Thoughts on things are not art
In response to one of my own posts, a kind blogger posted their own thoughts.
The point is well-made that things themselves are not art. The result of creative struggle, be it a painting, drawing of a tiger, or piece of music, is not all there is to art. Often, we refer to the thing as the art when the process of creation - the years of learning, the sweat and tears, the anguish, the joys - are also the art. The journey and the art thing are indivisible.
By separating the artistic thing from the journey, we commodify it. We treat it as a unit to be sold and a product to market. In doing so, we not only make the least important aspect - money - the most important, but we also place a fence around the painting, the drawing, the piece of music. In dong so, we boldly declare that the piece of art is done and finished. In this way, it's limited because markets don't understand art that isn't complete or finished. The market wants to simplify things to sell them as easily and quickly as possible. The market values the painless transaction over friction and complexity.
The deeper layer, as suggested in the response to my own post, is that the creative journey itself is all of the art. The end result is simply the art thing that can be sold and commodified. Without doubt, the often painstaking process of creating art is of least interest to the market and this is, perhaps, why it's often the most interesting aspect to other artists.
In the details of the creative journey, we discover the seeds of the artist - their life, their mind, their imagination, their motivation. The great Romantic poet William Blake viewed human imagination as a divine spark and uplifted it as the enemy of reason. The archetype of reason, Urizen, limits and binds freedom and imagination. It flattens our natures and results in the dry annals of science and economics.
In The First Book of Urizen, Blake writes:
Times on times he divided, & measur'd Space by space in his ninefold darkness Unseen, unknown!
Urizen represents the power of rationalism. Urizen divides and measures, as a scientist does. Once measured and divided, the great powers of human imagination are diminished through being laid bare for analysis and description. In this context, the commodified art thing is our imagination given form and measurement, and it being so open to criticism and analysis, perhaps it also loses the power and dynamism of the artist.
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