What is art?

Is art only something that is shown in a gallery or a museum?  Is art merely a manufactured label?  What one culture considered art, another might not.  I think that of the core elements of “art” are aesthetics and function.  Art must be both inspire a reaction and be functional.  Beautiful things can be artistic.  So can the grotesque or the strange.

Ultimately, I firmly believe that there is a fine line between art and visual culture.  While an artist can create an object and call it art, he/she can never truly do so without bias or influences.  We are products of our experiences and our surroundings, and these experiences will always influence the work an artist makes. The same can be said for the viewer, for a visitor to a gallery never looks at art without personal bias reading into what he/she sees, regardless of the artist’s intent.  People—societies—will continuously appropriate objects, redefine them, and use them according to the limits and categories of their own visual culture.  Because of this, I do not believe that there is any such thing as a purely aesthetic non-functional art object.  On the other hand, I do believe that an artist can think he/she is creating a work of art that is only aesthetic (art for art’s sake), but in the end all art is functional; all art serves some purpose.

One day, a 21^st century stoplight or a pair of jeans may be auctioned off in the future as a prime example of contemporary art.  Why not? We currently collect “vintage” items, gather objects from antiquity, and even bring back souvenirs from our travels, all of which we consider art.