What Is Art?
By Leo Gura - July 31, 2017 | 7 Comments
Understanding the essence of art
Mayur says: The worst mistake that you can make is to think that you’re alive, when really you’re asleep in life’s waiting room.
– Waking Life
Natalya says: This is one of your best videos, Leo! It changed my perspective on art, even though I’ve been a professional artist and graphic designer for over 30 years.
One thing I don’t quite agree upon is that rarely a creative professional has the opportunity to wait for inspiration. In reality, creative people who work full-time jobs must produce 5 to 25 pieces of art per day, every day. And when I was in school studying fine art, we were required to produce 100 sketches per week. So it’s humanly impossible to be driven by inspiration (unfortunately).
Another important aspect is that some creative jobs are only partially about aesthetic beauty and may even have very little to do with making stuff pretty. The term communication design is used interchangeably for advertising and graphic design because it’s not about making stuff pretty, but about ‘communicating’ a message to an audience. It’s the art of delivering a message in an easy-to-digest manner with the purpose of generating leads. It’s still art – the art of successfully getting one’s point across – to attract prospects.
So I don’t think all types of art involve inspiration and appreciating the beauty. I think some forms of art are about your proficiency level and becoming a master in what you do. You can not be a beautiful dancer if you’ve had no serious training with years of practice, and you can’t communicate design successfully if you haven’t taken any design and marketing classes, etc. Why? Because if you wait for inspiration, you’ll never learn enough to get to that proficiency level. Again, it doesn’t apply to all forms of art. I’m just speaking from my experience. But thank you for opening my eyes on all the different angles I haven’t considered before.
Mayur says: According to the book Sai Satcharita, Sai Baba arrived at the village of Shirdi in the Ahmednagar District, British India when he was about 16 years old. He led an ascetic life, sitting motionless under a Neem tree and meditated while sitting in an Asana. The Shri Sai Satcharita recounts the reaction of the villagers:
The people of the village were wonderstruck to see such a young lad practicing hard penance, never minding the heat or cold. By day he associated with no one, by night he was afraid of nobody.
His presence attracted the curiosity of the villagers, and he was regularly visited by the religiously inclined, including Mahalsapati, Appa Jogle and Kashinatha. Some considered him mad and threw stones at him. Sai Baba left the village, and little is known about him after that.
adam says: Cant play it. Message states “”Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available””
Firefox has never failed me in the past viewing Leos stuff.
Michiel says: Around 2 minutes and 2 seconds into the video you mention that art does not exist for birds. But what about singing birds? Isn’t that a kind of art too?
Michiel says: Around 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the video you mention that art does not exist for birds. But what about singing birds? Isn’t that a kind of art too?
Max Gron says: I struggled with my art before yet sending my pictures to Mum via text messages my mother’s come to appreciate my art. It’s really about paintings which I do on my mobile. As art is paintings and sculptures, or it’s creativity or it’s beauty, or it’s a skill learned from instruction, observation, or experience. Science is the art of learning physical reality even though there are markets funding science. That it can’t be rational, that’s nonsense, I got a certificate of art in high school, I’m an artistic genius. My post-impressionist art speaks for itself if only my family and friends see it on my mobile phone and not hung in public on the wall. Do you realize that art is a difficult piece of work that gets rejected, criticised, and demonised? To prevent this why should it be on public display? I was always a reject for everything I did, life in the real world is a poverty-stricken piece of shit. To see art in this is to see it for what it is: the beauty of manipulation and neurotic tendencies to shape it into the dump you’re in to save the lack of public shame by going out dressed beautiful only for society to see your intentions as amoral arty disgrace with no sense of thinking of anyone but yourself, I went through this nightmare and all I see is critics with no art and no imagination who see me as just a freak with no skill, with terrible inventions. I see the tongue-in-cheek aspect of art, artists very often are single and no woman wants them, that’s how one must suffer for their art.