A Proposition for Life Art
By Jon Keppel
This message is to make clear what I feel is a significant development in the historical narrative of Western art that both moves the needle of artistic practice forward for the next century and beyond while also transcending the art world as we know it. The practice of which I speak is namely living life as art, which for all intents and purposes can be recognized by the term life art.
The exploration and communication of this theme is a testimonial to what I feel is the truest power of art in our lives, the power of becoming. This exposition is not only philosophy of art but art practice itself and is at its most basic level simply an awareness of what I feel is the reach and potential of art in our lives. The following is the historical thread of influence by which I have come to this understanding and by which I have come to explore a transition in art from the consideration of objects as art to concepts as art to now people as art.
From time immemorial we had paintings and sculptures as indicators of art in the world. This began roughly with ancient cave paintings and went all the way through for hundreds upon hundreds of years to the beginning of last century when Marcel Duchamp changed the locus of art from a material display of taste to one of conceptual elucidation. He did this by entering a commonplace pre-manufactured urinal into an exhibition (which ultimately got rejected from that exhibition) as art thereby challenging the entire conception of what constitutes art. It was his choice as an artist, in jest as it may have been, to identify a commonplace pre-manufactured object as art (something that became known as a readymade) that opened up an entirely new vista of what art could be by ultimately identifying or revealing an artistic quality that was essentially already inherent in all material reality.
Through my research a thread can be followed from this point of transition towards conceptualization through the past century to the current day illuminating the notions of choice and concept as the key ingredients for artistic practice as represented in the Western historical art narrative. This thread goes through the 20th century to John Cage’s conception that all sound can be music depending on how you think about it, Andy Warhol’s perceptual interchangeability of art and reality with the Brillo Boxes to Allan Kaprow’s art life happenings all arising mid-century. The thread continues through to around the turn of the 21st century with relational aesthetics and social practice with a work like Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (Free). It is this work that I feel can be used to demarcate a shift of life merging with art as a lived action of sustenance (the piece consisted of the preparing and eating of a meal as art).
This is when I feel deeds in life became art and that the possibility of personhood as art arrived historically in the Western narrative timeline. In becoming about personhood, it makes an art of all people, of humanity itself and all of the world in which we live by merging completely with the sustenance of corporeal reality. The sentiment by Joseph Beuys that we are all artists is not lost in this sense.
This is why I feel that personhood is the artwork of our times and that character building and practices like mindfulness are instantiations of artistic practice now. It is not about making works of art per se. It is about living as art where conventional works of art are byproducts of the personal development done on an individual basis and in the collective. It is the dawn of art as person in my estimation after previously being primarily about object-hood and more recently conceptualization. Art as person opens up an opportunity to develop as people where we ourselves are the art we seek and can transform ourselves to help make this life and place a wonderful world in which to grow.
The opportunity we have here is not to simply re-present reality as an object or concept (though that too exists) but to actually be art, to make art our life and our life, art. I offer this conception of art as not an egoic achievement of my own but as a byproduct of a more selfless union with what I understand to be divine knowledge that I have experienced in the personal and artistic pursuit of peace. It is this union that I feel the art of our times now speaks through and will allow us to develop ourselves as works of art to respond to rising contemporary issues like climate and artificial intelligence where who we want to be as people will significantly help to constitute the emergent world in which we live. It is worth noting that the notion of art as person becomes the foundation so to speak of further exploration in art as object and art as concept as a kind of seedbed from which all three registrations can emerge in new and exciting ways. It is my feeling that we can help change the world for the better by recognizing existence itself as an artform. The question then is, will we choose to take this journey? I hope that we will. For more information on my research into art as life and other work that I do please visit my website at www.jonkeppel.com. Thank you for reading this and may you find the peace of the universe in art.