Art is such a personal thing that I am not sure this question can be answered completely. For me art is something that I personally think to be beautiful, something that makes me think about the world or see something from another perspective. Art is no longer a painting or a drawing, the evolution of technology has meant that it now covers a light show or immersive, interactive experiences (anyone experience The Curiosity Cloud as part of London Design Festival last month?).
For me there is something transient about the meaning of art, not just the work hanging on gallery walls or the editions being sold by artists worldwide but in the more every day designs we encounter. It used to be that only oil paintings or sculptures were considered to be art, now it can be anything. Previously the only ephemeral art form was flyers or posters pasted on a wall, perhaps this is still true but digital art also has ephemeral qualities, yet at the same time it has permanence. If you missed a light show or projection on the side of a building, that’s it, it’s gone, but YouTube can help you capture the essence of the experience. People collect posters, flyers and postcards because they like the way they look. You can spend hours working on a digital painting only to have the file corrupt on you when you try and open it again – not only a lesson in remembering to back up multiple file versions but also an example of how temporary the digital landscape can be. Recreating that painting is possible but starting from scratch means that not every pixel will be in the same place as before. Art is everywhere, in posters, wallpaper patterns and even down to the design of an individual letterform on a page. It is about leaving a lasting impression on the world we live in, whether we know the name of the creator or not, a part of them will live on for as long as the piece is preserved.
Art is also an escape, creating it can mean time away from a computer screen or thinking about the challenges that life can sometimes throw at you. Viewing it can give you an insight into the way that someone else thinks and an opportunity to see the world through another’s eyes. Art can make you laugh or cry, it can pull you up or push you down and, depending on your personal feelings; art can make something beautiful or ugly, that definitely makes the world a more interesting place. So perhaps art is also about making life more interesting? They say that a picture paints a thousand words but who is to say that every viewer sees the same words? Really a piece of art can illustrate hundreds, thousands or millions of words – depending on how large the audience is, and I wonder how many of those viewers experience what the artist intended them to experience, receive the message the piece was produced to broadcast (if there was an intended message at all) or respond in a way the artist expected.
Is art just visual? Personally I include music, theatre and literature as art, but perhaps for other people they fall into different categories. I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on what art is – you can post a comment below, or you can share your thoughts using #WhatIsArt on Twitter or by posing a comment on our Facebook page.
Kirsty-Anne Ward is part of the team responsible for marketing and design at Innova Art.
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