What is it?

Greetings, 

Free-thinking, free-conscienced, beautiful people.

Continuing to look through the mirror of art…

What appears to us today in the mirror of art,

Is a story…

I wonder what kind of story it is…

Whose story is it?

Is it a story of annoying cruelty?

Or is it a story of heart-warming kindness?

Since we say it is through the mirror of art,

Could it be the story of art itself?

Do not say, can art have a story…

Do not say, does art have two hands, two feet, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth to have a story.

Because it does.

Now, some of you might be thinking, what is this man who thinks he is a professor talking about?

If you allow me, I will explain, sir.

There is a story of art, written in 1950 under the title The Story of Art by Sir Ernst Gombrich, an art historian, critic, and theorist who was born in Vienna in 1909 to a Jewish musician family and emigrated to England before World War II.

Sir Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001)

Do you know what Gombrich, the author of The Story of Art, one of the most popular books written in the field of art history, says in the introduction of his book?

You will not believe your ears, but,

"There is no such thing as 'Art'. There are only artists," he says.

He is saying that what we define as art, which we lean on in the utopia of humanization invented by our species—the species that defines itself as human—is not something sacred, but something made by humans.

Should you laugh or cry?

Dear friends, let us neither cry nor laugh.

Should we "know ourselves," like the inscription "know thyself" on the door of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi?

Yes, let us know ourselves…

That is, let us know the magician within us.

In my last article, I gave a hint by saying "it was magic."

I wanted to show that what fascinates us, even if it seems like magic, is actually human creativity.

Civilization, which is the result and indicator of all creative activities in total, has reached a layered, intertwined compactness, starting from the primitive tool-making that humans achieved by carving stone.

Therefore, art, which is the result of human intellect and labor, is hidden somewhere inside us as an act potentially waiting to be awakened and to be awakened in every individual.

When Gombrich says, "There is no such thing as 'Art'. There are only artists," he is pointing to the human as the constructive subject of history.

Behind the community cultures, beliefs, and rituals that have emerged in all geographies of our planet, starting from prehistoric times, there is the creative human imagination that is constantly working and continues to work, and its artistic activities, which are its practical counterpart in life. 

Therefore, if there is a story being told as human civilization, it is actually the story of the human.

The story of people like me and like you.

In the beginning, there was no instructive master or guiding instructor.

There was only the human's world of imagery and their search for meaning.

Are we not searching for meaning now through our world of imagery that we feed with our dreams?

Or have we stayed so far away from real art that we are drowning in a sea of meaninglessness…

Because we cannot turn our own existence into our own work of art, we are tossing and turning within a feeling of nothingness.

Come on, let us look at the mirror of art again,

May what you see be the sparkle of tens of thousands of years of our ancestors' labor reflecting into your eyes.

What is it? "There is no such thing as 'Art'. There are only artists."

That means you exist, your story exists.

What remains for you from your ancestors.

What is it?

Until our next meeting, goodbye for now, always and at all times, breathe with art, stay with art.