Signs of Art

To see art as art we usually have to be given clues. A contemporary wet plate photo is immediately taken to be something serious where the same image shot on an iPhone could easily go unnoticed. It’s not so much the medium that gives us a clue (though it can be), but signals of a potential “specialness” of vision. Something that tips off the viewer to observe a thing more closely. To try and see as opposed to merely look. The hope is to jolt people into breaking away from their default framework and to get them to “think outside the box”, which is the process of how we gain insight.

Artists, then, always have to be aware of these lenses to be effective on some level. They have to present the viewer with information that throws up a flag. There’s no need for this to be conscious though. A medium can already be enough, as in the case of a photorealistic drawing. Being told an image was made with pencils as opposed to a camera makes the viewer look at it differently. The tip can also be the environment the object is placed in, such as seeing a large rock within the white walls of a gallery. Nobody has to be consciously aware of signs, but the effects are still there. We hope that the precious resources spent on creation are an indication of something worthwhile.

The potential for highlighting the specialness of reality for the sake of insight is limitless then. And though everyone is capable of making art it seems inevitable that certain reflections will be inherently more valuable than others. E.g. trying to get people to love and respect one another is more noble than getting people to see that riding a motorcycle is fun. Because of this there will always be opinions regarding what Art is with a capital A. What insights are worth our time?