What is Art?

Art is communication. Art is affection and affliction. Art is a mirror, and the image reflected back, and the light that does the reflecting. Culture does not exist without art. Whether it is the art of theater, the art of painting, the martial arts, or even just the art of communication, art must exist for people to have any kind of identity. It takes forms that may be very strict, as in the great classical painters, or the sweeping Wagnerian operas, or it may also exist in an amorphous and nearly intangible state of Bacchanalian chaos. Whatever its form, art distills something that is inner, something that is purely energetic, some might say even divine, within us, and manifests it so that it can be shared and given life outside of the individual or individuals that created it.
However, just as art is the manifestation of an inner spirit, or Mana to use an aboriginal Mexican term, it is also the action of tapping into a concept or spirit that is outside of oneself, that is greater than an individual or a single cultural context, but rather is shared on a human level and therefore universally communicable.
Art is an epic film with millions of dollars of financial backing, and it is the found object puppet piece that uses a pencil and a bottle to tell an improvisational story to a single child.
Art is expansive and restrictive. It can be something that seeks out the unifying aspects of all people, or it can be the defining lines of an isolated society. It is a herald and a catalyst of social change. Art is the Revolution. Art is institution and the convention, as well as the dissident and the experiment. Art is love incarnated with an arm made of hatred and an elbow made of ignorance and a wrist made of clarity, a foot made of wanderlust, two eyes of curiosity, a stomach of understanding, two palms of compassion, and genitals of desire. Art is what you make it and art is what art makes you. Art is good, art is bad, art is ugly. There is no substitute for art. Art is a prostitute. Art is a pimp, our President, and the bag lady in the alley. Humanity is art. I am art. You are art. And this post is most definitely… art.