Artless

It should be rather safe to assume that many an hour of pondering must have been spent over time by all sorts of people on the question of whether art can be clearly defined: if there are unambiguous criteria by which a straight line can be drawn between what’s art and what’s not. And quite interesting a question it surely is. So it won’t do any harm if yours truly puts in some humble thoughts as well.

The whole thing is tricky, no doubt, but quite likely not as antique and hoary as one might, at first sight, think – for the conundrum at hand cannot have come up until its very subject, the idea of art, has come into existence; art in the sense that we usually apply to the word today, I should add.

I’ve not looked it up but right off the top of my head I’d presume that this idea of art cannot be older than two hundred or three hundred years because for the greatest part of human history the activitiy that we consider artistic was not a thing in its own right: a cave painting was not just a painting for the audience’s edification or self-sufficient art pour l’art but it had a purpose; as had the sculptures in Greek and Roman temples, the adornments in Egyptian tombs, or the totem poles of the Tlingit.

The chums of N’gorkh the Cave Painter most probably didn’t assemble in front of his latest work marvelling and nudging each other saying: »That N’gorkh fellow, he’s really gifted – just look at the sophisticated application of complementary colours and the masterly use of whitespace.« – And presumably the temples of Thebes or Angkor Wat weren’t frequented by folks who were driven by interest in the intricacies of sculptural workmanship instead of by religious zeal.

Painters, carvers, gilders, musicians, builders, and, later on, writers were people practising a craft. What they made was only valuable in as much as it fulfilled a purpose: being decorative, being representative, pleasing the gods, carrying information, or helping entertain a crowd. The notion of products of art as things carrying an intrinsic value and of artists as people performing a quasi-sacred trade must be a development of rather late.

But be it as it may – answering the question of what exactly makes a piece of art art will surely puzzle most people if you urge them to spend a second thought on it.

Just the other day, we struck upon this subject during our lunch break back at work. I’d seen a TV show the evening before where people can put up antiques to auction, and I casually mentioned that I was still struggling to come to terms with the exorbitant price that had been paid for a little watercolour painting by the German expressionist Christian Rohlfs and the reverent fuss that had been made about it – for it had been only a rather crude affair of sad brownish brush strokes, certainly not a good painting … And in stepped my colleague A. (himself a musician) with vehemence and exclaimed that you cannot possibly attach labels like »good« or »bad« to art, and asking if I would like to ban bad art or cap the prices payable for unworthy paintings just because I did not like them. Well, there he’d fetched me quite a blow, for he had a valid point and in the very moment it occurred to me that the whole thing was not as obvious as I’d assumed a minute before. – We’d arrived at the very question introduced at the beginning of this article. Why is something art? And something else isn’t? And, contingent on this quest for a definition: can you judge pieces of art? Can you rate them?

Unfortunately, a lunch break doesn’t provide the time for a leisurely philosophical debate and so we had to abandon our dispute. But I couldn’t get the thing out of my head and so kept pondering about it the next days.

There’s no denying that my colleague was right: you can’t grade a painting or a sculpture or a song as »bad« without any objective criteria by which to underpin the assessment. Is it the time spent on a painting and the technical skill? Then, how do you define technical skill? It won’t do to state that working a canvas with a brush and oil paint is artisanship and, say, preparing a linoleum print is not. Is it the complexity of the subject and the attention to detail that makes great art? Hmm, this would exclude a bunch of modern paintings and books and buildings that I’d include in my list of masterworks without hesitating. Just look at the screen print »Through the Smokehole« that I’ve adopted as a cultural sponsor: I’m quite sure that many of my readers won’t share my fascination but say: »Why, this is only some geometrical shapes, one cannot discern anything. This isn’t art!« – And take my own blog, for that matter. Not that I was keen on being deemed artistic, but certainly there are as many folks who like my drawings and short stories as those who find them trivial or stupid.

