Art or Not?

Take the test before reading this, and then explain to me why it's any government's business to be subsidizing it all.

Comments

[Nathan Peters]

If governments start subsidizing starving artists I'm going to become a starving artist.

[Frank McGahon]

Not that I think the government should subsidise art but this test is a bit of a cheat. I managed to get most correct anyway (the Cy Twombly was clearly identifiable) but note the small graphic, a higher resolution image would have given the game away. A fairer test would be more narrow focusing on artists like Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and maybe Jeff Koons, artists for whom it might not be so easy to recognise the fakes.

[Abiola Lapite]

A cheat? How would you tell Duchamp's "Fountain" from an ordinary men's urinal?

[Scott Wickstein]

I need to borrow a 4 year old so I can pass it off as my own work...

[Factory]

The problem here is that most ppl don't understand modern art and therefore have to rely on picking what looks 'arty', rather than what is good or bad, since that is the only basis they have.
Liken it to music, most ppl would not be able to distinguish an Aphex Twin track and a random crappy IDM track, that doesn't mean that Aphex Twin is not worthy of being supported by the government.

Whether one should fund artists is really just a question of whether the government should fund recreational activities.

[William]

Why would something produced by a four or ten year necessarily not have to be considered art? Human beings have been expressing themselves in many different cultural forms throughout ages. Any individual expression by a human being is a cultural expression of some underlying thought or feeling.
Specific intent or awareness to produce is not a relevant criterium. Even though a four year old may not have a specific idea in mind when it clutters paint onto a canvas, the colours it specifically chooses to do so, are still an expression of some unconscious choice or introspective deliberation. Art does not necessarily have to be made with a specific intent or message to be qualified as art: look at Jackson Pollock or the ecriture automatique by the surrealist writers.

I find the test therefore somewhat ludicrous because it starts from the idea that commonly perceived "modern art" is necessarily supposed to distinguishable from what any layman would be able to produce.

What is art or what is not art is often just a matter of individual appreciation, or what "common sense" considers high or low art.

[eoin]

'What is art or what is not art is often just a matter of individual appreciation, or what "common sense" considers high or low art.'

Ah the quotes around "common sense" are clear indications of a Frankfurt school wannabe.

If it is all "art" - to the extent that we cant tell a four year olds efforts from a modern artist - then

1) Why is some of this art favoured with subsidy and some not? If we can all create art, why are some people subsidised to do so? Is it political? Whom they know? The topic of this post is about subsidization. If everyone can produce art then everyone, or no-one, should be subsidized to do so.
2) Why is some of this art - undistinguishable from a 4 years old's scribbles - worth a lot more than a four year old's scribbles if both are equal? The market is faddish, of course, but if it is all art then it should be all equally worthless.
3) Why does this "individual appreciation" only seem to apply to the visual arts, and not the written arts. Is my comment better than shakespeare's ouvre? If not why not? how about a four year old's scribble. How about this poem.

William is a lad
whose theory is sad

Better than shakespeare's sonnets? Should it be thought in schools? If not, why not?

Real art, is of course, the best of it's kind and is intergenerational, and even inter-cultural - notice the number of Japanese and Chinese ( increaingly) who stand in rapture before the pieta in Rome. A very roman catholic symbol.

Burke called it the idea of the sublime - he meant that real art made you doubt that a human could have done it, it has "transcendent greatness".

[Abiola Lapite]

"I find the test therefore somewhat ludicrous because it starts from the idea that commonly perceived "modern art" is necessarily supposed to distinguishable from what any layman would be able to produce."

Should we therefore subsidize everyone's daubs on paper? Because that is what is really at issue here, not whether 4 year olds can produce what some individual or other considers "art."

[J.Cassian]

I remember a TV programme where the rock group the KLF burned one million pounds of their own money on a Scottish island, put the ashes in a suitcase and tried to sell it as conceptual art*. Most of the galleries they took it to weren't having it. The reason? They hadn't been to art school and so didn't have the necessary pieces of paper to prove they were "genuine artists". There's a massive irony here. Modern art began with the impressionists attacking academic art; now once again it's the academy which decides what is valid art or not, while the artists they favour still feel free to wrap themselves with all the trappings of the "anti-establishment". It's the same with post-war serialism in Classical music: the composers present themselves as embattled radicals challenging the status quo, yet few musicians in history can have enjoyed the degree of state approval and public largess showered on Pierre Boulez, for instance.

