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Art Is Life. Life Is Art.

Iranian-Dutch artist Sevdaliza on the ultimate power of art, even in fragile times.

Photography by Tré Koch/Early Morning Riot

sevdaliza

Back in Janaury, around the release of "Oh My God," we were planning an op-ed by Iranian-Dutch artist Sevdaliza on her indentity and multi-dimensionality: she is a refugee, international businesswoman, creative director, artist, freedom fighter, CEO. That idea evolved into this piece, which couldn't be more timely as artists around the world are experiencing new creative and financial challenges.

To all artists,

Art is life, no matter how fragile the times.

Art is a testimony of the human condition. It encompasses all of our hardships, emotions, questions, decisions, perceptions. Love, hatred, life, death. Essentially the way in which we perceive our world, every aspect of humanity can be expressed through art.

These times lay bare why art can’t be dictated nor contained by anything. Creativity isn’t limited by its resources. Creation is a primal source. The authenticity in a painting or a piece of music is felt universally, because it resonates with the same essential being in the creator and the creation. The artist is often referred to as a magician, whereas her art only lays bare the heightened capacity to channel the universal truths.

The common story of life, love and death is what connects us humans.  Art is important because it functions as a holistic portal to a deeper understanding of humans and the self.

sevdaliza

Photo by Zahra Reijs

Traditions, beliefs, values and lifestyle all shine forth through what we produce as art, whether we know it or not. Architecture, fashion, music, film, dance, paintings, prayers.  They all essentially reveal the culture of people.

Art allows us to discover and preserves the delighted mind. While creation lays bare our human fragility. The distance between our most actualized self (creation) and it’s lesser materialization (art) is a vast universe between facts and metaphors. Perhaps this is why we create and materialize art, despite the arising feeling that everything has already been said and done. 

We as a species, cannot simply conceive our lives out of art. We struggle daily to close that gap, although we feel that it might be an impossible task. Art will always be metaphorical, but ultimately, it does not matter. And that exact fact for me, is beautiful, cruel and simple.

Art does not subdue to any kind of utility or desire. Creation only aims at its own existence.

We are all artists some way, somehow. We fight our battles, love and hate, ask our questions, and of course, read the universe in our own unique way.  Art is not a wrong nor right, it is not a distraction, nor a privilege.  It is life itself. 

I hope we understand why art is life and why life is art. Why we should always strive to allow art, to stimulate art, to support art. St(art) today.

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Essay on Art

500 words essay on art.

Each morning we see the sunshine outside and relax while some draw it to feel relaxed. Thus, you see that art is everywhere and anywhere if we look closely. In other words, everything in life is artwork. The essay on art will help us go through the importance of art and its meaning for a better understanding.

essay on art

What is Art?

For as long as humanity has existed, art has been part of our lives. For many years, people have been creating and enjoying art.  It expresses emotions or expression of life. It is one such creation that enables interpretation of any kind.

It is a skill that applies to music, painting, poetry, dance and more. Moreover, nature is no less than art. For instance, if nature creates something unique, it is also art. Artists use their artwork for passing along their feelings.

Thus, art and artists bring value to society and have been doing so throughout history. Art gives us an innovative way to view the world or society around us. Most important thing is that it lets us interpret it on our own individual experiences and associations.

Art is similar to live which has many definitions and examples. What is constant is that art is not perfect or does not revolve around perfection. It is something that continues growing and developing to express emotions, thoughts and human capacities.

Importance of Art

Art comes in many different forms which include audios, visuals and more. Audios comprise songs, music, poems and more whereas visuals include painting, photography, movies and more.

You will notice that we consume a lot of audio art in the form of music, songs and more. It is because they help us to relax our mind. Moreover, it also has the ability to change our mood and brighten it up.

After that, it also motivates us and strengthens our emotions. Poetries are audio arts that help the author express their feelings in writings. We also have music that requires musical instruments to create a piece of art.

Other than that, visual arts help artists communicate with the viewer. It also allows the viewer to interpret the art in their own way. Thus, it invokes a variety of emotions among us. Thus, you see how essential art is for humankind.

Without art, the world would be a dull place. Take the recent pandemic, for example, it was not the sports or news which kept us entertained but the artists. Their work of arts in the form of shows, songs, music and more added meaning to our boring lives.

Therefore, art adds happiness and colours to our lives and save us from the boring monotony of daily life.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Art

All in all, art is universal and can be found everywhere. It is not only for people who exercise work art but for those who consume it. If there were no art, we wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty in things. In other words, art helps us feel relaxed and forget about our problems.

FAQ of Essay on Art

Question 1: How can art help us?

Answer 1: Art can help us in a lot of ways. It can stimulate the release of dopamine in your bodies. This will in turn lower the feelings of depression and increase the feeling of confidence. Moreover, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Question 2: What is the importance of art?

Answer 2: Art is essential as it covers all the developmental domains in child development. Moreover, it helps in physical development and enhancing gross and motor skills. For example, playing with dough can fine-tune your muscle control in your fingers.

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How Art Makes Us More Human: Why Being Creative is So Important in Life

art is life essay

Art is an important part of life, as it helps us to explore our creativity and express ourselves in unique ways. Art is more than just a form of expression - it’s a way of understanding the world and our place in it. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the psychological, social, and cognitive benefits of creating art and how it can bring joy and purpose to our lives.

What is art?

Art is a form of expression that values creativity and self-expression. It can take many forms, from paintings and sculptures to photography and even digital art. Art has the power to move us, to make us feel something, and to tell stories. Art can be used as a way of connecting with ourselves and with each other, and its power lies in its ability to inspire, create joy, and provoke thought. Art is an expression of the human experience, and its value lies in its ability to bring people together.

The connection between art and emotion

The value of art lies in its ability to evoke emotion. Whether you’re looking at a painting, watching a performance, or listening to music, art allows us to experience a range of emotions from joy to sorrow and everything in between. Art can help us make sense of our own emotions and gain a better understanding of how other people are feeling. It can even bring us closer together as it enables us to feel connected with the artist, even if we have never met them. When we interact with art, it can often spark a dialogue, creating a feeling of understanding and empathy within us.

One way in which art can be especially powerful is when it reflects our personal experiences and values. By connecting with a piece of art that speaks to our values, we can often feel a strong emotional connection with it, enabling us to recognize ourselves in the work and appreciate its beauty and meaning.

The link between art and mental health

Art can be an incredibly powerful tool in helping us to manage our mental health and well-being. Studies have found that art can reduce stress, increase self-esteem, and improve our ability to cope with difficult emotions. Art provides a safe space for us to express our thoughts and feelings, allowing us to connect with ourselves on a deeper level.

One of the main ways that art benefits mental health is through its ability to help us process and make sense of our emotions. Art enables us to externalize our inner struggles, allowing us to make sense of them in a new way. By engaging in creative activities, we can gain insight into our own feelings, giving us the opportunity to recognize patterns and reflect on them in a non-judgmental manner. This can help us to gain a better understanding of our emotions and allow us to find healthier ways of managing them.

Art can also help to decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety. Studies have found that engaging in creative activities such as painting, drawing, or sculpting can reduce symptoms of both depression and anxiety. It also can increase positive moods and overall life satisfaction. In addition, engaging in art can give us a sense of control over our lives, providing us with the opportunity to express ourselves without fear of judgment.

Finally, creating art can provide a sense of purpose and accomplishment, helping us to feel connected to something larger than ourselves. Art gives us a way to channel our energy into something meaningful, allowing us to have a tangible outcome at the end of our creative journey. The act of creation itself can be incredibly empowering, giving us the confidence to take on new challenges and set goals for ourselves.

Overall, engaging in art has been proven to have a positive impact on mental health. Through its ability to help us process emotions, decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety, and provide us with a sense of purpose and accomplishment, art has the power to truly transform our lives.

The benefits of creating art

Creating art can be an immensely rewarding experience that has both psychological and physical benefits. It can provide a sense of purpose, satisfaction, and accomplishment. Art can also help reduce stress, build self-confidence, and improve problem solving skills.

Art can be used to express feelings and emotions, helping to better understand and cope with difficult experiences. It can also be used to relieve anxiety, improve mental health, and enhance positive self-image. Additionally, engaging in creative activities encourages creative thinking, which can foster innovation and creativity in other areas of life.

Creating art can also improve physical well-being. It has been linked to reducing chronic pain and boosting the immune system. It can also help with motor coordination, providing relief for conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Furthermore, it can help with hand-eye coordination, increasing dexterity and making everyday tasks easier.

Finally, creating art is a great way to relax and unwind after a long day. It can provide an outlet for pent-up emotions and help to restore a sense of balance and wellbeing. Even if your work is not immediately appreciated, it’s important to remember that art is subjective and it should be created for yourself, not for the approval of others.

The power of art in storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful tool for communication, and art is an important part of this process. Through art, we can express ourselves in ways that words alone cannot do justice to. Art allows us to show the emotion behind our stories, to add nuance and depth to our tales, and to create visuals that can leave a lasting impression.

Stories told through art have a special power. Whether it's through painting, drawing, sculpture, or even film, art has the potential to bring our stories to life in a way that words simply cannot do. With art, we can bring our characters and stories to life in vivid detail, making them more vivid and alive than if we were to tell the story with just words. We can also add layers of symbolism and meaning to our stories which can make them more meaningful and powerful.

Art has been used as a storytelling device for thousands of years. Ancient cultures used drawings and sculptures to tell their stories, and today, the tradition continues with all forms of visual arts. From street art to museum installations, art is used to tell stories of cultures, histories, beliefs, and emotions. By using art to tell stories, we can move people emotionally and capture their attention in a unique way.

In today's world, where we are bombarded with information from all sides, it can be hard to stand out. Art gives us the chance to do that in a powerful way. By creating art, we can tell stories that resonate with people, inspiring them and showing them something new. The power of storytelling through art is immense and should not be underestimated.

The importance of art in education

Art plays an important role in education, as it encourages creative thinking and provides a platform for students to express their feelings and ideas. It can also be used as a form of communication, allowing students to interpret and create meaning from what they observe. Additionally, the visual representation of art helps children to develop skills such as analyzing information, forming arguments, and making connections.

In the classroom, art can help to introduce new concepts, convey complex topics, and build relationships between students. By incorporating art into lesson plans, teachers are able to engage students in learning and make the material more interesting. Art also helps students to identify patterns and practice critical thinking skills by exploring how elements interact to create a bigger picture.

Furthermore, art allows for students to practice collaboration, problem-solving, and social interaction. Through group projects, students can work together to plan, organize, and execute a project from start to finish. This helps to teach kids essential teamwork skills while also giving them the opportunity to explore their individual strengths and weaknesses.

Overall, art is an integral part of education that helps students develop important skills and encourages creative expression. It is an important tool for teaching and can be used in various ways to make learning more engaging and meaningful.

The role of art in social change

The power of art in creating social change is undeniable. It has been used throughout history as a tool to inspire, educate, and challenge the status quo. Art can be used to bring attention to injustices, advocate for different perspectives, and to create positive cultural shifts.

One example of how art has been used to inspire social change is through protest art. This type of art is often seen at protests and marches, or used to create powerful visuals for political campaigns. Protest art can be anything from signs and banners to sculptures, graffiti, or public installations. It can also take the form of music, film, theater, and literature. By combining art and activism, people are able to communicate their message in an effective way that captures the attention of the public.

Another example of how art can be used to create social change is through digital media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. These platforms allow anyone with an internet connection to share their creative works and connect with other like-minded individuals. Art has been used on these platforms to raise awareness about important issues, tell stories that inspire change, and even challenge oppressive systems.

Finally, art can be used to help those who are oppressed find strength and resilience. Art provides a platform for those who are marginalized to tell their stories and express their experiences in a safe space. Through art, people are able to connect with each other and find solidarity in the face of adversity.

Art plays an important role in social change and is an invaluable tool for anyone looking to create positive impact in the world. Whether it’s used to create powerful visuals for a protest or to tell stories that inspire action, art has the power to bring people together and spark meaningful conversations about important topics.

Art is essential for all our lives

No matter who you are or where you come from, art plays a vital role in helping us make sense of our lives and the world around us. Art helps us to express our emotions, to communicate our thoughts and feelings, and to explore the depths of our imaginations. By engaging with art, we can discover more about ourselves and the world around us, and cultivate empathy and understanding.

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art is life essay

Life is Art. Art is Life: Lessons for a Meaningful in Life from Art

This is my final blog post at Wellesley College ever. Instead of a traditional reflection post, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite paper submissions. I wrote this paper for my Philosophy Seminar on the Meaning of Life and thought it summed up what I learned at Wellesley quite well. I’m still in disbelief that it’s all over so soon, but I know the lessons I learned from Wellesley and the friends I made will stay with me forever. So, without further ado – the last post. 

Greetings to President Johnson, Wellesley faculty, trustees, honorees, family, and friends.

And to all my bad-ass, inspiring siblings that make up the Wellesley graduating class of 2021: Congratulations!

Today, I wanted to speak about how art might aid in our quest for attaining a meaningful life post-graduation. You might ask, Shreya, why art? Well, one of my favorite classes in college was the history of modern art. It was certainly impactful and helped me see the world in a different way: Art is all around us. Art is life. Life is art. So, I ask, why not art?

Art is also an important part of the human experience…can you imagine life without it? It’s beautiful, complex, takes a while to understand – just like us. It’s also a meaningful metaphor as a way to make sense of the messiness and complexity of life.

While thinking about art, I’ve realized that I learned four important lessons from it that I want to share with you all today.

The first lesson is the importance of being present, which I know is easier said than done. One of the most peculiar assignments I had during college was to stare at an artwork for one full uninterrupted hour, before I was able to start writing my paper. I wasn’t allowed to pick up the phone, talk to a friend, or do anything else besides stare. Equipped with a piece of paper and a pen, I went to the Davis Museum, where I had to learn the importance of deceleration and immersive attention. For an outgoing, extroverted person like myself (who never stops talking), trust me when I say that it was challenging!  

One hour doing absolutely nothing but gawking might sound crazy at first, but that’s similar to what portrait painter John Singleton Copley did! Due to the long distance between Boston and London, Copley experienced frequent and excessive delays receiving feedback for his paintings (Roberts). However, these delays were formative, leaving a large impact on him and the rest of his career (Roberts).  In a time when we are inundated with information, and many around us are always in a fast-paced mindset, it’s valuable to pause and look harder and deeper.  

  In a chaotic and busy world, lingering can be impactful. New details arise and revelations can occur, which both take time to perceive (Roberts). It also involves immersing yourself in the present: looking at something does not necessarily mean that you’ve seen it for what it is (Roberts). Of course, there’s a fine line between reflection and overthinking. It’s also important to note that lingering isn’t for the past or for the future. It’s for the here and now, focusing on what’s in front of you and determining how you chose to react and respond to the world around you. It allows you to introspect and gain deeper knowledge which might not have been possible if you hadn’t taken more than five seconds to think about it. Processing and critical attention come from patience. I’d like to think the closest thing to pausing time and being fully present is lingering.

So, lesson one: take time to meaningfully and intentionally linger.

Lesson two: there are quite a few parallels between the art of painting and the art of living. Inspired by philosopher Pedro Tabensky, this worldview compares and contrasts the skilled artist and moral expert, in order for us to see that the two share a lot in common.

  Remember those grand plans some of us had when we first came to Wellesley? I’m talking about those meticulously color-coded four-year plans on google sheets. You know the ones? Chronic over planners, brace yourselves for what’s to come.

  According to Tabensky, a skilled painter doesn’t create magnificent works of art by following a set of rules, or a given manual (Tabensky, 59). Instead, they use their own unique manner of approaching the canvas (an acquired skill) to produce their works (Tabensky, 59). They don’t have a set plan that details every aspect of the successful artwork, but rather, the work of art is determined during the process of making (Tabensky, 59). Thus, a skilled artist has the ability to integrate new elements (conflicting or not) into the whole painting and adjust as they go along (Tabensky, 59). One mess up, accident, or splatter isn’t going to ruin anything: instead, it will be incorporated into the work.

For example, think of a watercolor painting: as soon as the brush filled with pigment touches the paper, the pigment takes on a life of its own – it’s unpredictable, affected by a multitude of factors such as the humidity, environment, wetness of the paper. For the artist to have control, they don’t need to micromanage the pigment/watercolor medium and make it what it is not naturally suited for – no, having control involves having the capacity to adapt to the unpredictable nature of the medium (Tabensky, 59).  

The skilled artist is able to use indeterminacy to their advantage (Tabensky, 60). I think that phrase is worth repeating: use the indeterminacy to your advantage. Ease and confidence in the face of unpredictability is a secret superpower that I want you all to hone.

Like a skilled painter, a moral expert (which I hope will be all of you!) is a master in the art of living and has the ability to integrate new circumstances into their already existing life (Tabensky, 61). Like an artist develops the skill of good painting, they have developed the skill of good living.

