photo credit: Bernadette Ann
Hi everyone (nice to see you both!)
Things are a bit strange around here these days, which explains the radio silence – or doesn’t explain it at all really, since I actually haven’t explained anything at all. Oh well. Anyway.
Action and reaction
This post began as a comment on another blog, but it quickly became clear that it had delusions of grandeur, so I moved it back here. In fact it was a comment on a post that I suspect may have started the same way… so, to continue a kind of slow-motion threaded conversation, I’d like to react here to Stacey Cornelius’ post on the Studio Source, which was itself a reaction to Clint Watson’s post on Fine Art Views, which was itself a reaction to some comments made by Seth Godin during promotion for his latest book, Linchpin:
“Artist doesn’t mean painter or cartoonist or playwright. Artist means someone willing to stand up, stand out and make change.”
“What do we call a customer service rep or an insurance adjuster or landscape architect that changes the game, that elevates each interaction and that takes enormous emotional and professional risk with their work? I think they need a name, so I stole one. I call them artists.”
“A great waitress or conductor or politician can make art. So can David, who cleans the tables at Dean and Deluca. Art isn’t the job, it’s the attitude you bring to the job and work you do when you’re there.”
I haven’t read Linchpin yet, so I am in no way directly reacting to it; I just had some thoughts on the subject and thought I’d throw myself into the fray… For better or worse, here goes:
A problem of definition
I’ve been in a few interesting ‘what is art’ discussions over the years, though not for a long while. It’s a thorny question that never seems to go away, and somehow it seems intensely important to most artists at some point or another over the course of their development. I’ve also noticed that most artists who get a lot of art done seem to have either made some sort of peace with it, or left it behind as unsolved, unsolveable, or uninteresting.
In my own struggle with the Question that Never Goes Away, I became convinced that the main reason people want to draw these lines in the sand is to protect their turf and make themselves seem and/or feel more important. We use whatever definition lets us dismiss or feel superior to people who are doing things differently, because sadly it seems to be human nature to feel threatened by that.
Eventually, I found the whole discussion unconvincing, so I settled for a kind of cop-out non-definition: art is anything anyone says is art, anything someone does with the intention of creating art.
It’s not very satisfying, to be sure, but what else can you really stand behind?
Should the term be reserved for the work of ‘professional’ artists? I hope not, because amazing things have been done by amateurs for, well, longer than there have been professional artists. Is art required to be political? Or required to be non-political? I’ve met excellent artists who hold both positions. Do you have to be able to put it on your wall? I hope not, I’m a musician. Does art require an audience to be art? Someone forgot to tell Emily Dickinson.
The Artful Dodger
Now, I understand the lukewarm reception to Seth’s appropriation, but in fact it’s hardly anything new – remember ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance‘? How many times have we heard ‘the art of…’ applied to traditionally non-artistic endeavours? The phrase conveys the sense of a different or more mindful approach, some sort of ‘finesse’, an ‘artfulness’ brought to an activity normally thought of as dry or technical.
OK, what’s ‘artfulness’ then? Aren’t we just deferring the question? Hmmm. A heightened aesthetic sense? Poetry in motion? Deliberate or self-conscious grace? Wait a minute, now we’re back at the ‘art is whatever is intended as art’ argument. But how can you have an intention if you can’t define what it is? Or if there are as many definitions as there are artists?
I don’t have a better answer for you. I do find the idea of bussing tables artistically a bit of a stretch, but perhaps that’s just my prejudice, my line in the sand. I’ve certainly been served by highly theatrical waiters and waitresses before (actually, I used to work at a circus/cabaret/dinner show where this concept was taken to hilarious extremes).
You say tomato…
In the end, what does it matter to us what other people think art is or isn’t? I play improvised piano concerts. To my mind I am making art, but someone else might come along and say no, art is something you need to work at, slave over, take apart and put together 10 different ways, that process is where art comes from, you’re just ‘playing’ (I happen to feel that play is central to creativity and art, but your mileage may vary).
My proposition, then, is this: just go and do what you do, with whatever intention you want to bring to it, and call it what you want to. Try to do it a bit better every time you do it. That’s what I’m going to do anyway, and if someone asks me if it’s art, I’m going to tell them ‘actually, no, it’s spinach’. At least that’ll confuse them, and maybe buy me some time.
Well? What do you think? Can art be defined? Should we even try?
