Integral Art is a map for both creating and evaluating art using the framework of AQAL’s four quadrants. In his Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (JITP) article introducing Integral Art, Matt Rentschler quotes Ken Wilber’s definition of art: anything with a frame around it. “Regardless of medium, style, genre, or school, art can generally be defined as anything selected, arranged, or framed for its significance.” (Rentschler, 2006, p. 41) But, who decides what is significant. Building on four main schools of art critique, Rentschler takes the reader on a quadrant tour, showing the importance of taking as wide a perspective as possible.

From within my individual experience (UL), I want to express something artistically. Perhaps it is my joy at being alive, or a painful issue over which I hope to connect with others who struggle similarly. Perhaps I seek to expose an injustice, or bring awareness surrounding a tacit shared blind spot, á la The Emperor’s New Clothes. Suddenly, my subjective perspective on a social phenomenon is pushed out into the collective (LL). I hope not merely to express something, but to have impact on others—even stimulate individual and/or collective action (LR). Perhaps my art will affect institutional thinking in education, politics, or another overarching social system. Rounding the quadrants to the individual, exterior I perform certain actions with specific media to get my inside vision to the outside (UR). My art is an artifact, judged by different criteria (realism, balance, color theory) and having different effects on different viewers. And, this is only the quadrants. Renschler takes on the other four elements in his companion article in the same issue of the journal.