Moral experts don’t view their lives in a completed form. Instead, moral experts give form to their lives by perfectly balancing and counterbalancing the new elements into their life with the general form of their life up to the present (Tabensky, 62). This skill requires the task of adapting to new, unpredictable, and disruptive circumstances: moral experts have a capacity to overcome and integrate conflict (Tabensky, 63). The moral expert has mastered the technique of good living, a skill learned through practice and experience (Tabensky, 63).

Thus, lives are not well lived by following a set manual, guide, or plan. We must use our skills to get us through the uncertainty that threatens to topple everything that we have achieved so far. An expert in the art of living will be equipped to deal with unforeseen circumstances into their overall composition of life, just like a skilled artist does with their painting.

  If this past year has taught us anything, it’s the importance of resilience. Acquiring the skill of embracing the uncertainty that awaits you and all that is to come is an advantage. Your paint might splatter on your canvas and get on your clothes and make a mess but integrating that into the total work of art is a powerful next step. I encourage you, fellow graduates, to be like the moral experts and skilled artists and integrate that into your own futures!

  Of course, you might not be so easily convinced: Art and living are two hugely different things. The stakes are higher with life compared to art: art is something that can be done over and over again, but you only live once! In response, I say, life and art may be two different things (Tabensky is not saying they’re synonymous) but lessons from one can be applied to the other. Even though we can’t redo our entire lives or start over like a canvas, we have the ability to, since every day could be considered a new start. Graduates, consider this your new start!

Lesson three: Critical thinking – easy in theory, hard in practice.

When an art historian approaches an artwork, they usually have a question in mind. Why did the artist make the decisions they did? How did they incorporate social commentary into their work? Where was it made? What inspired them to create the piece?  By having a question to begin with, the process of understanding the artwork became easier. Questioning what seems obvious at first glance is a good way to springboard into thinking about it critically.  

  I am a cognitive science major. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. One thing cognitive science especially focuses on is decision making – and as humans, we make millions of decisions everyday: from inconsequential ones like what we wear in the morning to life-altering ones like which career path to pursue.

According to a prevalent theory of decision making, there are two systems of decision making: System 1 and System 2 (De Neys, 428). System 1 is your automatic, quick, unconscious way of thinking (De Neys, 428). Susceptible to biases, it’s your brain on autopilot. System 2 is your logical, rational, analytic way of thinking – and it takes more effort (De Neys, 428). A lot more effort.

  We’re sometimes inherently lazy creatures – our default decision-making mode tends to be set to System 1. We get stuck in the mundane. In a way, during college, you’ve been practicing ways to overturn your System 1 thinking. You’ve been reflecting, questioning, musing. You’ve been taught to do so! In art history, when you linger, analyze, ponder, you’re working to overturn System 1. Critically thinking negates System 1. The challenge for you, now, graduates, is to continue doing that, out of the classroom. Not in theory, within the safe walls of college, but in practice, in the “real world.  

Humans love routines. We tend to easily get stuck in cycles and the same mode of thinking. We have to make a conscious effort to train ourselves out of the default. Being curious helps. In the classroom, you’ve used your liberal arts skills to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge to go through the world not as a machine, but as someone who is constantly questioning, evaluating, and reevaluating. As a college student, you’ve put pressure on academic arguments and writings. Doing this in the real world is a lot harder and I implore you to continue to do so. When something seemingly straightforward is presented – take a moment to question it.

And lesson four, the final lesson: The numerous ways to make meaning are ultimately up to you.

One of my favorite 20 th century art history movements is conceptual art. A key part of conceptual art is that the idea behind the work of art is more important than the finished object itself (MoMA). In other words, the concept of the work takes precedence over traditional techniques, materials, and aesthetics.

  Joseph Kosuth, a prominent conceptual artist, stated, “art is making meaning,” emphasizing ideas over the convention that art should reflect the artist’s skill or be pleasing or beautiful in some way (MoMA). Kosuth also was concerned that people accepted art as art because they were placed in museums, so he challenged the authority of art institutions to define objects as art (MoMA). One of his art projects involved three different representations of a chair: an actual chair, a photograph of the chair, and a dictionary definition of the word “chair” (MoMA).

Kosuth confronted the notion that art gets meaning from context, or by being placed in a white-walled museum. He questioned the nature of art, directing the viewer away from the form of art and what it should look like to the idea of art. Context and meaning shifted and suddenly existed in tandem with its audience. All at once, art’s meaning became up to you, the viewer, and not the context in which it was placed or how it looked.

  Conceptual art tells us that meaning doesn’t come from being placed in a museum. Meaning is up to the viewer and their ideas and attitudes in response to the artwork. The white walls of the museums, the external validation: some could say those have been necessary for objective meaning. But just as conceptual art challenged the traditional view of art and placing them in museums for meaning, I urge you to challenge what you think should be your version of a meaningful life. Think outside the white cube or the traditional norm. Push aside all expectations or the status quo or objectivity. Just like there was no one way conceptual art should look like, there is no one way of what a meaningful life should be. Your attitude can and should determine what you decide to be meaningful in your life – nothing else. And although not everyone might agree on what that meaningfulness entails, if you’re being true to yourself, it ultimately doesn’t matter.

  Well graduates, we’ve made it to the end of the four life lessons found in art. Congratulations on completing the last four years and beginning your wonderful journey that starts today. You’ve come so far already. On the path forward, remember to: linger a little while longer, embrace uncertainty, question the default, and make meaning from what matters to you. All of the lessons I shared with you today are skills that need to be acquired: strengthened with practice, important to always keep in mind as you go through trials and tribulations in life. And the lessons were hidden in the most beautiful, unassuming place of all: art. One last bit of advice: in life, not everything is going to turn out perfect, so cherish the moments that seem like they are. Oh, and visit more art museums. 🙂 

Thank you Wellesley for all you have taught me these past four years. Onto the next adventure!

art is life essay

Bibliography

Roberts, Jennifer. “ The Power of Patience.” Harvard Magazine. 2013.          

Tabensky, Pedro. “Parallels Between Living and Painting.” The Journal of Value Inquiry . 37: 59–68. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.

De Neys, Wim. “Dual processing in reasoning: Two systems but one reasoner.” Psychological Science. 17: 428-433. 2006.  

“One and Three Chairs”. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Learning. First published 2006.

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THE big ideas: Why Does Art Matter?

Art Is How We Justify Our Existence

Our technologies are tools. But our creative works carry the wisdom of the world.

art is life essay

By David Zwirner

Mr. Zwirner is an art dealer.

This is the essay is part of The Big Ideas , a special section of The Times’s philosophy series, The Stone , in which more than a dozen artists, writers and thinkers answer the question, “Why does art matter?” The entire series can be found here .

When I agreed to write this essay, little did I know that when I finally sat down to tackle it all my favorite museums would be closed to the public, along with every library, theater, concert hall and movie house and, of course, the galleries I own. It’s a bit like our world faded abruptly and unexpectedly from vivid color to black and white.

But it dawned on me that there could hardly be a better moment to reflect upon the importance of art — or, better still, culture itself — than in the face of its almost complete physical absence.

This total loss of actual, palpable experiences with art is like a kind of withdrawal for me. The experience and appreciation — the need — for culture feels like it’s hard-wired into my existence and, I’d like to believe, hard-wired into our species. Art is not something that happens at the periphery of our lives. It’s actually the thing that’s right there in the center, a veritable engine.

It’s like my mother once said: “Die Kunst ist unsere Daseinsberechtigung.” Art is how we justify our existence.

We’ve been creating art for much longer than recorded history. The earliest surviving visual art, as in the cave paintings of Sulawesi in Indonesia and El Castillo in Spain, date back to roughly 40,000 years ago. I have to assume there’s earlier work that we don’t yet know about. Our great rivals in the evolutionary race, the Neanderthals, were stronger, bigger and had larger skulls than us, but left behind no sophisticated tools and very little in the way of artifacts. One argument holds that the Neanderthal imagination was limited, and that Homo sapiens’ more complex and adventurous way of thinking — our creativity — is what moved us to the forefront among the human species.

For me, art is not just sensory stimulation. I believe it’s most gratifying as an intellectual pursuit. Great art is, by definition, complex, and it expects work from us when we engage with it. There is this wonderful moment, one that I have missed so much lately, when you stand before a work of art and, suddenly, the work is speaking back to you. Great works carry with them so many messages and meanings. And often those messages survive for centuries. Or — even more mysteriously — they change as the years and decades pass, leaving their power and import somehow undiminished.

Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” comes to mind, as does the intense pleasure I’ve experienced every time I’ve seen it, at different stages of my life, at the Prado museum in Madrid. Thinking about “Las Meninas” today, amid the new reality of a pandemic, reminds me how much I look forward to seeing works of art in their physical spaces again. There is no substitute for the artwork’s materiality, which ultimately and invariably relates to our senses, our bodies and our analytical prowess and intellectual curiosity.

The appreciation of art is, more often than not, a communal experience. It brings us together — when we go to museums, to openings, to concerts, to movies or to the ballet or theater. And we argue, and sometimes we fight, but we certainly don’t wage war over artistic expression. I would contend that art and culture are the most important vehicles by which we come to understand one another. They make us curious about that which is different or unfamiliar, and ultimately allow us to accept it, even embrace it. Isn’t it telling that those societies most afraid of “the other” — the Nazis, Stalin’s Soviet Union, the Chinese under Mao — were not able to bring forth any significant cultural artifacts? Yet an abundance of work created in resistance to such ideologies can still dominate our cultural discourse.

Lately, a discussion has raged about how art and culture stack up against the hard sciences. More ominously, the question is weighing on the colleges and universities of the United States, where the humanities are playing an ever smaller role. That’s a dangerous proposition. While the sciences have brought into this world so many wonderful things, they are also implicated when it comes to our most sinister achievements — nuclear warfare, genetic manipulation and the degradation of nature.

While art can reach into the darkest places of the human psyche, it does so to help us understand and hopefully transcend. Art lifts us up. In the end, I think its mission is simply to make us better people.

The machines have proven to be absolutely amazing during a pandemic, connecting us, informing us and entertaining us, but in the end they are limited. They’re born of science and they have no imaginations. We have to imagine for them.

Who knows what the future will bring? If we Homo sapiens are challenged again, it will not be by the Neanderthal — nor by any other species — but by the machines we invented ourselves. Winning that battle can’t be done without firing up the most important engines we possess — culture and creativity — because reason is born out of our cultural experiences. Works of art carry with them the wisdom of the world.

This difficult period we have been in recently will pass, and the exchanges I’ve had with visual artists have given me some of my most hopeful moments. I’ve reached many in their studios, while they were working. They certainly seemed happy to hear from me, and our conversations have been perfectly polite; still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was interrupting them. They had more important things to do than talk to me. They were making art.

I can’t wait to see what they’ve been working on. I promise I will show it to you as soon as I can.

David Zwirner is an art dealer with galleries in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.

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Art Is Life

Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night

By Jerry Saltz

By jerry saltz read by jerry saltz and mark bramhall, category: art, category: art | audiobooks.

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Nov 01, 2022 | 962 Minutes | ISBN 9780593612415 --> Buy

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Art Is Life by Jerry Saltz

Nov 01, 2022 | ISBN 9780593086490

Nov 01, 2022 | ISBN 9780593086506

Nov 01, 2022 | ISBN 9780593612415

962 Minutes

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About Art Is Life

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of How to Be an Artist : a deliciously readable survey of the art world in turbulent times Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists, and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary readers to fine art as few critics have. An early champion of forgotten and overlooked women artists, he has also celebrated the pioneering work of African American, LGBTQ+, and other long-marginalized creators. Sotheby’s Institute of Art has called him, simply, “ the art critic.”    Now, in Art Is Life , Jerry Saltz draws on two decades of work to offer a real-time survey of contemporary art as a barometer of our times. Chronicling a period punctuated by dramatic turning points—from the cultural reset of 9/11 to the rolling social crises of today—Saltz traces how visionary artists have both documented and challenged the culture. Art Is Life offers Saltz’s eye-opening appraisals of trailblazers like Kara Walker, David Wojnarowicz, Hilma af Klint, and Jasper Johns; provocateurs like Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, and Marina Abramović; and visionaries like Jackson Pollock, Bill Traylor, and Willem de Kooning. Saltz celebrates landmarks like the Obama portraits by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, writes searchingly about disturbing moments such as the Ankara gallery assassination, and offers surprising takes on figures from Thomas Kinkade to Kim Kardashian. And he shares stories of his own haunted childhood, his time as a “failed artist,” and his epiphanies upon beholding work by Botticelli, Delacroix, and the cave painters of Niaux.    With his signature blend of candor and conviction, Jerry Saltz argues in Art Is Life for the importance of the fearless artist—reminding us that art is a kind of channeled voice of human experience, a necessary window onto our times. The result is an openhearted and irresistibly readable appraisal by one of our most important cultural observers.

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Also by jerry saltz.

How to Be an Artist

About Jerry Saltz

Jerry Saltz is the senior art critic at New York magazine and its entertainment site Vulture. He is the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism and a 2019 National Magazine Award. Before joining New York in 2007, Saltz had been art critic for The Village Voice since… More about Jerry Saltz

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Praise for Art is Life : “From Kara Walker to Georgia O’Keeffe to Andy Warhol, Saltz surveys the contemporary art world with brilliant brush strokes.” — TIME “Whether considering a poorly understood painter from history or assessing the new and controversial, Saltz manages to impart his belief that art involves story, and storymaking is the stuff of life. His philosophy, like the man himself, is ageless.” — Los Angeles Times “A love letter to the art that, for Saltz, makes all the wheeling and dealing worth putting up with. . . . Saltz [has a] rare ability to articulate the mysterious alchemy of great art, the ways in which looking at some pigment on canvas can somehow blow open doors within the soul to reveal expansive, unknown places.” — New York Times Book Review “ Art is Life is a near-perfect summary of a singularly critical voice. . . . despite writing about a medium that tends more toward solemn nods than squeals of excitement, Jerry Saltz can be very fun to read.” — Chicago Tribune “[Saltz] looks at the various crises and New York City’s art scene—the aftermath of 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, the coronavirus pandemic—and depicts an ebullient yet fragile world undergoing perpetual reinvention. He writes formidable portraits of people such as Beauford Delaney and describes the jaw-dropping splendor of Paleolithic cave paintings in Niaux, France. He worships artwork while denouncing the excesses of its business, taking pleasure in ridiculing the frequently obscene industry’s theatrical auctions and overinflated cycle of openings, biennials, and fairs.” — Farah  Abdessamad, The Atlantic “Personal and entertaining.” — Garden & Gun “Eminently accessible, often humorous (he is a master of the sharp parenthetical aside), and stimulating. The art world is convoluted, but Saltz cuts right through it.” — Publishers Weekly “Illuminating . . . A sweeping survey and fervent defense of the value of art in modern life.” — Kirkus Reviews “There’s no one quite like Saltz. . . . He’s the best art critic working today.” — Shelf Awareness Praise for Jerry Saltz:   “The world’s most famous and celebrated contemporary art critic.” — GQ   “One of the most powerful art critics today.” — Time Out “A critic of the people, bringing art to a broader audience.” — Architectural Digest

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Arts on the Brain

Emory undergrads experience & explore!

How does art affect us?

It’s no secret that art can impact lots of people’s lives in very meaningful and deep ways. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” can attest to this much at the very least. Whether you think art is paint on a canvas or scenes from the nature that surrounds you, what we as a society deem art has an impact on us all.

Art is actually part of what historians deem necessary for a group of people to be considered a society! Art, along with writing, cities, government, religion, and social structure, is the very basis of life as we as humans have known it for millennia. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that art has both a mental and physical effect on the human being. 

To begin, music can have a significant effect on concentration. A lot of research has gone into its ability to help people hone their concentration, and theories such as the Mozart effect suggest that this effect extends to even spatial awareness. Physically, dancing is something that most people universally feel compelled to do when hearing a catchy beat. However, there is a physical effect besides dancing that not everyone feels: goosebumps. Studies suggest that 50% of all people experience this phenomena (Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, Zatorre, 2011), and is a result of excitement from music. It was found that dopamine production was very high while participants were listening to music, and this could suggest why music has been such a large part of cultures across the ages. 

Visual art can produce a lot of the same effects that music does. General feelings of happiness and calmness can be found and utilized via art therapy. Many people use these benefits of art to quell distress and solve problems in their own lives, and part of this effect is suggested to be caused by being involved in something tangible (Malchiodi, 2012). Tangibility is something that isn’t often seen when dealing with mental issues. Most all of our mental issues stem from the chemicals within us that dictate how we view situations and the reactions we have in regards to them, and while it may be possible to visualize how these chemicals work, you cannot mold your reactions and chemical outputs like you can mold a block of clay or paint a piece of canvas. Control is something that many who are struggling with internal battles such as mental illness or grief are desiring to achieve, and art therapy and other physical-emotional therapies can help achieve a more tangible version of this.

