Sunday, January 31, 2016

But is it 'Art' ?

Many thoughts about art triggered by a visit to the National Gallery of Singapore. Since the thoughts are fairly disconnected, I cover them as numbered points below:


1.) Earlier I was a staunch defender of modern art, in the face of "My 4 year old can do the same thing" kind of arguments. My response to that argument by the way, is - not really. I don't think the average kid scribbling has the same quality as modern art. And occasionally when it does, I feel very good about that piece of work.  I don't feel that it drops the bottom out of the modern art argument. I felt really happy about some of Vibhu's scribblings. I think the modern artists strive to achieve the quality of children that enables them to scribble with spontaniety, while also including all the other good stuff that comes with adulthood and experience.

2.) I recently watched this video recently "Why is Modern Art so bad?"

and found that I could not really refute some of the arguments. There is this tendency in modern art to do something random and then challenge the viewer to consider it also as art. Like where the video  talks about a rock that is on show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in LA.

 


(Pix stolen from latimes.com )

There's a nice rebuttal to the video to the previous, appropriately titled, "Why is Classical Art so bad".




3) On the frustration that a lot of people have with abstraction in modern art: I don't have a real response to that. Except that I just like the abstract stuff too, alongwith the pretty pictures. The art books offer some explanations. One argument that I came up with, is that when painting life just got better and better, there was nothing more that could be done along those lines, and so artists started looking for some other way of expressing themselves, thus abstract art.

4.) One argument against modern art is lack of technique. While the rebuttal video above offers some counter-arguments, to wit, that art need not only be about aesthetics, I wonder if that is quite true. Like at the National Gallery there is a video of a guy painting himself yellow and taking a bath to wash it off. Apparently he was doing it as a protest against the lack of support for performance art compared to other forms of art. Fair enough. But, it was a really dull boring video. Come on - if you want to protest there are a whole host of interesting attention-grabbing things you can do. If you can't elevate your performance art to the level where the performance is atleast remarkable in some way, I think you're just incompetent as an artist. Or lazy, or a charlatan.

5.) Why can't art discussions be held in reasonable language? I suppose art, like any field of human endeavour has its own technical language. So the same way that you cannot understand a discussion between experts in molecular biology, its too much to expect that you can understand a discussion between art experts. However, art is publicly displayed and viewed. Art curators who talk about their work for the common man have got to tone it down. I would say, this is kind of a faultline and that resolving it would resolve a lot of things. You should only get to be a curator and have fancy museums if you can figure out how to talk about art to the non-specialist.

6.) Art is one of the few public 'goods' that highly elitist. For the amount of money that is put into institutions like the National Gallery, the return or the acceptance by the public is highly suspect.
I wonder how all the employees hanging around the museum feel about some of the more random works they guard.


7.) There is something about banks and art. A lot of modern art hangs in banks, and a lot of shows and exhibitions are sponsored by banks. I have a feeling the connection is not too savoury - the fakeness part of art is what the banks are picking up on, reflecting some of their own fakeness and lack of substance.

Will post some photos from the National Gallery later


1 comment:

m said...

I have thought about this a lot too. My "answer" (response more like) is on the lines of what Basho said about haiku, master the form then abandon the form. Well, he didn't say it in those words exactly esp since he said it in Japanese. Take Picasso. He mastered classical art (just look at his prize winning painting for entry into an art school in Spain or his sketches). Then he abstracted it slowly and with deliberation. There was a brilliant exhibit I saw in MoMa which chronicled this. With a lot of "modern" art, there is no attempt at training and synthesis but just a desire to be new or creative. Sometimes, that works. Most times it does not. Same is true in literature, music and other endeavours too. It is like over enthusiastic classical singers who take to the stage without enough training (old school yes). The results are obvious. I also take an Indian view (rasa theory and all that)- without a rasika there is no art. So eventually, if there is garbage displayed, it will automatically be selected out. Or one would hope.

BTW the converse is also true. Operas are dying out. Even with western classical music, Hannah and I find ourselves to be the youngest in a sea of grey hairs.