Art is a problem. Fuck you, yes it is. If you're sitting there reading this thinking, "Art is an experience, it's made as self-expression, take it or leave it, but it's not a problem...A flat tire is a problem. Donald Trump being the leader of the free world is a problem...Picasso is oil on canvas." Then you're just not giving me room to expand my thought, hush your inner monologue.
Yeah, okay, anyone can walk through a gallery space, and anyone can look at a painting and anyone can be glib and detach themselves from their thinking being. That's experiencing art. That's walking through the MOMA with your cell phone, snapping pics for Instagram, texting your bff lol j/k lmao. That's the equivalent of just existing. What I'm getting at is the difference between living and existing.
Two artworks, side by side. One, a picture of a dying soldier in Iraq. The caption beneath reads, "Private First Class _______, during the invasion of ______, 19-- to 20--. Photo credit to Sgt. _____"
The second is the exact same photo. The caption for this one reads, "A picture of the picture seen to the immediate left. Photo Credit: Mr.____, Photographer, and artist".
The set up begs the question, "What makes the photo of the photo worthy of being hung in the gallery?" There's the problem.
Getting your hands on the answer to the question "What constitutes art?" is harder than just getting your brain wrapped around the core concepts of subjectivity versus objectivity. If all art amounted to was "whatever a person sees as art, is art" then, fuck it, everything and anything is art. And if everything is art, then fuck you, why make any more? Why are the Van Gogh's in the Dollar Store 15 dollars, but the ones in the gift shop at the Carnegie 150, and the actual paintings worth millions? I could accurately reproduce a Van Gogh. Does that make me a genius? No, that makes me a Xerox machine with oil paint instead of shitty ink and toner. Where's the difference?
It's authenticity of experience. Van Gogh lived his life, struggled, failed, continued, lost his mind, continued painting, and continued failing. Nobody gave a fuck about his work until well after his death. Now experts look at his work and say things like, "Can you imagine what he must've been going through?"
I didn't live through those times, I didn't struggle through that, I didn't suffer for the art, and so when I reproduce his works, even perfection isn't good enough.
I'm reading "Humans of New York Stories" by Brandon Stanton. It's...glaringly profound when seen through the lense of the argument I'm making here in this post. The elevation of human experience to art is something I don't take lightly. Pick it up. Put your cellphone down. Give it a good once-over.
That which affects, and that which moves us is the at core of artistic value. Art does it's best to be Universal in some sense. Anyone, hypothetically, could interact with a piece of art. Does that in some way demean it? Does the dissemination of fine art via the internet rob the viewer of some essential quality of seeing the piece in situ? Fucking, YEAH. Authenticity of experience.
At the same time, is coming face to face with the Mona Lisa a moving experience? I'll never fucking know, because I've seen it so many times in my culture that I've absolutely no desire to go and see it in person. Fuck you, I know what the goddamn thing looks like, and I'm not wading through several hundred assholes with their iCan'tBeBothered's snapping pics just to see something I've already seen. That said, someone who's actually been to see the Mona Lisa face to face still has something I don't in the realm of lived experience.
Why are you spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a house full of shit you don't really need? Have a family, provide them with the tools to be happy. Give them authentic lived experiences. Keep them healthy and well-fed. "We need kayaks if we wanna go kayaking..." Just fucking rent one, and give it back when you're finished having the experience. Pay for the experience, not keeping the shit involved with having the experience.
Okay, that was a lot of stream of consciousness...total sobriety doesn't exactly agree with me on all fronts.
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