncing upon what Art is, and at other times posting about hifalutin foods, but don't know if he ever put them together in a way that would address Jenny's question. I'm not quite sure I can guess where he would have fallen on this question.
A typical posting about food:
"FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD "
http://uncensoredsimon.blogspot.com/2011/03/food-glorious-food.html
I think ephemerality is a false distinction. All forms of art--acts of human creation--are ephemeral in some way. Some works of art have a more durable physical form, but every individual experience of art is fleeting and personal, whether one is viewing an image, listening to a live or recorded piece of music, reading words on a page (or screen), or consuming a meal. Art that is shareable, including performances (such as cooking) that are repeatable, enjoy greater reach across time and space and populations, but as Gary Null posted here before me, art is an experience (potentially interactive) between artist and audience. When the moment of performance is complete, the art experience echoes indefinitely as memory.
All of us have seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched art--much of it mundane, some of it profound--and we have created it, too. It is what makes us human. What makes us artists, I think, is when we actively attempt to move beyond the mundane and create something new, giving our work a personal touch. There is space in this definition for art that strives to reinterpret/revive/reproduce/recreate something old. Thus it is that the fictional Pixar chef, Remy the Parisian rat, created culinary art with his reproduction of ratatouille, a "peasant dish" that shook the snobby restaurant critic, Anton Ego (what a name!) to his core. Even cover bands are artists, if nonetheless often very forgettable ones.
This is interesting but I don't really agree with it. I appreciate the democratic spirit, but I'm old fashioned and I think art expresses truth, and truth is not ephemeral, nor is it fleeting or personal. It's not new, either. Back to the Old Testament I go!
For the receiver: art is memory + transcendence
For the maker: it is giving, doing and an expression and manifestation of thinking
I have to admit, I started your essay thinking cooking is not art and I was in agreement with your position and also the way you explained but by partaking in your exercise and actually forcing myself to write what I believe art is, it made me instantly change my mind and I now do believe cooking is a form of art.
Thank you for suggesting we all write what we think. As always, great essay and I am so enjoying everyone's thoughts.
On one last note, please Jenny do listen to "Chanting in the language of Christ" by Seraphim Bit-Kharibi-it will blow your mind, I promise...and I am someone who listens to System of a Down at full blast-but you will hear some of the most powerful transcendent sounds.
Also do some research into the Solfeggio scale if you're not familiar. I am also very, very affected by music and sound. This morning when my daughter wasn't feeling well for female reasons, I had her listen to this chanting and some Solfeggio music to relax her body. It took some time and focus, about 40 minutes, but yeah she felt better and went off to the beach.
Thank you so much for your music recommendations. Brilliant and agreed.
I'm listening to that now, thank you for the recommendation.
Wow. I almost can't take it.
Thank you so much for listening and sharing with me that you did. It is so kind of you. For some reason I knew when you suggested Tom Waits and Mozart together in one recommendation that you would get it.
Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography in a Supreme Court concurrence, "I know it when I see it." That is kind of the way that I feel about art. As far as food goes, a beautifully and originally decorated birthday cake that gives a child joy is art, while what we had every day in the high school cafeteria long ago was not.
Interesting article! BTW, great take on Lizzo and the woke "eating their young" on spiked this week.
Thank you!
My email client has a built in ChatGPT feature. I asked it to define art. Here is what it produced:
"What is art? I am writing to express my concern and frustration regarding the question you posed: "What is art?" While I appreciate the curiosity and desire to engage in intellectual discourse, I find it disheartening that such a complex and subjective topic is being reduced to a simple and vague query.
Art, by its very nature, defies a singular definition. It encompasses a wide range of forms, styles, and expressions, each with its own unique purpose and meaning. To attempt to confine art within a rigid definition not only undermines its inherent diversity but also limits our understanding and appreciation of its transformative power.
Rather than seeking a definitive answer to the question, I encourage you to explore the multifaceted dimensions of art. Engage in conversations, delve into art history, and immerse yourself in various artistic experiences. Only through active engagement and open-mindedness can we begin to grasp the intricate and ever-evolving nature of art.
I urge you to approach the topic with a more nuanced perspective, one that acknowledges the complexities and subjectivity inherent in defining art. By doing so, we can foster a more inclusive and enriching dialogue that celebrates the diversity and boundless possibilities of artistic expression.
Thank you for considering my perspective. I hope this email encourages you to approach the topic of art with greater depth and appreciation."
Wow. I did not realise AI was so judgemental. How creepy is that -- being scolded by a robot?
It's just getting started.