Not A Blog™

Today’s article is something of a part two to Monday’s entry where I formally began a public blog-debate. Chris, a friend of Graham’s who I met a few weeks back, left a comment on the post. He touched on a number of points, but his main challenge to me was to define what I mean when I talk about “art”. This is important. I should define my terms, as Chris stressed. Besides, I’ve never actually tried to define art to myself. I’ve never really needed to—which may sound strange from someone who has a BFA, but in reality, when you’re going to an art school, you just take it as a matter of fact that what you see around you being produced is art.

Before I get into the discussion proper, I need to clarify something from Monday. Chris wrote:

You claim that something in the imagination is subjective but as soon as you draw it it becomes objective. I challenge you to define objective so that this statement makes sense.

I don’t mean to say that the symbol becomes objective, as obviously this is not the case. (For more discussion on this topic, see today’s entry from Graham, On The S/O Dilemma.) What I meant was that it’s objective in the sense that we now have this thing—a drawing of a tree—which we can discuss in objective terms. (That is, what medium it was drawn in, the quality of the strokes, degree of realism or abstractness, etc.) We could argue all day about whether or not reality exists, and how can we both be sure we’re looking at the same tree drawing, and are you imagining me or am I imagining you—but I would say that’s outside the scope of the discussion. The point is, the thing on the table that is a drawing of a tree is the objective thing, not necessarily the imagining of a “tree”. I should have made that more clear.

Two, I’m going to refrain from defining beauty at this time, since that’s my challenge to Paul.

Finally, art. Chris talked about how one can arrive at a definition by paring away what art is not to arrive at a conclusion as to what art is. I believe this is dangerous, because the tendency is for one to pick individual, narrowly focused examples to disprove each aspect that art is generally considered to be. This ignores the larger picture, and ultimately leads one to arrive at a rather untenable conclusion—that a mountain is art. Maybe so, but I think we can do better than that. I have tried to take a look at the things all art has in common. Of course some pieces can be recognized as art without having some of these qualities, but for something to be considered art, it must meet all of these conditions. Miss any one, and it is not art.

I’ll present the definition, then go into the discussion of how it agrees or disagrees with Chris’, and why. My definition of art is as follows:

Art is a work with an audience, which is considered within a cultural context, created by an artist with an intent or a thought as to why they’re producing the work, and presented for consumption as art.

1. Art Has an Audience

If you are not able to perceive the work, there’s really no way to know it’s there. A work needs to be sensed. Art requires a viewer (or listener in the case of music, etc).

2. Art is Considered within a Cultural Context

Art does not exist in a vacuum. If you consider the art separate from the larger context in which it was created, you will occasionally end up with art that does not appear to be art at all. Medieval tapestries look, out of context, like a fifth-grader’s sewing project (well, except for the old English), but to consider them this way would be a grave disservice to the larger meaning and significance behind them. In exactly the same way, John Cage’s 4′33″ is literally nothing. It doesn’t have notes. You can’t play it for someone—outside of its context, which is the concert hall. To consider 4′33″ apart from its context is pointless. Obviously it doesn’t appear to be art; you’re not getting the whole picture (no pun intended). That is not to say that some art doesn’t stand alone; some does. But to fully understand it and appreciate the art, you must consider what it meant for the artist to have produced it in the time period and cultural context that they did.

3. Art is Created by an Artist

I do not specify that this artist must be human, nor do I specify that they must have produced the work by their own hand. The main criticism to this is art which is generated by a computer. This, itself, breaks into two pieces, each of which I will address.

First, art that is created as a result of a programmed or constructed machine still has a person-artist: the one who built the machine. This is especially true if the machine was designed to produce art, or some facsimile thereof. In this case, the computer is simply a tool to facilitate the creation of the art. It may no longer be guided by the person directly, but was guided by them initially, since the person inputted rules that the computer follows.

We do not yet have computers powerful enough to simply say to them, “create something”. If we did, we’d have the second piece of this criticism which is not yet a reality, but may be soon enough—and any definition of art will need to accommodate it: the possibility of true artificial intelligence. If we do have a robot and we tell it to “create something”, and it does—well, the human could be considered sufficiently removed that it makes more sense to say the AI produced the work. (This could be debated, but it’s outside the scope of the discussion, and it would be moot anyway, because then you simply revert to the first case.) But even if the creator is non-human, we still have an artist.

As far as forces of nature creating art—they do not, in themselves, produce art, for reasons I will be getting to at the end. However, they can produce art when something has been set up by an artist, with the intent of using the forces of nature to drive the artfulness of the work. This brings me to my next point.

4. Art is Created with a Conscious Intent

It is important to note that the conscious intent with which art is created does not have to be that the work will ultimately end up as art. It simply means that someone created it consciously. It doesn’t even necessarily need to have a purpose—although in that case you end up in a recursion where the purpose of the object is for it to have no purpose, in which case it has a purpose, so clearly it failed at its purposelessness… and so on. The point is that, independent of purpose, it’s creation was still a conscious action. This conscious action is not sufficient to establish something as art, but it is a prerequisite.

Some works of art, without the thought process that goes into them, can scarcely be recognized as art at all. Marcel Duchamp put a toilet in a show, and titled it Fountain. In other words, he created nothing but an idea—but this idea is the conscious intent which drives the work (not to mention, you also have to consider Fountain in its cultural context), without which, it is simply a toilet. It also serves to distinguish it from all the other toilets you see on a day to day basis, which cannot be considered art because they’re not presented as such.

