I suppose, to some extent, we all consider ourselves artists here on DeviantART--the namesake, yes? But what is art? (The immortal, unanswerable question). I don't think anything in a gosh-darned journal entry will suffice to answer the question; but, meh, it's 2:22 am, and I feel like thinking, damn it. <--(Epic hedging; not a way to open an essay...)

To start, I always think back to that good old heroic couplet of our dear friend Alexander Pope:

True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.

Art, in his opinion, was the beautification of nature through human expression (True Wit is Nature to ADVANTAGE dress'd). It was our jobs to take nature and make it into something useful. (The EPA would be on him like white on rice...) But, I'm sure he had more ideas, and that's probably a gross over-simplification of what he meant; and of what art is, for that matter.

Art is more than something pretty or nice to look at; in fact, many times, I think, art has to be rather hard to look at or to read or to face. It forces us to see the world for what it is, rather than what we want it to be. Art, I think (possibly stealing some much smarter person's thoughts), is reality distilled. Oscar Wilde, I believe, said that "art does not imitate life; life imitates art."

Granted, this definition, I am sure, is only broaching the surface. I know that to be good, art must relate back to the human experience--rather, art IS the human experience, I would think. Or at least, a very good representation--or re-representation or depiction--or some human experience.

Now, I know many, many, many people who think it's a rather pointless endeavor; one reserved for lives of luxury, up there with philosophy degrees, that sort of thing; and to a certain extent, sure, I can agree. Not many people can be artists by trade and say they have lived a workman-like life. However, I think art is basic to the human experience, to everyone's life. (Now here comes the conceited part...) Doctors and scientists will always be around, and scientific, economic and political progress will always be achieved; but it seems to me that art is even more necessary than any of those things. Science and politics might enrich and progress our lives; but art allows us (and forces us) to look and reflect on our lives, and science and politics place in our lives. It wasn't so long ago (but feels like it was...) that poets played an incredibly important role in society. As Percy Bysshe Shelley famously wrote: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

Is this to say we should all be artists? Well, yes. We should be. Should we all try and be Walt Whitmanian figures--illustrious and famous? Nah. We probably wouldn't make it that well in America, unless we were incredibly lucky and incredibly talented; but, we should still try, I think. What else is an artist than someone who has reflected and learned something about living? BLAH BLAH BLAH.