I'm going to keep this short, folks, as I want this to be more of a discussion rather than a post about what I think. I've seen a lot of comments about art and what art is. Most of the comments about the definition of art kind of disturb me, so this is what I hope we can all have a chat about.
Art is one of those things that's pretty damn hard to define. And let's not kid ourselves, people, there is no one way to define art. It is a concept which is, to a large extent anyway, highly subjective; however, I do believe that there are several elements a piece of "art" must have in order to be deemed as such.
But let's get one thing out of the way. Art is not simply a person pouring their heart and soul into something, nor is it someone just venting or showing their emotions; teen angst poetry is not art for a reason. No one wants to hear about how shitty your life is or how your boyfriend is an asshole. No one cares about your emotions, and they certainly aren't special. Wordsworth talks about emotions recollected in tranquility. Wordsworth's theory of "emotional-based poetry" is different from the whole pouring-one's-heart-out-onto-a-canvas thing because his type of poetry is a series of reflections on the implications of one's emotions in the context of a circumstance. Emotions are vehicles to understand the meaning behind a certain context; however, they should not be -- especially in an extremely personal and raw form -- the subject matter of one's "poetry" or "art."
One more thing I want to bring forth before I open up the forum to you guys. I believe there is "art" and I believe there is "Art." There is a big difference between the two -- not just the capital, of course -- and one of the obvious differences is that not everyone creates "Art." Not everything I have written creatively is "Art." If there wasn’t an inherent difference between "art" and "Art," then Eric Strege's world would be meaningless because Snookie would be just as much of a part of the literary canon as Joyce.
So, talk about art in the comments. I'll be interested in what you have to say.
JF
I come from a family where Art was always taken seriously. My father was a background artist for Disney Studios (he worked on Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Tarzan, Hercules and Emperors New Groove to name a few) and he taught me many important things about Art. First, that there will often be a time when no one likes your work, but if you like it and it has meaning to you,then it really doesn't matter what others think. Second, he explained that everyone's views are different. It is because of this second idea that he taught me tolerance for others' Art. You can help educate a person on techniques of the paint brush or the techniques of poetic devices, but you cannot force them to follow these rules. Art is supposed to be viewed with an open and patient mind. Although I personally hate Snookie, I know people who love her, just as I know people who hate Joyce.
ReplyDeleteIt is all a matter of opinion that should be viewed with patience and understanding because you will never know what the artist was thinking when they created their piece of work unless you ask them.
Art means the world to me and I understand that there are pieces of art out there that I will hate, but I also know that some people like and enjoy the things I hate. It is all about placing yourself in another's shoes. I merely think that it is important for a person to think twice before they become an angry critic of someone else's Art.
Lovingly yours,
S
Ham fistedly foisting your defining elements of art down the throats of people will not help your meager argument. Though you may have started with something you could have sculpted into a point, it seems as though your generalizations and definitions are much more deeply rooted in a veil of fearful ignorance.
ReplyDeleteThough you may like to sit with your chin lifted and claim that there are "obvious differences" between "art" and "Art," you have completely failed at making those ever so significant distinctions. How would you define these obvious elements? Though your vague text seems to indicate that you might know what you're talking about, there is nothing here that helps me come to that conclusion in the absolute. Horoscopes do a better job of convincing people, and I suppose that my essential point is that you're wrong.
This issue has existed for such a long time and I think it's childish to make such a poor claim for the advocacy of the position you selected. However it is clear that in our modern perspective (and in accordance with societal norms) there is hardly anything that falls outside of the boundaries of Art. We live in a world of new found appreciation for art. This is 2011 Mr. Frost, a world where youtube videos and street aerosol art can be brought to the realm of gallery level museum sponsored divinity that ignorance such as that displayed in your post would reserve exclusively to the artist... whatever the artist may or may not be.
I am reminded of Marcel Duchamp's display: Fountain, and the point he made when he submitted a urinal to the Society of Independent Artists in 1917 for display. He was on the board of the SIA but submitted it under a false name. It caused a controversy so huge that it created an entire genre of art as a consequence. He stated,
"The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."
Look it up Mr. Frost. I would like to appeal to you, however: under what authority do you dare to define the necessary elements for art?
Who are you, with no credibility to your name, to make statements about the definition of art?
You stated, "Art is not simply a person pouring their heart and soul into something, nor is it someone just venting or showing their emotions."
