Good art / bad art / non-art
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Over the years, Iâve noticed a strange form of aesthetic criticismâstrange to me at least. It happens when people encounter something that some artist made, and they are bewildered, disgusted, or otherwise put off by it, so they exclaim, âthatâs not art!â
For a long time, I really didnât understand why people say this. A while ago, I asked this question on Twitter.
One person suggested that âitâs not artâ is a rather clichĂŠd way of discussing any specific artworkâa much better tactic would be to say âthatâs not artfulâ, with which sentiment I agree. Saying âthatâs not artfulâ or âthatâs not artisticâ implies that there is, at least, a minimum standard of artfulness to which any artwork ought to adhereâbut that it is possible for something to not meet that standard, yet still be counted as art.
When I clarified the impetus behind my original question, the conversation grew richer.
One person suggested that maybe there is an honorific element at play here. Calling something âartâ elevates it to a plane above mere âdesignâ or âcraftsmanshipâ. This is a readily apprehended distinction: imagine a very well-made chairâwould you call it art? Or is it just well-made? There is a line, in peopleâs minds, that once crossed imbues an object with the special characteristics of art, above and beyond what good workmanship requires. This line exists between classes of objectsâhence the chair example above. But why is that so? Why is a very well-made chair not âartâ in the same way that a very badly-made painting is? Similarly, why does a well-made painting count as âartâ and not âcraftâ? Or put differently, what is it about Great Paintings that exists beyond craft?
Another person claimed that people say âitâs not artâ because then they donât have to engage in thoughtful critique of the artwork. They donât have to grapple mentally with it; they can walk off with a wave of the hand and go look at a Vermeer or whatever.
Then there was the person who said, simply, âbecause of Duchamp.â Itâs true that Marcel Duchamp broke our ability to explain artistic creation with his readymades1âsuddenly people were being forced to think about a question that they really didnât want to face. Itâs as if people said âart is supposed to be about a certain set of things, but your readymades, Mr. Duchamp, are not about those things. So by definition they canât be art.â For most people, a trip to the museum or gallery is not meant as an occasion to engage in philosophical debate about the nature of artistic creation. Confound it, we just want to look at some pretty pictures!
With Duchamp and the readymades, with cubism, with Dada and surrealism, with abstract expressionismâwith the whole apparatus of avant-garde thought in the visual arts of the twentieth century, in factâcame a fundamental inability to even talk about a particular artworkâs artistic merits. How can you say that Fountain is a good, or a bad, readymade? What scale would you use to differentiate between a readymade by a first-year art student, and one by Duchamp himself? Are the drip paintings of Pollock, or the color fields of Rothko, good or bad examples of their styles? One person commented on the Twitter question above by saying that âitâs not artâ âis easier because it tends to reject the modernist (avant-garde) frame completely.â Annoyed with all the baggage of the avant-garde, all the isms and artist statements, the poses and philosophical justifications of this or that artistic movement, some art lovers simply say, âyâall have got the issue all mixed up. Art isnât about that stuff.â
All of these explanations are compelling, and I think Iâve been broken on the floor this time; when I took to Twitter I was prepared to defend my long-held belief that âitâs not artâ is a lazy / foolish way of tackling the problem of aesthetic complexity, but now Iâm not so sure. Iâll probably still ask people to clarify when they say that something isnât art, but I wonât be as prickly about the issue. Maybe we need a new category in which to place the efforts of Duchamp et al.âthen we can say âthatâs not art, thatâs meta-artâ or something similar.
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MISC.
If youâre looking to read more about how we view and interpret pictures, James Elkins is your go-to. He wrote a series of essays for the Huffington Post, about close viewing and art, which are well worth your time. He also wrote a number of books about art history, perception theory, and visual stuff in general, three of which I reviewed here.
The most famous being Fountain (1917), which is pictured above, but Duchampâs output also includes Bicycle Wheel (1913), which consists of a bicycle wheel and fork mounted on a footstool, and L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), which is the official title of the notorious goateed-and-moustached Mona Lisa.
I was brought up solidly within the Conceptual milieu where Duchampian thinking was de rigeur. All of the avant-garde mediums and practices were celebrated and taught. So if and when I encountered something new the thing to ask was not is it art, but what does it do?
I think it would be a mistake to try to relegate the readymade and its many relations to some other category. The point of Duchampâs intervention (unless you fall into the camp that thinks Fountain was just a stunt) was to throw into question what people thought they knew about art, and to force them to contend with artâs philosophical bounds and the constraints of bourgeois âgood taste.â When people these days say âthatâs not art,â itâs often because their understanding of art history is limited -- they have no frames of reference for processing why a bicycle wheel on a stool should be considered art, much the same way I have no frame of reference sometimes for certain kinds of avant-garde music or theoretical physics. Most of the time I know better than to dismiss what I donât understand, but Iâm afraid lots of people have a much lower tolerance for anything that makes them feel uneducated or alienated. As I tell my students, âI donât like thatâ or âI donât get itâ is a much more accurate way to respond to such work, and it opens the door to actual understanding (if youâre open to the explanation).