(*I think they eventually got a couple of hundred quid for their "piece". By the looks on their faces at the end of the programme when they realised what they'd done and checked their bank balances, I think they had one or two regrets, to put it mildly.)

[Andrew]

"Should we therefore subsidize everyone's daubs on paper?"

In a way, we do subsidize 4 year olds' daubs on paper, in that many 4 year olds go to kindergarten at public schools and get art classes (I did, anyway). But of course the scale of the subsidy is very different!

[Chuckles]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/05/23/BL2005052300417.html

[...The work, which the Post described as "a two-foot white cube with a barely visible black speck set right in the middle of the top surface," failed to attract a minimum bid of $45,000 at an auction held at Christie's in early May. The black speck, I should add, was not paint or charcoal or chalk, or some other material commonly associated with art. The auction catalogue provides a helpful description: ".5mm of the artist's feces...]

Subsidized crapping? Now, there's art for you!

[J.Cassian]

Hey, that's not even original, Chuckles. Piero Manzoni canned it first:

http://home.sprynet.com/~mindweb/can.htm

[dsquared]

I got nearly a perfect score (I suspect that if I'd finished my morning coffee I would have spotted that the screenprint didn't really look anything like a knockoff Warhol).

The reason that the government should, in principle, be in the business of supporting art, is that today's ludicrous, pretentious wank is tomorrow's adverts and graphic design. There's a massive amount of revolving doors between the two cultures, and not a little direct ripping off.

Otoh, this government support only really needs to be at the level of having art colleges and grants to attend them; the whole Britart movement from Tracey Emin on down was an entirely commercial affair, supported by a few very rich (and very astute; I'd love to have Charles Saatchi's eye for quality) collectors.

[Jason Malloy]

John Stossel you intellectual beast! So insightful, so breathtakingly original. Once again the pretentious "elites" have been exposed for the shams that they are. Dare I say it, but Stossel has now done for art what Alan Sokal has done for the humanities.

Seriously though, the problem lies with John Stossel, Fred Reed-style anti-intellectualism, and the test itself, not with "modern art" (put in quotations because cultural reactionaries misuse the appellation as anything outside of the Renaissance, Thomas Kinkade or [bleh], "The One True Art", photorealism (see John Locke's series of emissions on Frontpage Mag). The test is actually a tautology - to take the test is to fail it, because of the exact premise that is built into it: That "true" art is defined only by the one-dimensional property of how it looks (and, of course, scoring more points by looking "hard to do"). So the test proves "modern art" is stupid only if you already accept their premise.

Taking one e.g. Picasso and comparing it with one similar picture from a second grader to make a point is totally ridiculous. Picasso was a genius not despite the fact that "mah eight yare ol' son cud do that", but because he was fertile, original, and vastly expanded the vocabulary of art and design. Artists are often important for what they are saying *about* art, for expanding and challenging the definition and the lexicon - for challenging the viewer. Art and artists are justified in an intellectual and aesthetic context, not in a vacuum, by their peers and those interested enough to initiate themselves.

I find it a little sad that Abiola, with all his Stravinsky and Bach over on the side there, and the death of the symphony, is content to let the free-market Britney Spears up the public taste pool. The government should subsidize art for one of the same reasons it subsidizes education, because it gives the polity a better chance at challenging and improving itself. The existence and popularity of John Stossel thinking is actually one of the greatest arguments *for* government intervention.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Seriously though, the problem lies with John Stossel, Fred Reed-style anti-intellectualism, and the test itself, not with "modern art" (put in quotations because cultural reactionaries misuse the appellation as anything outside of the Renaissance, Thomas Kinkade or [bleh], "The One True Art", photorealism (see John Locke's series of emissions on Frontpage Mag)."

This is all just a lot of name-calling: anyone can mount his soap-box and accuse others of being "cultural reactionaries" for not acknowledging his canned shit for the meisterwerk that it is. Where's the beef to your argument?

"The test is actually a tautology - to take the test is to fail it, because of the exact premise that is built into it"

Derrida and Lacan would be proud of this supreme effort at sophistry: we might as well discard the scientific method itself whenever it gives us answers that don't fit with our prejudices. The fact is that if even the so-called "experts" can't tell "real art" from store objects and children's dabblings most of the time, then there is *no* basis whatsoever for the public to be shouldering any of the cost of its production or exhibition.

"Taking one e.g. Picasso and comparing it with one similar picture from a second grader to make a point is totally ridiculous."