Dante's Divine Comedy was written purely as an expression of love towards a woman he never got to call his own. Dante pouring his heart and soul into something and expressing his emotions is what lead to that work. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is about two teenagers in a twisted suicidal plot and I guarantee you that half of the songs written by artists you truly admire are about love and somebody's ex.
Again I ask, who are you to deny an artist his or her credit? Under what authority can you make such a claim? It's foolish and snobby to do so; and with such little class it only reflects your poor judgement and blind consideration as a representative of this tiny little magazine? How do you expect to earn any respect? You should be ashamed of yourself.
Art exceeds beyond the realm of its physical craft and into the realm of intellectual interpretation. Maybe not in your eyes, but in the eyes of millions upon millions of people. In museums across the world, people display bits of pottery and shards of trash from ancient times as art in secure settings. Today's museums even host graffiti art; from The Brooklyn Museum all the way to MOCA, it is genuinely appreciated. Readymade art still exists today as people nail wire hangers to the floor and consider it art.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that if there is a physical craft that contains some degree of inherent value or beauty to anyone on earth, nobody can make the claim that it isn't art. It's just impossible to do so. You can claim that you don't consider it art but that's exactly as far as you can go without being smug.
The truth is Mr. Frost, if nobody cared about emotions as you claim, the world would't have art to begin with. Art has to do with feeling and the concept of the self. It's something to interpretation that has no respect for the status quo... or Jack Frost.
Your ignorant little rant is the type of thing that will ruin your entire magazine's following. I would hope you think things through in the future.
Mischief
Dear "Mischief," first of all, I find it ironic that you persist in referring to Mr. Foster (let me say that again, Foster) as "Mr. Frost." This is amusing to me because Robert Frost had similar sentiments to those of Mr. Foster's about poetry; Frost (will the real Mr. Frost please stand up?) said, "poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." This is the very sentiment put forward by Mr. Foster when he argued that art is not merely the pouring forth of an unexamined emotion. In fact, countless great writers, including Oscar Wilde and Sylvia Plath, have wholeheartedly agreed with this contention. So, I guess what I'm getting at is… what are you getting so upset about?
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, why would you feel the need to attack the character of an individual who is passionately putting forth his opinion and seeking responses to his content, not his rhetorical ethos? Are you really so threatened by the character of someone whom you refer to as having "no credibility to [his] name"? We here at A Few Lines illicit your feedback and love hearing from our worldwide readers and contributors (while recognizing that we are just a small and insignificant magazine; thank you for so graciously pointing that out by the way); however, we would appreciate a greater focus on the content of our blogs and a steering away from vitriolic attacks to our written personas. After all, the focus of this blog and certainly of our magazine is not ourselves, but ideas, both our own and others. We are an editorial staff full of strong personalities and we like to be ourselves and to have fun with what we are doing here- I sincerely hope you can find a way to come here and do the same. While your wish may be to silence dissenting opinions and to shun those who dare to define art, you must understand that people always define art and in all different ways; so, yes, there will always be people who dare to term something as "art" or "not art" (or even "not Art").
It's kind of our thing. And it's yours too for responding to this blog and offering your interesting insight about The Devine Comedy being in part motivated by a strong emotion. I would tell you to not be so quick to judge others, but I think you already said that. Cheers.
I applaud Mischief for his/her supremely amusing dadaist installation/imitation of a "post when I feel like it" webcomic artist. Eight out of ten.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't sure if you were completely missing the point or hitting the nail on the head, but I laughed the whole time.
Quick point - while it's quite clever and oh-so-original to point out that "your favroite stuff is based on outpourings of emotion," don't bring Shakespeare into this - Romeo and Juliet isn't about suicidal teens and how sad it is that kids killed themselves; it's about how emo kids ruin everything (the family, their friends, the peace of an entire fucking city - the ending is positive, the breach is sealed, because they did Verona a favor and offed themselves) - get it right.
Now to the original question: I'm going to take a different tack with this than some of you might expect and say that Art is the obvious presence of depth in a work.
When you hear Bach or Revel or Mozart or Haydn you can hear the depth to their works: the interwoven themes, the periods of contrasting lightness and heaviness, delicacy and heavy-handedness working together to create something complicated. But this doesn't only work with classical music - think of some of the heavy metal you've heard: it combines intensely strong musicality and great talent with monotonous vocals or disparate lyrics to create depth beyond just another fillintheblankcore song (Rob Zombie is particularly excellent at this.)
