Imagine, for a moment, a rectangular canvas that is painted blue… OK, you’re done. That’s all you had to imagine. Yes, that’s the whole painting. No other shapes, no other colors, no subject. Is this Art?

In 2006, this painting was on display at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. It was painted in 1961 by Yves Klein. Klein, like many other painters who have also used monochrome abstraction as a technique, wished to challenge and expand peoples’ conception of art. Another artist who defied a classic definition of art was John Cage. John Cage (1912-1992) was most notably an American composer who wrote the famous piece for piano 4’33. This piece consists of a pianist approaching a piano and sitting there for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. A stopwatch is used to time the piece. The pianist never plays a single note. Is a silent piece of music, music?

Art is the expression of ideas or emotions. Under that definition, both the blue canvas and 4’33 are works of art. Artists created both with very clear ideas in mind.

But, surely neither the blue canvas nor 4’33 can compare to work by Leonardo Da Vinci or Mozart. Neither requires much skill, if they require skill at all. And both could definitely fall under the category of “my 5-year-old could do that.” Yet I am still going to argue that they are indeed works of art. Art doesn’t require skill. It is the expression of a thought or feeling through a medium.

However, I am not thick. I’m not going to say that one can compare 4’33 to the New World Symphony. The two pieces are by no means in the same class of music. The New World Symphony is an extremely intense and powerful piece that also includes gorgeous melodies and phrases. No one can say that about 4’33. The New World Symphony is clearly more interesting to listen to and as such, is a far better piece of music. But 4’33 cannot be discredited due to its lack of musicality. One could easily claim that Cage’s piece is more interesting conceptually.

So what about the power in art? If both the New World Symphony and 4’33 are meant to convey ideas and emotions, does one do a better job than the other? It seems that the New World Symphony has the leg up. This is because it uses music’s power to transform the audience emotionally in addition to conceptually. It uses beautiful phrasing and dynamics to provoke its audience emotionally. 4’33, on the other hand, cannot transform one emotionally in the same way because it never actually makes use of the medium: music. 4’33 can only make one think and question. And when you boil it down, what causes people to deeply react and take action? What leads people to do things — emotions or thoughts?

The question “What is art” will continue to plague people for years to come, as it is yet another unanswerable problem. But, art must include more than just work that requires enormous skill and aesthetic beauty. The umbrella of “Art” should cover pieces that hope to spark people’s minds and get them thinking. The Mona Lisa and the blue canvas can never be compared. Nevertheless, both can be included in the definition of art.

Catherine Hochman

“It seems as if it I am standing on the very edge of a cliff, not knowing when the next change will come about, and that I will be pushed over the edge only to find myself on the edge of another cliff.”

In a fast-paced age of technology, in the “city that never sleeps,” and in a school system where excellence is not only stressed but expected, balance is the last thing I think of when I reflect on the life of a teenager like myself. The other day I sat down and thought for a while about whether or not there really is any kind of stability in my life. And the first thought that came to my mind was: Well, it depends how you define balance. Balance in itself is a fairly vague idea. The American Heritage Dictionary merely defines it as “a state of bodily equilibrium.” The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that there isn’t equilibrium in my life at all.

Being a teenager is pretty much a perpetual state of change. Halfway between being a child and being an adult creates imbalance in itself. Change seems to be the force that counteracts any stability I could possibly have in my life. It seems as if it I am standing on the very edge of a cliff, not knowing when the next change will come about, and that I will be pushed over the edge only to find myself on the edge of another cliff. With this image in my mind, obtaining balance seems frankly impossible, especially with so much uncertainty and so many decisions that are not left up to me. It may seem that while I am standing on that cliff I am in a state of balance, albeit briefly. But recovering from being shaken by the last push isn’t real stability, at least not stability I would ever be truly comfortable or satisfied with.

