Art or Not?
Because the infamous Hot or Not site was getting some Blog of the Day attention last week, I have been unable to resist mimicking the over simplistic circle-yes-or-no concept – for example, here. I know it’s not quite a fair reproduction – Hot or Not borrows the age-old scale-of-1-to-10 rating system for total hotness of single entity. There is obviously more complexity there. (Heh.)
But sometimes when it comes down to the distinctions of art and literature, we seem to fall into a pattern of making that either/or distinction. We say that a text is or is not literary; sometimes we say it has literary aspirations, but there do not seem to be enough common words to describe hybrid modes of writing that have some percentage of characteristics we attribute to literature. (Hence, the unabashed verbosity on the What is Literature comment thread.)
For art, my favorite colloquial distinction is “I know it when I see it,” taken of course from the famous case in 1964 in which judge Potter Stewart attempted to eyeball the distinction between art and porn. But you might also hear variations of that when you ask anyone in a museum what’s good: “I don’t know art, but I know what I like.” The stakes are a little higher for what is and is not art, at least monetarily - for art, people are willing to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars. I’ve only done minimal study of galleries, but I’m endlessly fascinated by the wild calculus through which effort, fame, media, and skill determine value. There is a gallery down the street from me called Absolute Abstract that specializes in “loft art,” which seems to imply occasionally beautiful but mostly campy pop pieces that range around the low hundreds rather than the low thousands you see at First Friday. As much as I love to look at, think about, and write about the material goods we sometimes call art, I can’t fathom coughing up a month’s rent for these things – perhaps because my moderate training in artcrit has completely undone my ability to “know what I like.” I have to think about it too long.
Enough opening remarks. I invite you to play Art or Not. Like Interesting or Not Interesting, your task is pretty simple. Look at the below examples of craft and aesthetics available for public view and/or purchase right here in Philadelphia, and tell me: is it art or isn’t it? Why and under what terms?
I probably don’t need to add the caveat of Judge the Subject, Not the Photography – photography Art or Not is like a whole other game, but more to the point, I couldn’t get good angles for many of these.
A. 
B. 
C. 
D. 
E. 
F. 
I’m game. ^^
A. Art
B. Not
C. Not
D. Art
E. Art
F. Art
I’m generally of the opinion that Art is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve seen some stuff like B. around here — and it doesn’t say affect me, therefore it’s not art to me. (To someone else, maybe. But that’s not the game we’re playing.)
C… C is difficult. I’ve seen stuff like this (from a local muralist who also has a fondness for politically charged stencils, Dave Loewenstein) and that is probably providing me some bias — this is not as, well, creative as Loewenstein’s work. There’s possibly some symbolism in the choice of a black/white color scheme, and definitely some sarcastic humor as well as the obvious political commentary, but it really just doesn’t attract me at all.
Both of the above Not images leave me with a “yeah, and?” feeling, ergo: Not Art.
i think art ~can~ be many things, including something intending to be self expression, to cause an emotion in the audience, to represent an opinion, etc etc etc
i think all of the examples are art, but i only LIKE some of them… above all other definitions, art is most definitely subjective
I’m kind of tempted to say only D is “not art”, but that’s on a purely pedantic level or something, in that a rose isn’t art, an orchid or a cloud aren’t art, no matter how beautiful, because they’re not ARTificial, they’re the opposite, natural… That is, assuming as Peach said we’re talking about the subject and not the photograph, and also assuming that this isn’t some weird sculpture of trees or something that I didn’t know about… I’d be curious though to see reactions if we included a variety of artificial and design oriented subjects that tend to sort of skirt the boundaries of our ideas about art… I was intially thinking of things like buildings and furniture that frequently we take for granted as utilitarian constructs, but which have gone through phases of being embellished with decorations, and of having their entire design and function rethought as a kind of artwork, e.g. the Bauhaus design movement… if a chair or building is decorated, might the decorations be art but not the building? Or both seperately? But another interesting direction to go would be the old supreme court debate route, pornography vs. erotica vs. say “slash” fan fiction or something… That an individual piece’s “art worthiness” is subjective is pretty well established, but what about questioning the boundaries of our whole ideas about art, and then trying to find counter examples that break the boundaries we thought we had, etc? A little broad an ambitious I suppose, but worth raising at least as a topic for discussion…
Jo: Interesting point about the simple political message. I think if I’d seen C. stenciled on the wall of some public building, I’d be charmed and amused by it. But this wood version was set up in the window of the aforementioned loft art store, and I was kind of grossed out. Context is all?
