What is Art?

Arizona Inn Mural

What is art and what is not?  

Babs DuPont Hannerman

SF Decorator Showcase Mural

This is a very difficult question to answer. And is one that encourages us to dig deep and pay attention to what really moves us. I have found as an interior designer that placing art for my clients is a very personal experience and belies expectations. I can show piece after piece after piece of art that “works” in the space, has the right colors, proportions, subject matter etc… However, more often than not, I find my clients gravitate to the piece that moves or speaks to them…and that is hard to predict.

Prehistoric

Lithographic Print Kyra Fung

Case in point, I was working with beloved clients to place art in a newly decorated dining room. I knew they favored traditional art. Working with a favorite local gallery, we gleaned several pieces for our presentation and then, at the last minute, we threw in a few contemporary pieces “just in case”. It was an amazing experience to talk with the clients about the art and watch how they were compelled and surprised by the contemporary pieces that ultimately moved them most. It was a wonderful surprise to me. For the clients, it was the conversations that the piece stirred up in their dinner guests that were so intriguing to them.

Private Collection piece by Melinda Coots

Art can be found in the every day, in the use of ordinary items in an extraordinary way. It can be in the conversations it creates, the soul it stirs.  Art can be a flower, a pebble, a stone.  Art can be a golf tee and other found objects that fuel the imagination. Art can be BIG, art can be small, humorous, it can make us smile, recall a memory, be seductive, be ordinary, prehistoric, studied, intricate…art can be anything.

Prehistoric

Saul Steinberg "People Looking Up"

As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is art…what do you think?  What moves you?