It’s Big and Visually Splendid But Is It Art?

There is a saying often attributed to the American writer Mark Twain that basically goes like this, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.”

Like a lot of my friend’s Blaze’s comments, it is both simply profound and ridiculously stupid. Simply profound because defining art is notoriously difficult so why not go with your own gut? Check out the painting, sculpture, and video whatever and if it feels like art to you well art it is. Problem solved and anyway why does art have to be so tricky in the first place? It’s all right for that old stuff from hundreds of years ago that is worth millions of dollars. Obviously the work of Michelangelo, De Vinci, even Van Gogh is clearly art, everyone says so and it is expensive and in museums. But modern art, well most of that is a very big WTF and you can hear the cries echoing down through the years.

 “The government spent how much buying that! That’s a lot of school halls or a new footy stadium toilet block right there.”

Alternatively as a comment or a rule to live your life with art it is also about the most wilfully ignorant, self-rationalising and egotistical position a person could take. One could argue that if you have an interest in art you should prepare yourself by undertaking some research into how art is defined and its history. Then you would in fact know something about art instead of being uninformed. What if when I look I see art and you don’t?

Even more importantly art is not necessarily about liking it. If that is the only criteria we already have decoration filling that role. Of course art can serve that purpose and if it is in your home then of course you should like it but art has to be defined more than if a person likes or dislikes it.

Every Xmas break I usually have a little list of things I like to do or see. There are things I always like to do like get some extra surfs in conditions permitting, buy some new books to read, catch some movies, and fall asleep on the couch while not really watching the cricket. Others slightly weird like trying the new Hungry Jacks Whopper with the no meat vege patty. I would eat Hungry Jacks and/or Maccas about three times a year but this whole meat free thing is staring to get a roll on so the ads have me interested. Will it taste just like a normal whopper?

I also want to visit the Gold Coast’s Surfing museum and see if they want some old 1990s Competition t shirts I have. I like art galleries and museums of all sorts so when I have time that is where I go. So yesterday The Artist and I made one of our regular trips to Queensland’s GOMA and Art Gallery. We were mainly going to see the exhibition titled Water at GOMA but the Qld Art Gallery also has a retrospective from a Brisbane based artist from the 1950s and 60s, a guy by the name of Jon Molvig. I had never heard of him which I feel is a bad thing but I am not sure why or whose fault it is. As someone married to an artist, [ indeed as I type The Artist is applying watercolour paint to paper] I understand the drive to create and hopefully be recognised for your skills as an artist and I can’t help but be annoyed at how little interest Australia in general has of its artistic community, past or present.

At GOMA the crowd was pretty solid which is pleasing but this is where I got to thinking about art and knowing it and liking it. The Water exhibition covers many different formats - sculpture, paintings, photos, video, you name it, and it was represented. There was a strong theme of climate change and oceans rising and the effects on indigenous island cultures. In my opinion there was lots of interesting, likeable works but it seemed like a real grab bag of stuff shoehorned into an exhibition subject and title. To me a lot of it wasn’t giving me what I want from art.

There are three popular and elaborate showstoppers. One is a three foot tall Snowman in a glass doored refrigerator. He sits there in the cold and seems to smirk at all of the people taking photos of him. This is the first hint that art now increasingly seems to require engineering or scientific expertise from someone, not necessarily the artist.

The piece “Heritage” by Cao Guo- Qiang consists of an artificial lake surrounded by stuffed animals like cheetah and gazelle which have been placed around the edge like they have come to drink. Given its all life-size and fills the whole room it is quite stunning to see, but as an artistic statement on species extinction which is what the artist says it is, like a lot of the pieces it is a little vague. You learn and feel more after you read the little plaque on the wall beside the entrance. For me most of the wonder is taken up by the execution of the piece, not by what it is trying to say.

Take that and multiply by 10 for the big one,” Riverbed” by Olafur Eliasson. This piece is basically the recreation of a steep, rocky, pebbly hillside about 150 square metres in area with a running creek flowing down through the middle. You can, within the rules, walk all over it, dip your hands in the clean running water [build no dams though] and given that the whole thing looks like a slice of Iceland countryside has been picked up and put inside one big, white walled room, it is an amazing sight. I stood there for ten minutes taking in the visuals of it, listening to the pebbles moving under people’s feet and the cries of wonder from kids.

Then I started to think about the logistics of moving it all, building it and taking it down again and by the time I was done with that I thought about how amazing it was that someone could conceive of the whole thing and have the vision and determination to get it over the line. But in the end while I was moved, I wasn’t seeing the world differently and so is “Riverbed” art? To me more like a sophisticated museum display or an original marketing concept for Icelandic tourism.

Is a preserved shark in a tank of formaldehyde worth the alleged $8 Million paid for it as a piece of art, even if the article in question is titled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in The Mind of Someone Living”? Is it art at all?

Who the fuck knows? Your guess is as good as mine. But I guess it is, if you like it enough. In the end I still don’t know I think about Twain’s alleged comment about art. Art is a tricky, tricky thing and a lot like beauty, all in the eye of the beholder.

Six songs about art

Art for Art’s Sake – 10CC

Meet James Ensor – They Might Be Giants

Art School – The Jam

Vincent – Don McLean

No One Was Like Vermeer – Jonathan Richman

Sensitive Artist – King Missile