.gallery.madness.

Last night was Impromptu Date Night, and my beau and I popped by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to see what was there to see, having discovered that they are open late on Thursday and Friday nights.
We saw some lovely sculptures by Rodin, and there were a few new pieces in the Egyptian wing, and while we were wandering we got into a discussion about the Nature of Art.

I live in a fairly dichotomous world with my art - there's the physical art, and there's my dance. Probably because I dance, and because dance is so fleeting an art form, I very strongly believe that what is or isn't art is completely determined by the viewer. My beau, on the other hand, believes that what is and isn't art is determined by the creator.

I don't really know that either of us is completely right or completely wrong. But with dance there is the moment in which you are dancing, and then there is a memory of that dance with the audience. And that's it. There is no physical thing when the piece is done to show that anything was done at all. There is nothing there to examine when years past for critics to continue to review and discus. Mata Hari is a perfect example of this - Spy, ConArtist, Dancer - known worldwide for her performances, and yet there is nothing left of them, not even video. The beau brought up a famous choreographer, long dead, whose dances are still being performed, but that seems removed a step, because in his case, his company of dancers was his medium, not necessarily the dancing itself.

There's an assemblage of sticks hanging in our living room wall - something he found on the side of the road, liked the arrangement of, and has clung to for years. To me, and whoever threw it out, it's a pile of sticks. To him, it's art. I can put an empty bottle of water on a pedestal and call it art, but to anyone passing by, it's going to look like trash.*  And after I die, as we all do eventually, some of my paintings might survive while my dancing will not.**

I'm going to see more galleries with a friend this evening.
Perhaps I can re-read the Courage to Create this weekend as well...


*On second thought, if I put an artist's statement next to my empty water bottle claiming that its placement is a commentary about the wastefulness of the human species and how early man would have revered such an object for it's usefulness and appearance, someone might call it art. But then it the bottle art, or the concept? And would there have been a better more thoughtful way to execute the same piece?

**And as old things tend to get destroyed, my old paintings would have much more value than they ever could today....and some historian would probably try to shove a lot of existential meaning onto it that the piece was never meant to have....and if my journals survived on top of all of that...
And this is how art is made.