Culture: What Is Art?

(Drivebycuriosity) - Recently New York`s Guggenheim Museum pulled three items from an upcoming exhibition called "Art and China after 1989" (artnews). These pieces contain a video showing dogs on treadmills trying to fight each other, an installation which displays living  cockroaches, live insects, amphibians, and reptiles as they fight and eat each other and a boar and a sow in the act of mating. The curators responded to protests form animal right groups and others. The Chinese activist Ai WeiWei didn´t like the pullback and complained that Guggenheim`s pullback harmed freedom of speech,  "that is tragic for a modern society" he claimed ( artnet). Really? Do dog fights, cockroaches and mating boars belong to freedom of speech? Are they really works of art?

WeiWei himself has a peculiar concept of art. He once destroyed a Hang Dynasty urn - a highly valuable object of historic art - and called this act of destruction an act of art! Later another artist smashed a vase created by Weiwei and the Chinese complained (cnn artstory). Yoko Ono once displayed a real green apple with the tag "Apple" in one of her exhibitions.  John Lennon took the fruit and bit a piece out of it.  Yoko wasn´t amused.




                                                      "I could Have Done That"?

Obviously there is no common sense about what is art. Especially modern art (mostly works created in the first half of the 20th century including Picasso, Kandinsky & Modigliani) and contemporary art (usually paintings & sculptures created past 1950) are controversial. Skeptics declare "I could have done it", but lovers of modern art reply "but, you didn`t". 

Bryan Caplan, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University, who belongs to the skeptics,  claims that "observers expect some artworks to be good - because they're in a museum: Believing is seeing" (econlog). He adds "when an artist achieves world-wide fame, our natural inclination is to attribute his success to aesthetic skill - and dismiss the possibility that he merely won a lottery". He also believes that many observers conform: "If you're in a museum where everyone around you claims soup cans are great art, mere consensus can plausibly change your mind for no good reason".

Caplan`s demurs have some merit. And he certainly explains the career of Ai WeiWei and like. Ai is a Chinese dissident and famous for his struggle against the Chinese government and he is political very active today. Many seem to share his political views and may therefore believe that WeiWei is very important and his actions must be art. But if political opposition is art then why not Brexit (decision against European centralization) and the Catalonia Referendum (vote against Spanish government)? 

Caplan´s colleague Scott Sumner replies to Caplan and indicates that different people have different tastes and he adds that the perception of art has been changing all the time and over the centuries (econlog cultural). The late work by the British painter J. M. W. Turner ( 1775 – 1851 above "The Slave Ship") "were originally viewed as ugly splotches of color  and Mozart once explained one of his more difficult works that "this is for future generations". I think contemporary art is just a segment of the general evolution in technology, sciences, economy & society.

A commentator mentioned: "In earlier years art was produced by a very small subset of the population, with poorer technology, and under the tutelage of more indifferent teachers. We now search the world for the people with the most innate talent, get them in front of the most skilled people in the world, and do this with orders of magnitudes more people than we did in the past". Another commentator wrote: "There is enough art out there to satisfy everyone's tastes. There is something for everyone". I agree with both.

I am a connoisseur of contemporary art and I often visit art galleries, museums & auction houses. I love Caravaggio, Hieronymus Bosch, Vermeer, Renoir and other classic masters as well but contemporary art is so fresh and there are so many surprises & discoveries. Contemporary art is continuously increasing the diversity and often the artists impress by new ideas. And sometimes they try to shock & provoke.



                                                  Unique View & Mastery

I remember the hypnotic beauty of Mark Rohtko`s paintings I saw in Los Angeles`Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) which reserves one room just for his work. They are an invitation to meditate (sorry, their spell works only when you in person   artsy).

I also recall the spell of Gerhard Richter`s (artsy) creations which I enjoyed @ Art Institute of Chicago and many other places.

I confess that I needed a lot time to like Francis Bacon (above his "Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd Version 1971") and to acquire a taste for Joseph Beuys. Today they belong to my favorites besides Anselm Kiefer`s works (above on of his installations).  They all show an unique view & mastery and there is beauty in them.

But I am quite convinced that living cockroaches, fighting dogs & vase smashing don´t belong to art.