On Art
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as at any other art display, I hastily make my way through the sections hosting Ancient Greek sculptures or Medieval portraits, sections usually crowded by bored children and their well-meaning parents, and art students absentmindedly sketching the torsos like every good art student before them. There is hardly anything about these pieces that attract my attention – except perhaps the diligence and patience of their creators. I would go as far as to say that I dislike Ancient Greek Art. And after hours of soul searching I have discovered why – its simply not art!
“Art: the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination”
“Creativity: the use of the imagination or original ideas, esp. in the production of an artistic work.”
Oxford American dictionary
Art connoisseurs will probably disagree with me – but I am suggesting a new definition, of art as representation rather than documentation. Art does not mirror nature as the latter is visible before us, but it takes nature – including also human ideas and social beliefs and practices – and transforms it. The source of the art may or may not be recognizable the piece’s model , but the artist should never strive for her final product to be indistinguishable from its source.
Isn’t art by definition a result of a creative process, the need for or desire to find novel ways of expressing an idea, an event, a system or practice? And does not the craft of the Greek sculptors contradict this, and the definitions given above by the intelligent people editing the Oxford American Dictionary?
So there it is, the reason for my lack of appreciation for the knockoffs of the ancient Greeks and the portrait “artists” of the Middle Ages. It is just unimaginative, unchallenging documentation (and of only a single aspect of their contemporary societies at that).
