https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=X57fG71pbGc
The traditional way of seeing art is very different from the contemporary way of seeing art. The way that traditional vision, pretty much I would say worldwide, you see art as a skill. And so the notion of art is, we still use that word today when we say the art of cheese making, or the art of this, the art of that. And so that’s really the traditional way of understanding the word art. The word art actually means in Latin comes from the notion of fitting things together. So the capacity to fit things together properly, that’s what art is. And so in a traditional vision of art, we say things like, the art remains with the artist. The art is the skill of making things. And so the object that is made has to serve a purpose. There’s no such thing in a traditional vision as making art. You don’t make art. You use art to make things. And so art is the tool. Art is the tool. Art is the skill. Art is the capacity that you have mastered to make an object. And so then that object needs to have a function in the world. It needs to be integrated within a purpose. And that’s probably one of the hardest things for people to understand, is that art is not a value in itself. And once you understand that, at least when I understood that, it actually liberated me from a lot of problems, because one of the problems we’re always asking is, is this art? Is this art? You know, they come up with some crazy Jeff Koons, you know, blown up Snoopy, and then the question is, is that art? And the answer to me now has become, I don’t care. That doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. Whether it’s art or not, that’s not a question. The question is, does it matter? Does it have meaning? Does it have a function? Is it integratable into society? Like, does it have a capacity to integrate into the world? It really is the difference between, let’s say I make, you’re a musician and you come to me and you say, here’s what I’m trying to play, this is what I’m doing, then I design a guitar for your particular needs. That’s traditional art, right? And the postmodern version of that would be? The postmodern version of that would be, I will make a guitar that will question what a guitar is, right? I will make a guitar that cannot be played, but will ironically question the whole tradition of what guitars have been and what music. And then now, today it’s even worse, because now it’s going to show how the guitar itself, as an object created by hierarchies, of historical hierarchies, how is it an object which manifests or subverts that hierarchy? That’s the difficulty of postmodernism. So that’s not what I was wanting to do. That’s not what I was trying to do. I was trying to create a visual language which would integrate with my own experience, with my own faith, with my own participation in the community, in the church and all that.