The picture I’ve included displays the ventral striatum, which has also been shown to be activated and produce dopamine when shown art via a study at Emory (Eastman, 2011). When shown a photograph versus an artistic rendition of the subject, participants were seen to have much more activity in the ventral striatum while looking at the art. This part of your brain is very close to the midbrain and plays a role in the decision making vs reward system. So, looking at art may actually be a reward from our brain’s point of view!

Overall, art is an essential part of the human experience. Even if it doesn’t play a big role in someone’s personal life, art shapes the world around us and almost everything we experience when we interact with others. Art impacts what’s on the T.V. when you turn it on, it impacts what you see in textbooks on ancient civilizations (be it cave paintings, classical works, or folk art), it impacts what comes on on your radio and what reaches the tops of the charts on your streaming services. Art impacts us all, whether it makes you sad, happy, or anywhere in between. 

Eastman Q. 2011 Jan 6. Viewing Art Activates Brain’s Reward Circuits.

Malchiodi CA. 2012. Handbook of Art Therapy, Second Edition.

Salimpoor VN, Benovoy M, Larcher K, Dagher A, Zatorre RJ. 2011. Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience 14:257–262.

3 Comments Add yours

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I love the subject of you blog post! I find it fascinating that humain beings are related by art. You do not need to speak the same language as the artist to understand his work. However, it is very personal at the same time since everyone has their own interpretation of what they see. It is also true art can become very useful for our everyday life, with Art Therapy for example. We can see the emotional impact it can have on humain beings.

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Katie, fascinating ideas! I totally agree with what you explained about how art has a significant impact on our lives even if many of us don’t think about it usually. Art, as a way of expression,. should be taken more seriously as it is inseparable from our daily life. We can see art almost everywhere around us and in almost everything we do. I liked how you introduce and literate the ideas on that. I am inspired in many ways!

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I really like your post. The concept and definition of art is very broad and obscure, but it is also what makes it so interesting. Ranging from visual, to auditory, to a combo of both, or even though, art can mean a lot of things, yet they are hoping to communicate a message or feeling through the works. I think what is important, like what you mentioned in the end, is to realize the essential role of all forms of arts in our lives and appreciation the impacts they bring.

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Gagosian Quarterly

Spring 2024 Issue

The beginning: A life in art

Delphine huisinga and alison mcdonald chart larry gagosian’s formative years on the west coast and contextualize the los angeles art scene in the mid-1970s..

art is life essay

Exhibition poster for Portraits: 1969–1975 at Art Center College of Design, Westwood-Broxton Gallery, Pasadena, March 26–April 18, 1976

art is life essay

A freelance art researcher based in New York, Delphine Huisinga has been working closely with the Gagosian publications team on a series of ongoing projects for the past five years. She was also the researcher for the fourth volume of John Richardson’s Life of Picasso . Photo: Pamela Berkovic

art is life essay

Alison McDonald  is the Chief Creative Officer at Gagosian and has overseen marketing and publications at the gallery since 2002. During her tenure she has worked closely with Larry Gagosian to shape every aspect of the gallery’s extensive publishing program and has personally overseen more than five hundred books dedicated to the gallery’s artists. In 2020, McDonald was included in the Observer ’s Arts Power 50.

See all Articles

Larry Gagosian has played a fundamental role in shaping the art world of our time. Much has been made of his ambition, instincts, and perseverance right from the beginning of his career: he took risks, always worked with the best artists he could, and established connections between important East Coast artists and West Coast collectors; and he supported performance art, Conceptual art, and photography, all three of which were having pivotal moments in the 1970s, when he started out. This essay shines new light on some of the key moments of his early career, specifically between 1972 and 1977.

The date most often given as the beginning of Larry’s career as an art dealer is 1980, when he opened the Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. As early as 1972, though, he had been working to find ways to support creatives and to build a business of his own. Early on he was presenting exhibitions and works by artists who had or would have outstanding careers, including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Judy Chicago, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Lee Friedlander, Barbara Kruger, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, and others. He was selling art to some of the most important collectors on the West Coast before he turned thirty.

Larry spent his childhood in downtown Los Angeles and his teenage years in the Valley. His father was a municipal accountant who later trained to be a stockbroker; his mother was an actress. He spent little to no time in museums as a child and had no training in art history. He graduated from UCLA in 1969 with a degree in English literature. After graduation he took various jobs, including working as the assistant manager in a record store, boxing groceries in a supermarket, and taking the midnight shift at a gas station. For over a year he worked in an entry-level role at the William Morris Agency for $90 a week, supervised briefly by Michael Ovitz, though he also worked for Stan Kamen, reading manuscripts and answering phones. Larry recently recalled, “Kamen was an agent with one of the best client lists in Hollywood at the time. He represented Warren Beatty, Elliott Gould, Steve McQueen, and others. It was a lot of fun to work with him because I was able to meet really cool people.” 1 He left that job to work as a parking attendant in Westwood, which paid more money.

The part of the story that is less well-known starts in 1972, when he opened the Patio (also called the Open Gallery), an outdoor market in a lovely old Spanish building in the center of Westwood Village, where movie theaters and ice cream parlors brought the neighborhood to life. The building had an L-shaped courtyard running from one street to another, and Larry rented this open-air patio space for $75 a month—which he borrowed from his mother—so that he could offer artisans a place to sell their goods. He even took out a restaurant license so that his sister could sell apricots there. Larry recently mentioned that he showed watercolors by Henry Miller at the Patio: “I found out that Henry Miller lived in Santa Monica Canyon and he was a literary hero of mine. It wasn’t necessarily the most impressive art that I had ever seen, but I was fascinated by writers who made art as well.” 2

The Los Angeles Times dedicated an article to the Patio:

Every night this month and on weekends for the rest of the year about 25 craftsmen have been paying Gagosian $6 plus 10% of their gross to shiver and sell to the shopping traffic born of Westwood theaters, restaurants, and college shops. . . . Besides its obvious commercial value, the gallery seems to function on other levels as well. Gagosian believes it has replaced the old Free Press bookstore as the last place in Westwood for hanging out without buying anything. . . . They had Anthony Marks’ paintings on mirror (he did a one man show in London) and Ron Cobb (the cartoonist for the Free Press) has exhibited here. 3

Even at this earliest moment we can see traces of Larry’s business acumen and his affinity for the visual arts. And he must have been onto something: he got a write-up in a major newspaper.

At the Patio, Larry noticed vendors selling posters: they were buying the posters for a couple of dollars each, framing them, and selling them for fifteen or twenty dollars each. He could see that they were making good money, so he went into the business and started making a couple of hundred dollars a night, plus bringing in rent from the spaces on the Patio. As Dodie Kazanjian would write in Vogue over fifteen years later, “He was living in the same eighty-dollar a month apartment, a stone’s throw from the beach in Venice. He was reading all the time (‘I was very, very deep into literature and music’), enjoying the beach, ‘hanging out,’ playing tournament chess, and talking about writers until two in the morning in coffee shops. (‘I sound like a beatnik. I wasn’t.’)” 4

He had enormous energy and extraordinary ambition. Once he set his mind to something, there was no stopping him. Constance Lewallen

To better understand the art scene that Gagosian entered in Los Angeles in the 1970s, we might want to go back briefly to the mid-1950s. In 1955, Los Angeles had plenty of homegrown artists, but few galleries and no museum dedicated to contemporary art. The prosperity of the time, combined with the ever expanding entertainment industry in the city, would grow the cultural economy. In 1957, Walter Hopps and the artist Ed Kienholz opened the Ferus gallery; the following year, Irving Blum moved from New York and purchased Kienholz’s share of the business. The Ferus scene nurtured LA-based artists including John Altoon, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Ed Moses, and Ken Price. In 1959, Virginia Dwan—later an early champion of Conceptual art, Minimalism, and Earthworks—opened her first gallery, finding space in Westwood. She would show plenty of work by local artists while also introducing artists from New York and Europe to LA.

In the 1960s the West Coast scene fostered a whole generation of artists, including Chicago, Celmins, Nauman, Ruscha, John Baldessari, David Hockney, and so many more. At the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962, Hopps organized the first-ever group show of Pop art in the United States,  New Painting of Common Objects . By the middle of the decade the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art had divided into two institutions, one of them the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1965, Artforum magazine moved down from San Francisco into an office above the Ferus Gallery.

Even while the arts community flourished, it was a challenging time in the city. The Vietnam War was tearing the country apart; young men were being drafted against the backdrop of antiwar protests. The Manson-family murders and random acts of violence heightened the looming sense of fear that haunted residents.

During this period, the Watts neighborhood in southern Los Angeles was home to a vibrant Black community and to a number of Black artists working in assemblage who would later prove hugely influential, including Melvin Edwards, David Hammons, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar. But the devastation caused by the Watts rebellion of 1965—which witnessed brutal violence, widespread looting, arson, over thirty deaths, and more than $40 million in property damage—left a calamitous mark on the community. When asked about the rioting, Larry has said, “In 1965 I was at UCLA, and the Watts riots [made a deep impression] on me. The intensity and scope of it was beyond anything that I had ever seen or experienced. I’ll never forget it.” 5

This was also a time of community building in the Latino community. In the East Los Angeles Walkouts (or Chicano Blowouts) of March 1968, 15,000 students protested unequal educational opportunities in high schools, ultimately presenting a list of demands to the city’s Board of Education. The first Chicano art gallery, established in East Los Angeles in 1969, actively promoted the growing movement, celebrating artists whose works responded to social protest and community empowerment.

The LA gallery scene changed in the early 1970s as the country went into an economic recession. Many of the galleries that had helped to develop the city’s reputation as a cultural center closed, or moved to New York or Europe; these included Ferus, Rolf Nelson, Virginia Dwan, Felix Landau, and Eugenia Butler. This shift likely played a role in opening up more opportunities for younger dealers to make their mark. Describing the hard turn taken by the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1970s, the West Coast art critic Peter Plagens wrote, “The West Coast hit the late sixties with some optimism: Los Angeles had established itself as the ‘second city’ of American art and expected to provide for the coming art-and-technology boom. But a funny thing happened on the way to the pantheon: The West Coast art scene hit the skids—not collapsing, but flattening out. The most noticeable leveling took place in Los Angeles, where hopes were raised highest.” 6

By December of 1974, Larry had opened a small indoor gallery in the same building complex as the Patio, at 1017 Broxton Avenue. Prints on Broxton was advertised as “selling contemporary prints, custom frames, and original graphics, by a wide range of artists, including Hundertwasser, [Frank] Stella, [Victor] Vasarely, [Joe] Goode, [Paul] Wunderlich, and Chicago.” 7 By that point the business focused on making custom frames and selling signed lithographs for several hundred dollars each. Kim Gordon, who would cofound the iconic band Sonic Youth a few years later, was one of the framers. She remembered this period in her memoir Girl in a Band : “Frame after frame—I must have assembled thousands of those things, and the dimensions twenty-four by thirty-six are still carved in my brain.”

Even when he only had one wall to show on, he did it well. Doug Cramer

In 1975, Larry turned thirty years old. His energy for business was expanding, his taste in art was growing more sophisticated, and he started paying close attention to art magazines. One day he was flipping through  Art in America  or Artforum and saw photographs by Ralph Gibson. The images made an impression on him and he felt they would make a beautiful exhibition in Westwood Village. Gibson lived in New York so Larry gave him a call, they had a great conversation, and Gibson invited him to make a studio visit. Larry had not been to New York more than once but he made the trip, went to Gibson’s loft on West Broadway, and left with an Agfa box filled with photographs. He brought these back to Los Angeles, had them framed, mounted the exhibition Ralph Gibson: New Directions , and brought Gibson out for the opening. A few of the images were a bit risqué, which shocked the landlord, who almost shut the show down before it opened; but Larry convinced him that the work was in museum collections, which impressed him enough to leave it alone. Robert Mautner at Artweek reviewed the show: “Although a few of the better known images from the books have been included in his show at ‘Prints on Broxton’ in Westwood village, the most exciting aspect of the exhibit is the new work which is being presented for the first time in this area. . . . the exhibit is a must for Los Angeles viewers.” 9 That is a remarkable review for the first serious exhibition that Larry put together. And he sold all of the prints.

It turned out that Gibson was repped by Castelli Graphics, the dedicated prints and photography gallery of Leo Castelli. This was fortuitous for Larry because the introduction to Castelli led to a long and prosperous working relationship between the dealers. To broaden the reach of his gallery’s artists beyond New York, Castelli had collaborated with West Coast galleries since the 1960s, most significantly with Blum of Ferus. By the time he met Larry there was a precedent in place for a working relationship that would allow Larry to present Castelli’s artists to Los Angeles audiences, creating new market opportunities for them, although this wouldn’t begin until the 1980s.

In that same year of 1975, Larry hired Constance Lewallen, who had worked for Klaus Kertess at the legendary Bykert Gallery in New York before moving to Los Angeles in 1972. She had taught a few art-history classes at Santa Monica College and was working at Cirrus Editions, which published prints with some of the best artists in Southern California. Larry persuaded her to leave Cirrus and come to work for him, helping to put her on a path to becoming an influential bicoastal curator of contemporary art. At Prints on Broxton, she organized the exhibitions while he took care of the business side: “He didn’t know much,” she would remember, “but he sure learned fast. He had good instincts before he had the knowledge and that intensity was always there. He read and read and read. He had enormous energy and extraordinary ambition. Once he set his mind to something, there was no stopping him.” 10 It was a bold move for a young businessman who had run a gallery for less than a year to hire a budding young curator. Lewallen “had good ideas,” Michael Auping writes, “and Gagosian, who was at an early point in his own career, embraced them. He had offered her a big raise (a whopping $25 more a week, which was a lot back then) to leave her previous job and she remembered that time fondly, even sometimes recalling, ‘He let me bring my kids to work when they weren’t in school and I couldn’t get a babysitter.’ In those early years, Connie’s expertise was influential in shaping the gallery’s burgeoning program, which spanned between classic modernism and the new avant-garde.” 11 Looking back over Larry’s career, one can see that he has always sought guidance and advice from people he respects, particularly by hiring museum-level curators. This pattern has continued into the present day, with some of the most sophisticated scholars and curators of our time joining his gallery over the years.

In July of 1975, Larry put together a summer group show of drawings, paintings, and assemblage that marked the first time he showed work by Burden, Nauman, and Ruscha, among others. By that point Burden had already developed a reputation for his unnerving performance art. Auping, then a local grad student in art history, remembers,

Along came Chris, who woke us all up from our meditations. You could not ignore his drama and I have no doubt that he was conscious of constituting an assault on Light and Space as a term and a phenomenon. . . . [Robert] Irwin taught on and off at the University of California, Irvine, when Chris was getting his masters there. It’s easy for me to see now that his grueling masters show—which consisted of Five Day Locker Piece ( 1971), in which he locked himself in one of the school’s small portfolio lockers for five days—was a twisted reaction to Irwin’s and James Turrell’s use of a NASA anechoic chamber to sensitize themselves to space and light. 12

Lewallen once recalled the early days of working with Burden: “I remember one day Chris Burden came and wanted to air a TV ‘commercial’ where he’d say, ‘Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Chris Burden!’ He sat at my little desk at the Gagosian Gallery after it moved to La Cienega Boulevard, and together we called TV stations and bought ad slots. You could get a 2:00 am slot for $50 or something.” 13

In August of 1975, Prints on Broxton became Broxton Gallery, marking both the success of Larry’s first year in the space and a notable shift in his approach to the business. Larry says, “I had started showing and selling more high-end works of art. The business was shifting away from prints and editions, and though there were plenty of shows of photography, they were more serious exhibitions.” 14 Broxton Gallery’s first show was Duane Michals: Photographs . Michals had enjoyed a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) just a few years earlier.

A few months later Larry brought together the complete lithographic works of Vija Celmins, an exhibition that many years later he would remember as pivotal: “My first show that wasn’t photographic was Vija Celmins. I really loved Vija Celmins’s work, and I was able to assemble her entire oeuvre of graphic work.” 15 Lewallen recalled meeting Larry for the first time when she was working at Cirrus Editions:

[Cirrus] was printing artists like Ed Ruscha and Vija Celmins at the time as well as lots of younger LA artists. . . . that’s when I met Larry Gagosian, who nobody knew then. He had a poster gallery in Westwood and wanted to buy Vija Celmins’s long ocean lithograph from Cirrus. It’s a beautiful print. The edition had sold out but he would call all the time wanting to buy it, and I’d say, “You know, I have to tell you, we just don’t have any available.” He was relentless. And finally I told Jean Milant, who was the Cirrus’s founder and director, “This guy is driving me crazy. Can’t you find a proof or something?” And he did. He actually found an artist’s proof. So one day Larry called and I said, “You’re not going to believe this, but we actually do have a print to sell you.” So then he had the gall to say, “Will you deliver it to me?” . . . It turns out that I was living close to his shop, so I agreed. And the funny part is that [after he hired me] there was one month he couldn’t pay me, and he gave me that print. 16

He started collecting more seriously, acquiring Joseph Beuys’s Felt Suit (1970), for instance, and he was careful to deal with artists whose work captured his attention, excited him, and pushed at the edges: “Something that I’ve always paid attention to is to work with the most important artist that I could.” 17 He didn’t shy away from challenges and his enthusiasm for ambitious artists such as Burden began to push them to think bigger. He also found ways to cultivate the collections of clients. As early as 1976, he started selling to David Geffen, whom he met through Kamen, one of his former bosses at William Morris. He also grabbed the attention of Barry Lowen, a television executive who spotted the Beuys suit in the window of his gallery. Lowen in turn made the introduction to Doug Cramer. And Steve Martin was active on the scene as well, often stopping by the gallery to see the shows, discuss the art, and get to know Larry.

