But the larger question of just what makes art is a topic of no small concern. What is good art? What is bad art? What isn’t art at all?
A new and shocking paradigm of expression
I’ll tell you now that one of the reasons the big important art critics get to comment loudly and publicly on the nature of art is that they have studied this question for years and years and years, while you were sitting around with your friends after a hard shift at T.G.I.Fridays getting stoned and asking all sorts of deep philosophical questions and shit, like, what is art? and what if god were one of us? and also what if dog were spelled C-A-T?
The difference between you and a dedicated art critic is that tomorrow you will go back to waiting tables and whining impatiently for your next smoke break, and the critic will continue to ask that question until the day he dies. Even if he comes up with a good snazzy answer and writes a big long paper about it, he still has to consider other equally articulated answers to the same question, argue for his own answer, and possibly even abandon it if it doesn’t pass muster.
To be clear, when I say “art” I don’t just mean paintings and sculpture or some anorexic kid in a Soho loft dressing up like the statue of liberty and throwing cottage cheese on his audience – I also mean literature, film, photography, dance, music, etc. So what kinds of things do art critics think when they talk about art?
Aaaieeeee!!! What the fuck? I mean, What the FUCK?
For one thing, they consider the form or genre: you probably can name two modes of form in painting – abstract and realist, and between these two distinctions you may know of sub-forms or movements like pointillism, surrealism, luminsim, and so on. An adherence to form is not in itself artistic – a wonderfully rendered watercolor portrait may or may not be artistic: it can be just a picture. Similarly, a random rendering of paint on a canvas, lovely or no, is not necessarily an abstract masterpiece – it could just be paint randomly rendered on a canvas.
The thing that allows us to judge any piece of work within or without its form or genre is context, and context is lent to us largely by geography and history. Where was the piece made? When did it come out? What came before it? What informed it, or what is it reacting against? Jackson Pollock’s big drizzly works aren’t considered art because they’re so visually stunning or because they’re such fine representations of whatever he claimed he was painting – they’re art because everyone told him he couldn’t paint that way, then he went out and did it, so fuck you, art world.
But regardless of ALL of this, art needs a certain mimetic catchiness, and here I am totally in bed with the formalists – art speaks to you. It is communication. You look at it and recognize that something is being said – you may not be able to fully articulate what, but for just a moment, whatever that work of art says is the only thing that needs saying in the whole of history and the world.
Yep - people gotta know about this
So there is in part some subjectivity involved. Something that speaks to you might not speak to anyone else, and this may or may not diminish its capacity to be considered art by the world at large. If a piece doesn’t speak to a significant portion of recipients, it’s really hard to argue for that piece’s value as a work of art. It can be beautifully rendered, but mostly meaningless: the equivalent of a very pretty boy or girl who becomes less so when speaking.
Does this mean that mob rule affects art status? In a word, yes, but the chances are very good that you’re not in the mob. While academics tend to humbly eschew this distinction, it still should be said that the academy and the learned critics of the world at large (those in the employ of museums and the press) hold a great deal of sway over which artifacts are deemed art and thus are privileged to contribute to the cultural collective.
Consider: you may really like The Health Inspector starring Larry the Cable Guy. You tell everyone you know (probably about 100 people or so) and your take on the matter is thusly dispersed – 100 people now know that you think The Health Inspector is this generation’s Citizen Kane. You may have all kinds of strong supporting evidence and diagrams and shit, but you’re only able to tell about 100 people, give or take the clerks at your local video store and random strangers at the bus stop.
Oh look, Thomas Kinkade made his painting again
However, with the weight of the academic publishing industry behind me, I can posit that it is not The Health Inspector, but Baby Geniuses that is the defining film of this generation. Even if your opinion is as equally well researched and argued as mine, I have a much better chance of having my opinion published, and so not only will I reach the 100 people or so that I know, but also another 20 or so who actually bother to read academic journals.
Luckily, I’ll also be read by every desperate first-year art major feverishly digging through JStor in an attempt to shit out a last-second paper for Art History 105 – my opinion is now disseminated to hundreds, if not thousands, of young scholars who will in turn cite me as an authority, making my opinion that Mariah Carey’s Dream Lover album is the quintessential pop compilation of the 20th century not only less controversial, but rendering it fucking fact.
I make light of the matter, but do know that you don’t just walk up to a journal and say “publish me” and get that kind of authority – I wouldn’t write a paper on the brilliance of Baby Geniuses if I didn’t have strong research and a lot of historic inertia behind me, which is why you may notice that I have never written, nor will I ever write, a paper arguing for the excellence of Baby Geniuses. As elitist as it sounds to say that those with an education in matters critical get their voices canonized, it's worth remembering that these people devote their lives to critical exchange. This isn't rambling rumination - this is peer-reviewed research.
There are a lot of layers here
A painting, a movie, a song, a book, and so on can all be very enjoyable and very well rendered and not be art. Conversely, all of these can be middling in their formal execution, but if they resonate and communicate, then they can be considered art. There are all manner of arguments for which makes one good or bad, and I hope I’ve shed some light on this, but there’s one more qualifier that I hem and haw on, but that I will mention now for the sake of argument.
Picasso (who was only 5'3" but girls could not resist his stare) said that all art is subversive. This doesn’t mean that Dogs Playing Poker is shaking the establishment to it’s core – by this standard, Dogs Playing Poker is not art – it’s a painting. Art, real art, is critical itself – it rebels against paradigm, bends and even breaks the limitations and definitions of its own form, and hopefully helps to bring down authority (thus, the act of hanging Dogs Playing Poker on the wall at the Louvre becomes a subversive, and possibly artistic, act). This means again that your favorite painting may be very enjoyable and pretty, but it may not be art in a meaningful sense of the word.
And that’s really the distinction to be made, and the big puzzle to be put together: what is it? Is it even a term worthy of consideration? If anything and everything can be art, then there’s no point in even talking about it because we already have too many words for “everything.” This is similar to the frequently offered spiritual-but-not-religious statement that god is everywhere and everything, in which case we have to ask – why call it god at all? If I’m god and you’re god and we’re all god, why come up with more words to confuse the point? If I and the Mona Lisa and a pile of dog crap all have the same cultural value, why make any distinction?
Now I'm all kinds of confused
The distinction deserves to be made, if for no other reason, because I don’t want dog crap hanging on my wall. While the dog crap would certainly communicate something, it would only say “I have terrible taste and evidently no sense of smell,” which is not a captivating expression. It will never be the most important thing needing to be said. Well, unless you're trying to eat dinner in that room.
So we'll all keep hammering away at the question, and we'll keep coming up with tide-me-over answers. Want in on the conversation? Read books, go to libraries, and study! Rather than lament that you don't understand why photography is an art form, try taking some pictures yourself. Don't just rely on "liking what you like," but try to justify its existence. You may find it harder, and more rewarding, than you think.
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