Maybe, art comes into existence when a person’s thoughts merge into a painting or a song or a sculpture? But what kind of criterion would that be to base a definition of art and an assessment of quality on? Any quack can claim that their works express deep emotions and revelations. Or that they want to provoke and help overcome stale traditions or just make the audience think. Well, good luck arguing against that. And besides: what about portraits and still lifes, just as an example? No deeper thoughts spent on them, right? Can’t they ever be art and even great art?

Is it solemnity that makes art? Nah, come on.

So what is it? What makes art? Do we have to content ourselves with the answer that art is what’s in museums and books and what antique dealers and collectors are willing to spend large sums on? This would feel a bit like sometimes in my childhood when I’d thoroughly tired out my parents with my incessant questions on anything and everything and they finally had recourse to the terse reply: »Das ist nun mal so.« (That's just the way it is.)

Museum directors, dealers and collectors surely do have their respective criteria for their assessments. Market value it is for the latter two. Good. What makes the market value? Demand. But what again causes demand? And in the case of museum directors? They take into account historical and cultural significance, right? Hmm. What makes a piece of art significant? Significant for whom and of what? And why is it that we tend to value anything that comes from one artist as soon as they’d been elevated to the ranks of the select? Take the watercolour painting by Rohlfs I’ve mentioned above – imagine that the artist himself didn’t like it, that for him it was just a casual scribble or an outright failure? Can we overrule the artist and decree: »Thou hast been misguided in thy verdict – ’tis art forsooth«?

I remember a little episode from my youth. Our art teacher had registered our school class for a competition organised by a shop for home electronics: everyone of us was to paint the textile cover of a loudspeaker (a note to younger readers: speakers used to be big back then, they used to be a piece of furniture …). Then the customers of the shop would vote for the best work. I started with a lofty idea and got going. But it didn’t pan out at all like I’d imagined, it was rubbish, and so, in my momentary frustration, I took the brush and tossed some angry paint strokes across the failed opus. Then I put it aside, forgot it and started something new. My second attempt was quite a different matter, much more down-to-earth: I painted a brick wall onto the canvas and applied to the wall some faux graffiti. It was the time when I was just discovering the world of punk and so the result filled me with quite some satisfaction and pride.

The submission date came, our paintings went into the shop’s windows and we forgot about the competition. But, you may have guessed it, some weeks later, when the votes had been counted, it was no other than yours truly who was announced the winner. I’d be in the local newspaper and I’d haul home as my prize two rather expensive loudspeakers (that I’d never ever could have bought at the time). I was blissfully happy! – Until I wasn’t … It turned out that my art teacher had, without me knowing it, taken my failed first work and submitted it to the competition, too. And it was this piece of rubbish (in my eyes) that I’d given the coup de grâce with the furious criss-cross brush strokes – it was this work that had won the most votes. I vividly remember the mortification and indignitation that mixed with my happiness. How could my teacher possibly have … – and how in the world could people prefer this pathetic ruin of a painting to my fantastic graffiti wall?! Well, I got over it and many years later I was able to see the whole affair in another light.

Why I’m telling you this anecdote? Because it’s just about the subject of this article. Obviously, the people who voted my first painting the winner of the competition had another notion of art (and good art) than I had myself. And, probably – just a hunch – they saw in the picture something very different from what it actually was and how it came to be. Is that good, is it bad? Does it matter?

When the unconscious brush strokes of a moment of fury can produce art (or at least a thing that some people see as art): could not a drunken madman also create art, or a monkey? And cannot, thus, the pictures and melodies generated by Artificial Intelligence be pieces of art by the same logic? – I think that here we have got hold of the coattails of an answer to the big question of what art is. Art is nothing real. Nothing definite. It’s a figment, a mixture of tradition, social mechanisms and economic interests and a lot of taste and personal preferences.

Would that be bad? Not at all. I rather think that this answer can open us a door to a much more relaxed stance on art. What if we try and drop the conventions about art, the social nick-nack, the quasi-religious reverence and timidity, and mere financial speculation? What if we try and ignore by whom a painting or a song has been made? – This would leave us with our own, strictly personal criteria that are totally valid. Valid for ourselves and only for ourselves.

Sounds like a rather artless approach towards art? Indeed!