Larry has a post on pop*modern describing a recent discussion session on the subject of 'What is art?'
I was a participant in that conversation. Whatever it was I said that evening - and I don't remember because, frankly, I was just blathering - I now retract.
While it may be appropriate to ask in a broad sense, 'What is art?' I think it's dangerous to look at a particular piece and ask, as we did hypothetically that evening, 'Is this art?'
When we look at something and ask, 'Is this art?' we begin to distance ourselves from it. It is another example of having an experience and, rather than letting the experience speak to us directly, forcing it to compete with a bunch of stuff we drag out of our footlocker of memories, opinions and preferences - all the stuff we use as benchmarks for classifying, measuring and pigeonholing.
Better to simply experience the thing - nothing else.
The danger in this approach is that crap becomes accepted as art because although everyone sees the emperor has no clothes, no one will say so, and the next thing you know the crap's being sold in mass quantities on cable shopping channels. But that doesn't seem to me to be as much of a danger as letting our experiences be limited by our preconceptions and judgments.
(There are exceptions to this rule. Somewhere in my brain is stored the notion that being hit by a semi on the highway hurts. I'll live with that prejudice - I won't stand in the middle of I-35 to experience it directly.)
Some time back, I read several passages about stuff being neither phenomena nor not-phenomena. 'Well, stuff has got to be one or the other,' I thought to myself. 'I sort of get this concept, but not really.'
Well, now I get it. (The usual disclaimer applies.)
If I say, 'This stuff is phenomena,' I've classified it. Granted, I've classified it at the broadest, most vague level, but I've classified it nonetheless. Once again, I've filtered the experience through my own memories and opinions.
But what about, 'This stuff is not phenomena.'? Well, I've classified it again, but this time by exclusion.
So the key is to view stuff as neither phenomena nor not-phenomena.
What stuff?
You know... stuff.
Another quiet Friday evening. Not phenomena, not not-phenomena.
3 comments:
Saturday Evening 6PM
Meeting at the Line Gallery to discuss "Is this Art?"
You're invited...
dilettantes ask what is art, artists just make it.
I guess that shows us what side of the equation you occupy.
I don't make any claim to being an artist, except to the extent that I'm a commercial artist, which basically means I express someone else's vision.
(This has occasionally included finishing up the work left undone by some other 'artist' because he stayed home and smoked weed on the customer's dime and only showed up in the workplace to sabotage coworkers' equipment because he wanted them to appear to be at least as unproductive as he was.)
However, the original conversation from which this post grew included George Oswalt, Larry Pickering and a couple of other people whom I assume you will agree are not dilettantes, and who felt this was a topic worth discussing.
If you feel that they are dilettantes, you should take that up with them, and I'm sure they'll be glad to have your input.
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