Here's an idea I had several years ago when I was trying to learn a bit about art, and also came across an online personality questionnaire that asked you if certain pictures were "art".
People seem to debate what counts as art, with some people including everything and other only traditional painting. Some people include old toilets found in alleys and include beach umbrellas all opened at the same time seen from a satellite and include juggling. Others won't even count a sculpture or a picture if it forms a useful object like a bowl or a map. We can put these people on a spectrum from left to right, with the far left being exclusive, art-as-landscapes, and the right being inclusive, art-is-life-all-around-us.
But this categorization is dull and rarely useful.
A more interesting system adds a second dimension, a second axis, going up and down, describing how interested a person is in art. The bottom of this spectrum wd be someone who never looks at art of thinks about art or visual creativity. The top wd be that friend or yours to whom art is everything, they do it professionally and as a hobby, and everything they do is infused with art. Everyone cd make a generalization about himself, and place himself somewhere on this spectrum.
Combining the two one-dimensional spectrums, one going left-right, one going down-up, you get a two-dimensional grid, with four quadrants, up-left, up-right, low-left, low-right. Art lovers will by definition be toward the top of the grid, but divided into those who only love the landscapes (up-left) and those who love everything anyone considers art (up-right). The bottom of the grid will be art ignorers, and these will be divided into those who ignore the narrow things they consider art (down-left), and those who ignore all of what the art world calls art (down-right).
My interest in this grid comes from my guess that not all the quadrants are equally populous, and more specifically, that I think I'm in the least populated quadrant. (This cd be another example of my mind subconsciously choosing opinions bc they make me different, not bc they reflect the true me.) One highly populated quadrant is the up-left, with the art lovers of all things art. My observation is that people who love art tend to see it everywhere and enjoy seeing it everywhere, so they include more and more things as art. I doubt anyone wd question this describes a lot of people.
The opposite corner, down-left, also seems to me well populated, although this seems less clear. People who don't look at art and don't like to look at art and don't see art in their lives, have no reason or motivation to even consider whether non-traditional forms count as art, bc even if a form counts as art, they're not going to bother looking at it. It's easy for them to be critical of art in general, and critical about what counts as art. They just don't get art unless it shows the skill of creating a picture or sculpture that copies a landscape or model, or unless the picture teaches them history, or maybe if it obviously raises political or philosophical questions. And they are happy that way.
That leaves the up-left and down-right. The up-left is those who love art but conceive of it narrowly. I don't see this a lot, but I can easily imagine the type. Those stuck on tradition but with a personality that is strongly visual and attuned to beauty. The true art snobs, they don't want any new inferior forms or art crowding out museum space meant for the classics. Similar to those who only read classic novels. They are critical of new art bc it is new and trivial, not (as with the down-left quadrant) bc it is art.
And that leaves my quadrant, the down-right. I conceive of art broadly, and enjoy finding new things to call art. I draw the line before some people, but I'm always sad to draw the line. And it's pretty far along (I don't require skill, for example). But this is just conceptual to me, I don't practice art, I don't like the art itself for more than a flash at a time, and I don't seek it out. Art is less meaningful to me, so almost anything can qualify as art. Why not, if it's neat? This seems like a natural position, but I don't think I see it much.
Further work:
write questionnaire, 15 questions, determining score on each spectrum, and plot people on grid. Find most populous quadrants. Think on why people are spread that way.
Hey Josh,
ReplyDeleteI love it, I tell you LOVE it that you're writing thoughts down. Too many of us think our thoughts are meaningless or trivial. Mostly, we're right. But there are some thoughts we actually feel compelled to articulate, and why not put them down?
The argument about what art is is so pointless to me. I've had such all out arguments about this with certain "artsy" friends, and have just come to realize that art is whatever you want it to be. It can be a painting, or it can be an event. It can be a staging, or it can be a blank space (right? I've seen it at MoMA). Once I went to a museum in Paris and the work of art displayed was what came out of the bag in someone's vacuum cleaner, and other assorted litter. In a museum, man. In Paris! So, you know...whatever. If you can have the Mona Lisa and that crap in the same city, well...who am I to argue with it. It may be art, fine. But I don't have to like it.
So having said that, I disagree with you that the upper-left (I think) is not that populous. I think most people are like me. We profess to like art, but something about has to be tangible, moving, and (usually) beautiful. LIke a painting, or a sculpture. Yeah, I think most people fit in that category.
Having said that, I have seen things - installations, performances, even excellent teaching at Montgomery Blair - that wouldn't traditionally be thought of as art, but that I absolutely would define as gorgeous artwork. I don't know.
Anyway, thanks for sharing.
Marta