So say you, but that doesn't make it true. Is Picasso a son of God or something, that to hold him up to scrutiny is to commit blasphemy?

"Picasso was a genius not despite the fact that "mah eight yare ol' son cud do that", but because he was fertile, original, and vastly expanded the vocabulary of art and design."

"Fertile", "original" - what do these vague terms actually mean? Do you simply mean that he churned out a lot of stuff? Well then, so do a lot of 4-year olds!

"vastly expanded the vocabulary of art and design"

I.e., like Lacan and Derrida after him, he knew how to come up with fancy-schmancy pseudo-intellectual terminology to intimidate the culturally insecure.

"Art and artists are justified in an intellectual and aesthetic context, not in a vacuum, by their peers and those interested enough to initiate themselves."

This is the *exact* same line parroted by the structuralists, post-structuralists and other bullshitters. The question, again, is why those of us who don't feel an overpowering desire for the approval of this clique must be burdened with any of the cost of maintaining it; if you want to fund those interested in "initiating themselves" into the profundities of Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and company out of *your own* wallet, fine by me, but don't try to force me to do the same.

"I find it a little sad that Abiola, with all his Stravinsky and Bach over on the side there, and the death of the symphony, is content to let the free-market Britney Spears up the public taste pool."

If Bach and Stravinsky can't survive without subsidies, so be it: I'm not such an egotist that I think my own cultural preferences so important that other people's money must be seized to fund them.

"The government should subsidize art for one of the same reasons it subsidizes education, because it gives the polity a better chance at challenging and improving itself."

One could wheel this same argument out in support of anything whatsoever: should the government therefore subsidize everything under the sun? This is a deeply unserious argument.

"The existence and popularity of John Stossel thinking is actually one of the greatest arguments *for* government intervention."

Is this an unconscious echo of the old refrain "I believe precisely because it is impossible"? That's what it sounds like to me.

[dsquared]

[I.e., like Lacan and Derrida after him, he knew how to come up with fancy-schmancy pseudo-intellectual terminology to intimidate the culturally insecure.]

Applied to the proposition "Picasso expanded the vocabulary of art and design", this is visibly wrong; everywhere you turn you can see knock-off Picasso themes in modern graphic art.

[if you want to fund those interested in "initiating themselves" into the profundities of Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and company out of *your own* wallet, fine by me, but don't try to force me to do the same.]

I don't know who Martin Creed is, but neither Hirst nor Emin has received any material support from taxation; they made their money by selling art, mainly to Charles Saatchi who does not force you to watch the adverts which underpin his fortune. You're not really bolstering the credibility of this criticism of the actual art by linking it to another argument about funding.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Applied to the proposition "Picasso expanded the vocabulary of art and design", this is visibly wrong; everywhere you turn you can see knock-off Picasso themes in modern graphic art."

Which is not necessarily a good thing: ubiquity isn't quality, otherwise there'd be no basis for Jason Malloy to slag off Britney Spears.

"I don't know who Martin Creed is"

You don't know Mr. "Lights going on and off", winner of the 2001 Turner Prize? You philistine!

"You're not really bolstering the credibility of this criticism of the actual art by linking it to another argument about funding."

1 - I picked those names because they're easily recognizable examples of just the sort of pretentious, self-indulgent nonsense that makes public subsidies for art impossible to justify, not because the particular artists in question have received subsidies. Replace them with Chris Ofili's dung sculptures, Robert Mapplethorpe's pictures of self-buggery or Andres Serrano's urine-play if you like.

2 - As a matter of fact, they *have* all been subsidized, thanks to government handouts to places like the Tate which exhibit their work. To give one example, Creed's "Lights going on and off" was exhibited at the Tate in 2000.

[Abiola Lapite]

Oh, and finally:

3 - As a libertarian, I don't really have a problem with cliques of pretentious people throwing vast amounts of money and adulation at "artistic" poseurs who know a good scam when they see one. In fact, as ridiculous enthusiasms go, I think worship of trendy "artistic" nonsense is a lot less harmful than, say, pretty much any religion outside of Zen Buddhism. My *entire* problem with the whole thing stems from the fact that the power of government is used to coerce the rest of us into supporting the enthusiasms of a small, privileged clique which then has the audacity to sneer at the uncultured swine who fail to show the proper gratitude for the pearls of artistic brilliance cast before them.