Larry was leaning into his presence on the West Coast as a way to attract East Coast artists with solid reputations and followings, expanding their audience reach and connecting them with a serious new client base. Alison McDonald

The gallery was getting traction in the media, with reviews coming in for most of Larry’s exhibitions. When he opened a Friedlander show in 1976, an Artweek reviewer observed, “The Friedlander exhibit at Broxton Gallery provides a rare opportunity for west coast viewers to experience the rare depth and insight of this well-known east coast artist.” 18 At this point Friedlander had an established reputation in New York; along with Arbus and Garry Winogrand, he had been the subject of John Szarkowski’s groundbreaking New Documents exhibition at MoMA in 1967, endorsed as one of a new generation of photographers focused less on documenting “truths” than on examining their own perceptions of and interactions with the world. With shows like this one, Larry was leaning into his presence on the West Coast as a way to attract East Coast artists with solid reputations and followings, expanding their audience reach and connecting them with a serious new client base.

Larry first encountered Avedon’s murals in New York’s Marlborough Gallery in 1975, in the photographer’s first major show at a commercial gallery. Each of the four murals on view depicted a row of larger-than-life figures lined up side-by-side, towering over the observer. One of them showed eleven members of the Mission Council, a group of generals, diplomats, and other officials responsible for running the Vietnam War. This work was shown alongside a mural of the Chicago Seven, a group of men who had protested that war and had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to incite riot. The show captured the tension of the era and participated in the evolution of photography as an accepted medium of fine art. Larry wanted to bring it to Los Angeles, as he had successfully done with other exhibitions:

Stunned by their scale and audacity, I made immediate inquiries about bringing the exhibition to the West Coast, where I was based at the time. My first gallery in Los Angeles was diminutive, far too small to accommodate these photographs of unprecedented scale, but I managed to negotiate for the exhibition to travel to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where it opened in the spring of 1976, before continuing on to Seattle, Tokyo, and Montreal. At the same time, I presented an exhibition of smaller, related works in my gallery, some of which remain cornerstones of my personal collection to this day. 19

The attention won by these and the Marlborough shows helped to propel the institutional recognition of an overtly political body of work. They came at a critical moment in Avedon’s career, solidifying his reputation beyond the fashion photography that had catapulted him to early success. Larry was well positioned in the south-California art scene and saw a role he could play for the artist at that moment: he was attuned to the acclaim and audience reach that Avedon had achieved in other aspects of his career, he understood the region’s institutional dynamics, he embraced Avedon’s powerful imagery, and he recognized the potential for all involved. In March of 1976, around the time of the Pasadena exhibition, he ran an ad in the Los Angeles Times : “Broxton Gallery is the exclusive southern California representative of Richard Avedon.” 20

Larry’s interest in photography persisted throughout the 1970s. In May of 1976 he hosted Broxton Sequences: Sequential Imagery in Photography , which presented eighteen photographers, including celebrated figures such as Michals, Lynda Benglis, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Walker Evans, and more. That July he showed works by Bill Brandt, Jo Ann Callis, and Abigail Perlmutter; and in 1977 he exhibited color photographs by William Christenberry, William Eggleston, John Gossage, Joel Meyerowitz, Nicholas Nixon, and Stephen Shore. Between 1975 and 1977 he hosted fifteen photography exhibitions, including solo presentations by Bevan Davies, Larry Fink, Steve Kahn, André Kertész, and, twice, Elyn Zimmerman.

One day Chris Burden came and wanted to air a TV commercial. . . . He sat at my little desk at Gagosian and together we called TV stations and bought ad slots. Constance Lewallen

In 1976 Larry opened Robert Wilhite: Telephone performance OR Attendance by telephone only , a performance-based work that could only be viewed in the form of verbal descriptions spoken by the artist to callers on the telephone—the space’s windows were blocked out, no two callers got the same description, and half the callers received a sound work created for the event. Wilhite had attended UCLA and had been a student of Bell, Irwin, and Moses; in 1977, when Burden curated a show of performance art at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art titled Live from L.A. , he invited Wilhite to participate. Even this early in Larry’s career, we witness his embrace of performance and conceptual works, which are often set outside commercial parameters and produce no physical objects that can be sold. His desire to support artists working in this way clearly laid the groundwork for future interactions with artists such as Walter De Maria, whom Larry would champion in the future.

Brice Marden was represented in a group show at the gallery, alongside Ruscha and other artists, as early as 1976. Curated by Lewallen and titled Works on Paper: East and West Coast Artists , the show brought together an impressive selection of artists working across styles, ranging from expressionist abstraction to sharp-focused realism. A review describes it as presenting “a pluralist panorama of what drawing is and dares to be these days.” 21 Larry had shown work by Ruscha in a group show as early as 1975, then again in Lewallen’s exhibition in 1976.

Originally from Oklahoma, by the 1970s Ruscha was a fixture in the Los Angeles art community. He had met Castelli in 1961, had had his first solo show at Ferus in 1963, had enjoyed success at a young age, and his reputation was still on the rise. While riffing on Pop art and other art-historical references, his work was entirely unique. Blum recalls, “Ed Ruscha came to my attention in 1963. He was doing fascinating work. Those are the years of the big Twentieth Century Fox logo, the mural-size Standard-station paintings, the large painting of the L.A. County Museum on fire.” 22 In the 1970s, Ruscha was exhibiting with Castelli in New York and at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles, but he started working with Larry in small ways, such as group exhibitions. The seeds of that relationship would grow into a dynamic partnership that would continue for the next five decades.

By August of 1976, the Broxton Gallery had moved into a space at 669 North La Cienega Boulevard that had previously been occupied by the well-known Mizuno Gallery. In September of that year it hosted C hris Burden: Relics , a pivotal exhibition showcasing artifacts from the artist’s early performances. Around this time, Larry acquired the padlock to the locker in which Burden had confined himself during Five Day Locker Piece , arguably his first mature work, for a price of $500. A review of the show by William Wilson in the Los Angeles Times read, “Chris Burden, widely noted for perpetrating scary acts some allege to be artworks, shows relics of his escapades. We see pushpins he instructed a volunteer to insert in his body, a knife with which he threatened to slit the throat of a collaborator, live electric wires he jabbed into his chest before a group of onlookers. . . . There are any number of ways to interpret Burden’s acts, few of which have to do with aesthetics.” 23 Burden responded to the review later that month: “I found William Wilson’s review of my show at the Broxton Gallery to be misinformed, extraneous, and irresponsible. My work almost invariably suffers at the hands of the popular media, which have preconceived notions about what art can or cannot be.” 24

I moved fast because I didn’t perceive what the boundaries were. There’s a benefit in not having any kind of preconceptions about structure or hierarchy. Larry Gagosian

The exhibition that followed Relics , in October of that year, was Christo: Drawings, Collages, Photo-documentation , which celebrated Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence project and was presented simultaneously with an exhibition on the work at the Pasadena City College Art Gallery. Running Fence was an enormously ambitious undertaking, developed after the artists’ influential 1971 orange Valley Curtain near Rifle, Colorado. Installation of the fence had been a massive endeavor, completed on September 10 of 1976; the work consisted of 200,000 square meters of heavy white nylon fabric hung from steel cables, eighteen feet high and over twenty-five miles long, stretching from Petaluma, California, to the Pacific Ocean. The project was the culmination of 3 ½ years of planning, negotiation, and collaboration, and was financed entirely by the artists through sales of preparatory drawings, collages, scale models, and lithographs—the kinds of materials in Larry’s exhibition. In response to the Broxton show, Henry J. Seldis wrote in the Los Angeles Times , “For those who missed Christo [and Jeanne-Claude]’s actual Running Fence  up in Sonoma and Marin Counties, some excellent renderings of [their] concepts are also being shown. They reveal Christo [and Jeanne-Claude] to be first-rate drafts[people] as well as environmental conceptualists.” 25

The following month, the Broxton Gallery presented twenty color photographs by David Hockney and photographic portraits of artists by Hans Namuth. The Los Angeles Times again reviewed the show: “Back-to-back solo shows of photographs by a painter and photographs of painters. The latter are by Hans Namuth who seems to play it fairly straight with his subjects. . . . The painter showing photographs is David Hockney, heir-apparent to the unofficial title of Britain’s best pictorial artist. Hockney’s photos are entirely in his familiar style. . . . his photographs are richly, almost uncomfortably, sensuous in, for example, images of a young male nude. This quality is suppressed in Hockney’s paintings and drawings objectified in urbane detachment.” 26

When asked about other dealers he was paying attention to during these years, Larry said, “Nick Wilding had a gallery at the time and I visited frequently. He was showing Hockney and others. I remember a show of Cy Twombly blackboard paintings that knocked me out. Nick and I became fast friends and he let me spend time in his back room, looking for works that I could sell. He was an established dealer and a very good ally.”

Exhibitions at the Broxton Gallery continued until April of 1977, after which Larry started working from his house in Westwood. (He lived in a historic modernist complex, designed in 1937 by the renowned architect Richard Neutra.) Cramer recalls,

Barry [Lowen] told me there was a former William Morris agent who was in the business of buying and selling contemporary art, operating out of a little apartment in Westwood. Barry thought he had a great eye and wonderful contacts with this young new group, and he said he was someone I should know and work with. He took me to see him in a little one-room apartment with a sort of loft in it. It was neat and clean—as all of his offices and galleries since have been. Even when he only had one wall to show on, he did it well. 28

Larry expanded his own collection as well: “I’d started buying some small works and drawings. I’d bought a Brice Marden piece. I’d bought a Sol LeWitt drawing. I was still kind of drawn to minimal art. It was more accessible at the time—by which I mean less expensive.” 29 By 1978 he was traveling more and gaining visibility in New York. He was on the verge of the next step in his career: “I was a hard worker in California, but you can only do so much there. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to leave. I could always make a nice living and go to the beach every day and bodysurf and hang out, or I could come to New York and kind of ruin my life. I decided to come to New York.” 30

1 Larry Gagosian, in conversation with Alison McDonald, November 20, 2023.

3 Beth Ann Krier, “A Gallery of Folkloric Oddities,” Los Angeles Times , December 17, 1972.

4 Dodie Kazanjian, “Going Places,” Vogue , November 1989, p. 415.

5 Gagosian, in “In Conversation: Mike Milken and Larry Gagosian,” Gagosian Quarterly , July 7, 2020. Available online at https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2020/07/07/mike-milken-larry-gagosian-in-conversation/ (accessed November 15, 2023.)

6 Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast , 1945–1970 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), p. 155.

7 Prints on Broxton, advertisement in Los Angeles Times , December 15, 1974.

8 Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), p. 65.

9 Robert Mautner, “Ralph Gibson: New Directions,” Artweek 6, no. 23 (June 14, 1975): p. 13.

10 Constance Lewallen, quoted in Suzanne Muchnic, “Art Smart,” Los Angeles Times , October 15, 1995.

11 Michael Auping, “Game Changer: Constance Lewallen,” Gagosian Quarterly , Fall 2022, p. 186.

12 Auping, in Alison McDonald, “At the Edge. Chris Burden: Prelude to a Performance,” Gagosian Quarterly , Summer 2022, pp. 85–86.

13 Lewallen, in Dena Beard and Lewallen, “Making It Live: Dena Beard and Constance M. Lewallen in Conversation,” The View from Here no. 4 (October 11, 2016). Available online at https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2016/10/making-it-live-dena-beard-and-connie-lewallen-in-conversation (accessed November 15, 2023).

14 Gagosian, in conversation with McDonald.

15 Gagosian, in Peter M. Brant, “Larry Gagosian,” Interview , November 27, 2012. Available online at www.interviewmagazine.com/art/larry-gagosian (accessed December 2, 2023).

16 Lewallen, in Beard and Lewallen, “Making It Live.”

17 Gagosian, in Negar Azimi, “Larry Gagosian,” Bidoun 28 (Spring 2013). Available online at https://archive.bidoun.org/magazine/28-interviews/larry-gagosian-with-negar-azimi/ (accessed December 2, 2023).

18 Robert Mautner, “Insight into Friedlander,” ArtWeek 7 , no. 2 (January 18, 1976): p. 13.

19 Gagosian, Foreword, in Mary Panzer, Louis Menand, Bob Rubin, et al., Avedon: Murals and Portraits , exh. cat. (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2012), p. 7.

20 Gagosian advertisement, Los Angeles Times , March 21, 1976.

21 Sandy Ballatore, “Directions in Drawing,” Artweek 7 , no. 15 (April 10, 1976), p. 5.

22 Irving Blum, in Roberta Bernstein, “An Interview with Irving Blum,” in Ferus , exh. cat. (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2002), p. 33.

23 William Wilson, “Art Walk: A Critical Guide to Galleries,” Los Angeles Times , October 1, 1976.

24 Chris Burden, “An Artist Replies,” Los Angeles Times , October 17, 1976.

25 Henry J. Seldis, “La Cienega Area,” Los Angeles Times , October 22, 1976.

26 William Wilson, “Art Walk: A Critical Guide to the Galleries,” Los Angeles Times , November 26, 1976.

27 Gagosian, in conversation with McDonald.

28 Doug Cramer, quoted in Charles Kaiser, “The Art of the Dealer,” Interview Magazine , July 1989, p. 56.

29 Gagosian, in Brant, “Larry Gagosian.”

30 Gagosian, quoted in Kazanjian, “Going Places,” p. 462.

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art is life essay

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Why Everything in Life Is Art Seeing the World Through an Artist's Eyes

Why Everything in Life Is Art: Seeing the World Through an Artist’s Eyes

art is life essay

Art can take many forms and is an expression of creativity in its purest form. But have you ever considered that everything in life is a form of art?

From the way we dress , to the way we act, to even the ways in which we interact with others, art is all around us.

This article will discuss how everything in life reflects art and how it impacts us on an individual and social level.

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Why Everything in Life is Art?

Everything in life is art because art is not confined to galleries or studios, but permeates every aspect of our existence. From the way we perceive the world, to the way we interact with others, to the choices we make, art is an inherent part of our human experience, reflecting our creativity, emotions, and individuality.

I Think Everything in Life is Art Quotes

“Everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home . Or even the way you write. It’s all art.” “Every gesture, every movement, every interaction is a brushstroke on the canvas of life.” “Art is the expression of our souls, woven into the fabric of our existence.” “From the simplest act to the grandest creation, everything we do is an opportunity to make life a masterpiece.” “In every moment, in every detail, we have the power to infuse beauty and meaning into the world around us.”

How Everything in Life is Art?

The idea that everything in life is art can be seen as a way of recognizing the creative potential and beauty in all aspects of life.

By viewing the world through this lens , we are encouraged to approach even the most mundane aspects of life with a sense of curiosity and wonder, and to find joy and meaning in the smallest details.

1. Art is fundamentally about self-expression and creativity.

Whether we’re talking about a painting, a song, or a simple conversation, all of these things involve the expression of thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a creative way.

By recognizing this creative potential in all aspects of life, we are able to see the world in a more vibrant and meaningful way.

2. Art often involves a sense of connection and community.

Whether through a shared experience of a film or a concert or through the appreciation of a beautiful sunset or a well-cooked meal, art can bring people together and create shared moments of joy and connection.

By recognizing the artistry in all aspects of life, we can cultivate a sense of connection and community with others.

3. Celebrating the diversity and richness of human experience.

Whether we’re talking about the natural beauty of the world around us or the complex emotions and experiences that make us human, all of these things can be seen as expressions of art uniquely.

We can create a more inclusive and vibrant world by recognizing and celebrating this diversity.

What is Art?

Art is a form of creative expression that is used to convey ideas, emotions, or experiences. It can take many different forms, such as painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature, or theater.

Art is often used as a means of communication, whether it is to express the artist’s personal feelings and perspectives, or to convey a message to the audience.

Art can be both decorative and functional, and it has been an important part of human culture for thousands of years.

In essence, art is a way of bringing beauty, meaning, and inspiration into our lives.

Everything in Life Is Art

Everything in Life Is Art

While some may see it as diminishing the importance of more traditional forms of artistic expression, it can also be seen as a powerful reminder of the beauty and potential for creativity that surrounds us every day.

Everything in life is art ! The art of life is about creativity , expression and imagination. It requires self- discipline to think critically in order for an artist’s work be appreciated.

When you think of art, what comes to mind? Paintings? Sculptures? maybe Music or Dance? All of those things are art, but art is so much more than that.

Art is anything that you create with passion. Cooking can be art. Gardening can be art. Even folding clothes can be art!