I have gone through many changes over the past year and many moments where I felt like I have been pushed from any sort of balance I had. For example, Wylie, one of my very good lifelong friends, announced last May that after years of dreaming about it, she was going away to boarding school. Push. I have always had three best friends at school since Kindergarten: Selena, Holden, and Reese. Last April Reese decided to leave our school to go to a special performing arts high school. Then Selena decided that my high school would be too challenging and switched to a school outside of Manhattan completely. Holden, who used to live a block away from me, moved to the other side of Central Park. Push, Push, Push. I went to high school, and although it’s on the same block as my middle school, it is different—very different. I was used to always being at the top of my class, and with ease. My eighth grade teachers told us that with their help, we were fully prepared for high school. I would categorize this statement as an exaggeration. Fifty new kids joined my grade, a group of kids I had known since I was five, and used to know everything about. And these kids all took hard tests and wrote essays and interviewed to get in. They were the best of the best who applied. By contrast, when I applied at the age of five, I only had to draw a picture of my family to get in. No competition there. Push.

But what if I could jump from cliff to cliff? I played with the idea of putting myself in charge of the changes and embracing them, instead of just waiting to be pushed from ledge to ledge. And the more I thought about it, the better the idea sounded. Not all of the changes that I’ve been through in the past year have been bad ones, and even if they were, embracing all kinds of changes with a positive attitude allows me—instead of falling off—to drop from cliff to cliff and enjoy the ride.

“What I can do is attempt to create balance within myself—allow myself to be okay with the ever-changing surroundings.”

So I have come to a new conclusion. Attempting to create stability in my own, small, chaotic, universe may not be a very possible or worthwhile feat. But what I can do is attempt to create balance within myself—allow myself to be okay with the ever-changing surroundings. Once I am no longer worrying about what is constantly going on around me, or when I will be pushed next, I can finally embrace every change with new-found inner balance, and jump.

Katie Hartman

My dad steps out of the car, looks around at the surrounding stores, and grumbles. “I can’t believe how much this area has changed.”

He sighs. “When I was growing up, this was an entirely Hungarian neighborhood.”

My brother and I exchange amused smirks. Now it’s my turn to complain. “Seriously dad? We visit Grandma all the time, and you always mention this.”

“Could you please avoid reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ just this once?” my brother chimes in.

Looking back, my brother and I were actually being pretty rude to our father. It may be true that we can’t visit our grandmother without hearing about how the neighborhood has changed since my dad was growing up, but the subject is obviously very important. Of course, neither my brother nor I were mature enough to apologize to my dad. Instead, we’d forget about this conversation, and all of the other ones like it, as soon as we left my grandma’s house, until our next visit. Right now, however, I am thinking about my dad’s remarks for a completely different reason; I think that he may actually be right.

I didn’t come up with this shocking opinion out of the blue. I was actually mulling over this issue’s Big Question when the conversation with my father popped into my head. On the one hand, it seems apparent that it is important to learn how others celebrate, because it is hard to connect with people who are different from you if you don’t really understand how they think or what they believe. On the other hand, learning about your own traditions places you into a community. The experience of actually celebrating the same things and sharing common beliefs connects people more than having the same knowledge without practical experience. Some people worry that if we immerse ourselves too deeply into a new tradition, we may become disconnected from the community, or even the family, in which we grew up. We don’t want to learn about different traditions at the expense of our own. Between these opposing ideas it seems the main goal is finding the middle line between the two extremes; opening yourself up to other ideas without abandoning what you stand for. And this is exactly what has not happened in my grandma’s neighborhood.

The experience of actually celebrating the same things and sharing common beliefs connects people more than having the same knowledge without practical experience.

As my dad always laments, the previously Hungarian area no longer has any cultural identity. He misses the family-run businesses that he frequented as a kid, now mostly replaced by random and impersonal stores. His main problem with the neighborhood changes is not that it’s no longer Hungarian, it’s that no other community-owned stores came in to replace it. After learning more about how other neighboring areas were assimilating, his previously closely-knit community abandoned much of their former identity, no longer practicing the same traditions or holding the same celebrations.

Overall, I am definitely not saying that the area around my Grandma’s house would have been better off if no one in the area had tried to learn more about new traditions or branched off. In fact, my dad also admits that the neighborhood used to feel too exclusive. His family wasn’t Hungarian, and he felt left out, and resented it. His experience shows the positives and negatives of respecting other people’s traditions as well as your own–showing that it is important to understand that you can learn about how others celebrate without abandoning your own beliefs. Ultimately, being part of a community that has its own rituals and celebrations and being open-minded about other people having different beliefs, are not mutually exclusive.

