What is Art?

“Art is not a thing — it is a way.”

Art is a form of expression; Expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuition, or desires. It is the purest manifestation of our soul. For me, it is the closest thing to magic. Whether it's crimson red on a blank canvas or doodles of flowers, whether it's the tunes of Indian classical music or the gestures and moves of a dancer. Whether it's the stanzas by Robert Frost or the poems of Gulzar, or plays of Shakespeare, or the stories of Rabindranath Tagore or the frescos in church or the pillars of an ancient temple ; ART IS EVERYWHERE.

I would go as far as to call it divine, for it's through art you are in most sync with yourself and thereby in sync with the universe.

When you dance with your whole heart, just being guided by the beats of music, it feels as if you are in trance.

When you feel the impulse to express your thoughts in ink, or abstractly paint, it feels as if you are guided by a force.

This creativity that sweeps in at peculiar times seems to come from a distant land and not from within but manages to present a glimpse of your soul in form of art.

In ancient Greece and ancient Rome, people did not believe that creativity came from humans. They believed that creativity was this divine spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknown source. The Greeks identified this divine spirit of creativity as 'Daemons'.

Thus the idea that art and creativity are a part of something larger than what we perceive is not very recent.

Poetry is also art in form of words. It is the ambiguity of poetry that allures me.

For me, the difference between a poem and a story is that a story tells you exactly what happened; it is a detailed account of an event. Your job as a reader is to only imagine it in the space of your mind and let it seep in.

However, for a poem, it's a two-way street.

A poem too tells a story or provides the basic outline of a story and it gives the reader the liberty to fill in its gaps, to fill it with their experiences, thoughts, and ideas.

The poem is written by the poet but it is completed by the reader.

And a poem can have an altogether different meaning for different people.

Its mysterious nature, its deceptiveness, and at the same time its ability to strike certain chords in oneself, that they didn't even know existed, is what makes it so special for me.

I believe art is a form of storytelling and most times I am too intrigued to know it and at times I am terrified to find out what lead to its creation.

As Oscar Wilde said, "Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."

Adorno, wrote, ‘all art is an uncommitted crime’, meaning that art challenges the status quo by its very nature and engages with an already existing ideology and dominant discourse. Thus, art should be critical and should interrogate the world, rather than seek to explain it, or as Brecht wrote: ‘Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it’.

Whatever art is, it is inherent to human existence. Dostoevsky wrote: ‘Art is as much a need for humanity as eating and drinking. The need for beauty and for creations that embody it is inseparable from humanity and without it man perhaps might not want to live on earth. Man thirsts for beauty, finds and accepts beauty without any conditions but just as it is, simply because it is beauty; and he bows down before it with reverence without asking what use it is and what one can buy with it’. For Nietzsche, ‘art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence’. Art is a means of coping with the world we live in, our own existence and making sense of it all. American novelist Saul Bellow wrote that ‘art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos’. Art is also an attempt at immortality, or as French novelist Andre Malraux wrote, ‘art is a revolt, a protest against extinction’. Art is all those things and so many others.

And for me?

It is the medium to connect to something greater than myself, greater than the world I perceive, and caressing the fabric of my soul. It's spiritual.

So tell me?

what does art mean to you?

- Amishi