What is ART?

By

Amaya

To know about art, we need to begin with creativity.

At its core, creativity is about ideas and how we develop, understand, and communicate them. It involves taking risks, challenge assumptions, and seeing things in a new way. Creativity is an element of art and not exclusively limited to art. If we look at it as being about expression, or about solely existing in the freeform world of art, we diminish its power.Creativity manifests itself in many different forms outside the world of art. A new product, a new app, a new system, a new way of organizing your closet or even what to make for dinner examples of creative endeavors, and they are not art.

Art usually refers to the visual arts. And art is used to describe something of beauty, or a skill which produces an aesthetic result. It could be our thoughts, emotions, creativity, intuitions, and desires. The aesthetic experience sets into motion a rhythm and this rhythm connects and blends with the rhythm of universal life (empathy). Thus the artist finds a kind of immortality in his work. -Nandalal Bose. Art has rhythm. In fact art is rhythm. Feelings, thoughts, ideas, experiences, forms, colors gain aesthetic value only when they get into a rhythmic movement.

It is on the sense, whether gross or subtle, that the sixty four arts – like music, poetry, sculpture, architecture, dance, drama and the like – subsist, also each of these can depend on others to express itself. The mind experiences the aesthetic essence through sense and then gives form and substance to it through the medium of art. The special virtue of visual art is the ability to transform one visual object into another kind of visual object.

Art does not come with a user manual. All we can do is look at the way it is made and the way it is talked about and to spot the patterns. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t any governing principles just that they are a bit harder to pin down. But the purpose of art is the same. Whether it is poetry or painting or dance they all want to capture the rhythm of delight inherent in all creations. There are many who think that art is the domain for the rich and pleasure-loving alone. They forget that the vitality of a work of art lies in its sense of beauty and order and not monetary value. There is no one true method for art creation. You have to start with one method or the other to start. And once you understand the essence of creativity your work will attain uniqueness.  

Reference: Vision and Creation by Nalandal Bose, Ted-talks videos.