The Nature of Art

by Joseph Farbrook

1. Art is nature de-contextualized
2. Artistic talent is not something that can be learned, but it exists to some degree in everyone, although it often lays hidden within day-to-day mediocrity.
3. Those that are deemed by society as 'artists' are only those that have found a successful expression of their talent via excepted mediums. They may or may not have any more or less talent than anyone else.
4. One who focuses their life on creativity becomes the real artist, as opposed to those that focus their lives solely on self preservation, i.e. making money.
5. Anything that can be changed in some way by an artist is a medium for art, so everything is a medium for art--including each other.
6. Good art is something that provokes change and thought (hopefully positive), exposes truth, and initiates creative spin-offs within the viewer.
7. Great art will do this for a long time. This requires that it be preserved or duplicated in some way.
8. Artists should create because they have to; because they will be miserable otherwise; because they may become depressed and/or suicidal otherwise; because they need to regardless of the consequences (often a life of financial failure and alienation from those who consider art useless). To do art for any other reason often degrades it as personal ego interferes.
9. Good, and great artists are inherently egotistical fascistic money-grubbing whores, and must forever wrestle with this contradiction.
10. Life itself is a dynamic work of art (including ourselves) although it must be de-contextualized in order to be fully realized.
11. Nature is art contextualized within its own environment (nature) and so is not art.
12. This is not art, it is only information. It could become art if it is de-contextualized, such as printing this and hanging it on a wall.