The important thing is to do it with love and care. So don’t ever think that your life is too ordinary to be an art form.

Every moment is a chance to express yourself creatively. Let your imagination run wild, and see where it takes you. I can’t wait to see what wonderful creations you come up with!

Life as Art

Life as Art: The Beauty of Creative Expression

Discover the beauty of creative expression , and how everything in life can be considered art. Learn how to appreciate and create your own works of art with this insightful guide!

Defining Art and Creativity:

Art and creativity are often associated with traditional forms like painting, sculpture, and music. However, art and creativity can manifest in many different ways.

Any activity that involves expressing oneself in a unique and original manner can be considered art.

From the way we dress to the way we speak, our lives are filled with opportunities to create and express ourselves in a creative way.

Creativity is the ability to imagine and generate new ideas, while art is the expression of those ideas through different mediums.

The Importance of Self-Expression:

Self-expression is a crucial aspect of our mental and emotional well-being.

The ability to express ourselves creatively allows us to communicate our thoughts, feelings, and experiences to the world.

Through self-expression , we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

In a society that often values conformity, self-expression allows us to break free from societal norms and expectations and express ourselves in a unique and meaningful way.

The Benefits of Embracing Life as Art:

Embracing life as art can have a profound impact on our lives. By viewing our lives as a canvas to create and express ourselves, we can find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.

Creative expression allows us to tap into our innermost thoughts and emotions and transform them into something tangible and beautiful.

Embracing creativity can also improve our mental health by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.

By engaging in creative activities , we can increase our self-esteem and confidence , develop new skills, and foster a sense of community and connection with others.

The Art of Dressing

The Art of Dressing: Creating a Personal Style

Discover the art of dressing and create your own personal style! Learn why everything in life is an art form and how to express yourself through fashion.

Dressing for Self-Expression

Dressing is a form of self-expression that allows us to communicate our personality , mood, and values to the world.

The clothes we wear can reflect our individuality and help us to stand out from the crowd.

By dressing for self-expression, we can create a sense of identity and communicate our personal style to others.

The Importance of Fashion as Art

Fashion is often considered a form of art, with designers creating unique and innovative pieces that push the boundaries of style and creativity.

Fashion can be a means of self-expression and an opportunity to showcase creativity and originality.

Fashion designers are like artists, using fabrics, textures, and colors to create unique and visually stunning designs.

Finding Your Unique Style

Finding your unique style is a process that takes time and experimentation. It involves exploring different fashion styles, trying on different outfits , and experimenting with different colors and textures.

It’s important to remember that style is personal and subjective, and what works for one person may not work for another.

Finding your own personal style is about embracing what makes you unique and finding the confidence to express yourself through your clothing choices.

The Art of Conversation

The Art of Conversation: Communicating with Intention

Discover the art of communication with intention. Learn how everything in life is an art – and why conversation is no exception.

The Power of Words

Words have the power to inspire, motivate, and connect us to one another. They can also hurt, divide, and alienate us.

The way we use words can have a significant impact on our relationships and our ability to connect with others.

By choosing our words carefully and using them with intention, we can create meaningful conversations that foster understanding and connection.

Listening as an Art Form

Listening is an often overlooked but crucial aspect of communication. It involves paying attention to what the other person is saying, asking clarifying questions, and demonstrating empathy and understanding.

Listening allows us to connect with others on a deeper level , and it shows that we value and respect their thoughts and feelings.

By listening actively and attentively, we can create a safe and supportive space for meaningful conversation.

Creating Meaningful Connections through Conversation

Meaningful conversations allow us to connect with others on a deeper level, and they can help us to build relationships that are based on mutual understanding and respect.

By communicating with intention and listening actively, we can create conversations that are meaningful, engaging, and fulfilling.

Meaningful conversations require vulnerability and authenticity, and they can be a powerful tool for personal growth and self-discovery.

The Art of Cooking

The Art of Cooking: Creating Culinary Masterpieces

Explore why cooking is an art form , from the creative process to the delicious results.

Discover the power of creating culinary masterpieces and how everything in life can be seen as art.

The Art of Flavor and Presentation

Cooking is not just about nourishing our bodies; it’s also about engaging our senses and creating culinary masterpieces that delight the palate and the eyes.

The art of flavor involves combining ingredients in creative and unique ways to create dishes that are not only delicious but also visually appealing.

The art of presentation involves arranging food in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, using colors, textures, and shapes to create an experience that is not just about taste, but also about sight and touch.

Cooking as a Creative Outlet

Cooking is a form of creative expression that allows us to experiment with different ingredients, flavors, and cooking techniques.

It’s an opportunity to explore our creativity and push the boundaries of what is possible in the kitchen.

Cooking can be a meditative and relaxing activity, allowing us to focus on the present moment and create something beautiful and delicious.

The Joys of Sharing Food with Others

Cooking and sharing food with others is a universal human experience that has been a part of human culture for thousands of years.

Sharing food with others allows us to connect on a deeper level, to share our cultures, and to express our love and gratitude.

Cooking for others is a way to show hospitality, generosity, and care. Sharing food can bring people together and create a sense of community and belonging.

The Art of Movement

The Art of Movement: Dancing, Sports, and Fitness

Explore the beauty and power of movement in dance, sports and fitness! Learn why physical activity is an art form that can transform your life.

Movement as Self-Expression

Movement is a form of creative expression that allows us to communicate our emotions, thoughts, and experiences through our bodies.

Dancing, sports, and fitness all involve movement and can be used as a means of self-expression.

Movement can be a way to express ourselves in a non-verbal way, and it allows us to connect with our bodies and the world around us.

The Physical and Mental Benefits of Exercise

Exercise has been shown to have numerous physical and mental health benefits.

Regular exercise can improve cardiovascular health , increase strength and flexibility, and reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Exercise can also improve mental health by reducing stress and anxiety, boosting mood, and improving cognitive function.

Movement can also be used as a form of therapy to help individuals cope with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

Finding Joy in Movement

Movement can bring joy and happiness into our lives. When we move, our bodies release endorphins, which are natural chemicals that promote feelings of happiness and well-being.

Movement can also be a form of play, allowing us to explore and experiment with different ways of moving our bodies.

By finding joy in movement , we can cultivate a sense of playfulness and curiosity that can add depth and richness to our lives.

The Art of Parenting

The Art of Parenting: Nurturing Creativity in Children

Nurture your child’s creativity! Learn how parenting is an art form , and discover tips and tricks to help build a creative environment for your kids.

Encouraging Creative Play

Encouraging creative play is an essential aspect of nurturing creativity in children.

Creative play involves allowing children to explore their imaginations and express themselves in a playful and imaginative way.

By providing children with open-ended toys and materials, parents can foster creativity and imagination in their children.

Creating a Nurturing Environment for Children

Creating a nurturing environment for children is important for fostering creativity and self-expression.

A nurturing environment involves providing children with emotional support, positive reinforcement, and a safe and secure space to explore their interests and talents.

Parents can create a nurturing environment by showing an interest in their children’s hobbies and passions, providing opportunities for them to explore their interests, and offering support and encouragement.

Fostering a Love of Art and Self-Expression

Fostering a love of art and self-expression is important for nurturing creativity in children.

Parents can encourage their children to express themselves through art by providing them with art supplies and materials , taking them to art museums and galleries, and encouraging them to participate in art classes and workshops.

Parents can also foster a love of self-expression by encouraging their children to express their emotions and thoughts in a safe and supportive environment.

The Art of Learning

The Art of Learning: Embracing Curiosity and Exploration

“Dive into a world of exploration and curiosity – learn why everything in life is art. Embrace the power of learning and unlock your inner genius!

The Importance of Lifelong Learning

Lifelong learning is an essential aspect of personal and professional growth.

It involves a commitment to ongoing education and personal development , and it can lead to new opportunities and a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Lifelong learning allows us to expand our knowledge, skills, and perspectives, and it can lead to greater creativity, innovation, and problem-solving ability.

Finding Inspiration in the World Around Us

The world is a rich and varied source of inspiration for learning. From nature to art to technology, there are endless opportunities to explore and learn from the world around us.

By embracing curiosity and exploring our interests, we can find inspiration in unexpected places and discover new passions and pursuits.

The world is a classroom, and every experience offers an opportunity to learn and grow.

Learning as a Creative Endeavor

Learning is not just about acquiring knowledge; it’s also a creative endeavor. Learning involves imagination, exploration, and experimentation.

It’s about discovering new ideas and perspectives and integrating them into our own unique understanding of the world.

Learning can be a means of self-expression , allowing us to communicate our thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a creative and meaningful way.

The Art of Living

The Art of Living: Finding Beauty in Everyday Moments

Discover the beauty in everyday moments! Learn how to find joy in the ordinary and how to make everything in life an art.

Cultivating Gratitude and Mindfulness

Cultivating gratitude and mindfulness is an essential aspect of finding beauty in everyday moments.

By practicing gratitude, we can develop a greater appreciation for the small and simple things in life, and we can cultivate a sense of contentment and joy.

Mindfulness involves being present and fully engaged in the moment, allowing us to experience the richness and beauty of everyday life.

Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

The ordinary moments of our lives are often filled with extraordinary beauty and meaning.

By cultivating a sense of awareness and appreciation, we can see the beauty in the mundane and find joy and meaning in everyday life.

The art of living involves recognizing the inherent beauty and value in everyday moments and finding inspiration and joy in the ordinary.

Living a Life of Creativity and Purpose

Living a life of creativity and purpose involves embracing our passions and talents and using them to make a positive impact on the world.

By living with intention and purpose, we can create a sense of meaning and fulfillment in our lives.

The art of living involves using our creativity and talents to create a life that is meaningful, fulfilling, and joyful.

Types of Art

What Are the Different Forms of Art?

Art comes in various forms including painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, dance, cinema, photography, and performance art. Additionally, modern and contemporary art have introduced forms like installation art, digital art, and conceptual art.

Different Forms of Art | Types of Art

The definition of the word “art” is diversified, covering many unique forms of creative expression of human imagination, skill, creativity, and application.

Many arts are expressed in visual form but can also be enjoyed through sensory touch or audibility.

Arts were traditionally appreciated for their beauty or emotional power but are now often used for social commentary, political or self expression.

Throughout human history , specific forms and mediums of artistic expression have changed.

But for the most part, there are mainly seven forms of art. Each of these 7 forms of art affects our feelings and emotions differently. 

  • Architecture

Let’s explore its history, what each art form holds, and how it enriches human lives.

What is literature?

Literature refers to written works, such as novels, poetry, plays, and essays, that are considered to have artistic or intellectual value. Literature allows writers to express their thoughts, emotions, and ideas in a creative and often complex way, while also allowing readers to engage with and interpret these works in their own unique way.

What is painting?

Painting is a visual art form that involves applying paint, pigment, or other materials to a surface, such as canvas, paper, or wood. Painting allows artists to express themselves through color, composition, and form, creating images that can evoke emotions, tell stories, or capture a moment in time.

What is music?

Music is a form of artistic expression that involves sound and rhythm. It can be created using a variety of instruments and techniques, and can range from simple melodies to complex compositions.

Music can evoke emotions, create a sense of atmosphere, or tell a story.

What is sculpture?

Sculpture is a three-dimensional art form that involves shaping and manipulating materials such as stone, wood, metal, or clay. Sculptures can range from small, intricate pieces to large, public installations, and can convey a range of emotions and meanings.

What is theater?

Theater is a form of performance art that involves actors, a stage, and an audience. Theater can be used to tell stories, convey emotions, or explore complex themes and ideas.

It involves a range of elements, such as set design, costumes, lighting, and sound, and allows actors to embody and portray a range of characters and emotions.

What is architecture?

Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and other physical structures. It involves a range of elements, such as aesthetics, functionality, sustainability, and safety, and can range from small residential structures to large, complex commercial buildings.

What is cinema?

Cinema, also known as film, is a form of visual storytelling that involves the use of moving images and sound to create a narrative. Cinema can be used to explore a range of themes and ideas, and can evoke a wide range of emotions in the audience.

It involves a range of elements, such as cinematography, editing, sound design, and visual effects, and can be used to create a wide range of genres, from drama to action to comedy.

What is not Art?

What is not Art?

Art is subjective and can be interpreted differently by different people, but generally, anything that is not created with the intention of expressing personal creativity, ideas, or emotions, or does not provoke thought or feeling in the viewer, may not be considered art. However, this definition can vary widely based on cultural, historical, and personal perspectives.

Here are some generally accepted criteria that can be used to determine whether something falls outside the realm of art:

1. Lack of creative intent

Art involves a deliberate effort to create something that has aesthetic or intellectual value. If something is not created with the intention of expressing a creative idea or emotion, it may not be considered art.

2. Lack of skill or technique

Art typically involves a certain level of technical skill or mastery. If something is created without attention to detail or lacks a basic understanding of technique, it may not be considered art.

3. Lack of originality or uniqueness

Art often involves a certain degree of originality or uniqueness. If something is a direct copy or imitation of something else without any attempt at originality, it may not be considered art.

4. Lack of cultural or historical significance

Art often reflects the cultural or historical context in which it was created. If something lacks any cultural or historical significance, it may not be considered art.

5. Lack of emotional or intellectual impact

Art is often created to evoke an emotional or intellectual response from the viewer. If something fails to connect with its audience or lacks any meaningful impact, it may not be considered art.

Everywhere I Look, All I See Is Art.

Everywhere I Look, All I See Is Art.

In summary, art is the expression of emotional power and aesthetic experience. Artists are people who are passionate about creating and exploring different forms of art , including acting, painting, music, cooking, and fashion design.

Everything in life can be considered art, from the way we look in the mirror to the technological advancements that surround us.

Science and religion can also be seen as reflections of art, with the natural world and the work of passionate individuals being considered as art in itself.

Overall, art is not limited to traditional forms of expression but can also be found in the details and passion behind tasks such as building masonry.

Why art is not everything?

While art is an important and meaningful part of life, it is not everything.

There are many other important aspects of life that are equally valuable, and reducing everything to art can be a limiting perspective. Instead, we should strive to find a balance between the aesthetic and the practical, between the emotional and the intellectual, in order to live a rich and fulfilling life.

Art is everything that induces emotions in humans

There are many different ways to define art , one way to view it is as anything that induces emotions in humans.

Whether it’s a positive or negative emotion, art has the power to connect with us on a deep level and provoke thought, introspection, and transformation.

Art relays an experience, observation, idea, etc

By definition, art is an expression of human creativity . Art needs observation as well as experience to inspire its expressions.

Because everything doesn’t come from any being, so everything is art. Often the things they do without real intent are a masterpiece of art.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to Everything in Life Is Art! Look here for answers to your burning questions about the relationship between art and life.

Get answers today!

Who said I think everything in life is art?

The artist Paul Cezanne is often credited with saying “I want to make of impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums,” and “I think that everything in nature is sculpture.”

However, the exact phrase “I think everything in life is art” is attributed to the artist and designer Ray Bradbury.

Did Helena Bonham Carter say I think everything in life is art?

There is no record of Helena Bonham Carter having said this quote.

What is a good quote about art?

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” – Pablo Picasso

What is the meaning of art is life?

The phrase “art is life” suggests that art is an essential part of life and can be seen as a reflection of it. It implies that art can give meaning and purpose to life.

What did Albert Einstein say about art?

Albert Einstein once said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

What is Einstein’s most famous quote?

Einstein’s most famous quote is “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

What is art according to Aristotle?

According to Aristotle, art is the ability to create something according to rules or a plan, which aims at achieving a specific goal or purpose.

What did Einstein say about creativity?

Einstein once said, “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” He also said, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

Describe a universe where art doesn’t exist?

In a universe where art doesn’t exist, creativity and self-expression would be greatly limited. Art allows us to communicate ideas, emotions, and experiences in unique and meaningful ways.

It enriches our lives and provides a way to explore the world around us.

What is the meaning of art?

It can be seen as a form of communication, a means of expression, a way to challenge societal norms, or a source of beauty and inspiration.

Is everything around us an art?

Everything around us can be considered art, depending on how we perceive it. Art can take many forms, from traditional paintings and sculptures to everyday objects and experiences.

Can anything be considered art?

Some people argue that anything can be considered art if it is created with the intention of being considered as such. However, there is ongoing debate and controversy over what constitutes as art.

Why art is for all?

Art is for all because it is a universal language that can be enjoyed and appreciated by people of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds. It can be used to express emotions, convey ideas, and evoke a variety of responses from viewers.

Why does art exist everywhere?

Art exists everywhere because it is a fundamental part of human expression and creativity. People have been creating art for thousands of years, and it continues to be an integral part of cultures and societies around the world.

Who said that art is everywhere?

The phrase “art is everywhere” has been attributed to a number of different people, including Marcel Duchamp and Bob and Roberta Smith. It reflects the idea that art can be found in everyday objects and experiences.

Can any object be art?

Some people believe that any object can be considered art if it is presented in a certain way or context. Others argue that there are certain qualities or characteristics that an object must possess in order to be considered art.

