To be or not to be: Art?
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." - Thomas Merton
What is art?
I believe that art is something that evokes emotions, makes you feel, makes you believe in the beauty of this world that is often shown cruel and unjust. Makes you believe that there is hope in life; that our existence has a purpose; that a difference in perspective is something you need to understand better the aspects of our philosophical and psychological conundrums. Art moves you, from one state to another.
I love art.
What is not art?
Statements. Statements presented as an "art piece", such as a banana peel duct-taped to a wall, or an empty canvas submitted as an expensive joke, are not art. Such "art pieces" often need to protect themselves by bringing up the saying "art is subjective". Art is subjective, yes, but how does that translate? I rather think it means that the interpretation of art differs from person to person, that everyone could conjure a different meaning from it; what it does not mean is the definition of art is subjective. We humans have taste for art and hence are able to intuit whether something is art or just overglorified fart.
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp:
I highly disagree that an artist's mere act of choice would make any object a work of art; artists do not have the Midas' touch.
Philosopher Stephen Hicks says about it,
"The artist is a not great creator—Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The artwork is not a special object—it was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennobling—at best it is puzzling and mostly leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on."
"Art is something you piss on", huh? What the heck does that mean?
Fountain was one of a kind when it was presented back in 1917. Duchamp wanted to stir controversy in the art society and provoke thought into the mind of the audience, and he was brave to do this in such a way. He presented Fountain to question the time's stereotype as to what could be considered as art. He took a toilet which we would irk to look at and made it into something we would keenly observe while pondering philosophical questions. Do I think Duchamp's Fountain is a piece of art? No. But do I think his action was artful? Yes.
The Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan:
This is bananas, lol. An Italian artist named Maurizio Cattelan submitted this banana duct-taped to a wall at the art fair of Art Basel staged in Miami. It was sold for a whooping, idiotic, holy godforsaken amount of 120,000$ (89,96,382₹) with another edition going for 150.000$.
The founder of the display gallery, Emmanuel Perrotin, stated about it,
“Whether affixed to the wall of an art fair booth or displayed on the cover of the New York Post, his work forces us to question how value is placed on material goods. The spectacle is as much a part of the work as the banana.”
Duchamp did it once; don't do it again, it's not cool anymore. This person taking a banana and raising its value by making it "art" and then selling it is a con game. It does not "force us to question how value is placed on material goods", it makes us realise that people will try to say any absurd thing that will go against our intuition and we should oppose it, even if those people are considered "artists". Next, someone will take a shit on stage and call it "art", and people will applaud to it, ugh.
To it, GQ.com says: "Cattelan is pretty explicitly poking fun at how arbitrary art can be sometimes."
Art can never be arbitrary. Arbitrary: based on random choice. Art is thoughtful, crafted, evoked, made effort for. Art has to be excavated from deep within the artist's human conscience. It has to be moulded with passion and shown to the audience with such presentation that it arouses in them the idea and the feeling the artist wants to convey. To say art can be arbitrary is very asinine.
Visual artist Jens Haaning was given 84,000$ by a Danish museum so that he could frame the cash in his artwork. Instead, he returned to them two empty canvases titled "Take the Money and Run". The museum was perplexed by these empty canvases but still presented them in an exhibition called Work It Out, which delves into theme of people's relationship with work.
The artist says that the blank canvases are a commentary on poor wages, and it is not a theft. "It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of work," he says.
He says that it is a commentary, which means it is a statement. The problem I have about this is not with the artist or the work that he has done, but with the people on social media exclaiming that it is a great piece of contemporary art. Preposterous! People know nothing and say everything. They do not know the theme of the exhibition and do not understand what he wanted to say with these canvases, they only see a humorous act of an artist stealing 84,000$, yet go on about opining . Such artistic illiteracy in the public could be dangerously misused by charlatans and could degrade and deprive the world of quality art, since no such public would care to know it and no such artist would care to make it.
The museum acknowledges that he made a provoking piece of work, though. I don't think the empty canvases are art, but I do think that his action of submitting them in regard to the theme of the exhibition was artful.
Our world is becoming a centre stage for controversial things especially if they are easy to understand and does not require any intellectual effort. In this dire case, statements posed as "art" have become very popular for they can be easily viewed and promptly judged in a minute's time without having to think much about it. But I am no pessimist; I believe that the want to consume good art and the want to make more of it will keep proliferating in our minds and it will only ever keep spreading and infecting many more humans. Art is infectious. And I infect you with these:
1) Films: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, The Royal Tenenbaums, Following, Arrival, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke.
2) Paintings: Woman with Parasol Facing Left by Claude Monet, Self-portrait with Straw Hat by Vincent Van Gogh.
3) Books: Charlotte's Web, Maze Runner, Animal Farm, Malgudi Schooldays, Ruskin Bond books.
4) Music: Bach's Cello Suite in G Major, Vivaldi's Summer, Jack Stauber, Louie Zong.
These are some of my favourite artists or works of art.
And that's it. Au revoir!
Comments
Post a Comment