Why do I make art and why I’m keep making it?
The simple answer is I don’t know, I don’t even know what art is and what an artwork should have in order to be called “Art”.
What do I know then? Well, I make doodles and people tell me that this is art. Why? Why do they think this is art and some other objects not?
So, should I start by trying to describe what Art is? At least for me? But first a little bit of history.
Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages talks about Art as mastering a task:
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“The military art commands the art of horse riding. Some arts admit of conjecture, such as medicine, commerce, and the like. There is an art of making what is pleasant, namely, the art of cooking and the art of making perfumes. The habits of building and weaving and making music are in the soul and from the soul. But it is more accurate to say that the builder builds, and not that his art builds, though he builds through his art.
An art that is concerned with the end commands and makes the laws for an art concerned with means to the end. Thus, the art of civil government commands that of the military; the military commands the equestrian; and the art of navigation commands that of shipbuilding.”
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)1
But the concept of art has changed through times and now common people relates Art with “Beauty” and “Soul”.
In a speech about arts, Xi Jinping the President of China throw some ideas about what artists should do and what art should be:
“Our nation’s writers and artists should become the savants, the pioneers, the early advocates of their era. Through more substantial, moral, warmhearted artistic work, they should write about and document the people’s great path, the era’s requirements for progress, highlight the beauty of convictions and integrity, carry forward the Chinese spirit, bring together China’s might and inspire all of the nation’s people of every ethnicity to vigorously march towards the future.”2
Last month I was in Japan, and I had the opportunity of visiting several contemporary museums there and compare them to what we can see in North America and Europe.
It’s clear to me after visiting several contemporary museums that Art is not about beauty, even if there are some pieces based on beauty, that concept does not apply to all the artworks that I have seen. Is the “Guernica” beautiful or Francis Bacon artworks? Definitely beauty is not exactly what Picasso or Bacon were looking for.
I know, you can argue about Michelangelo, Raphael or Leonardo, yes there’s beauty on their works but in their time they were censored and had to fight against the cannons of their age, and actually if you analyse the Gioconda you will realize that it’s not exactly beautiful, it is well done, there’s a mastery in the art of doing a portrait, proportions, tones, shadows, expressions but for our standards the girl is quite ugly with no eyebrows or eyelashes. At least the concept of beauty has changed a lot in the last 600 years but art should be the same then and now.
What about soul? Art is related with Soul? What is soul? In one group in Facebook somebody started to criticize the works of others as lack of soul, that they should learn from Pollock. Is Pollock reference for soul? Can it be measured? Is there a device or an app that can check the amount of “soul” in a work of art? According to the Oxford Dictionary, Soul is”, talking about art, “emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance. It seems to me that soul, the same as beauty is a perception and can vary from one person to another.
There’s a Sci Fi film directed by Christopher Nolan: “Inception”. In the film the protagonist infiltrate in Dreams and can steal secrets through the mind of people while they’re sleep. It’s a sci fi thriller but there’s an idea there that I like to abound: the method to awake from a deep sleep. Let’s suppose that you can have conscious dreams, you can act consciously during your dreams, how you can awake from it at will? In the movie the protagonist, interpreted by Leonardo DiCaprio, came with the idea that a violent movement can wake you up, so he jumped into the void from a building and that sensation make him awake. I think everybody had experienced that feeling of jumping into the void that makes you awake, well, that’s exactly what a work of art should do, make you awake by a violent movement. The Mona Lisa has that, the same as the Guernica, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or some Pollock’s paintings.
So, no I don’t make Art because of beauty, or to make pretty things. If, at the end, the artwork is beautiful it’s ok but that’s not the ultimate goal but to shake you up and awake you but I have to confess that I have failed every time I tried. I’ve always stayed short when I throw the ball, I had never reached the umbral of awakenings with my paintings but that’s not mean that I should stop and do something else, my plan is try again, and maybe one day I will do it.
Carlos Fentanes 
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