What makes something art?

This is a complex and ongoing debate in the art world.

Generally, art is created with the intention of being considered as such and often involves elements such as skill, creativity, and expression.

What do philosophers say about art?

Philosophers have long debated the nature and meaning of art, with some arguing that it is a form of representation or imitation, while others see it as a means of expressing emotion or conveying ideas.

How does philosophy define art?

Philosophy defines art as a form of human expression that is intended to stimulate the senses and provoke thought or emotion in the viewer.

What is Aristotle’s theory of art?

Aristotle believed that art is a form of imitation that allows people to learn and understand the world around them. He also believed that the purpose of art is to evoke emotion and create catharsis in the viewer.

What did Nietzsche say about art?

Nietzsche believed that art is a form of self-expression that allows people to transcend their everyday existence and connect with something greater. He saw art as a means of creating meaning in a chaotic and uncertain world.

Why is life an art?

Some people see life as an art form because it involves creativity, expression, and the constant pursuit of meaning and purpose.

Can everything be considered art?

While some argue that everything can be considered art, others believe that there are certain criteria that an object or experience must meet in order to be considered as such.

What is the saying about art and life?

The saying “art imitates life” reflects the idea that art is a reflection of the world around us, while “life imitates art” suggests that people often emulate or imitate what they see in art.

Why is art important in our life?

Art is important in our life because it provides a means of self-expression, can be used to convey important messages and ideas, and can enhance our understanding and appreciation of the world around us.

Can we consider art everywhere?

Yes, art can be found everywhere, from the natural beauty of the world around us to the man-made creations of people. Art is a fundamental part of human expression and creativity that can be found in every aspect of our lives.

Why art is important to society?

Art is important to society because it allows us to express ourselves and communicate our ideas, beliefs, and emotions. It can be used as a form of self-expression, allowing people to explore their creativity and find new ways to express themselves.

Art also serves as a way for people to connect with one another. Through art, we can share stories, experiences, and perspectives that may otherwise remain unheard or unseen.

Art gives us a platform to voice our opinions and values in an accessible way.

How do you define fine art?

Fine art is a broad term that can be used to describe many different types of visual artwork. Generally, fine art refers to artwork that has been created with the intention of expressing emotion or conveying an idea.

This type of artwork may include paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, prints, and mixed media pieces.

Why we love arts and crafts?

CraftyThinking

Why we love arts and crafts? We love arts and crafts because they are enjoyed by people of all ages . For kids, crafts can be a fun and creative way to spend an afternoon.

For adults crafting can be a relaxing hobby or a chance to express their creativity . Arts and crafts can also be used to DIY projects around the house or to create decor for your home.

Arts can be as simple as painting a picture or as complicated as building a piece of furniture. No matter what your skill level, there is an arts and craft project that is perfect for you.

So why not try your hand at arts and crafts today? You might just find that you have a hidden talent for artful creation!

Wrapping Up Everything in Life Is Art

The idea that everything in life is art can be a powerful way to see the world. We all use art in some way or another, whether it be for personal enjoyment or to make our lives more interesting.

At its core, art is an expression of creativity and emotion that can inspire us on a daily basis.

Although the idea may seem simple at first glance, there are many layers to this concept which we’ve covered here today.

If you like this article about Everything in Life Is Art and would like to know more, please comment below.

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Essay on Importance Of Art In Our Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance Of Art In Our Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Importance Of Art In Our Life

Art sparks creativity.

Art is like a key that unlocks our imagination. When we make or look at art, our minds start to think in new and exciting ways. This creativity can help us in school, work, and solving problems. It’s like art gives our brain a fun workout.

Art Shows Feelings

Sometimes it’s hard to say how we feel. Art can help with that. By drawing or painting, we can show our emotions. This can make us feel better and help others understand us more.

Art Connects People

Art is a language that everyone speaks, no matter where they are from. It brings people together. When we share our art, we share a part of ourselves. This can create friendships and make our community stronger.

Art Teaches Us

Art is full of stories and lessons. By looking at art from the past, we can learn about different times and places. It’s like a time machine that teaches us history in a fun way.

Art Adds Beauty

Art makes our world beautiful. A painting on a wall or a song in the air can make our day better. It’s like a splash of color on a grey day, making life more enjoyable.

250 Words Essay on Importance Of Art In Our Life

Art brightens our world.

Art is like a splash of color on a blank canvas. It makes our world more interesting and beautiful. When you see a painting or a sculpture, it can make you feel happy, sad, or excited. Art is not just about creating; it’s also about sharing. When artists share their work, they share a piece of their heart and mind.

Art Helps Us Express Ourselves

Sometimes, it’s hard to say how we feel using just words. This is where art comes in. It gives us a way to show our feelings without speaking. You can draw or paint your emotions, and this can help you feel better. It’s like art understands you and can help you understand yourself.

Art Teaches Us New Things

Art is not only about looking at pretty pictures. It can teach us about different places, people, and times in history. By looking at art, we can learn stories from all over the world. It’s like a window to different cultures and helps us see how others live and think.

Art has a special power to bring people together. When you make art with others, you create a bond. It’s fun to work on art projects with friends or family. You can learn from each other and create something special together. Also, when you look at someone else’s art, you can feel connected to them, even if they are far away or from a different time.

In short, art is very important in our lives. It adds color to our world, lets us say what we feel, teaches us new things, and helps us make friends. Art is not just something nice to look at; it is a part of us and our way of living.

500 Words Essay on Importance Of Art In Our Life

Art is everywhere.

Art is a big part of our lives, even if we might not always notice it. Think about the music you listen to, the cartoons you watch, and the pictures you draw. These are all forms of art. Art is not just something you see in a museum; it’s in the games you play, the clothes you wear, and the way you decorate your room. It makes our world more colorful and interesting.

Expressing Ourselves

One of the most important things about art is that it lets us show who we are and how we feel. When you make a drawing or write a story, you are telling people something about yourself without even using words. This can be really helpful when you have big feelings that are hard to talk about. Art gives us a way to share our thoughts and feelings with others.

Learning and Thinking

Art is also a great way to learn. When you make art, you think about colors, shapes, and how to make your idea come to life. This helps your brain grow and helps you solve problems better. In school, teachers use art to make learning more fun and to help you remember things. For example, when you draw a picture of a plant and label its parts, you’re more likely to remember what each part is called.

Bringing People Together

Art can bring people together. When you look at someone’s art or listen to their music, you can feel what they feel and see things from their point of view. This can help you understand people who are different from you. Art can also bring people together to work on things, like when you and your friends make a big poster or put on a play.

Jobs and the Economy

Art is not just for fun; it’s also a way for people to make a living. There are many jobs in art, like being a painter, a musician, a dancer, or a movie maker. These jobs are important because they give people work and help the economy. When people buy art or tickets to a show, they are supporting artists and helping them to keep making more art.

Health and Happiness

Making and enjoying art is good for your health. It can make you feel happy and relaxed. When you are stressed, doing something creative like drawing or playing an instrument can calm you down. Doctors have found that looking at art can make people feel better when they are sick or sad.

In conclusion, art is very important in our lives. It is all around us, helping us to express ourselves, learn, and bring people together. Art also creates jobs and can make us healthier and happier. Even if we are not all artists, art touches everyone in some way. So next time you see a painting or hear a song, think about how art is making your life better.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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1010 words essay on the Relations Between Art And Life

art is life essay

Art is life, not something to be placed in a shrine and substituted for life. Actually, art is an effort to create, besides the real world, a more human entity. Moreover, a true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. Indeed, even those who regard art as an ideal and artists as idealists cannot deny that art is a faithful mirror of the life and civilization of a period.

Everyone concedes what Nehru said that Indian civilization of the past periods was full of life; it created things of beauty, the arts flourished, and the echoes reached distant countries. Nehru was also stating the reality when he said that the art of a people is a true mirror of their minds. Both arts and crafts have indeed close connections with life; there is no line of demarcation between arts, crafts and life when the arts have really been an integral constituent of the people’s daily existence.

Obviously, it is impossible to separate art, or the arts, from life; they are a part and parcel of it. The idea can also be expressed by saying that when life declines and the standards of living deteriorate, art also declines. On the other hand, when life marks an upward swing and shows all-round improvement, such a un swing inevitably gets reflected in the arts.

It is during the regimes of eminent influential kings and emperors, Maharajas and Nawabs in history, especially during the Golden Age, that the arts, such as painting, music, since and crafts of various types prospered. Who bothers about art and the artists when there is poverty and destitution all round, when the rulers are constantly engaged in internecine warfare or struggles for power during which art is the first casualty?

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This is also true of the age of exploitation, colonial, imperial or other.

To say that art is only confined to the artist the painter, the sculptor, the dancer, the musician, the singer or other craftsman is to take a needlessly rigid and restricted view. Real art is all-round illumination and adds stature to life. The object of art, it has been well said, is to crystallize human emotions into thought, and then fix it in a concrete form.

After all, painter thinks, reflects for a long time, tries to imagine something good and great, has a vision or a dream, and then draws a picture, a drawing or moulds clay or metal into a figure he has dreamed or thought of. Since dreams, thoughts and visions are all a part of our life, art is also very much a part of our existence.

Even the illusions, which often get reflected in masterpieces of art, can be entertained only by human beings of talent and cannot, therefore be separated from life.

An unfortunate aspect of life in the modern world is that misconceptions about art and artists, and about their role, have been spreading fast. Anyone, it is said, who finds a way to make a lamp or some other artistic piece out of a Camp-Cola bottle gets more protection than a humble man who creates a work of real art.

There is indeed a distortion of values in the world of art; really talented artists often starve because of the lack of patronage by those who lead a life devoted to un artistic activity. An artist who revolts against man’s fate in life may or may not get adequate encouragement. Moreover, what passes for “art” in today’s world may in reality be fraud or cheap imitation of a masterpiece.

Again, is it not true that the measure of the creator is the amount of life he puts into his work. A real work of art has to be full of life; if it is lifeless and soulless or dull, it evidently lacks life.

Who can deny that a painting or a piece of sculpture has great appeal if it is life-like, emanating vigour and activity and if it inspires human feelings? Besides, the real artist is he who does not cater to cheap tastes or panders to the low, in human or base instincts of men and women. If an artist sells himself for the baser things, he is a traitor to art.

True art grasps, rediscovers and reveals to us reality which human beings tend to forget and from which we often seek to get away. Often the reality is harsh; even that serves as a reminder of what we are prone to ignore. When the reality is pleasant and artistic creations please, we begin to appreciate art, not otherwise.

Art, like most human beings, is temperamental; it is no secret that artists, poets and musicians work when they get the requisite inspiration. Dictation and imposition of authority are what art and artists firmly resent. In this sense art is an intense form of individualism. Even so, art should never seek popularity; on the contrary the people should try to value art and make themselves artistic as far as they can.

Life itself is an art, and though artists and poets may seem visionaries, they have a specific and distinct role to play. The irony, however, is that if art and artists continue to live in a world of their own, far removed from life, they may have to starve unless they are able to get permanent and affluent patrons.

Art and artists are now being patronized and encouraged by the Government of India and the State Governments. But official patronage alone cannot be a lasting guarantee of the prosperity of art; the people themselves must learn to appreciate art in whichever form it comes before them.

Life itself is an art. The swing of the pendulum may raise art to the skies or bring it down crashing to the earth. Experimentation is what art thrives on, and such experimentation, as in science, ultimately proves highly beneficial to society. The progress in art reveals the progress of a country and its innermost character. The relationship is, therefore, intimate and is becoming increasingly obvious.

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Anne Buckwalter on Art, Life & Everything In Between

By Will Fenstermaker

June 14, 2017

The 10 Essays That Changed Art Criticism Forever

There has never been a time when art critics held more power than during the second half of the twentieth century. Following the Second World War, with the relocation of the world’s artistic epicenter from Paris to New York, a different kind of war was waged in the pages of magazines across the country. As part of the larger “culture wars” of the mid-century, art critics began to take on greater influence than they’d ever held before. For a time, two critics in particular—who began as friends, and remained in the same social circles for much of their lives—set the stakes of the debates surrounding the maturation of American art that would continue for decades. The ideas about art outlined by Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg are still debated today, and the extent to which they were debated in the past has shaped entire movements of the arts. Below are ten works of criticism through which one can trace the mainstreaming of Clement Greenberg’s formalist theory, and how its dismantling led us into institutional critique and conceptual art today.

The American Action Painters

Harold Rosenberg

One: Number 31

Harold Rosenberg, a poet who came to art through his involvement with the Artist’s Union and the WPA, was introduced to Jean-Paul Sartre as the “first American existentialist.” Soon, Rosenberg became a contributor to Sartre’s publication in France, for which he first drafted his influential essay. However, when Sartre supported Soviet aggression against Korea, Rosenberg brought his essay to Elaine de Kooning , then the editor of ARTnews , who ran “The American Action Painters” in December, 1952.

RELATED: What Did Harold Rosenberg Do? An Introduction to the Champion of “Action Painting”

Rosenberg’s essay on the emerging school of American Painters omitted particular names—because they’d have been unfamiliar to its original French audience—but it was nonetheless extraordinarily influential for the burgeoning scene of post-WWII American artists. Jackson Pollock claimed to be the influence of “action painting,” despite Rosenberg’s rumored lack of respect for the artist because Pollock wasn’t particularly well-read. Influenced by Marxist theory and French existentialism, Rosenberg conceives of a painting as an “arena,” in which the artist acts upon, wrestles, or otherwise engages with the canvas, in what ultimately amounts to an expressive record of a struggle. “What was to go on the canvas,” Rosenberg wrote, “was not a picture but an event.”

Notable Quote

Weak mysticism, the “Christian Science” side of the new movement, tends … toward easy painting—never so many unearned masterpieces! Works of this sort lack the dialectical tension of a genuine act, associated with risk and will. When a tube of paint is squeezed by the Absolute, the result can only be a Success. The painter need keep himself on hand solely to collect the benefits of an endless series of strokes of luck. His gesture completes itself without arousing either an opposing movement within itself nor the desire in the artist to make the act more fully his own. Satisfied with wonders that remain safely inside the canvas, the artist accepts the permanence of the commonplace and decorates it with his own daily annihilation. The result is an apocalyptic wallpaper.

‘American-Type’ Painting

Clement Greenberg

Frank Stella

Throughout the preceding decade, Clement Greenberg, also a former poet, had established a reputation as a leftist critic through his writings with The Partisan Review —a publication run by the John Reed Club, a New York City-centered organization affiliated with the American Communist Party—and his time as an art critic with The Nation . In 1955, The Partisan Review published Greenberg’s “‘American-Type’ Painting,” in which the critic defined the now-ubiquitous term “abstract expressionism.”

RELATED: What Did Clement Greenberg Do? A Primer on the Powerful AbEx Theorist’s Key Ideas

In contrast to Rosenberg’s conception of painting as a performative act, Greenberg’s theory, influenced by Clive Bell and T. S. Eliot, was essentially a formal one—in fact, it eventually evolved into what would be called “formalism.” Greenberg argued that the evolution of painting was one of historical determinacy—that ever since the Renaissance, pictures moved toward flatness, and the painted line moved away from representation. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were two of the landmarks of this view. Pollock, who exhibited his drip paintings in 1951, freeing the line from figuration, was for Greenberg the pinnacle of American Modernism, the most important artist since Picasso. (Pollock’s paintings exhibited in 1954, with which he returned to semi-representational form, were regarded by Greenberg as a regression. This lead him to adopt Barnett Newman as his new poster-boy, despite the artist’s possessing vastly different ideas on the nature of painting. For one, Greenberg mostly ignored the Biblical titles of Newman’s paintings.)

Greenberg’s formalist theories were immensely influential over the subsequent decades. Artforum in particular grew into a locus for formalist discourse, which had the early effect of providing an aesthetic toolkit divorced from politic. Certain curators of the Museum of Modern Art, particularly William Rubin, Kirk Varnedoe, and to an extent Alfred Barr are credited for steering the museum in an essentially formalist direction. Some painters, such as Frank Stella , Helen Frankenthaler , and Kenneth Noland, had even been accused of illustrating Greenberg’s theories (and those of Michael Fried, a prominent Greenbergian disciple) in attempt to embody the theory, which was restrictive in its failure to account for narrative content, figuration, identity, politics, and more. In addition, Greenberg’s theories proved well-suited for a burgeoning art market, which found connoisseurship an easy sell. (As the writer Mary McCarthy said, “You can’t hang an event on your wall.”) In fact, the dominance of the term “abstract expressionism” over “action painting,” which seemed more applicable to Pollock and Willem de Kooning than any other members of the New York School, is emblematic of the influence of formalist discourse.

The justification for the term, “abstract expressionist,” lies in the fact that most of the painters covered by it took their lead from German, Russian, or Jewish expressionism in breaking away from late Cubist abstract art. But they all started from French painting, for their fundamental sense of style from it, and still maintain some sort of continuity with it. Not least of all, they got from it their most vivid notion of an ambitious, major art, and of the general direction in which it had to go in their time.

