Josh Moses- What is Art

I had this question on my mind all week, its sort of like trying to define the color red. Red is red. There is no description for it, there are simply examples, red things are fire trucks, tomatoes, strawberries, and art things are Picasso, Dalí, or whomever else.

But, by a stroke of pure luck, in the first lecture of my comparative literature course my professor defined art as a way to see the leakiness of our perception of the real world. I'd like to elaborate. It is true that most people agree on most things about how to define the plethora of objects, ideas, and sounds that make up the world. Trees are trees to most people, including myself. But, it stands to reason that each person throughout their life has had a different interaction with trees, brought new concepts to what a tree means to them, specifically. In art, a person can show how they see a tree to the rest of the world, their internal concept of what it means to have branches, leaves, and to be made of wood comes across in everything from context to brush strokes. I think that the leakiness my comparative literature teacher was trying to describe is the differences in how we each see reality. What is just a urinal to some is beautiful art to others. What is art? It is the medium by which people can show the world the way they see it.

Below is how Pablo Picasso saw the tragedies of the Bombing of the town of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War