But is it art?

So much ink has been spilt considering the question: "Is it art?".

 

Just because something is painted or sculpted, just because somewhere in its history something has been linked with the word 'art', does that make it art?

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Trust me, I have done my time as a student of aesthetics. I have written the essays and engaged in the debate. Let me give you a few token answers to the question 'What is art?' to play around with:

 

"It's art if I say it is"

 

"It's art if it's in a frame and in an art gallery"

 

"Art re-presents the world to the viewer" (not mimics the world).

It shows us the world in a different way.

 

"We know what 'art' is until we're asked to define it"

That is, we know how to use the word  'art' even if we can't say exactly what it means.

 

"Art is a word like game or time. It doesn't have any defining or necessary conditions" (Wittgenstein)

 

 

Okay, so far so good.

 

So let's have a look at Anthea Hamilton's installation The Squash in Tate Britain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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If you want (and why not?) you can read the blurb on Tate Britain's website.

 

But in a nutshell, Hamilton filled the Duveen Galleries with plinths. White ceramic blocks, arranged in a variety of patterns as homes for sculptures. Some of them actually housed sculptures: pieces picked from the Tate collection by Hamilton herself.  Others were empty. And one ... well, one was occupied by a manikin with a strangely-shaped head. It took me a while to realise that there was a real person inside the costume.

 

And yet it was the empty plinths which spoke most eloquently to me. Because they were empty, they spoke of all the sculptures, all the artefacts which might have been there. They brought to mind a host of objects which the artist herself never considered. 

 

Isn't this the magic of art?

To enable us to see what is not there?

To enable us to see that to which we would have otherwise been blind?