What we Commonly refer to as 'Art' Doesn't Actually Exist

Oxford defines ‘art’ as “the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings, particularly in painting, drawing or sculpture“. We can then see that The Mona Lisa, a moody teen’s “deep” heartbreak poetry, and even this website, these are all examples of the undeniable personal expression of an artist’s vision, designed to create a genuine emotional reaction in the viewer.

Art is subjective, and all around us. Is an AI’s musical composition considered ‘art’? What about the swirl of a galaxy, or the swirl at the center of a sunflower? At what point do we cross the boundary between ‘art’ and ‘coincidence’? Must art have a human creator? Must art have a creator at all?

Modern artists create with the intention of impacting a specific type of viewer. After all, min/maxing the soul out of everything in order to maximally derive profit is the status quo of the modern world. Classical artists, on the other hand, created art in order to create art. Of course, prehistoric artists simply did their best to recreate the world around them. Can anyone really call any of these “better” or “wrong”?

Of course, all of these questions, and more, are ultimately meaningless. As with all things, modern scientific theory has allowed us to quantify, explain, analyse, and render meaningless the very concept of human enjoyment itself. For example, we now know, thanks to, among other things, modern neuroscience, that ‘art’, as we know it, doesn’t exist.

Before we get into things, let’s clarify a few things. Art doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that the things most people refer to as ‘art’ don’t exist. The Mona Lisa exists, but it isn’t ‘art’. Art is a false social construct. The object exits. It’s the social construct that people <i>ascribe</i> to the construct, that doesn’t exist. One can ask “then what is the Mona Lisa?” and get the answer “a painting”, which is a hilariously dismissive and witty response, but is not helpful in this discussion.

Now, when we look at something considered to be ‘art’ it may or may not create a pleasurable response within us. Some may call this ‘an unknowable magic of art’ or ‘the mystery majesty of the mystery of the human experience’. I call it a blind-folded man throwing darts at a wall of dart boards. He may hit some of them, and some even hit on the bullseye, but is this really “magic”?

We know, thanks to modern scientific advancements, that the concept of pleasure and enjoyment is nothing more than chemicals and electrical signals. Dopamine is the chemical that’s released in the brain whenever one does something pleasurable, like eating or having sex. It also applies to seeing or hearing something that we like. Mona Lisa? Dopamine. Pikachu in a baseball cap? Dopamine. The new Nicki Minaj album? You better believe it’s dopamine!

How, though, does this apply to the real world? Everything that we call ‘art’ doesn’t create pleasure in everyone equally. People like different things for different reasons. Well, of course different things elicit pleasure in different people. We aren’t biological clones so, how can anyone expect different people to like the same things? Different people have different brains and so it stands to reason that different stimuli effect different people in different ways - which makes them like or dislike certain things.

What makes people like things, though? No-one really knows, but we can make an educated guess and land in the ballpark. We can safely assume that the totality of a human’s existence begins and ends firmly within the confines of their own skull. If nothing else is knowable, then at least that is. We also know that people’s likes/dislikes tend to stay relatively consistent over time. Of course our tastes slowly change as we age, but I mean to say that our preferences on beans or soup don’t take sharp left turns in short periods of time. Lastly, we know that people like similar things, or, in other words, things that have shared characteristics; someone who likes pears might also like peaches, a second song in a musical genre might interest someone who has enjoyed the first, and so forth.

From these three pieces of already-held knowledge, we can conclude that what we like and dislike comes not from the ether nor from the heavens, but is preordained a) the moment we’re born, or b) due to an event or experience of some description, usually during childhood, both positive and negative.

<b>So then, since the act of enjoyment (pleasure response) is simply the release of dopamine, and that different things create the pleasure response in different people, we can conclude that ‘art’ is nothing more than a matching game between the stimulus (painting, song, video game, food item, so on), and the person who is predisposed to derive pleasure from that stimulus. The thing that makes it seem like some magical experience is that we don’t know exactly who will react to exactly to what stimulus in exactly what way.<b/>

The fact that the thing we call ‘art’ has rules and structure mean that is it definitely quantifiable and measurable, rather than some mystical, unknowable thing that makes us “uniquely human”. Different people like different things, yes, but you’ll find that if certain rules aren’t followed, then most people will not like the thing you’ve built. Stories practically demand the three act structure, for example. Beginning, middle, and end. No-one likes a rambling story that goes no-where. Want to write a hit song? Want to paint a great painting? Want to write an aesthetic poem? There are rules for all of these things, rules that, if not followed, will result in an alienated audience and bad stimulus/pleasure matchups.

What can these rules mean for the thing that we call ‘art’, if not that predispositions exist in all of us? ‘Art’ isn’t real, enjoyment is a myth, and having a good time is a chance encounter between the right stimulus and the right predispositions within you

What of the blind-folded man and the dart boards, though? The man is always the “art”, so if the man is music, then the darts are songs, and the dartboards are things that we like. That dartboards have different regions relating to accuracy represents the differing amounts of pleasure one can derive from a stimulus. Different types of music, different melodies, tempos, beats, and so on.

If we’ve never encountered a genre of music before, then it is truly random. He throws the darts and hits what he hits. If we have, however, then the man cheats. He lifts the blindfold and looks at the dart boards. With great precision he hits and misses in the exact right ways based on what you’ve experienced before. If you enjoy Pop Rock a great deal, and he’s throwing music from that genre, then you’re far more likely to get a hit. Bullseye! A transcendent experience.