{"id":1578,"date":"2015-09-15T10:11:35","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T14:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/what-is-art\/"},"modified":"2015-09-15T10:11:35","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T14:11:35","slug":"what-is-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/what-is-art\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Art?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Sr. Spero<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span>Those of us who have passed through several decades seem to have one unanswered question that circles through the years. \u00a0Mine is \u201cwhat is art\u201d? \u00a0I tried to answer the question in school with a confusing course on Aesthetics. \u00a0That didn\u2019t work, and now, many years later, I\u2019m no closer to the answer. \u00a0I have learned a couple of things though\u2014that what I like and don\u2019t like has little to do with art; that what moves me, or makes me cry, is not a test of art. \u00a0That what disgusts me is just as likely to be called great art. \u00a0And that art takes all forms\u2014the visual arts, music, poetry, dance, theater, as well as the culinary arts, the art of smells&#8211;incense or perfume, and many more, such as flower arranging, architecture, and so on. \u00a0As a monastic at The Community of Jesus, I am surrounded by many forms of art; most recently, the art of making yogurt!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Tolstoy said \u201ca<\/span><i><span> writer [artist] is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/i><span>I am pondering this as a definition of art. \u00a0Is that quality, so hard to pin down, recognizable in great art, simply a revelation of the \u201cworkings of the [artist\u2019s] soul,\u201d wrought through creative struggles with paint, sound, words, movement, even food?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I welcome your comments, thoughts and opinions. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>My next big question is \u201cis all art subjective?\u201d \u00a0or is there an objective measure \u2013 to which we can all say, \u201cyes, that is great art.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/A21721.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-5624902\" src=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/A21721-1024x804.jpg\" alt=\"Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 - 1890 ), Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon\" width=\"584\" height=\"459\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 &#8211; 1890 ), Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. Public Domain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Follow us<\/strong><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheCommunityOfJesus\/~4\/zaxPJ8HfBqc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sr. Spero Those of us who have passed through several decades seem to have one unanswered question that circles through the years. \u00a0Mine is \u201cwhat is art\u201d? \u00a0I tried to answer the question in school with a confusing course &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/what-is-art\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}