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Yellow (Photo By Erica Ann, Image Courtesy of Nathan Sawaya)

Is It Art?
I chose to argue for the case of Yellow by Nathan Seaway as a true piece of art. My
definition of art defines it as anything that generates emotion in the viewer. This allows a
persons idea of art to differ from another persons because as Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
wrote, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (Hungerford). Based on my theory, a burned down
house could be considered as beautiful as a ten by twenty foot scene painted by a master. The
house and painting could both inspire emotion, even though you would only find one of these in
a museum. Tolstoy said artists communicate in feelings and emotions. Expression theory is the
most accurate way to define art since each person has their own opinion of beauty and there is
no one criteria for it (excluding the Darwinian theory of beauty). Our most powerful muscle is
our heart, should it not dictate what is beautiful and what is not?
Yellow is a Lego bust of a man pulling apart his chest similar to the iconic image of
superman tearing off his shirt. Inside the breast of this man, it is hollow and contains hundreds
of smaller Lego bricks which spill out of him and onto the exhibit. I chose this art because it is
an emotionally striking piece. The bust was first shown at Agora Gallery in New York City March
2010, and has been traveling on exhibit since. The artist Nathan Sawaya was a lawyer who quit
his job in 2004 and pursued his hobby of Lego building full time. To create a sculpture like
Yellow from scratch takes incredible skill and time, even though the medium is relatively simple
the idea was original and it could take years to replicate what he made.
Why can we call Yellow a piece of art? To begin we must look at Tolstoys theory of
expressionism. Tolstoy believed an artist's chief job is to express and communicate emotions

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to an audience (Freeland, 155). When an audience looks at Yellow they see a man in distress,
struggling to release something within himself. It is a thought provoking image and the likeness
of the bust to the proportions of a human are done in a way so the viewer can put themselves in
place of this figure. Interest and disgust are both brought up to the viewer; the spilled blocks
resemble guts or gore spilling out of the distraught bust.
Greenberg says art needs to challenge the viewer. A piece of art such as yellow can
inspire the viewer to consider the thoughts behind the piece. [beauty is] the quality through
which a painting or sculpture refers to its medium and to its own conditions of creation
(Freeland, 16). A large part of what makes art so special is the skill and creativity required to
create an emotionally striking piece.
A historical art piece that comes to mind when considering a mannequin made of toy
blocks is the infamous Brillo Boxes by Andy Warhol. Arthur Danto wrote several papers about
the Brillo boxes and if they could be considered art or not because really they were just
enlarged versions of a branded box of scrubbing pads. Arthur Dantos interest in the boxes
gave George Dickie the inspiration for the institutional theory of art art is any artifact which
has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons
acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the art world) (Freeland, 55). This theory may
seem as a cover all for almost any art which doesnt fit conventional theories, but it connects
directly to Yellow for a special reason. Thanks to people such as Warhol and George Dickie
paving the way showing everyday objects can be art as long as they evoke emotion and are
appreciated by curators; Sawaya is able to display his creations in a museum today.

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Works Cited
"Art Blog - The Artist's Muse." Brick by Brick. 6 Apr. 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal
Verbs. 2002. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 12 Oct. 2015
Dutton, Denis. "A Darwinian Theory of Beauty." Ted. Ted Talks, Feb. 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.
Freeland, C. (2001). But is it art? an introduction to art theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
"JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE." Brickartist. N.p., 24 Jan. 2004. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.
Leddy, Tom, "Dewey's Aesthetics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/dewey-aesthetics/>.
"Making Lego Into Art: Nathan Sawaya's Impossible Brick Sculptures." Co.Create. 3 Jan. 2013.
Web. 12 Oct. 2015.