Barbara Rose

Galvanized Iron

Like many critics in the 1950s and 60s, Barbara Rose had clearly staked her allegiance to one camp or the other. She was, firmly, a formalist, and along with Fried and Rosalind Krauss is largely credited with expanding the theory beyond abstract expressionist painting. By 1965, however, Rose recognized a limitation of the theory as outlined by Greenberg—that it was reductionist and only capable of account for a certain style of painting, and not much at all in other mediums.

RELATED: The Intellectual Origins Of Minimalism

In “ABC Art,” published in Art in America where Rose was a contributing editor, Rose opens up formalism to encompass sculpture, which Greenberg was largely unable to account for. The simple idea that art moves toward flatness and abstraction leads, for Rose, into Minimalism, and “ABC Art” is often considered the first landmark essay on Minimalist art. By linking the Minimalist sculptures of artists like Donald Judd to the Russian supremacist paintings of Kasimir Malevich and readymades of Duchamp, she extends the determinist history that formalism relies on into sculpture and movements beyond abstract expressionism.

I do not agree with critic Michael Fried’s view that Duchamp, at any rate, was a failed Cubist. Rather, the inevitability of a logical evolution toward a reductive art was obvious to them already. For Malevich, the poetic Slav, this realization forced a turning inward toward an inspirational mysticism, whereas for Duchamp, the rational Frenchman, it meant a fatigue so enervating that finally the wish to paint at all was killed. Both the yearnings of Malevich’s Slavic soul and the deductions of Duchamp’s rationalist mind led both men ultimately to reject and exclude from their work many of the most cherished premises of Western art in favor of an art stripped to its bare, irreducible minimum.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Philip Leider

Double Negative

Despite the rhetorical tendency to suggest the social upheaval of the '60s ended with the actual decade, 1970 remained a year of unrest. And Artforum was still the locus of formalist criticism, which was proving increasingly unable to account for art that contributed to larger cultural movements, like Civil Rights, women’s liberation, anti-war protests, and more. (Tellingly, The Partisan Review , which birthed formalism, had by then distanced itself from its communist associations and, as an editorial body, was supportive of American Interventionism in Vietnam. Greenberg was a vocal hawk.) Subtitled “Art and Politics in Nevada, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Utah,” the editor’s note to the September 1970 issue of Artforum , written by Philip Leider, ostensibly recounts a road trip undertaken with Richard Serra and Abbie Hoffman to see Michael Heizer’s Double Negative in the Nevada desert.

RELATED: A City of Art in the Desert: Behind Michael Heizer’s Monumental Visions for Nevada

However, the essay is also an account of an onsetting disillusion with formalism, which Leider found left him woefully unequipped to process the protests that had erupted surrounding an exhibition of prints by Paul Wunderlich at the Phoenix Gallery in Berkeley. Wunderlich’s depictions of nude women were shown concurrently to an exhibition of drawings sold to raise money for Vietnamese orphans. The juxtaposition of a canonical, patriarchal form of representation and liberal posturing, to which the protestors objected, showcased the limitations of a methodology that placed the aesthetic elements of a picture plane far above the actual world in which it existed. Less than a year later, Leider stepped down as editor-in-chief and Artforum began to lose its emphasis on late Modernism.

I thought the women were probably with me—if they were, I was with them. I thought the women were picketing the show because it was reactionary art. To the women, [Piet] Mondrian must be a great revolutionary artist. Abstract art broke all of those chains thirty years ago! What is a Movement gallery showing dumb stuff like this for? But if it were just a matter of reactionary art , why would the women picket it? Why not? Women care as much about art as men do—maybe more. The question is, why weren’t the men right there with them?

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

Linda Nochlin

Linda Nochlin

While Artforum , in its early history, had established a reputation as a generator for formalist theory, ARTnews had followed a decidedly more Rosenberg-ian course, emphasizing art as a practice for investigating the world. The January 1971 issue of the magazine was dedicated to “Women’s Liberation, Woman Artists, and Art History” and included an iconoclastic essay by Linda Nochlin titled “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

RELATED: An Introduction to Feminist Art

Nochlin notes that it’s tempting to answer the question “why have there been no great women artists?” by listing examples of those overlooked by critical and institutional organizations (a labor that Nochlin admits has great merit). However, she notes, “by attempting to answer it, they tacitly reinforce its negative implications,” namely that women are intrinsically less capable of achieving artistic merit than men. Instead, Nochlin’s essay functions as a critique of art institutions, beginning with European salons, which were structured in such a way as to deter women from rising to the highest echelons. Nochlin’s essay is considered the beginning of modern feminist art history and a textbook example of institutional critique.

There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cézanne, Picasso or Matisse, or even in very recent times, for de Kooning or Warhol, any more than there are black American equivalents for the same. If there actually were large numbers of “hidden” great women artists, or if there really should be different standards for women’s art as opposed to men’s—and one can’t have it both ways—then what are feminists fighting for? If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is. But in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education.

Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief

Thomas McEvilley

Tribal Modern

One of the many extrapolations of Nochlin’s essay is that contemporary museum institutions continue to reflect the gendered and racist biases of preceding centuries by reinforcing the supremacy of specific master artists. In a 1984 Artforum review, Thomas McEvilley, a classicist new to the world of contemporary art, made the case that the Museum of Modern Art in New York served as an exclusionary temple to certain high-minded Modernists—namely, Picasso, Matisse, and Pollock—who, in fact, took many of their innovations from native cultures.

RELATED: MoMA Curator Laura Hoptman on How to Tell a Good Painting From a “Bogus” Painting

In 1984, MoMA organized a blockbuster exhibition. Curated by William Rubin and Kirk Varnedoe, both of whom were avowed formalists, “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern” collected works by European painters like Paul Gaugin and Picasso with cultural artifacts from Zaire, arctic communities, and elsewhere. McEvilley takes aim at the “the absolutist view of formalist Modernism” in which MoMA is rooted. He argues that the removal tribal artifacts from their contexts (for example, many were ritual items intended for ceremonies, not display) and placement of them, unattributed, near works by European artists, censors the cultural contributions of non-Western civilizations in deference to an idealized European genius.

The fact that the primitive “looks like” the Modern is interpreted as validating the Modern by showing that its values are universal, while at the same time projecting it—and with it MoMA—into the future as a permanent canon. A counter view is possible: that primitivism on the contrary invalidates Modernism by showing it to be derivative and subject to external causation. At one level this show undertakes precisely to coopt that question by answering it before it has really been asked, and by burying it under a mass of information.

Please Wait By the Coatroom

The Jungle

Not content to let MoMA and the last vestiges of formalism off the hook yet, John Yau wrote in 1988 an essay on Wifredo Lam, a Cuban painter who lived and worked in Paris among Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque, and others. Noting Lam’s many influences—his Afro-Cuban mother, Chinese father, and Yoruba godmother—Yau laments the placement of Lam’s The Jungle near the coatroom in the Museum of Modern Art, as opposed to within the Modernist galleries several floors above. The painting was accompanied by a brief entry written by former curator William Rubin, who, Yau argues, adopted Greenberg’s theories because they endowed him with “a connoisseur’s lens with which one can scan all art.”

RELATED: From Cuba With Love: Artist Bill Claps on the Island’s DIY Art Scene

Here, as with with McEvilley’s essay, Yau illustrates how formalism, as adapted by museum institutions, became a (perhaps unintentional) method for reinforcing the exclusionary framework that Nochlin argued excluded women and black artists for centuries.

Rubin sees in Lam only what is in his own eyes: colorless or white artists. For Lam to have achieved the status of unique individual, he would have had to successfully adapt to the conditions of imprisonment (the aesthetic standards of a fixed tradition) Rubin and others both construct and watch over. To enter this prison, which takes the alluring form of museums, art history textbooks, galleries, and magazines, an individual must suppress his cultural differences and become a colorless ghost. The bind every hybrid American artist finds themselves in is this: should they try and deal with the constantly changing polymorphous conditions effecting identity, tradition, and reality? Or should they assimilate into the mainstream art world by focusing on approved-of aesthetic issues? Lam’s response to this bind sets an important precedent. Instead of assimilating, Lam infiltrates the syntactical rules of “the exploiters” with his own specific language. He becomes, as he says, “a Trojan horse.”

Black Culture and Postmodernism

Cornel West

Cornel West

The opening up of cultural discourse did not mean that it immediately made room for voices of all dimensions. Cornel West notes as much in his 1989 essay “Black Culture and Postmodernism,” in which he argues that postmodernism, much like Modernism before it, remains primarily ahistorical, which makes it difficult for “oppressed peoples to exercise their opposition to hierarchies of power.” West’s position is that the proliferation of theory and criticism that accompanied the rise of postmodernism provided mechanisms by which black culture could “be conversant with and, to a degree, participants in the debate.” Without their voices, postmodernism would remain yet another exclusionary movements.

RELATED: Kerry James Marshall on Painting Blackness as a Noun Vs. Verb

As the consumption cycle of advanced multinational corporate capitalism was sped up in order to sustain the production of luxury goods, cultural production became more and more mass-commodity production. The stress here is not simply on the new and fashionable but also on the exotic and primitive. Black cultural products have historically served as a major source for European and Euro-American exotic interests—interests that issue from a healthy critique of the mechanistic, puritanical, utilitarian, and productivity aspects of modern life.

Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power

Anna C. Chave

Tilted Arc

In recent years, formalist analysis has been deployed as a single tool within a more varied approach to art. Its methodology—that of analyzing a picture as an isolated phenomena—remains prevalent, and has its uses. Yet, many of the works and movements that rose to prominence under formalist critics and curators, in no small part because of their institutional acceptance, have since become part of the rearguard rather than the vanguard.

In a 1990 essay for Arts Magazine , Anna Chave analyzes how Minimalist sculpture possesses a “domineering, sometimes brutal rhetoric” that was aligned with “both the American military in Vietnam, and the police at home in the streets and on university campuses across the country.” In particular, Chave is concerned with the way Minimalist sculptures define themselves through a process of negation. Of particular relevance to Chave’s argument are the massive steel sculptures by Minimalist artist Richard Serra.

Tilted Arc was installed in Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan in 1981. Chave describes the work as a “mammoth, perilously tilted steel arc [that] formed a divisive barrier too tall to see over, and a protracted trip to walk around.” She writes, “it is more often the case with Serra that his work doesn’t simply exemplify aggression or domination, but acts it out.” Tilted Arc was so controversial upon its erecting that the General Services Administration, which commissioned the work, held hearings in response to petitions demanding the work be removed. Worth quoting at length, Chave writes:

A predictable defense of Serra’s work was mounted by critics, curators, dealers, collectors, and some fellow artists…. The principle arguments mustered on Serra’s behalf were old ones concerning the nature and function of the avant-garde…. What Rubin and Serra’s other supporters declined to ask is whether the sculptor really is, in the most meaningful sense of the term, an avant-garde artist. Being avant-garde implies being ahead of, outside, or against the dominant culture; proffering a vision that implicitly stands (at least when it is conceived) as a critique of entrenched forms and structures…. But Serra’s work is securely embedded within the system: when the brouhaha over Arc was at its height, he was enjoying a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art…. [The defense’s] arguments locate Serra not with the vanguard but with the standing army or “status quo.” … More thoughtful, sensible, and eloquent testimony at the hearing came instead from some of the uncouth:
My name is Danny Katz and I work in this building as a clerk. My friend Vito told me this morning that I am a philistine. Despite that I am getting up to speak…. I don’t think this issue should be elevated into a dispute between the forces of ignorance and art, or art versus government. I really blame government less because it has long ago outgrown its human dimension. But from the artists I expected a lot more. I didn’t expect to hear them rely on the tired and dangerous reasoning that the government has made a deal, so let the rabble live with the steel because it’s a deal. That kind of mentality leads to wars. We had a deal with Vietnam. I didn’t expect to hear the arrogant position that art justifies interference with the simple joys of human activity in a plaza. It’s not a great plaza by international standards, but it is a small refuge and place of revival for people who ride to work in steel containers, work in sealed rooms, and breathe recirculated air all day. Is the purpose of art in public places to seal off a route of escape, to stress the absence of joy and hope? I can’t believe this was the artistic intention, yet to my sadness this for me has become the dominant effect of the work, and it’s all the fault of its position and location. I can accept anything in art, but I can’t accept physical assault and complete destruction of pathetic human activity. No work of art created with a contempt for ordinary humanity and without respect for the common element of human experience can be great. It will always lack dimension.
The terms Katz associated with Serra’s project include arrogance and contempt, assault, and destruction; he saw the Minimalist idiom, in other words, as continuous with the master discourse of our imperious and violent technocracy.

The End of Art

Arthur Danto

Brillo

Like Greenberg, Arthur Danto was an art critic for The Nation . However, Danto was overtly critical of Greenberg’s ideology and the influence he wielded over Modern and contemporary art. Nor was he a follower of Harold Rosenberg, though they shared influences, among them the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Danto’s chief contribution to contemporary art was his advancing of Pop Artists, particularly Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein .

In “The End of Art” Danto argues that society at large determines and accepts art, which no longer progresses linearly, categorized by movements. Instead, viewers each possess a theory or two, which they use to interpret works, and art institutions are largely tasked with developing, testing, and modifying various interpretive methods. In this way, art differs little from philosophy. After decades of infighting regarding the proper way to interpret works of art, Danto essentially sanctioned each approach and the institutions that gave rise to them. He came to call this “pluralism.”

RELATED: What Was the Pictures Generation?

Similarly, in “Painting, Politics, and Post-Historical Art,” Danto makes the case for an armistice between formalism and the various theories that arose in opposition, noting that postmodern critics like Douglas Crimp in the 1980s, who positioned themselves against formalism, nonetheless adopted the same constrictive air, minus the revolutionary beginnings.

Modernist critical practice was out of phase with what was happening in the art world itself in the late 60s and through the 1970s. It remained the basis for most critical practice, especially on the part of the curatoriat, and the art-history professoriat as well, to the degree that it descended to criticism. It became the language of the museum panel, the catalog essay, the article in the art periodical. It was a daunting paradigm, and it was the counterpart in discourse to the “broadening of taste” which reduced art of all cultures and times to its formalist skeleton, and thus, as I phrased it, transformed every museum into a Museum of Modern Art, whatever that museum’s contents. It was the stable of the docent’s gallery talk and the art appreciation course—and it was replaced, not totally but massively, by the postmodernist discourse that was imported from Paris in the late 70s, in the texts of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Lacan, and of the French feminists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray. That is the discourse [Douglas] Crimp internalizes, and it came to be lingua artspeak everywhere. Like modernist discourse, it applied to everything, so that there was room for deconstructive and “archeological” discussion of art of every period.

Editor’s Note: This list was drawn in part from a 2014 seminar taught by Debra Bricker Balken in the MFA program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts titled Critical Strategies: Late Modernism/Postmodernism. Additional sources can be found here , here , here (paywall), and here . Also relevant are reviews of the 2008 exhibition at the Jewish Museum, “Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976,” notably those by Roberta Smith , Peter Schjeldahl , and Martha Schwendener .

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Does Life Imitate Art, or Is Art Imitating Life?

a hotel room with a television set in it

In The Republic , Plato recounts a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon about whether or not art should be banned, since it is a mere imitation of things that takes people further and further away from truth. They conclude that art is an unreliable source. I was reminded of this argument when I first encountered Tania Franco Klein ‘s 2016 Contained (Self-Portrait) , found in her photo book Positive Disintegration . The picture of an unoccupied hotel room features a small television at its center. The same room, from the same angle, is reproduced on the black and white TV screen, this time inhabited by a woman, who, remembering the parenthetical in the title, we assume is the photographer.

The photograph goes on forever, since inside the first television there is a second one, but the image on that screen isn’t easily perceived, thus creating a sense of infinity and suspense. Franco Klein’s Positive Disintegration project explores emotions (mostly negative) that surface as a consequence of the generational drive for success and happiness. It represents the pressure of achieving and portraying a perfect lifestyle, in spite of what is lost or neglected in trying to do so.

detail from photo of tv set in hotel room

Detail from Tania Franco Klein, Contained (Self-portrait), 2016 © Tania Franco Klein, courtesy the artist and ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica

Plato would say The Form of the woman, the television, and the bed would be closest to the truth. But we cannot access them through our senses. Following his theory, The Forms are divine and eternal, they are an unchanging reality that exists outside of our material world. Everything we might access through our senses derives its identity from The Forms, so it’s all an imitation of the truth, never The Forms themselves. Actual things (and beings) are categorized by Plato as “perceptual” objects, since we recognize them through our senses. Those objects, therefore, are imitations of true forms. And if you’ve followed me so far you might guess that Franco-Klein’s photograph itself is an imitation of an imitation of truth, making the image inside the television a complete abomination to our ancient philosopher.

art is life essay

Can the photograph be called a self-portrait? Or is the woman contained in the television too far away from who Tania Franco Klein really is? Honoring the sense of curiosity the photograph caused in me the first time I encountered it at Pier 24 in San Francisco , I will tell you what I know about the photographer and muse of this piece. Tania Franco Klein is a 32-year-old Mexican artist. At her young age she has earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in photography. She has been published in The New Yorker and Aperture and has won several international photography awards.

