Art is Not What You Think It Is

Art is Not What You Think It Is - a new book by Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago. With a title like this I had hoped to read the book and come away from it with an answer - if it is not what I think it is then what is it? Art is: Insert pat answer here. Unfortunately that is impossible.

Sewing, 24 x 24, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, Suzanne Utaski Gibbs, May 2012

This book is based on 7 incursions.

Definition of incursion is:

1. (Military) a sudden invasion, attack, or raid

2. the act of running or leaking into; penetration

I believe that the authors wished to provoke me to think about art differently and it did, but not enough. Either I did not fully understand their position, they did not penetrate my beliefs critically enough, or because I practice art making regularly and I just have an inner knowing that coincides with what they are trying to teach. I have begun to put into words some of my thoughts and feelings about art. These thoughts may or may not be similar to Preziosi and Farago's objectives. For example:

• Artists are not god-like individuals or heroes, we are all people making things
• Art is everywhere and that also translates to nowhere
• Very few people outside of the art world critique their own assumptions about art
• Do we critique contemporary art enough, so few people "get it" that I wonder...
• Art is made in collaboration, influences abound - artists only think they are alone in the studio
• Museums are problematic and at once necessary
• Values placed on art are problematic at best
• Art is political even if the artist says it is not, think about all the silenced voices over the ages

The authors seemed to write about things in threes: work, author, function or idea, hand, divine or subject, audience, artist. I think the idea is that ART is at the center of any one of these tripods.

Stitching, 24 x 24, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, Suzanne Utaski Gibbs, May 2012

Would it actually be possible to make art that stopped catering to the fabricated capital letters Art World? Can any art work hold true across time, place and culture? The ideas in this book bring me full circle to what my art practice has meant to me for so many years. Art is art while it is being made, especially when being made in the community of other people. Then the object is a mere trace of what art was. A painting becomes and object that is but a trace of the process.