Marty and the Art World

It is said that art is to the artist, by which is meant that art is whatever the artist says it is. I disagree.

I have a very simple yet realistic definition of what makes something art: if I can do it, it ain't art. I'll give you an example: Orange Brown . I can do that. Therefore, it's not art. Yet it actually belongs to the Detroit Institute of Arts, potentially (I haven't looked it up) on the taxpayer's dime.

What is art, then? The Mona Lisa. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Stuart's portrait of Washington which is replicated on the dollar bill. Things like that. Fuzzy orange brown squares and rectangles? I'm going to argue no.

In short, art isn't necessarily what the self proclaimed artist or supposed art experts say it is. The kind of standard applies across the board too. If you think Zinn's Bad History is good history simply because Howard Zinn purports to be an historian, then you ought to rethink the subject. You should certainly rethink Zinn.

Art is what art is, according to rational standards of beauty, talent, and whatever other reasonable standards apply to analyzing art, exactly as history is what it is according to rational standards of history no matter what any given person, even an historian, might say it is. Look beyond the experts, question them, challenge them. If they can't give you good answers, doubt them. Never let them rest on their own word.

Key to History

How many of you have old keys hanging around? Maybe they're on your key ring, or perhaps in your junk drawer. At the Shop, we have keys hanging on nails right inside the office door, most of which haven't been used in ages. 

Some are the keys to cars which have long met the compactor.  I know that one key is for the last flatbed truck we had for delivering welders. That truck's been gone 30 years. We also still have the key from a 1961 Ford delivery truck. That truck Joe bought from 7-Up; you could see the 7-Up logo where it was painted over on the driver's door. Smaller keys are old shop locks for padlocks which are who knows where. Most of them have not been touched since well before Pops died, and he's been gone more than 12 years now.

Why don't we get rid of them? I dunno. It's habit to have them there I suppose. One key is attached to a key ring which has the baby from the first Incredibles cartoon. That's, what, 2004? The baby is no longer bald but has a nice head of dust hair. It's to be expected I suppose, after hanging inside the doorway for close to 21 years now.

Some of those keys might even fit locks we still have if we were to try and find them. I'm not fired up to find out though. I suspect me kids when clearing out the old barn hopefully way, way into the future, will wonder why the hell we kept them, and just toss them out. 

Yet the joke is on them. A few keys are actually painted to the woodwork, although I will admit it's kinda sad that we didn't bother taking them down the last time we painted. 

Ah, hell. I'll just call it art.

Canine Hold 'Em

The Ohio Cosgriffs were up yesterday. The family, other than yours truly (who isn't a huge garage sale guy) went on a shopping spree. There's an annual garage sale which runs the length of Michigan State Route 15 and they're participating. Happy trails.

I stayed home. I had some writing I wanted to do, and also felt it wouldn't hurt to keep their dogs company as they get a bit antsy when home alone. "What are you going to do with them while we're shopping?" me granddaughter asked.

"I think we'll recreate that famous velvet painting of dogs playing poker," I quipped.

That isn't as easy as it sounds. While searching for a template to determine how to pose the dogs I found that there are not one, nor two, nor three, velvet paintings of dogs playing poker. There are dozens.

I didn't expect that. It's as though it's it's own genre, it's own school of art. Future classes of art historians will speak of the impressionists, the cubists, the expressionists, the modernists, the minimalists, the realists, Art Nouveau...and the dogs playing pokerists. 

I have a flair for art after all.

Foot almost in mouth disease

Sometimes that little bird on your shoulder can be very smart, very prescient. Sometimes I have not listened and ended up embarrassed or ashamed. Sometimes I have listened and been very grateful. Enormously grateful in fact.

About twenty five years ago I had to have minor surgery on my foot, and no, it was not to remove it from my mouth. But I almost put it there afterwards.

While waiting in an examination room in my podiatrist's office for a follow up visit after the surgery I began looking over the several paintings in the room and man, they were awful. I'm no kind of artist, but those paintings were terrible; worse than a six year old doing a paint by number terrible. Worse than your first grader's stuff that you proudly put on the fridge. I sat studying the artwork, all the while thinking of the insults I'd make about them to whomever I saw next. Yet the little bird told me to be careful what I said.

Soon enough a nurse entered. "Those are some paintings," I began. It was intended a prelude to mockery. Yet it also gave me a moment to gauge things.

"Aren't they?" the nurse replied, beaming. "Doctor Lewis's father made every one of them!"

"Ah," I answered back. "That's really cool." And I left it at that. But I've thanked that little bird every time since that I've thought of the occasion.

Standards of Art and Beauty

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? That is a stance taken by most people when the subject of beauty comes up. Taken at face value, it is meant to say that we all have our quirks and foibles and as such our own opinions on the beautiful. That's fine, too, so far as it goes. Without a bit of individual interpretation an awful lot of very good things might go unrecognized.

Too often, though, it is not taken at face value. It is often intended as a way of dismissing any claim which propriety or objective analysis of art and objects may have against what makes something beautiful. On that level, it at the least makes art valueless. At the most, it is dangerous to our very psychological well being.

Why should there be no standards for beauty? Why should we not be able to know and employ them? We do and know and apply standards to so much else; why should the beautiful be any different? What can we really know about art and beauty if we have no way of judging them anyway? Indeed it can open us up to certain ironies, areas where what we think awful may actually be lovely.

I remember a nun back when I was in Catholic schools who couldn't hold a musical note in a bucket: God love her, her voice was terrible. Yet when I hear it now, I realize that it in fact had a certain beauty in it which made it endearing. She belted out those hymns, by gosh, a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord, and it really was a joyful noise.

Aethetics, I believe Aristotle called it. A way to judge the beautiful from the horrendous. It is a subject on which I think we need to spend more time and effort.