is my shoe art?

[new boots]is my shoe art? it is most certainly a design classic, with the tough, trademark yellow stitching and the air cushion soles, on which it reassuringly says 'made in england'... these boots are not just made for walking anywhere, they are built for the road... there is something so very uplifting to the spirit when one acquires a new pair of boots...these dr martens airwair boots were a delightful, serendipitous find in a charity shop yesterday - brand new, never worn dm's in just my size (gasp!), in a beautiful pewter leather, my favourite (non) colour - and only £7!the bargain purchase (and subsequent formal analysis as evidenced in the above photographs) of some shiny new dm boots instantly recalled memories of charles thomson's (of the stuckists) appearance on bbc's newsnight, of the perennial debate that always surrounds the turner art prize, the is it art? and of the classic moment in the discussion, is my shoe art..?...charles thomson debating the merits (or not) of the turner prize 1999thomson need not have been so indignant; it spawned a new painting, one with more than a satirical nod to ex-friend tracey emin...charles thomson, is my shoe art? oil on canvasbut, what about van gogh's still life of boots? a painting which i fondly remember first seeing whilst on a college field trip to amsterdam.  i am sure charles thomson would agree that these shoes are art...vincent van gogh, a pair of shoes, 1886but, what if one forgets for a moment that this is a van gogh painting - what then? the visual recording or transcription, using oil on canvas, of a pair of boots does not make it (yet) a notable work of art. however, these boots, looking very worn and placed as if they have just been taken off might reveal a back story - one of a hard day's labour or ongoing financial hardship - there is no money for new shoes. furthermore, if one imagines what might have been going through the mind of the maker of the painting (the artist), then the story unravels still further - the boots are perhaps now discarded, worthless, they signify poverty and perhaps misery in the mind of the artist. if these boots were van gogh's own then this painting is not just a still life, but a poignant self-portrait, one embued with the struggle of one man's existence......these thoughts led to a nostalgic trip down memory lane... to an old drawing of a boot that signifies my beginning as an fledgling artist...pencil drawing of a monkey booti did this drawing of a monkey boot when i was about fifteen or sixteen years old. i remember well those monkey boots, they were in an ox-blood leather and i recall polishing them with a matching ox-blood boot polish. i remember too that it was a drawing study that i started at home (probably homework) and clearly (as was my bad habit then) i didn't complete it. looking at the drawing now, i am wondering why (or, in fact if) i did just draw the one boot and not actually draw the pair? the drawing, which is interestingly much larger than 'life size' has been cropped and stuck to an A2 sheet of paper with another drawing of a sheep's skull. i have deduced that the art teacher must have guillotined off the unfinished part of the drawing to make a more interesting worksheet for the exam portfolio - the exam work, as i recall, was sent off to the examination board in those days...these monkey boots remind me of my adolsecence, in the making of my identity, not as an artist but as an individual. every crease in the leather is a silent witness to my 'growing up' - of trying (and failing) to be different, pretending to be a rebel who really wanted to be accepted, of the self-consciousness and the wanting, the wanting-to-be an artist, but not knowing then what art really was...so, was my shoe art? back in those days i thought it was...