01 Diane Cai: An Attempt

Defining a standard for art has been something that I've struggled with a lot for a good portion of my young adulthood. It's this intangible, fleeting thing that some people would be willing to die for-- or at the very least, live uncomfortably for. It is an ideal. It is a purpose. It is a crusade. It is not a pipe.

It steals across history in varying and alternating masks, strumming something in each individual who makes contact with it, whispering in the ear of its beholder reflections of his own nature and nurture. It is a rainbowed symphony arcing across the heavens of our personal gods. It is as we will make of it.

But at the same time it sets itself apart from other ideals. Liberty. Privacy. It is at once all of those things, and different from all of those things.

Perhaps because it is selfish. People don't typically die to protect other people's rights to art. You won't hear a starving artist exclaim, "I might not like what you paint, but I'll defend to the death your right to paint it."

And yet, it still has a genuineness about it. It is rigorous and immaculate in its intentions. It is naked, candid, and ironically artless. It is an artist's expression, and though we may be privileged enough to view it as humble and unsuspecting audience members (and if we're lucky enough, touched by it and rocked by it), we must remember that for the most part, these pieces of artwork have not been crafted for the viewing of our individual eyes. Picasso would not give two shakes of a monkey's ass if I, Diane Cai, had never seen a single one of his paintings and consequently been heart-twanged. It is easy to forget, walking into a museum or a show with our impressive Google-guided knowledge bases and presumptions, that real art is great because its creator has made it so, and less because we have decided it to be so.

So when I look at art, I look for all the usual things: aesthetic beauty (although I still make a distinction between that, and art... but that is for another post), context, meaning as I feebly try to understand it. But above all else, I look for sincerity.

Still, I won't pretend to have made much progress in this venture for a textbook definition that satisfies me; as of now, I still feel completely and totally, helplessly, hopelessly uncomfortable answering the question "what is art."