This distinction – what is art and what is not art – used to haunt me.
I’ve been fascinated my whole life with the notion of aesthetic aura – the encounter with art that elevates us, that delights us, surprises us, intrigues us, inspires us. The feeling you have in front of a great masterwork or at the opera or symphony.
More recently, contemporary American art of the 1960s and 1970s has provided a different backdrop for both my creative approach to life, and my broader understanding of experience. I discern less and less the boundaries between these.
“Ordinary life performed as art/not art can charge the everyday with metaphoric power.”
— Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow, one of these conceptual artists (also a painter), whose peak work came in the 1970s, once wrote a five-page essay about brushing his teeth. He’s a hero of mine because he realized that everyday life, lived with intentionality, becomes art. Or you could say, he brought his notions of art into all of his life.
Allan Kaprow, a conceptual artist (also a painter) whose peak work came in the 1970s, once wrote a five-page essay about brushing his teeth. He’s a hero of mine because he realized that everyday life, lived with intentionality, becomes art. Or, you could say, he brought his notions of art into all aspects of his life.
This approach carries for me the most fruitful attempt to define where the art begins and where it ends. It certainly cannot be discerned in any of the material components of the work, which is simply a black-and-white photograph of a worn path in a meadow. Or is the art in the line, worn and formed in the grass of an English meadow by Richard Long’s repetitive walking back and forth across it?
Or is it more like an “earthwork sculpture,” like Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty? What about the photograph, which is Long’s documentation of the line? Perhaps it’s none of these, as the actual line no longer exists; the worn grass likely recovered within the day.
Then, the art must be in the act of walking itself, which becomes a contingent, site-specific performance piece. But this performance happened over 40 years ago, and performances typically imply an audience, of which there was none. I begin to find art historical categorizations elusive and arbitrary, which helps me make sense of my own practice.
Similarly, my understanding of spirituality used to be one of transcendence and otherness. I felt I needed to be in a special place, having an exceptional experience, to feel connected to something larger. Or, I needed the right language to express my experience. As a result, I found myself living as though spirituality were distant and apart for most of my waking life. I relied on transcendent experiences, which are rare, and this mindset devalues the present moment, other people, and the natural world around us.
A friend once asked me, “Do you try to fit moments of contemplation into your life, or do you live a contemplative life?”
I’m not the best at being still, or doing meditation (though I continue to practice). – I constantly strive to be more disciplined. Then, I realize I am striving (a teacher once used the invented adjective “strivey“, as in, “you are being strivey!”, which I love).
This life of mindfulness means everything we do can be intentional. But how do we come to that realization? It’s easy to say this, harder to embody it.
As I dug into this everyday practice thing, I began looking for ways to create artwork that could appropriately communicate these experiences while further enriching my walking practice. I was writing and taking photographs, but I didn’t want the making part of my practice to be just an “end result.” For example, if I went for a walk, then made a painting about it, should we just look at the painting and say that I have completely expressed my feelings about walking?
Why can’t I make art about my walk to the bus stop? Can my walk to the bus stop be a contemplative act, if done with intention? How can I walk to the bus stop in a way that makes it sacred? I can apply an intention while I walk; I can allow my awareness to descend from my eyes/brain, into my heart, while I walk. I can turn the walk itself, the ordinary movement-and-moment, into an icon. Sacred intention blurs the boundaries between present and not-present. Each breath, and each step, can become a miraculous gift of presence.
What is art and what is not art? Is a drawing art? The walk? The markmaking? The sacred intention we bring to anything disrupts the categories and boundaries we put on things. Nothing is outside, or inside. No categories, no borders, no walls.
These distinctions between art and not-art become unnecessary, and can even get us into trouble. Michael Fried wrote an essay about this very distinction, defending these boundaries. He wrote that art pulls us out of the realm of everyday life, transcending the ordinary and pulling us into an aesthetic space he referred to as “presentness.” He ended his essay with a famous (or infamous) line: Presentness is grace.
Fried was criticized for attributing a sense of religiosity to art, especially during the late 1960s when minimalist art challenged the notion of art as something holy or beyond. But the Minimalists, in a way, were performing a great act of generosity – by focusing on the viewer’s perception, they destabilized the notion of art as an exalted object.
Fried was right – presentness is grace – but presentness is not confined to a symphony or a painting. These things, objects/paintings/sculptures (but also a breath, a step, a moment in time/not-time) can and do heighten our awareness, but we can bring that same heightened awareness into any moment.
Presentness is available to us at all times, in every moment. The very fact that we breathe and perceive is an unfathomable gift, filled with infinite possibility. May we each recall this fact in this moment, and live out our unique and infinite possibilities with grace.
