"Art," it was explained, "is oil painting, watercolor, sculpture, photography, crafts, music and drama. Art is 'creative imagination' – the only difference is the medium used by the artist (be it theater, poetry, painting, photography or film). As a painter will use his brush and canvas to produce an image, a photographer will use light and film." Others may use "clay, color (for mood), musical sound, photographic image, words and in accordance with his/her ideas and emotions, fashions artistic objects."
In essence, Mike Henry expressed, "Art is anything that evokes emotion (senses besides sight and hearing). All art, music, painting, sculpture, photography, etc., will evoke some kind of response or emotion from us. Let's just take music for example. Classical, jazz, blues, disco, techno, rap – what do you like? We all have our likes and dislikes and each different kind of music will evoke a different emotion from excitement to pleasure to downright disgust. The same is true of all art. Is all photography art? A photograph must evoke some kind of emotion to qualify as a work of art. It must make us think! It makes us ask questions. Who is this woman? What is in the sack? What's in the bottles?"
"The purpose of art," it was argued, "is not for self-expression, but the means of communicating an idea or an emotion to another person. That is its only excuse for being. Art is the medium for the expression of emotions, or idealistic ideas. Regardless of the medium, works of art are constructed through the artist's senses, memory and imagination."
It was also pointed out, "Art has been thought of as a quest for truth. The artist lives in the real world and from his experience draws artistic inspiration or intuition."
However "art is related to reality" because "pictures, cathedrals and symphonies do not exist in the imagination. To be art, they must exist in the physical world. Imagine a society of unreal artists, called up by clairvoyants."
It was also stressed, "Art must do more than imitate. Cameras have not replaced artists. If an artist sets out to depict, realistically, the appearance of an apple, he must leave out a great number of real aspects. He cannot paint all views of the apple; he must choose one. He cannot reproduce the volume, or the changing light, or the physical changes the apple undergoes, such as decay. He cannot paint the weight, or the taste, or its chemical structure, or its history. These aspects are all real. The careful, realistic picture will be a shadow of the actual object – an abstraction. If the artist was only concerned with surface appearance, he certainly would not convey his attitude about the apple, or any ideas about it. A magnificent painting of an apple is possible, but it must do more than record the appearance."
It was understood, "Art and photography came to the parting of the ways at the end of the 19th century. Until then painters had thought photography a great help because it refreshed the memory. But modern art did not wish to recall; it dealt, not with the memory, but with the creation of new impressions. The photograph imparted a feeling of looking at nature through a window. The frame was nothing but a mere boundary, and the scene was all flatness. One saw a tree, for instance, as a shaded thing, just 2 flats. One might know it was round and could be embraced, but the photograph conveyed nothing of this quality. The modern painting gave a vital feeling of being out of doors in a world full of sensory impressions, a solid world where the trees had 3 dimensions, not 2."
The layman may at first find the artist's work obscure because the observer had not fully entered into the artist's experiences. As pointed out, "We each see the world according to our interests, experience and shifting attention. Ten witnesses give 10 different versions of one accident. Ten artists would give us 10 different pictures of the same apple."
In conclusion, "What a picture expresses is much more important than what it depicts. Ideas, emotions and values are very real things. They are also significant. The appearance of an apple is of little importance. It is quite ordinary. An extraordinary painting could be made of it, if the painter used it to make a statement. If you value a painting because it resembles an object, you have missed the point and have reduced the painter to the status of a camera. An artist depicts the invisible with visible. All art is real in that it exists. And all art is abstract in that it refers to many aspects of experience. If a spectator only responds to art that imitates, he will have to ignore the great majority of art. He will also fail to appreciate the significant aspects of art; the expression of ideas, emotions and values which are the very life of art."
In conclusion, "What a picture expresses is much more important than what it depicts. Ideas, emotions and values are very real things. They are also significant. The appearance of an apple is of little importance. It is quite ordinary. An extraordinary painting could be made of it, if the painter used it to make a statement. If you value a painting because it resembles an object, you have missed the point and have reduced the painter to the status of a camera. An artist depicts the invisible with visible. All art is real in that it exists. And all art is abstract in that it refers to many aspects of experience. If a spectator only responds to art that imitates, he will have to ignore the great majority of art. He will also fail to appreciate the significant aspects of art; the expression of ideas, emotions and values which are the very life of art."
