Typically, I believe that the purpose of art is to communicate something to the viewer. Thus, if a piece of art failes to communicate something to me, than I deem it a failure. Someone else may have a sublime experience with it, but that doesn’t make it any less of a failure to me.
Soup, would you deem a novel written in Icelandic a failure? If not, what’s the difference? Assuming you’d agree that a novel is art, I’m not sure I see a difference at all.
Let’s take Weird Al Yankovich’s song “I Want a New Duck,” played today for an audience of
a) 50 Americans born in 1975
b) 50 Americans born in 1995
c) 50 Aborigines born in 1975
I think you can pretty clearly figure out who would and wouldn’t “get” the piece of art, and on which levels. Group A would probably get it, and understand that it’s a parody, and might appreciate some of the lyrical similarities to the original work. Group B might have some kids whose parents listen to Huey Lewis, and a small percentage of them might “get it” as intended; many of them might appreciate it as an original work of art (the idea of wanting a new duck is probably pretty humorous to nine-year-olds). Group C might or might not enjoy the tune, would almost certainly not understand the lyrics, and would not have a hope of understanding that it was a parody.
For Group A, this piece of art is a total success. For Group B, this piece of art is successful because even though they don’t appreciate it at its highest level, it still communicates to them on some level. For Group C, this piece of art has a chance of failure – it is possible that, for an aborigine who doesn’t like the tune, this work will have no appeal whatsoever.
My point is that at some point, a certain basic amount of context is required before a person in the audience is able to understand the communication. Any artist who willfully ignores this fact and chooses to communicate only on a level where an exclusive few can understand him has–in my view–insulted the audience by insisting that they are unworthy of understanding his work.
Conversely, an artist who knows the message he wants to communicate and uses redundant layers of context is infinitely more likely to succeed at communicating, and thereby creating good art.
Failures:
- stepping up to an open mike night in Baltimore and reading a poem in Russian with no translation
- a sculpture whose silhouette is a stylized representation of a birthmark on the artist’s foot
- a pair of lightbulbs plugged into a black marble pedestal; one on, one off.
Successes:
- Finding Nemo (subtitled if necessary)
- Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
- A translation of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi
By jove, I even think I know who Wumpus is talking about, even if he doesn’t. The Icelandic author Halldor Laxness was also fluent in French, but wrote in Icelandic for “patriotic” reasons. Which essentially doomed him to being well-known only in Scandinavian countries. (Bully for him, though, that the Nobel Prize is awarded by Scandinavians.)
It’s possible that the reason I chose Icelandic as an example is because is one of my 3 or 4 favorite authors.
oips. must perview.
LAXNESS is one of my 3 0r 4 favorite authors.
Again, this is an entirely subjective judgment. I can easily imagine a context in which your first three examples would be successful pieces. One of my favorite artists, in fact, is Vija Celmins, who does minutely detailed drawings of things like the surface of the ocean or the surface of a gravel parking lot or the night sky. In the postmodern idiom, these pieces are extremely successful.
I find her stuff far more valuable than Finding Nemo. And I, subjectively, find Van Gogh’s sunflowers historically important but aesthetically dull; ditto much of O. Henry.
This is something of a strawman. In order for there to be a “universal language” it is not necessary that it affect “every single human individual in exactly the same way.”
There is a perfectly good case to be made that there are such things as human universals and that good art speaks to them. For example, take a look at this. You might think it crude, nonetheless, we “get” its inherent absurdity even though it comes from a culture that is completely removed from our own.
Of course there are varying degrees of universality in different works of art. Pointing to a few NEARLY universal works doesn’t really do much to alter the fact that one person’s perception of art is going to be different from the next person. They might have a piece or two in common that they interpret in exactly the same way. But the more people you put in that pool, the fewer pieces will qualify as universal. Ultimately, by the time you put EVERYBODY in the pool, you’ve long ago run out of universals.
I don’t see that as absurd. Is that supposed to be absurd?
Then from Jurph
Do you think ‘art’ should communicate to the audience the same way a street sign should? That it’s message should be so basic like ‘STOP’?
That, to me, sounds like boring art. I don’t want everything explained out to me in art. In instructions on how to assemble my new bookcase from IKEA, clairty is a must, but art does not require the artist to ‘play to the level of the audience’. Now yes that may sound like the audience that does not get it is unworthy and looked down upon. In reality the only people that get looked down upon and, in my opinion rightfully so, are the people who willfully refuse to attempt understanding and then blame the artist.
It’s rather like that old joke about a guy who goes to see a shrink and the doc gives him the ink blot test. In the first picture he seestwo people having sex. The second picture he sees two people and a dog having sex. In the third picutre he sees a large orgy. The doctor says, ‘You are obsessed with sex’ and the patient says ‘ME! You’re the one with all the dirty pictures!’
