"What Makes That Art?" Reformulated | Open Thread
A respected art dealer I know, writing about a highly publicized artwork, noted on Facebook the other day that, although he appreciated the piece, he wasn't convinced it was "art."
As I've noted many times here before, I firmly believe that Rauschenberg was right. "Is that art?" is not a valid question for the observer, despite how well educated, to apply to a declared artwork. "Art" is whatever an artist says it is. The role of the observer is limited to deciding whether that declared artwork is any good or not. It's not at all up to them to declare whether the work is "art" or not. The artist said it was. Full stop.
The reason I insist on this way of approaching the question is that it gives maximum latitude to artists to create whatever they wish and to present whatever they wish as a work of their creation. Any other formula is too restrictive in my opinion, limiting where the human artistic mind might one day take us, and in that way a hindrance to ultimate human potential.
How we, as humans, prevent all manner of useless effort from cluttering our museums as "art" is through our critique of what an artist presents. We get to weigh in on whether it's good or bad. Just because an artist calls it "art" doesn't mean we have to agree that it's worth preserving. It might suck.
But we do, in my opinion, need to accept the artist's right to submit anything he or she wishes as their "art."
And, yes, I've argued this for some time now. What only occurred to me recently, though, was that this formula -- that "art" is whatever an artist says it is -- demands a definition of what makes someone an "artist." I think that's critical to this question, and so I'd like to flesh that out a bit in this post.
How do we agree that a person is an "artist?"
One approach is to look at education. We agree that someone who achieved an MD is a "doctor," and someone who suffered to get their JD is a "lawyer." Is someone with an BFA or MFA automatically an "artist?" Perhaps, but in the case of MDs and JDs we still require state authorization for you to work as a doctor or lawyer. You must prove not only that you've completed the degree, but that you actually learned something in doing so, before you can call yourself a practicing Doctor or Lawyer.
So having a degree doesn't automatically make you officially something in a practical context sometimes.
I think having a BFA or MFA is actually more parallel to having an MBA. Getting your Master's in Business Administration doesn't automatically make you a businessperson. You must start or work in an actual business to become that. You must accomplish something.
I came to this notion more clearly recently when re-reading a passage in Jean-Paul Sartre's brilliant biography of the writer Jean Genet. In his book (Saint Genet), Sartre discusses Genet's first novel Notre Dame des Fleurs (Our Lady of the Flowers), which, peopled with pimps and whores and thieves and murderers, has been called, among other things, "A masterpiece of crime and perversity." Sartre describes Our Lady as a journey that the author made from the existential hell he was living in a French prison (where Genet wrote it) back to a sense of himself:
I am beginning to like this direction for defining an "artist," but it then circles back round to "who says they accomplished something?" Our Lady of the Flowers was banned as obscene and called all manner of things other than "art" for many years. Just because Sartre declared it "art" does that make it so? (Don't get me wrong, in my opinion it is a masterpiece, but then who am I?)
This is not a silly question to my mind. What's at stake here is granting license (much as we do to doctors or lawyers to operate on us or risk everything we have in court) to some person to present anything they wish as "art"...as a vessel to carry into the future something important about who we are. Some definition, some validation would seem appropriate.
Consider this an open thread on what makes someone an artist.
As I've noted many times here before, I firmly believe that Rauschenberg was right. "Is that art?" is not a valid question for the observer, despite how well educated, to apply to a declared artwork. "Art" is whatever an artist says it is. The role of the observer is limited to deciding whether that declared artwork is any good or not. It's not at all up to them to declare whether the work is "art" or not. The artist said it was. Full stop.
The reason I insist on this way of approaching the question is that it gives maximum latitude to artists to create whatever they wish and to present whatever they wish as a work of their creation. Any other formula is too restrictive in my opinion, limiting where the human artistic mind might one day take us, and in that way a hindrance to ultimate human potential.
How we, as humans, prevent all manner of useless effort from cluttering our museums as "art" is through our critique of what an artist presents. We get to weigh in on whether it's good or bad. Just because an artist calls it "art" doesn't mean we have to agree that it's worth preserving. It might suck.
