Y'know, I have a real love/hate thing when it comes to art.
Okay. Hate may be too strong of a word. How 'bout irritation? Frustration? Exasperation?
I enjoy art. I appreciate art. One of the things I love about our city is the large amounts of public art scattered all over the place, sometimes in unexpected places. I may not actually like an individual piece, but I like that it's there. I think art is a vital part of culture, and that it's a good thing for everyone, even the "non-artistic" to dabble in the sheer creativity of making art. Art can be fun, thoughtful, lively, morose, silly, deep, and a whole bunch of other things. Two people can look at the same piece of art and perceive it in totally different ways. Ten people can look at the same piece of art and perceive it in as many different ways. In many ways, art is very subjective.
What, however, makes art good? Sometimes the better question is, "is this art at all?" In a country that spends billions of federal dollars on art, on top of the money spent by provincial and municipal governments, I think that's a valid question. If someone creates a piece of art and can find someone to buy it, more power to them, but if the art in question is being pair for with our tax dollars, I think the definition needs to be a bit more limited. Finding out that some guy calling vials of his own semen "art" was given a grant to do it - essentially being paid taxpayers' money to wank off into containers - bothers more than a few people.
There's the rub that I have with the art community. It sometimes seems as if the less likely the general public would like it, the more likely it's being marketed as being "artistic" (as if art was something we plebeians are just too low to be able to get), the artists more "daring," and therefore they must be supported by grants. Lord knows, they wouldn't be able to make a living off their work any other way.
A couple of days ago, Youngest and I took in the local art gallery. Usually, we enjoy the many small (often free) galleries and displays around our city featuring local artists, but this is THE art gallery for our city. The first time we went to it, it was just before the building was mostly demolished and rebuilt (the city insisted part of the building be kept and "recycled," even though doing so was actually more expensive and wasteful... but hey, no one asks the demolitions and construction crews their opinion on the subject). They had an open free for all, where local artists were invited to send in their work for display, which was then made available to the public for viewing for free. Eldest had some of her early work in there, as did a friend of hers. It was pretty fantastic, actually. Some pieces did seem to be made by people who thought they had more skill or talent then they actually had, but the vast majority of art was really excellent. We live in a city full of talent.
The gallery is open again and has one free admissions day a month, so we went to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, when we got there, we discovered the free admission was only during the last 3 hours of their day. So we paid, and I found that the admission rate was quite a bit higher than before they rebuilt. Oh, well. The new building might look like a giant potato chip, but it's a very lovely potato chip. ;-) I think they got their money's worth.
Anyhow. Off we went. There were quite a number of galleries on several floors. One consisted of mostly oil paintings of landscapes, many in tacky, ornate frames. At least we're told some of them were landscapes. Some of them were... pretty abstract, to say the least. Without a sign telling me, I would never have thought that that's what they were.
Here's where things got rather amusing. As we wandered around, we'd come upon some paintings and be rather perplexed as to why it was there. They looked like paint-by-number pieces, or finger paintings done by children. Then we'd read the plaque and discover they were actually Group of Seven. I admit that oil is not my favorite medium when it comes to art, but I can still appreciate skill and talent when I see it. At least I thought I could. These didn't seem to display either, but they're considered high art and the epitome of Canadian art in particular. Exploring why that is would make for an interesting discussion. Another less than stellar example of art turned out to be an Emily Carr piece. Having lived on the West Coast for so long, I knew who she was, but I can't say I like her work all that much. Each to their own. This sort of thing is a matter of personal taste, but the pieces are still clearly art.
Then is was off to a different gallery. The next one we visited was an M. C. Escher display. Now that's art I really enjoy! Not only are the subjects fascinating to look at and the skill required to produce them amazing, they required a fantastic mind just to conceive of these pieces, then plan and execute those ideas to produce images that look like they should exist, but can't. I look at those and, not only am I impressed by the art itself, but I find a strong desire to get to know the mind behind it.
While we were in this gallery, however, we caught up with a guided tour. It was a very small group, and the facilitator was trying to engage them at least somewhat interactively. I don't remember the exact words she used as she spoke, but several times she's say something that had Youngest and I looking at each other in amazement. Not because she'd revealed some spectacular piece of information about any particular piece, but because of the "dumbed down" language and phrasing she used. In trying to get people to talk, she asked what should have been a simple question ("why do you think Escher used colour in this piece?") that got no response. Had we been in the group, we wouldn't have responded, either. I would have been too busy wondering if it was a trick question or something. Was there some sort of symbolism I was missing? Some deeper meaning that we hadn't grasped? Nope. The answer was, "so you could see it [the details] better."