This usually shows the idea of transference. Where the patient imagins that other people have the problem he does. I don’t think the art community looks down on the general public. I think some people are transferring their disdain for artists to the art world.
ON a side note as for your examples
I watch non-english language frequently. I prefer subtitles to dubbed versions. You know why? Because the art of how their voice sounds is precious. You get understanding just listening to the tone of the voice. If a person read a poem in Russian and did a good job of it I would bet that most of the audience would be able to put forth a good guess as to what the poem is about.
I don’t think I could disagree more. Some of my most profound emotional experiences in viewing art came from viewing pieces of abstract art. That abstract art doesn’t have any emotional resonance with you does not mean that it is incapable of doing so for anyone. And further, no work of art, no matter how popular, is going to be universally acclaimed. Even Shakespeare has his detractors.
If you think that lissener is arguing that you can’t judge art you don’t like harshly, you’ve not been paying attention to any of his other threads. You’re making the most common mistake of all in debates like this: you’re assuming the word “art” contains a value judgement. It does not. Both of the pictures you link to later in this post are art. One is bad art, one is… well, less bad art. Both could be praised or criticized, depending on the critics reaction to each, but not liking one does not make it cease being art.
As you say, the deficencies of appreciation do lie between the exhibit and the floor. However, this must not be taken as being a deficency in the audience members who don’t appreciate the art. Nor is it meant to be taken as a ban on providing a negative opinion of the art. Dissenting viewpoints are essential to the understanding of any work of art, provided they’re presented in a useful manner. “It’s not art, it’s just crap,” is not a useful opinion. Neither is, “It’s great, you just don’t understand it.” Because neither of these provides any insight into why that person had that reaction, which is, IMO, the entire point behind any artistic discussion. They are opinions on what other people should feel when they look at a work of art, and no one is in any position to dictate that to anyone else.
If art communicates what “mere” words cannot, doesn’t that necessarily imply that novels cannot be a form of art? Art can be just as much about ideas as it can be about emotion. On a certain level, the two are inseperable.
I would say that a mother holding her child is going to communicate a different message to someone who was brought up immersed in Korean culture than it would to someone brought up in, say, a devoutly Catholic Italian culture. Further, such an image could leave radically different impressions on individuals within the same culture. If the image you described were shown to a woman who had just lost her child, a person who was sexually abused by their parents, and a person who grew up in an orphanage, each would likely have radically different reactions to it. There are no universal concepts in art, because no one work of art is going to produce a universal response in all people who view it.
This is a perfect example of why your definition of art is too subjective to be useful. I’m assuming that the first picture, “Anna,” speaks to you in some way. But it says almost nothing to me. It’s a flower. Yay. Haven’t seen that a hundred thousand times before. Besides which, a painting of a flower is almost always going to pale beside the actual flower itself. A real flower is just as pretty, or even prettier, and also has a texture and odor that can’t be replicated on canvas. “Nasosov” is marginally more interesting, at least in part because it portrays something that doesn’t exsist in real life. It has a much more powerful emotional impact, bringing up ideas about the dehumanization of industry, death, decay, and an impotent anger at things that cannot be changed. It also looks like something H.R. Gieger would have painted when he was five. The artist is going over territory that has already been explored and mapped by other far more capable artists, which greatly detracts from his impact. I would say neither of these are particularly good pieces of art, although I would favor the second work over the first.
Now, which one of us is right? Under your definition, one of these pictures is art and one isn’t, depending on which of us views it. Which of us is right? We could take a poll, to see which view has the most popular support, but all that does is reduce art to a popularity contest, where whoever generates the most sales is the better artist. The end result would be the recongition of Britney Spears as one of the greatest musicians in the history of humankind.
The alternative is to recognize that art is completely subjective. There’s nothing wrong with a painting being accesible, but neither is there anything wrong with it be gnostic and insular. The worth of a work of art isn’t determined by the breadth of its audience, but the depth of the reaction in those who appreciate it, even if they make up only a tiny handful of people exposed to it. The worth of any work of art is defined by the personal reaction, not the universal.
I think we may be working with different definitions of “universal,” then.
I have no idea what that’s supposed to be. Can’t make heads or tails of it. Maybe if I saw it in three dimensions, instead of a photo…
Also, everything Zebra said in his post right above mine.
On further thought, I see where the confusion lies. You seem to agree that there exists a hierarchy in art, a hierarchy of complexity. Tasting wine requires a degree of refinement, knowledge and effort not necessary for tasting sugar. The experience can indeed be hierarchically placed… this goes against your earlier claim that there only exists a lateral plane to art. What hierarchy were you then rejecting? The “pre-determined hierarchy of people” which claims that some people cannot appreciate certain forms of art, by birth or education. I reject that hierarchy as well. In fact, I wonder if that is a popular opinion. I have only heard of elitists claim that the general audience cannot appreciate a particular work because they haven’t taken the effort, not because they were born that way. To summarize, I believe that there are degrees of complexity and sophistication within art, which you seem to agree with.
