thou art my joy

the term “art” has become a grey area that is ripe for the picking, and also poking. since creative expression cannot be measured by a mathematical absolute, how does one define art and its worth? here are eight propositions in search of an argument

text peter stephenson image photolibrary

1 At first it would appear that the only trouble with culture in Bali is that there’s way too much of it. It’s hard to find a single view that hasn’t been embellished, framed by carving or careful cultivation, so that even if after a while you start to take it for granted, and stop consciously looking, the whole experience of Bali remains filtered through a filigree of creative endeavour.

2 Yet a further problem arises when someone asks whether we should classify any of it as “art”. Then there’s that other old chestnut – riddled with borers – about the distinction between craft and art; that is, between an activity adjudged to be primarily concerned with the manipulation of materials and an activity primarily concerned with the task of communication and self-expression for its own sake. Until relatively recently, most cultures had no such distinction.

3 So already, the more astute eavesdroppers in this circular argument will mention the tendency to rely on Western parameters that don’t apply to creativity in cultures in other parts of the world, such as ours. Ideas of creativity in Bali, for example, have not always been so bound up in notions of individualism, or the idea of the artist as the elegant stranger come to teach us how to see, ideas that have at least since the European Renaissance underpinned romantic Western notions of artistic endeavour.