Hmmm.
More wandering around. The new building itself is a work of art, with the potato chip shapes continued inside. Quite striking, really.
Along the way, there were a number of sculptural pieces and some... others. As we approached one piece, Youngest commented that the shapes hanging from the ceiling and knotted on the floor looked like intestines. Intestines made out of someones drapes. Which turned out to be pretty much exactly what they were, except it was upholstery fabric, not drapes. It was a huge piece, too. Another consisted of a long wooden pole with wooden handles hammered into it, like some sort of hedgehog. Two other displayed consisted of glass rods that looked like those bamboo garden stakes at the hardware store, in bundles and leaning against the wall.
A couple of displays were behind black out curtains. One was supposedly a recreation, of sorts, of the artist's bedroom, except it was an almost empty room with some sheets and pillows on the floor, and their weird two-headed creature covered in black flowers coming through a pair of blackout curtains that made up one of the walls. Off to the side was an opening that was supposed to be a closet with some long underwear hanging in it. The write up claimed the long underwear (hand made by the artist) could be viewed as any number of things, including sacred robes.
Uhm... no. There was nothing robe like about them. They looked like somebody's full-body undies.
There was one display behind a blackout curtain we skipped. A video presentation, a quick glance through the curtain at the screen had me dropping it and continuing on my way. I'm rather open with my kids about sexual themes, but some things I'm not about to drag my daughter through. The mom with a 5 or 6 yr old caught a bit of a view through the curtain as I looked, too, and she was quick to steer her daughter away, too. Funny thing is, I'm not even sure exactly what I saw, other than it involved the sex act. At least I hope that's what I saw.
One piece had us standing and staring for a while. We must have looked pretty confused or something, as one of the security staff came over and gave me a brochure describing the displays. The images being projected onto the wall that make me think of my old Spirograph game turned out to be imagery of the brains of the 2 artists who made it, taken while they were sitting still, thinking, but not speaking. I was actually more impressed when I thought it was some sort of interactive lights display. The idea of medical technology being used to record the brains to two guys just sitting there seems so... pretentious to me.
Actually, that's a word that comes up an awful lot when I think of the "art community." Pretentious. If a piece is so confusing and obscure it has to be explained to the viewer, is it really art? When you're standing there, wondering if something is actually one of the gallery pieces, or if someone forgot their lunch on the counter, is it art? Is throwing in images or phrases that are insulting to Christianity enough to make something art? Are a bunch of photographs of different versions covering an entire wall art?
Some art is instantly recognisable as such, whether it's a bunch of metal pieces welded together, an eclectic variety of objects piled onto a shelf or an exquisite rendition of something that can't possibly exist in the real world. One doesn't have to actually like it to recognize it as art.
Other pieces, I just don't know if I'd be willing to call art. I recall one display I saw with the kids years ago. It was made up of shopping carts full of garbage. It was apparently some sort of commentary against consumerism and waste. Except it was still just a bunch of garbage in shopping carts. Other infamous displays I've heard of but, thankfully, have never seen include blenders with goldfish in them. Viewers were welcome to turn the blenders on and kill the fish inside. Another artist got in trouble because his "art" involved putting rats between two pieces of canvas, then dropping something from above to squish them flat. The artist claimed it was okay because the rats were instantly killed, but the animal rights folks were up in arms over it. The artist probably got more of a name for himself from the controversy than he ever got from his actual art.
So the question remains: what is art? Is it just stuff that we can hang on a wall or set on a pedestal? Or is it crucifixes in urine or squished rats? Is it just the pretty and safe things, or dehydrated fetuses turned into earrings? (gosh, that one was so long ago, I'd forgotten about it completely until now!) At what point does something cross the line from being art to being junk?
This is where the art community starts to irritate me. How does an artist or art critic get to a point where they don't consider something "art" unless it's obscure, offensive, bizarre or incomprehensible? I swear, some of these "artists" must just throw things together, make pretty speeches about how it "evokes" this and "represents" that, while in private they're just taking the grant money and laughing over what fools they're making of the hoity-toity set oohing and ahhing over their "work."
I do want to support local art and artists. I do appreciate the hard work and effort that can go into any individual piece.
But sometimes, I just wanna throw up my hands in exasperation over some of the things being passed as "art."
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