Now, here are two issues which frustrate me:
(1) Complexity doesn’t always enhance art: Deliberate complexity shows. Some self-indulgent art are needlessly and annoyingly layered. There is only so much of masturbation I can watch.
(2) Lack of structure: I am quite frustrated with the lack of structure and craft in modern art. While it is a blessing that an art exhibit can be created from crushed coffee cups, the degree to which this freedom has been mal-exploited grates me. There are a ton of ideas which all of us can snatch from the air but we need to realize that every single idea isn’t necessarily worth executing. Modern artists seem to easily fall for this because the craft doesn’t necessarily require tremendous effort.
Working in musical theater, which is either suffering the growing pains of an art form in transition or its death blows, I hear about the “elitist” vs. “accessible” argument a lot. To me, it seems the artist’s task and responsibility is to depict the human condition in general and evoke through the subject a universal sense of life beyond itself. That is the essence by which works of art truly move us. We are in the communication business–and if we can’t, won’t or don’t communicate, we’re not in business.
Two followups:
Fellini, in an interview in The Spectator, said, “I disagree with some of them (New Wave filmmakers) when they consider that film can be a sort of individualist medium of expression like literature. Being a writer myself, I was interested in motion pictures precisely because it was a POPULAR medium. To make an intereresting picture for a few people is relatively easy. To make a bad picture for a lot of people is very easy. The great thing, the great problem, and the most interesting and new approach in art, is to try to make great things for the greatest amount of people. That’s the solution Chaplin found and I would like to see a new Chaplin today. And not new, young directors who just want to be interesting for critics.
What is new in our business, what’s fascinating, is precisely this possibility you may have of distributing emotion to millions of people. I would not like to see the motion-picture medium be for the few who consider themselves “intellectuals.” the motion picture is a new form. Before the motion picture, the diffusion of art was limited to a relatively small amount of people. The great new thing was this: to make art for the great many. Not in the normal Hollywood sense of the word, but in the Chaplinesque sense. It seems to me the New Wave is working more for critics than for big masses.”
Or as Mark Twain wrote:
" I never tried to cultivate the cultivated classes. I was after bigger game---the masses."
Amen to both.That seems as exclusionary to me as the idea that all film should be directed towards the art-theater audience. Film as a medium is no more inherently “populist” than any other medium. Don’t forget, they used to (and far too many still do) say that comics were an inherently childish, superhero-centric medium. Bill Watterson, the writer/artist of “Maus” (sorry, I forget his name), and Neil Gaiman demonstrated the falsehood of that statement, and so is it with film. To say that “X2” or “Star Wars” is better filmmaking than “Requiem for a Dream” simply because it is more populist no different that sneering at “Maus” or “Sandman” just because “Superman” sells more copies.
Kudos to lissener, litost, and Miller for expressing my feelings on this subject better than I possibly could.
Ack, really mangled that one. The last sentence of that first paragraph should read:
To say that “X2” or “Star Wars” is better filmmaking than “Requiem for a Dream” simply because they are more populist is no different than sneering at “Maus” or “Sandman” just because “Superman” sells more copies.
I’ve always felt that the “responsibility” of an artist was to make something that was interesting or important to themselves. If other people like it too, then that’s just gravy.
Tarrsk: Art Spiegelman.
Tell that to someone who’s investing $500,000 in your musical, lol.
By the way, you misunderstand the Fellini quote. First off, he means film is “populist” because it is accessible to practically everyone everywhere—unlike, let’s say, a Brancusi sculpture in a particular museum. And he’s not saying a work of art is ipso facto better because it sells more. In fact, he says the opposite–that the challenge for filmmakers is to create something of quality that can potentially communicate to untold millions of people.
Upon further review of my comments, I concede that perhaps I should be a bit more clear.
For where I wrote “viewer,” put in its stead “audience.” A piece of art should communicate something to its audience. If I’m the audience, and it doesn’t communicate something to me, than I deem it a failure for having failed to do so.
A novel written in Islandic? I’m not the artist’s audience, as obviously, the artist intends the novel to be appreciated by someone who speaks the language. Likewise, Yankovic’s song’s audience, that is, who is meant to appreciate the art, is that segment of the population that understands the concept.
I don’t prejudice authors’ hard work in languages I don’t understand. I’m not the intended audience. Rather, the kind of people thar irk me, are those “artists” who make art for me as the intended audience and then complain that I don’t “get” it. No, I don’t have any examples right off the top of my head, but I’d guess that you could surmise what type of folk I’m talking about.