[dsquared]

[the uncultured swine who fail to show the proper gratitude for the pearls of artistic brilliance cast before them]

actually the Britartists have been incredibly popular; exhibitions of Saatchi's collections are among the most reliable money-spinners in the gallery world and are used by eg the Royal Academy to cross-subsidise less popular exhibitions of more conventional artists. Reproductions of Hirst dot paintings and Tracey Emin's stylised nudes jump off the shelves and Mapplethorpe prints were a staple of the old Athena chain. In other words, I think you're overestimating the extent to which the "uncultured swine", in the sense of the general run of the gallery-going public, share your taste and John Stossel's. So maybe it should be "the audacity to sneer at a smallish clique of old farts who would rather see the subsidies going to the sort of art that was popular when /they/ were twenty-two".

Chris Offili has never made a "dung sculpture" as far as I know, by the way. I'm not ruling it out of hand, but I suspect that you're thinking of the controversial (in the USA; in the UK nobody noticed it as we were all horrified by the Myra Hindley portrait) work in the "Sensations" exhibition. This was a picture with some bits of painted elephant dung glued to it, not a sculpture. Offili is another great example of an artist who hasn't ever received a state subsidy; he made his money by selling his paintings to Charles Saatchi.

In general, you'll find it hard to come up with any name of an artist who has made a lot of money at the public expense; the state funded institutions just don't provide living grants to artists and their acquisition policies follow the market for modern art, they don't drive it. It is almost impossible to get shown in a major London publicly-funded gallery unless you've first been taken on by a private gallery and art dealership.

And finally (arts bore that I am; apologies for length), I don't think that the "state subsidy" argument applied to the Tate really makes it. The Tate didn't receive any state subsidy until 2000, when the Blair government decided to subsidise ticket prices so that entry to the main collections would be free. By this time, Emin and Hirst were already stars. If you're going to make the case against state subsidy of controversial art, you'll do much better by taking examples from Europe or the USA, because the UK doesn't actually have much of it (indeed, you'd probably do better by pointing out that following the libertarian prescription and getting the government out has done wonders for British art!)

[Jason Malloy]

I said: "The test is actually a tautology - to take the test is to fail it, because of the exact premise that is built into it"

You responded: "Derrida and Lacan would be proud of this supreme effort at sophistry: we might as well discard the scientific method itself whenever it gives us answers that don't fit with our prejudices."

Laughably ignorant bullshit. Ok Abiola, your definition of art - realistic looking pictures that are technically hard to imitate - is the "scientific" one. Any definition of art that deviates from the Stossel/Abiola/Fred Reed definition is pseudoscientific, disingenuous and illogical. Art with a narrative or context within a larger body of art is not real art, because Abiola's definition is mandatory and scientific. Art is completely visual and not conceptual because Abiola and John Stossal say so. Not literature though, that has another clear and compartmentalized mandatory "scientific" definition, courtesy of the art pope.

""Fertile", "original" - what do these vague terms actually mean? Do you simply mean that he churned out a lot of stuff? Well then, so do a lot of 4-year olds!"

How post-modern of me to use meaningless words like "fertile" and "original". The word 'original' is straightforward enough - creating things which were not previously there. Music styles like jazz, heavy metal and techno are all original in the sense that they have coherent development points, and nothing like them existed, say 200 years ago. They were created by creative people - artists. Picasso invented artistic vocabularies and ideas that didn't exist before him to an extent that far surpasses the average artist. In other words he was also 'fertile'. Both of these things are facts by the way, just as the statement that there was nothing like Metallica 300 years ago is a fact, or that African-Americans were largely responsible for developing rock and roll is a fact. Artistic influence among peers and impact on your field is also not subjective, it can be suitably measured. Picasso's foundational role in modern graphic design is a fact.

Taking one scribbly picture of his and comparing with a six year old's doodle obscures these important facts, which is why you and Stossal are the sophists, not me.

I said: "vastly expanded the vocabulary of art and design"

You responded: "I.e., like Lacan and Derrida after him, he knew how to come up with fancy-schmancy pseudo-intellectual terminology to intimidate the culturally insecure."

No, actually I was referring to the conceptual and artistic forms and ideas he created and successfully transmitted, not a literal "vocabulary", as in new words (e.g. Techno has its own original musical "vocabulary" of beats and progressions, etc).

"The question, again, is why those of us who don't feel an overpowering desire for the approval of this clique must be burdened with any of the cost of maintaining it; if you want to fund those interested in "initiating themselves" into the profundities of Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and company out of *your own* wallet, fine by me, but don't try to force me to do the same."