On the other hand, it has also been said that “though competition brings out the best in products, it brings out the worst in people,” [David Sarnoff], and an unknown author observed, “Those that want to win have a horrible tendency to punch the best player on the other team when nobody is looking.”

Maybe it’s simply the makeup of the human brain that makes us this way, but it seems that competition has always been in our nature. We compete for glory, money, popularity, and sometimes even survival. We often enjoy watching others compete. It seems that where there are people, there is competition. The question that we have pondered for ages, though, is whether or not competition is beneficial, or even necessary.

CAN everyone really be equal? This notion is very well communicated by Kurt Vonnegut in his satirical story “Harrison Bergeron.” Within this story, those who succeed are handicapped by various devices, in order to be brought down to the level of everyone else. Those who are unfortunate enough to be handsome are forced to wear masks. Gifted athletes are burdened by heavy and uncomfortable weights. And those who are intelligent are forced to wear earpieces that emit sounds that quite rudely interrupt their train of thought. Is this really fair?

CAN everyone really be equal?

Many believe that competition is the oil behind the wheels of effective civilization. This is because it powers economies, encourages businesses, ensures that the best possible work is done, and even gives cause to get outdoors and have fun. Healthy competition can be found in everything from sailing to baseball to business. Take, for example, the famous rivalry between the baseball powerhouses, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Without this rivalry and others like it, the entire sport of baseball would consist of no more than a group of grown men running around rubber bases on a well worn infield. Who would want to watch that?

Others, though, may say it is competition that is tearing civilization apart. Nowadays, employees are so terrifyingly obsessed with outselling each other that they seem to be far too occupied with work to spend time with family. For instance, in the United States, working over 40 hours per week has become the norm. This is often viewed as one of the major flaws of the capitalist system. While it rewards innovation, capitalism places far too much emphasis upon work. As the German philosopher Karl Marx noted, “Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer.”

Children, too, fall victim to the downside of competition, whether it is sports, fashion, or academics. For example, sports players often spend their afternoons practicing rather than doing homework, or hanging out with their family. Many young children even carry this notion of winning to ridiculous extremes, such as war games. Is something wrong with our society if four-year-old children will go so far as to spend entire summer days pretending to kill each other, out of “the fun of competition”?

However, the biggest problem that many people have with competition is that the winner takes all, while the loser is left in the shadows. With every loss, these shadows deepen, until at some point the loser is swallowed, and the winner is standing alone in the limelight. Being the loser in this situation would be extremely degrading. For this reason, both losing and winning are an art. Wouldn’t you rather be the humble and accepting loser, rather than the pompous and sneering winner? For many, the answer is no. They would rather be the winner at any cost. It is altogether difficult to master the act of accepting defeat, or embracing victory. Unfortunately, the art of competing is not often taught. We are left with the raw emotion of either being on a pinnacle, or being left, alone, by the wayside. From an emotional standpoint, it seems that competition may either build you up, or tear you down.

Because of all of the emotional damage that competition causes, many people find themselves wishing that our world was completely competition free. When we think about this, though, isn’t it a bit like punishing those who succeed for being successful? While capitalism may have its problems, communism also has its pitfalls. If everyone is equal, then how, and by whom is the world to be governed? Diana Moon Glampers, the “Handicapper General” in Vonnegut’s story, has no handicaps herself, despite the fact that she is athletic and extremely intelligent. Translate this to the real world. Communist societies, based on equality for all, are often run by dictators. The balance between communism and capitalism is difficult to achieve. A world without competition would not only be unfair to those who are successful, but it would be close to unworkable in reality.

It is impossible to say whether competition is beneficial or detrimental. If practiced in excess it can be ugly, but it could be argued that our world wouldn’t be the vibrant place that it is today without competition. Can we fulfill our potential as humans without competition? That is for you to answer.

Ben Decker