Ecentipede: Well, sure, art certainly is subjective. But art nonetheless is forced onto a semiobjective scale in terms of what goes into museums and what goes into thousand-dollar galleries and what goes into “loft art” galleries.
I think my question – for all of you, really – is less what objectively qualifies for art, but what belongs in the annals of art history and what is worth paying First Friday prices for and what qualifies as art under your personal philosophy, which is subject to change.
Vague enough for you? ; )
Brian: D IS a weird sculpture of a tree, and it’s made of something very shiny… it looked silver. Does that change your opinion?
By changing the boundaries of what we consider art, did you mean mostly in terms of which objects count (furniture vs. henna paintings vs. silver trees) or in the ways we describe art (like the ways we describe literature, below?)
@Brian: D is, yes, a tree. Coated in silver. One of several.
OK, now on this monitor it’s more detectable that D is in fact metallic and therefore, in most senses (even assuming Gabe’s correct and being literal, that it’s a natural tree covered by some metallic substance) a sculpture… The one on the right/background still looks pretty natural to me, but the metallic sheen is pretty visible now on the front one, I was looking at it on my TV before I think and I guess I either wasn’t close enough to see or didn’t look carefully enough…
If we revise this to annals of art history and/or what we personally would be willing to spend a great deal of money on (assuming we had, say, a lot of money, but significantly less than bill gates or warren buffet), I’d probably say “none of the above”. The food item of letter F raises interesting questions in this area though, and broadly brings up the place and value etc. for all inherently temporary artwork, food presentation, butter or ice sculptures, fireworks displays… we can capture images of them, but that’s not the same obviously. What about a particular production of a play? Is that a distinct piece of art from the play itself as written? It seems so in most respects, but obviously they’re inextricably bound up, at least on the production’s side if not on the play’s…
I dunno about the “boundaries” question, how we count them, how we describe them, both and more I guess… I’m kind of used to exploring what something is by exploring the boundaries of what it isn’t… Partly this is my overly logical/analytical side seeking clear cut definitions etc, but more than that I think is wanting to avoid a certain kind of self-congratulatory navel-gazing that’s at risk of being “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” This is always a risk in trying to talk with any conviction or certainty about anything abstract and/or subjective, and it’s one I don’t mind taking, but I like to keep it in mind to ground things or something…
i know it’s a total cop out, but i have to refer back to my subjective comment…
you see, an eight foot canvas painted yellow with one red dot on it can be considered groundbreaking, moving, beautiful, and worth much more than i make in a year, but I WOULD NOT BUY IT EVEN IF I COULD. so to me, it is art not even worth the loft prices.
although that leads me to another topic about how lofts in this day and age can range from ‘comes with plumbing, barely’ to ‘if you have to ask you can’t afford it’ prices, and might have art work of all price ranges in them… that’s a mini-rant from another conversation i had a few days ago that you were not present for, sorry to digress.
right–i’ve seen things in museums that i thought were insulting their neighbor works of art just by being there, and i’ve seen things hanging on a friend’s primer covered drywall that i jealously wanted to put in my ‘collection’ so my very wobbly point here is, i suppose, that i can’t agree or make use of anyone else’s semiobjective category or label for anything i see and must decide on my own if it’s art, and what it might be worth.
this, of course, precluding any discussion of how silly it is to judge a piece of art’s worth in terms of money.
bleh. i dunno. i find myself in the odd position of being over tired and having leaky brain activity before midnight, unable to coalesce an idea much less clearly express it to anyone else.