ART + STYLE = Originality

What is art? How do you define it?

Andy Warhol showed us that art was inseparable from style.
As Lou Reed and John Cale pointed out in the song, “Style It Takes” from the album Songs for Drella (a good - by to Andy),
where the average person saw simply a Brillo box, Andy saw art.
Warhol had the style it took to dictate what art was, and is to this day.

Only now do I make the connection to an acquaintance from a few years back, as I was visiting a Gallery in Hamburg.
“One carefully chosen piece of art” - with real conviction, the man said that had just entered the Gallery a few minutes earlier.
Was all that was needed to transform the mundane into something inspiring?
Those words briefly made in passing have not only stayed with me but have also inspired me down to this day.

Andy Warhol's Brillo Box | 1964 | Acrylic and Silkscreen on PlywoodIt seems that Andy Warhol, and that person from my past,
both followed the same creed - that style dictates art. In vain we keep trying to group and classify art of every sort into different styles,
yet these styles continue expanding and defying such grouping.

Why?
Because there is always another artist who has the style it takes to dictate what is art or what art is.

The avant-garde impressionists of more then a hundred years
ago defined their own style just as Warhol defined pop art in the '60s and '70s.

Who is redesigning art today?
Those who have the style it takes.
For style + art = originality.
The real question is not how do you define art, but rather how do you define art?

“Stay original” - have the style it takes!