*Yawn*. You forgot to add the "at the point of a gun" line. Yep, I'll vote for art, museum, symphony, gallery, etc. funding, for the same reason I vote for a public school that teaches Shakespeare and Mark Twain, because I consider it part of the cultural/educational sphere of society, which I believe needs federal support and maintenance. Certain art and ideas just don't do well in the free-market precisely because they are intellectual, specialized and challenging. I believe these ideas to be important for conceptual, qualitative, social and historical reasons. I don't want to live in a culture that makes no distinctions, and shows no favortisms between No Doubt and Mozart, so that is how I vote. You vote for the society you want.

If we both get our way in separate places, I imagine you visiting mine curiously often.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Laughably ignorant bullshit. Ok Abiola, your definition of art - realistic looking pictures that are technically hard to imitate - is the "scientific" one."

Learn to read before spouting off in future. Where have I given a definition of art? Go ahead, point it out!

" Art is completely visual and not conceptual because Abiola and John Stossal say so."

Again, where have I said what art "is"? When you stop having arguments with the straw men you're hallucinating in your head, I'll pay attention to what you have to say. Until then, you're just another hot-air spouting poseur looking to flaunt his avant-garde bonafides.

[Abiola Lapite]

As for the following:

"Music styles like jazz, heavy metal and techno are all original in the sense that they have coherent development points, and nothing like them existed, say 200 years ago."

You could hardly have alighted on worse examples for the case you're trying (and failing) to make. Who subsidized Duke Ellington, Led Zeppelin and Aphex Twins? Yet somehow they managed to exist and thrive without the government's assistance.

"I don't want to live in a culture that makes no distinctions, and shows no favortisms between No Doubt and Mozart, so that is how I vote."

Just plain daft. The only way a culture can make distinctions is through the government purse? And just who are *you* of all people to be slagging "No Doubt" anyway? You get all pissy when John Stossel says Michelangelo is a real artist while Serrano isn't, but then turn around and say No Doubt and Britney Spears are somehow of lesser value than the stuff you like? Who died and made you Petronius Arbiter while I wasn't looking?

[J.Cassian]

There's also the question, implicit in what Abiola says, whether public subsidies to contemporary arts actually distort the development of those arts for the worse. Taking the area of classical music again, post-war serialist composers have had vast sums of state money flung at them to promote their music, yet the general public have so far refused to be "educated" into admiring them. In the 1960s William Glock used his role as head of the public-funded BBC Radio 3 to push a few favoured avant-garde composers and exclude any contemporaries he regarded as "cultural reactionaries" from air play. The net result has merely been to make the general public deeply suspicious of most new Classical music. Anyhow, I don't want to go banging on about Boulez in particular, but this funny/sad story of the millions of francs the French government donated to his IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/ Musique) project is well worth reading, showing how subsidy intended to further the development of new computing technology ended up actively hindering innovation:

http://yoz.com/wired/2.06/iv/machines.html

[Jason Malloy]

"Learn to read before spouting off in future. Where have I given a definition of art? Go ahead, point it out! . . . Until then, you're just another hot-air spouting poseur looking to flaunt his avant-garde bonafides."

Riiiight. I'm a poseur, unlike Lapite over here who defers to the aesthetic wisdom of John Stossal. There is no "until then", if you agree that artistic value includes concept and context then you don't agree with the art test, which you linked to approvingly. You can't have it both ways.

I said: "Music styles like jazz, heavy metal and techno are all original in the sense that they have coherent development points, and nothing like them existed, say 200 years ago."

You responded: "You could hardly have alighted on worse examples for the case you're trying (and failing) to make. Who subsidized Duke Ellington, Led Zeppelin and Aphex Twins? Yet somehow they managed to exist and thrive without the government's assistance."

Ok, you just annoyingly mixed two different arguments. The quote was to demonstrate that originality corresponds to something real and roughly measurable and is an important criteria in judging artistic merit. The argument over state subsidy is another issue entirely. I'm not "failing" to make that argument either, I would rather live in a society that attempts to assess, value, and promote art and artistic value and subsidizes public works (like Christo's gates), galleries, art scholarships, museums and symphonies than in one that doesn't. That is a fact. Take it or leave it.

Same for science.

[dsquared]

[post-war serialist composers have had vast sums of state money flung at them to promote their music]

No they haven't.