What is Art?

“A real work of art destroys in the consciousness of the recipient the separation between himself and the artist, not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.

An artist’s work cannot be interpreted. Had it been possible to explain in words what he wished to convey, the artist would have expressed himself in words. He expressed it by his art, only because the feeling he experiences could not be otherwise transmitted. The interpretation of works of art by words only indicates that the interpreter himself is incapable of feeling the infection of art. And this is actually the case, for, however strange it might seem so, critics have been people less susceptible than other men to the contagion of art. For the most part they are able writers, educated and clever, but with their capacity for being infected by art quite perverted or atrophied. And therefore their writings have always largely contributed, and still contribute, to the perversion of taste of that public which reads them and trusts them. “

Leo Tolstoy, ‘What is Art’ in Aesthetics, 1965

Of Rodin and Wong Kar Wei.

Rodin, a French sculptor who created the partial figure, who worked with the vision that the human figure is complete without the sum of its parts. He used marcottage and repetition to a feverish pitch; frequently reusing and reassembling the body to create different personas. The same schizophrenic tendency exists in his renaming of The Poet to The Thinker, The Vanquished to The Age of Bronze.


Wong Kar Wei, Hongkong director who created and recreated his characters in different films, the same name, the same idiosyncrasies, different settings and stories told. He freely used takes of one movie and transported them to another, for stories are but disparate images, waiting to be made sense of.

Of Magritte and Jay Chou

René Magritte, French Surrealist who used the constant image of the man in the bowler-hat to orchestrate different enigmas. The simplicity of a man is rendered not-so-innocuous in his juxtaposition with a life-sized fish or a green apple but critics are never able to get to the heart of the matter; is the reusing of the man in the bowler-hat a statement?

Jay Chou, Taiwanese songwriter and artist who used the same musical themes for ten tracks in his 8 albums to date, evolving in his pieces in slight notches, while retaining the constant formula. The spin-offs from his diverse musicality highlights the pirate nature of the music industry itself. but why call it piracy and not an art movement?