What Came First: The Art or The Artist?
What Came First: The Art or The Artist?
As I read Peter London’s “Drawing Closer to Nature” today I pondered this question. Specifically London’s chapter was dealing with the idea of winning in art. The chapter was titled “There is no Winning in Art”. My favorite part was a reference to James Carse by London:
“Art is an infinite game inviting continuing engagement. [Carse] tells us that a finite game is played for the purpose of winning, whereas an infinite game is for the purpose of continuing the play.”
So what came first: The Art or the Artist? I couldn’t help but think about this as I read the chapter. (I even came up with the question) I systematically looked back through my own interactions with others who identify themselves as artists and tried to think about how they would have answered the question. There was about a fifty-fifty divide.
There are those artists in the world that believe, and rightfully so, that art is dictated by it’s interaction with the human mind. How would art exist if it was not recognized by somebody? This is such an interesting take on the idea of art because it places the human mind as the recognizer – as the creator and the definer. This is an enormously powerful role for any person to find themselves in. This kind of thinking correlates very nicely with the modern take on religion. In that I mean that the vast majority of modern religion tends to put itself and its believers at the forefront as the definers of what is “holy”. This is much like the artist who makes the art. Man creates religion, man creates art – the artist came (and comes) first.
And there are those who would answer, also rightfully so, that art is everything – that art is everywhere. Art is dictated by existence. Art is existence and therefore everything that exists is art. This is an extremely powerful viewpoint in itself because it allows the artist to be anybody or anything. Answering that the art came first almost assuredly dictates that “Art is” and it would be whether we were here to appreciate it or not. A tree that falls in the forest with no one to see it falls gracefully and as it does creates sounds and dances in its final descent – and this is art. A baby whale’s birth is art. A man tripping on the sidewalk in New York city on a gloomy afternoon – is art. On and on. This kind of thinking correlates very nicely with the idealistic approach to spirituality and religion, one where the creation of all things is ineffably holy and man just happens to be here as its witness.
As I pondered all of this I could not help but think that there is something that inevitably gets lost when attempting to answer the question either way – you stop creating in the moment to start defining the illusory past. I cannot answer the question without asking myself – what kind of artist am I? Do I believe I am the center of the universe – the almighty creator of painted universes. Am I the humble human who’s existence is insignificant and I am just lucky to witness the creations around me?
My answer – I am neither and I am both. This is the ultimate contradiction – and here is how I can explain it. In the end of the Matrix (the first one not the crappy sequels.) Neo dies and is resurrected. Some have compared this to Christianity’s resurrection of Christ and some have compared this to part of the Buddhist’s concept of “to die before you die”. I am sure there are many others. None of them I am too concerned with – what captivates me is what occurs to Neo as he wakes up after dying. Neo sees the world [the Matrix] as it truly is. He rises up and sees everything as numbers and computer code. Because of his new sight he is able to stop bullets and even jump into existing code and alter/rewrite it.
This scene is the definition of what art is to me. We are both answers to the the question of whether the artist or the art came first – we are the creators and that which has been created. We are the artists and the art. We create ourselves while being created. I once described this to students in comparison to the act of painting. When we paint we are creating – yet the act of painting and seeing it instantly creates the painting within our minds. Essentially we are rewriting the code. It is not to say that the paint in the jar and the blank canvas was not art – it was, but it was art that had not changed us yet. It unused items do always have that potential and are able to do so at any time. If something never utilizes its potential to change the human mind it does not become less powerful as an artistic artifact – it just is a powerful artistic artifact that has not changed a human mind.
When we paint however we are actively engaging with a loop of being the creator while simultaneously being created by the action. The artist is the art itself and is also nothing special, while being completely awesome.
Confused?
Basically everything is just code that is completely significant, but also common place. We are both the artist and the art – and in that comes the responsibility of constantly moving back and forth towards understanding and practicing.
“Practice. Learn. Forget.” Morihei Ueshiba
