What is art? Why does it exist? Does it have meaning; does it have a purpose? Is it simply something beautiful to decorate our homes and our minds?
Artists and art historians have been attempting to answer this elusive and tantalizing question for hundreds of years. That is why there are so many movements: Impressionism, Expressionism, Neoclassical, Baroque, Rococo, Dada, Futurist. I could list at least a dozen more. But I will not, because that is not the point. I believe that the key to our most fundamental state of being is hidden in our art. I believe that art is what you, the audience and listener, make of it. I believe it can persuade. I believe it can change the world.
I would never have considered myself a visual artist until I started sketching earlier this semester. A performance artist, yes. But never a visual one. I did not think I was capable of producing work that would even be acceptable in a middle school art class. I was reading about a strange movement of the 20th century European avant-garde called Dada. I came across this phrase in 1918 manifesto written by Tristan Tzara: “A work of art is never beautiful by decree, objectively, and for all.”
I had to think about that. I looked down at my own sketchbook, at the sketch I was working on at the time. It was a group of animals all crowding each other, made from straight lines, almost cubist, but not quite. But very avant-garde. “A work of art is never beautiful by decree…” I thought about it some more. Learning how the Dada artists rejected the philosophies of their day, rejected order and embraced chaos, I came to the brink of an understanding about art.
My art does not need to mean something to everyone. It can be meaningful to me. It can be meaningful to a handful of people. But if someone doesn’t find beauty or meaning in a piece, that does not automatically disqualify it as art. It is still art.
The only terrifying part is throwing it out to the world. Shouting at the top of your lungs, “Look at what I have created.” Look, see, and know. We can not always know. And that is the beauty of art. It comes in so many shapes, sizes, and volumes. Words on a page, lines in a sketchbook, a dancer on a stage, paint on a canvas. It is all art. And it is all valid. Even the secret things we hide from the world, they are still art.
I have found solace and freedom in creating the sketches in my book and the poems in my head. I hope that you, the reader, can find that same gift of freedom in your own creative mind. A large part of the later avant-garde movements was that anyone is capable of being an artist. Visual, performance, you name it. You are all able to be creators.
What can we create when we replace the phrase “I can not create” with “I can create”? What amazing and marvelous things will we bring to a broken world in need of healing? I believe that art has that capacity, and I believe that it is our art that can accomplish this.