Franco Klein revealed the inspiration behind P ositive Disintegration in a 2018 interview by Jim Casper for Lens Culture . “One day I was in a bookshop in Madrid, and I saw a title in the philosophy section called The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han. The title struck me. I was like, this is exactly how I feel.” In that book, the Korean-born German author and philosopher argues that there is a generalized inability to face negative experiences in a time when everything has to be perfect and everyone is supposed to be happy. He claims that stress, anxiety, depression and exhaustion have become social and historical phenomena that are affecting an entire generation. That is how the photographer felt when she came across The Burnout Society in a period of her life when she was lonely and isolated. So she did what artists do best, she channeled all these feelings into her art.

art is life essay

Franco Klein wanted to transform these feelings of loneliness, solitude, and anxiety while taking the autobiography to a more generational and universal scale. As she states in the interview, her main character is not herself, but emotion. She is not trying to simply capture a picture of a woman on a television screen in a hotel room, but to take the emotion of solitude and depression and make it into art. So then, Plato’s desire to ban art takes a new turn. What if these emotions, which are part of the realm of ideas and knowledge, don’t have a perceptual shape in our world and Franco Klein is giving it to them? Will art still be an imitation of life? Or is life imitating art? As Oscar Wilde wrote in his essay The Decay of Lying (1889), “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” adding further, “the self-conscious aim of life is to find expression, and art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may release that energy.” Through her art, Franco Klein is shaping emotions and giving them a place in the world.

The woman in the Franco Klein photograph IS loneliness, depression, isolation, and exhaustion. All of these emotions are contained, in a mise-en-abyme , a picture within a picture that draws you in and shamelessly undresses your emotions, making them its own.

I hadn’t felt so connected to an art piece in a very long time. As an exchange student, spending a semester in San Francisco, away from my home in Colombia I felt very understood and mirrored in the photograph. Doing an exchange semester can be very enriching, but, feelings of loneliness and alienation remain. All my relationships with loved ones back home are conducted through a screen. And if I allow myself to be egocentric, I am also contained in a screen for my loved ones, just like Franco Klein’s “self-portait.” Can they really grasp the woman I am becoming? Is there a way of expressing love that is strong enough to transcend distance and the limitations of electronic communications? There must be, because love and art always find their way into the world and into others.

art is life essay

The author Laura Carcache Guas reflected in the glass covering Tania Franco Klein’s 2016 Contained (Self-Portrait) at Pier 24 in San Francisco.

Post produced for Multimedia Storytelling course Fall 2022.

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Essay On Art In Our Life

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Literature , Music , Computers , Apple , Books , Friendship , World , Art

Published: 12/15/2019

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I can say that art is a part of my everyday life – indeed in everything I do. From the moment I wake up, I already see the decorations in my bedroom – the posters and pictures on my wall, the lamp on my bedside table, and the curtains on my window. I consider them all to be works of art as they are made up of different designs and colors, which truly make them beautiful.

As I go to school or out with my friends, works of art line up the streets – from the way plants, flowers, and trees are lined up on the sidewalk to the way that store owners have decorated their stores. Indeed, art is a very vast concept and is employed in different ways by different people. For example, one home may be decorated with a Victorian theme while another may be decorated with a country style theme. I think this is what makes art so prevalent. It s not fixed or constant. Art can be anything to anybody. It has no limitations or boundaries. People have different artistic tastes and they can easily incorporate this in the way they live. Even the way we dress up can be considered art. One doesn’t have to dress up like Lady Gaga to be artistically flamboyant. Whatever style we choose in dressing up can be considered an art form – whether we choose to dress conservatively or if we prefer the retro fashion. When I turn on my computer, I’m immediately greeted by works of art – from my desktop wallpaper to the different font styles and colors I choose to use when doing my homework. Indeed, even my computer monitor and computer mouse are works of art. They come in the design and color that suit my taste. When I log on to Facebook or play online games, my monitor is immediately filled by works of art in the form of graphics. Even the sounds that are played while an online game is running can be considered art. In addition, the emoticons I use when I chat with or email my friends can be considered works of art, including all the Internet lingo that my friends and I are fond of using – LOL, BRB, TBH, and the list goes on. When I turn on my iPod to listen to music, both the iPod and the actual music I’m listening to are works of art – the iPod with its slick design and application features, and the music, which is a combination of beautiful instrumentation and meaningful lyrics. As I sit on my bed and read my favorite book, the pillow that I prop on my back is a work of art, as well as the book I’m reading. Although the book does not have the same visual representation as most forms of art, the stories in the book enable me to create images in my head and be transported to another world – the same effect that the movie on TV has, which is also a work of art. Indeed, art is a part of everything I do. I can’t imagine how the world will be like without art – probably dull and a lot less interesting. Fortunately, we are all gifted with creativity, which makes art exist in each one of us.

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The Purpose of Art in My Life

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Art Is Life, Life Is Art

Art Is Life, Life Is Art

The rubrics of the verse forms can state you a batch about them before you have even began to read to read them. For illustration the verse form You re. Well foremost of all its rubric tells us that the talker is traveling to be speaking about or depicting person or something. The verse form Mushrooms does non needfully hold to be approximately Mushrooms because of what the rubric says. Because when analyzing a verse form you must happen out what it means and what the words are depicting as most of the words are likely similes or metaphors. For illustration the word mushroom could be something to make with multiplying or acquiring bigger really rapidly because that is what mushrooms do.

Plath has used her experiences to compose about many of her verse forms. For illustration in You re she has written about being pregnant. And in Mushrooms she has described the feminist motion by utilizing mushrooms. The verse form is depicting the feminist motion when the state was chiefly dominated by work forces and adult females didn? Ts have the ballot and when people had mid western values ( adult females stay at place and cook while the work forces go to work e.t.c. ) .

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The poet is seeking to acquire across that adult females will shortly be acquiring what they deserve and that they are merely every bit good as work forces deserve to vote and should be treated as peers. The temper is instead dominant. The words she uses makes it sounds as though the adult females are taking over.

The technique she uses in her verse form is imagery. Throughout the poem Plath gives the thought of multiplying, acquiring bigger, taking over and power. The construction of the stanzas is really short. She besides uses words that rime. The words she uses are really weak but the manner she uses is really effectual. What I mean by this is she makes what she is depicting sound little but strong.

There is tonss of ima gery used in this verse form, an illustration of this is? So many of us? This quotation mark gives us the feeling of tonss of adult females multiplying and acquiring more powerful. The velocity of the verse form is a slow changeless gait. There are a batch of different sound characteristics throughout the verse form. These sounds are insistent throughout the stanzas.

This verse form is about a pregnant female parent who is speaking about her unborn babe. She describes how it moves about insides her tummy. The poet is seeking to depict what it is like to be a pregnant female parent utilizing metaphors. The emotion and temper of the verse form is a really happy and bright temper.

She besides uses imagination in this verse form excessively but its non objects she creates in your head its emotions. The emotion she creates is happy feelings. The verse form doesn Ts have many stanzas but they are really long stanzas. The linguistic communication she uses is chiefly metaphors depicting happy ideas.

There is tonss of imagination used in the verse form. Here is an illustration of this imagination. Feet to the stars and moon- skulled. The velocity of the verse form is reasonably changeless and regular. The verse form doesn. T truly hold any specific sounds. The verse form doesnt rime though.

As you can see both verse forms are really different the first 1 has a instead dominant, command temper whereas the 2nd 1 is a instead a happy and bright temper. This is why I chose them because I think they are a good comparing and have many differences. Plath has written both of them from her ain experiences in her life. Mushrooms is about her experience of the feminist motion and when adult females were contending to acquire the ballot and become peers. You re is about her experiences of being a pregnant Dendranthema grandifloruom and what joys it brings and she mentions how far off the babe seems.

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Performance Art, Conceptual Art, Installation Art

A sculpture intended by the artist to move is called ________ sculpture. a. a kineticb. an armaturec. a motion-detector d. a fluted A. Kinetic All sculptures have this characteristic in common: a. they exist in three-dimensional spaceb. they are made of solid materialsc. they are meant to last for many years d. they are created for beauty e. all of these answers A.

Walking into Greek Art Section of Art Galleries

Ancient Greek artWalking into the Greek Art section of art galleries, surrounded by Greek art furnishings and interior designs, accompanied by musical flutes and occasional gong strikes, gives a surrounding atmosphere of entering into a mysterious world. Ancient Greek Art originated from the single-digit B.C. era, but its strong style influences impact decorative art of

Art Appropriation as Post-Art

Art eludes all possible definitions and characterizations. Postmodern thought has come to characterize the very ways in and through which we view and think about the world, life and reality. Art, that is, the realm of the beautiful, faces the same predicament. It is in this line of thought that we shift our attention from

Art Deco: History of Classic Art Movement

Art Deco is a classic art movement that started out in the early 1900s  but this style started to recede after only  thirty to forty years of existence. But Art Deco ended with a big bang because during its last years in the 1930s-40s, several notable works were generated by artists that are still admired

Art Museum and Brief Definition of Art

Art does not have exact definition because it is subjective. It depends upon the discretion of perception of an individual –and people have different ways of appreciating art. Any brief definition of art will oversimplify the subject. For a start, art is defined a visual expression of an idea or experience with the skilful use

Difference Between Art Museum and Art Gallery

Difference Between an Art Museum and Art Gallery Both art museums and public galleries present works of art to the public, exhibiting a diverse range of art from more well-known artists to emerging artists. They may sound similar, but in fact they are used very differently in their representation of art objects. Art museums are

Gender Issues Art Production & Art History

Gender Issues

Describe How Issues of Gender Are Important to the Production of Art and the Writing of Art HistoryFeminism has given new and of import penetrations into the production of art and the survey of art history. It has non merely helped us to detect the work of ignored adult females creative persons but has besides

For an Art to Be Discern as an High Art It Must Depend Upon on Its Structure

According to Novitz, High Art is the only acceptable Art. High Art are highly associated within our historical pasts. We tend to appreciate older artworks such as Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and etc., wherein we tend to learn and gain knowledge from the past events through

art is life essay

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  1. Art Is Life. Life Is Art.

    Art is life, no matter how fragile the times. Art is a testimony of the human condition. It encompasses all of our hardships, emotions, questions, decisions, perceptions. Love, hatred, life, death.

  2. Book Review: 'Art Is Life,' by Jerry Saltz

    Nonfiction Jerry Saltz Plays It Uncharacteristically Safe "Art Is Life" collects the art critic's essays, reviews, interviews and more from the past two decades. 14 Krista Schlueter for The...

  3. Essay On Art in English for Students

    The essay on art will help us go through the importance of art and its meaning for a better understanding. What is Art? For as long as humanity has existed, art has been part of our lives. For many years, people have been creating and enjoying art. It expresses emotions or expression of life.

  4. Essay on Art Is Life

    January 7, 2024 Students are often asked to write an essay on Art Is Life in their schools and colleges. And if you're also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic. Let's take a look… 100 Words Essay on Art Is Life Art: A Reflection of Life Art is like a mirror that reflects life.

  5. How Art Makes Us More Human: Why Being Creative is So Important in Life

    Art is an important part of life, as it helps us to explore our creativity and express ourselves in unique ways. Art is more than just a form of expression - it's a way of understanding the world and our place in it.

  6. Life is Art. Art is Life: Lessons for a Meaningful in Life from Art

    It's beautiful, complex, takes a while to understand - just like us. It's also a meaningful metaphor as a way to make sense of the messiness and complexity of life. While thinking about art, I've realized that I learned four important lessons from it that I want to share with you all today.

  7. My LIFE is art. ART is my life.

    As artists,: we simply must create! Art can and does mean so much more Art may be a way to explore your world or your imagination. In this way, life is art. Art may inspire a beginning painter to take steps into learning a new medium, or an accomplished artist to experiment with a new technique. Art is teaching, art is learning.

  8. Why Appreciating Art is So Important For People

    Art can stimulate thought and reason. That is why it is known to have brought a revolution in many cultures. It can stimulate ideas as it allows viewers to draw their own emotions in their thoughts and pull from their personal experiences as they encounter them. Art can be influential in a way as it naturally develops critical and innovative ...

  9. Opinion

    This is the essay is part of The Big Ideas, a special section of The Times's philosophy series, The Stone, in which more than a dozen artists, writers and thinkers answer the question, "Why ...

  10. Art Is Life

    The result is an openhearted and irresistibly readable appraisal by one of our most important cultural observers. | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4| ISBN 9780593086490. "From Kara Walker to Georgia O'Keeffe to Andy Warhol, Saltz surveys the contemporary art world with brilliant brush strokes." "Whether considering a poorly understood painter from history ...

  11. How does art affect us?

    Art is actually part of what historians deem necessary for a group of people to be considered a society! Art, along with writing, cities, government, religion, and social structure, is the very basis of life as we as humans have known it for millennia. So, it shouldn't be surprising that art has both a mental and physical effect on the human ...

  12. The Beginning: A Life in Art

    The beginning: A life in art ... This essay shines new light on some of the key moments of his early career, specifically between 1972 and 1977. The date most often given as the beginning of Larry's career as an art dealer is 1980, when he opened the Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. As early as 1972, though, he had been working to find ...

  13. Why Everything in Life Is Art: Seeing the World Through an Artist's

    Art involves a deliberate effort to create something that has aesthetic or intellectual value. If something is not created with the intention of expressing a creative idea or emotion, it may not be considered art. 2. Lack of skill or technique. Art typically involves a certain level of technical skill or mastery.

  14. Essay on Importance Of Art In Our Life

    Art makes our world beautiful. A painting on a wall or a song in the air can make our day better. It's like a splash of color on a grey day, making life more enjoyable. 250 Words Essay on Importance Of Art In Our Life Art Brightens Our World. Art is like a splash of color on a blank canvas. It makes our world more interesting and beautiful.

  15. 1010 words essay on the Relations Between Art And Life

    Art is life, not something to be placed in a shrine and substituted for life. Actually, art is an effort to create, besides the real world, a more human entity. Moreover, a true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

  16. The 10 Essays That Changed Art Criticism Forever

    The 10 Essays That Changed Art Criticism Forever. By Will Fenstermaker. June 14, 2017. Dr. Cornel West. There has never been a time when art critics held more power than during the second half of the twentieth century. Following the Second World War, with the relocation of the world's artistic epicenter from Paris to New York, a different ...

  17. Does Life Imitate Art, or Is Art Imitating Life?

    As Oscar Wilde wrote in his essay The Decay of Lying (1889), "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life," adding further, "the self-conscious aim of life is to find expression, and art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may release that energy.". Through her art, Franco Klein is shaping emotions and giving them a ...

  18. Art In Our Life Essay

    Essay On Art In Our Life Type of paper: Essay Topic: Literature, Music, Computers, Apple, Books, Friendship, World, Art Pages: 2 Words: 550 Published: 12/15/2019 ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS I can say that art is a part of my everyday life - indeed in everything I do.

  19. Art in Human Life

    Importance of Art in Human Life. Art is an all-embracing notion that plays the most important role in the development of the mankind. Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities. Art is a diverse field and includes artistic imprints in many forms which may include the creation of images or objects in fields ...

  20. Art is Life

    Art is Life Good Essays 1237 Words 5 Pages Open Document Throughout all of known human civilization man has used art as a form of communication to express ideas, emotions, and experiences that speak to each individual differently.

  21. Art Changed My Life

    I believe that graffiti art can change everyone's life and personality. Till this day I still continue drawing and doing so many things that involve art so I can get my mind of stuff that get me sad or lonely. I now appreciate that art is in my life and I now can say what a famous urban art writer said and it was " GRAFFITI SAVED MY LIFE".

  22. The Purpose Of Art In My Life

    The Purpose of Art in My Life Essay details Category: Arts & Cultures Subcategory: Visual Arts Words: 579 (1 page) Download Please note! This essay has been submitted by a student. The question of what art is persuading the world and human life has occupied the human mind from the earliest eras and in various places.

  23. ⇉Art Is Life, Life Is Art Essay Example

    Art Is Life, Life Is Art The rubrics of the verse forms can state you a batch about them before you have even began to read to read them. For illustration the verse form You re. Well foremost of all its rubric tells us that the talker is traveling to be speaking about or depicting person or something.

  24. 猹鱼 on Instagram: "Vol.169 ONLINE Zeet life drawing theme: LE PETlT

    784 likes, 1 comments - zeet_studio_sketch on February 14, 2024: "Vol.169 ONLINE Zeet life drawing theme: LE PETlT PRlNCE Time: 2/24 (SAT) **8:30PM CHINA / 1:30PM..." 猹鱼 on Instagram: "Vol.169 ONLINE Zeet life drawing theme: LE PETlT PRlNCE Time: 2/24 (SAT) **8:30PM CHINA / 1:30PM FRANCE / 7:30AM NEW YORK 💡This session will start half an ...