Tim Bone

What is Art?

This week's guest philosopher is Tim Bone, an outgoing, cheerful, energetic, thoughtful, and very talkative 10 year old in Mrs. Pitzer's 5 th grade class at Hoover Elementary School in Mount Lebanon , Pennsylvania. Tim's favorite subjects in school are math, science, and writing.

Tim likes to play with his Thomas the Tank Engine and his Legos. He likes to play board games and he is a big Monopoly fan. His family plays the Original edition, the Pittsburgh edition, and the American edition of Monopoly, but Tim's favorite is the Pittsburgh edition of the game. He also likes to play Rollercoaster Tycoon and Backyard Sports on his computer, and he loves his Gameboy and XBox 360. Tim is a huge fan of Mountaineer sports, and he made it very clear that he does not like Pitt! Tim and I met up in a Morgantown café after the Mountaineers beat Cincinnati . Tim was wearing proudly his blue and gold Kevin Pittsnogle jersey.

Tim also likes to make art.

On to THE QUESTION! I always begin my weekly interviews by sharing a list of juicy, philosophical questions with our young philosopher. Then I ask the child to choose one question to answer. Tim was so enthusiastic that he starting rattling off answers to each question I presented to him! When I asked him to pick one, he grinned and said, “well…I'd have to say… my favorite is… “What is Art?”. Without much prompting from me, he had a lot of interesting ideas to share. Due to time constraints, our discussion was limited to visual art.

Tim began setting up his analysis of art by listing a few clear examples of art and a few examples of things that are not art. He listed a blank wall in the middle of nowhere, a boring piece of silverware, and my ordinary pen as objects that are not art. He pointed to a painting on the wall of the café we were sitting in as an example of art. I asked him about a blender sitting on a counter across the room. Tim immediately answered that “it could be art and it could not be art,” depending on the situation. “Well, I'd have to say that it could be a work of art if it was part of a very beautiful display in a collection of kitchen appliances. If it is just sitting on a counter all alone, with nothing in it, it is just a blender. If I put different colored scoops of ice cream in it, or if I blended some strawberries beneath the pile of colorful ice cream so you could see the black dots blended in the bright red mixture, it would definitely be art.” He quickly returned to his claim about the blank wall. He claimed that even that blank wall could be part of a work of art, “if it was not in the middle of nowhere, but surrounded by interesting, colorful objects.” Tim went on to explain that any object could be turned into a work of art. I asked him about a roll of wall paper. “Well, it depends. If it is just sitting there as a boring roll of wall paper, then no, but if it is on a wall, surrounded by other interesting patterns and colors, then it turns into a bit of art, right?” (Obviously, by now, this kid knocked my socks off!)

“What if somebody just splashed some paint on a wall, would that be art?” I asked. “It depends. If there are a lot of colors splashing in different directions and the colors overlap in interesting ways, creating new colors, then that could look pretty wonderful. That would be art. But if you just dump a blob of brown paint on a table, well that's not art.”

I asked Tim to consider a situation in which an elephant walked on some wet paint and then walked over a blank canvas, putting painted footprints on the canvas. “Well that depends. If it is just one color, then I would have to say that's not art. That's just footprints on a canvas. But, if the elephant marched over the canvas several times, after dipping his feet into several different colors of paint, it would be art --- especially if the different colored footprints overlapped. Lots of overlapping footprints in different colors would look pretty wonderful.”

I asked Tim if there could ever be an “accidental work of art.” I was wondering, for example, if we'd get art if someone accidentally splashed some paint on a wall. “It depends. Imagine if a person accidentally hit a can of paint and that can hit another can and that can hit another can, and so on. Imagine that all the paint cans splash on the wall and there are lots of overlapping colors. Well, I would have to say that we would have some art there even if nobody meant it to be art.”

I asked Tim to reflect upon his ideas about art and to express his theory in a definition, if possible. This is a very difficult task. Professional philosophers do this all the time, and it is often quite challenging and time consuming. With rocket speed, Tim put his theory in a nutshell.

“(Visual) Art is something that looks interesting, it is not boring and simple, and it has several colors that overlap.” I asked Tim if this were suitable to use as a dictionary definition. He immediately said, “I doubt it.” “We'd have to do a survey and see what everyone else thinks. Everyone has their own idea about what makes something art. I really like overlapping colors, but others might not care a lot about overlapping colors. That is just my idea. I think a good definition would be a lot longer, and it would include other ideas too. We would have to see what everyone else thinks. Probably, there will never be one, simple answer.” According to Tim, theories of art would be best expressed subjectively. What I mean by that is that Tim thinks his theory is not so much an answer to “what is art?” but an answer to “what is art to me (Tim)?”. As I understand Tim's view, he thinks this is the best we could ever hope for, since there is not one correct answer to the question, “what is art?”.

Discussing this question with Tim was a total blast! This kid's a natural philosopher, and one of the most refreshing, logical, interesting, and enthusiastic people I have ever met. Next time you find yourself being dragged down by a cranky comment about the youth of America , remind yourself of Tim Bone!