Against Art: Food for thought by Joan Hus

Against Art

It would be better if we stopped using ‘art’ to refer to the natural human tendency to ‘create for reasons no one knows about’.

From the 17th century onwards, the idea of creativity has evolved from a term which referred to ‘any skill or mastery in general’, into art as a particular, predominantly Western cultural category.

Since the 19th century the ‘Western category of art’ has been used for dividing and grouping objects, concepts, activities, projects according to what was deemed to be essential for classification as ‘art’.

The definitions of art, which give the reason why we recognize and label something – for the rest of its existence!- as art, have moved back and forth between aesthetics and iconography, between form and content, or – according to a general linguistic approach – between syntactic and semantic definitions.

After four centuries use and abuse, art, as a Western category of creativity, is completely exhausted, and as a consequence the term itself has become useless.

This seems contrary to the fact that art figures prominently not only in the reports of aesthetic, literary, arthistorical and philosophical research (which generates one after the other theoretical monstrosity, poisonous like mercury, breaking down at the slightest touch in countless theory beads) but also appears in records pertaining to public administrative and financial issues, in written arrangements for private sponsorship, in investment reports and all sorts of commercial agreements. However, it is not because of the fact that a word is ubiquitous, that it has any sense.

Like artificial satellites man has placed by his own endeavour all sorts of things into the orbit of creative activity, without thinking about the possible consequences.

Now, if it is true that ‘art’ has become something which is not characteristic of man, an idol that appears in innumerable shapes, then it is absolutely pointless to try to revolutionize the domain of creative activity, while in the meantime continuing to use the term ‘art in the Western categorical sense’.

Clearly, art is a dead end. It does not lead any further, anywhere. This road is closed – for ever. There is no other option but to take a different route.