The same theory applies to visual Art: The Photography of Annie Leibovitz suggests far more than it states - her Photography relies on contrast in many ways: the contrast between a subject and its surroundings, the contrast between light and dark, gender contrast, color contrast and so on; now think about all the snapshots of somebody's girlfriend you've ever seen on facebook - I'm sure that whoever took that photo really felt strongly about the subject, he or she loved that girl with all his or her heart, but there's nothing more to the photo than the girl in the picture - it says "look at my awesome girlfriend" and nothing else. While that snapshot may have great personal meaning and depth for the person who captured it, none of that is communicated to the audience.
That's what I mean about the obviousness of the depth.
Have you ever had to explain a joke to someone? It sucks. The joke's not funny anymore.
If you have to explain to me why you, as a fan of SCreamoBand, see such tremendous depth to their anthem "I miss my girlfriend but she's a bitch" then there's probably not really that much depth to the song - there is for you (hypothetically of course) because it came out when YOU missed your girlfriend, who was a bitch, and it spoke to you at a very deep and personal level - but just because YOU feel strongly about a song (which is great, good for you) doesn't mean that it's Art; to be Art that song would have to touch everyone who heard it in some way - revulsion, exultation, orgasm, hysterical weeping, whatever, but it has to elicit a reaction from a broad audience.
I like this definition because it holds pretty well through history: people were revolted by the Art of Van Gogh and Warhol because it didn't hold with their definitions of Art but just because the Art was detested didn't mean that it was meaningless or lost in time; people loved the Art of Michelangelo and Da Vinci because it touched them spiritually (since their Art was largely based in the Catholic religious mores at a time when everyone was Catholic) but the important thing about the Art of all the above mentioned artists is that it endured because it continued to communicate deep emotions to a large audience.
Long Ass Comment Continued:
ReplyDeleteSo let's recap: Art is something of obvious depth (i.e. it continues to inspire or bother its audience for a remarkable period of time after it was created).
Then what is art? (Plz note the lowercase) art is something that people make that other people enjoy. That's it. Big reveal.
art is great - it amuses people, passes time, gives you something to talk about with your co-workers or the students in your class. art is the Die Hard series, art is The Monkees, art is Hello Kitty, art is political cartoons from the 1680s and apps for iPods. art is peachy keen, but probably won't last. Sure the lowercase artists out there have their diehard fans: people who live and die with Blink 182 breakups, Twilight fans, people who still REALLY want to be on Survivor, Sanrio Otakus, and the people who still read DC. That's great - those artists need fans and those fans need artists. But will the music of Blink 182 really last? Let's face facts people, they're never even going to make it to a classic rock station. Will people 100 years from now read Twilight? Only in the way people now read Charlotte Temple: contemptuously and for classes only (and then only as an example of a very particular genre). Does anyone even care about Survivor now? Didn't think so. Hello Kitty may be a cultural icon that lasts, but will Spotty Dotty? If you don't know what that is now you have proved my point and you're either too young, too old, or too male to be reading about it. Will Superman survive a hundred year's worth of revamps? I want to think so, but I don't believe it. So all of those things are great; they've made a lot of people happy, but they don't have the depth to last: they're light topsoil, blow away by the winds of time and not made to endure. That doesn't make them bad, but I think it does disqualify them as objects of ART.
"Art transcends craftsmanship. It transcends the artist and reaches something deeper; something intangible," -Bermuda
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jack that Emotions shouldn't be the subject matter of your writing. But for me at least, its not because nobody cares about your perspective, but because everyone has experienced those same emotions. We have all felt that way or will feel that way in the future. Your emotions are not special and neither are mine. They're just too mundane, to common place to transcend their own existence.
Teenage Angst Poetry for that reason, isn't Art because as Alli puts it, it is just "top-soil". It will be blown away with time as the poet grows as an emotional being. That kind of poetry doesn't have the emotional depth to last any longer.
Dante's Inferno isn't Art because it was written out of someone's emotional soul, but because it has survived throughout time, and has served as an inspiration to countless others. It has transcended the artist, and the medium of the written word.
Art is timeless and transcends. art amuses.
Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda
Post Script:
It should be noted that we live in a nation born from the Puritans. People who distrusted the personal narrative. This could be the reason we all have a little cynic in our heads.