What is art?

I forgot to mention it, but on the last page of last Friday's Datebook section in the San Francisco Chronicle was a series of letters readers wrote in response to a critic's take on the previously-blogged-about Dale Chihuly exhibit at the de Young. I'm glad the Chron published it, because I'm pretty sure it sparked hours-long debates in households bay-wide.

Here's the gist: the critic who reviewed the exhibit slammed Chihuly and the de Young for choosing to feature his work; in his opinion, the museum didn't choose to recognize the best modern art there is to see but rather the most colorful. He said art has to give the audience a message; it has to be intellectually stimulating and reflect on society or something equally intelligent and if it doesn't, it errs on the side of knick-knacks.

To me, this review shows we've lost sight of what art is and why it exists. Time and time again, we hear people applaud movies, music and works of art that show us something profound and/or hidden about our society. But what about stuff that just makes us feel good?

Art exists because it communicates things we can't communicate verbally, so if you can discuss art and conclude exactly what it means verbally, it's not great art. The best art is the kind that inexplicably stirs something inside us, that makes us feel something we can't explain. Claude Monet does that to some, and so does Vincent van Gogh, but neither of them were trying to send us a deeper message--they just wanted to paint the way they felt or saw. Why, then, do we call them artists and not Chihuly, who creates stirring feelings and scenes with glass-blown forms? Why do modern artists have to pack a lecture into a piece of art?

Answer: they don't. Chihuly's work is art because it makes people feel.