5. Art Must be Presented for Consumption as Art

Works that are not put in a position to be admired as art are not art. For a work to be art, it must be presented to an audience. This can be as simple as posting a song to your blog for your friends to hear, or as magnificent as erecting statues in celebration of a cause. But it needs the presentation: the gallery, the park, the town square, the wall, the blog, the concert, the book, the cinema, the T-shirt: all of these things are way for art to be presented. Without the presentation, a work may have the potential to be art—but it’s not art yet.

This also allows us to distinguish between the creation of art, and practice. When I practice the piano, I don’t consider myself to be creating art because I’m not playing for anyone. It’s not for consumption. But if someone sees me practicing and they ask me to play for them, and I do (however unrefined my playing may be), now I do create art because I play for an audience.

Additionally, we have many examples of things that were not originally created to be art, but can be considered art today because they fulfill all the other requirements—and now are presented as art. Architecture often falls into this category. For example, the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall was built for purely utilitarian purposes. But today, the Chinese government has put it on display; it’s a tourist attraction. It has now assumed the role of art. Likewise this is the case with feudal weapons from Japan on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, castles in Europe, and simple pottery from civilizations long since lost. Their original purpose has been superseded by a new purpose: as a work of art.

That is my definition. For a work to be art, it must be perceived, be considered within its cultural context, be created by an artist with an intent or thought as to why they’re producing the work (not necessarily artistic), and it must be presented for consumption as art.

Applying the definition to some examples:

I read an article a while back about an elephant that created paintings. These paintings were not bad, per se. Abstract, but nothing that you couldn’t find something similar to in a gallery. The article went on about how art isn’t just a human thing, we have to revise our definitions of what makes art, etc. I would argue that this is not art, because it was not the result of a conscious process—or at least not as far as we can know. In the same way an elephant can learn circus tricks, this painting is something of a trick—a learned action taught to the elephant by its trainer—rather than a genuine act of self expression on the elephants’ part.

On the contrary, graffiti is art by this definition. In college I had trouble accepting this to be the case, but I could never come up with a reason why graffiti wouldn’t be art. In the case of this definition, it can be defended as art. It might be a nuisance or an eyesore, and it may be illicit, but it’s still art.

A mountain, by this definition, is not art, because it is not the result of a conscious intent. But let’s say you put an empty frame around the mountain, at an appropriate distance to view it—or let’s say that you signed your name to the face of the mountain, a la Calvin signing a snow-covered landscape in Calvin & Hobbes. At this point you’ve done something to the mountain; it’s no longer “just a mountain”. This something took a conscious intent. Perhaps you did this to make fun of what can be considered art—now you have a cultural context. If you get enough press, now it’s been presented for consumption and people are seeing it. You have a work of art. But note the mountain itself is not the art; rather the art is what you’ve done to it.

This is not to say that nature doesn’t have artistic qualities, or that viewing a mountain can’t inspire thoughts and feelings in one just as a work of art does. Surely a mountain can be picturesque. But, as I mentioned before, simply having the potential to become art does not automatically make something art. As beautiful as a mountain may be, it is not, itself, art.

A single blue rock placed on a mountain—or the entire mountain painted blue—would be art if it meets all the aspects of the definition. A blank canvas is also art, provided it meets this criteria, and as Chris suggests, art certainly can exist independent of the artistic process. I went to an exhibit of M.C. Esher’s art. In the center of the room, they had one of his original litho stones on display. Now, after Esher completed the run he desired of a particular litho, he would carve an “X” across the face of his stone, so that it could not be used to create further prints. In this case, not only was the final print hanging on the wall being presented as art, the destroyed tool was, too. Esher did not necessarily expect the litho stone itself would be presented as art, but it was nonetheless. And so, it became art; it met the criteria set forth here. This is an example of the art existing apart from the artistic process, yet it is still legitimately art. It didn’t become art as part of the process of creating the other art in the room, but through it being presented as art.

Finally, I’d like to touch on the claim that:

…[art] is the ACT in the VIEWER of viewing some aspect of their external reality as the concretization of another, emotionally , conceptually, or aesthetically salient aspect of another.

This is close because it recognizes that art does not exist apart from its audience. The viewer must view; the listener must listen. But this act—while in itself an “art” of sorts—is not the art. Clearly, objects d’art exist. They do not exist without the viewing—but it doesn’t make sense to talk about the action of viewing as the art itself. There is more involved.

For one thing, this ignores the contributions of the artist to the process. This is something we cannot do because without the artist making conscious decisions as part of the creation, we don’t have art. The artist cannot be removed from the work—nor from the definition—of art.

Also, assuming that “the action of viewing is art” ignores the cultural context in which the art was created. In order for the viewing to be effective, it must take into account knowledge greater than the presentation of the art itself. But claiming that viewing is art leaves no room for this, as it implies that the work merely needs to be glanced at—and suddenly this act reveals art! Again, citing both Cage’s 4′33″ and Duchamp’s Fountain, this is not reliable. It’s not even possible to listen to 4′33″ outside of a concert hall, and just looking at Fountain is not enough for you to know this is art. It’s just a toilet, after all. When you view it today, you view it with all the knowledge you have of art history, and you think about this, and now you know: art. But just looking at a piece of art is not sufficient for you to know it is art. If you do not know that what you see before you is intended to be art, then indeed, it is not art! Therefore, looking cannot serve to establish artfulness, and viewing cannot be art, Q.E.D.

It is important to note that this definition does not distinguish between amateur and professional, good and bad, or popular and independent art. It may be possible to find many examples of crafty, trite, or slip-shod work which is art in a low-brow way—but simply because something is not avant garde or high concept does not exclude it from the definition of art. Velvet Elvis—for all its mass-produced kitschiness—is still art. But more importantly, this definition sets a baseline which I believe is an effective and sensible definition from which to work in future discussions on the topic.

As far as how this all relates to beauty—well, that’s coming up.

-Ted