But we do, in my opinion, need to accept the artist's right to submit anything he or she wishes as their "art."
And, yes, I've argued this for some time now. What only occurred to me recently, though, was that this formula -- that "art" is whatever an artist says it is -- demands a definition of what makes someone an "artist." I think that's critical to this question, and so I'd like to flesh that out a bit in this post.
How do we agree that a person is an "artist?"
One approach is to look at education. We agree that someone who achieved an MD is a "doctor," and someone who suffered to get their JD is a "lawyer." Is someone with an BFA or MFA automatically an "artist?" Perhaps, but in the case of MDs and JDs we still require state authorization for you to work as a doctor or lawyer. You must prove not only that you've completed the degree, but that you actually learned something in doing so, before you can call yourself a practicing Doctor or Lawyer.
So having a degree doesn't automatically make you officially something in a practical context sometimes.
I think having a BFA or MFA is actually more parallel to having an MBA. Getting your Master's in Business Administration doesn't automatically make you a businessperson. You must start or work in an actual business to become that. You must accomplish something.
I came to this notion more clearly recently when re-reading a passage in Jean-Paul Sartre's brilliant biography of the writer Jean Genet. In his book (Saint Genet), Sartre discusses Genet's first novel Notre Dame des Fleurs (Our Lady of the Flowers), which, peopled with pimps and whores and thieves and murderers, has been called, among other things, "A masterpiece of crime and perversity." Sartre describes Our Lady as a journey that the author made from the existential hell he was living in a French prison (where Genet wrote it) back to a sense of himself:
But, at the same time, this work is, without the author's suspecting it, the journal of a detoxication, of a conversion. In it Genet detoxicates himself of himself and turns to the outside world. In fact, this book is the detoxication itself. It is not content with bearing witness to the cure, but concretizes it. Born of a nightmare, it effects--line by line, page by page, from death to life, from the state of dream to that of waking, from madness to sanity--a passageway that is marked with relapses. Before Our Lady, Genet was an esthete; after it, an artist.So what about that delineation? Between an esthete and an artist? Can anyone "artsy" declare themselves an "artist"? Or must they first accomplish something?
I am beginning to like this direction for defining an "artist," but it then circles back round to "who says they accomplished something?" Our Lady of the Flowers was banned as obscene and called all manner of things other than "art" for many years. Just because Sartre declared it "art" does that make it so? (Don't get me wrong, in my opinion it is a masterpiece, but then who am I?)
This is not a silly question to my mind. What's at stake here is granting license (much as we do to doctors or lawyers to operate on us or risk everything we have in court) to some person to present anything they wish as "art"...as a vessel to carry into the future something important about who we are. Some definition, some validation would seem appropriate.
Consider this an open thread on what makes someone an artist.
posted by Edward_ at
9:38 AM
32 Comments:
Rather than starting with the question, "Is that art?" I encourage people to start with "How is it art?" The latter lets the viewer explore the work and determine on their own what they feel about it. It may be bad art, or good art, but it's art, nonetheless.
As for how to determine if someone is an artist? I call myself that because I can't figure out what else I could be given the things I do and the way I live my life. If a better title comes along then I'll go with that. You're right Ed, an MFA is like an MBA. It doesn't make artists, however it represents a part of a system that can confer significance upon individuals and art works that meet certain expectations established by the system itself. In these cases if you remove the system then there's nothing left. On the other hand, I see an artist, and accompanying art work, as a self generating system so if you remove it, then there's nothing left. Those people, the artists, are there for the long haul. It's called a life, not a business.
Thanks for this post Edward. First, I could not agree more that we should disregard questions of something being "art". Saying something is "not art" is an easy way to dismiss its value - and value is often what people mean (even if they don't intend it) when they equate something as art or not. "That's not art!" usually means, "I don't like it." And, "Oh, it's a work of art!" usually means something is wonderful. It's a value judgment more than anything else. But the assumption that if something is art it is inherently good, and if it is not it is inherently bad, is implicit in these proclamations. We know better.
I have to admit, however, that taking this to a logical conclusion would suggest that one does not have to be an artist to proclaim something is art. How about we simply accept that anything can be art, if anyone wants to suggest as such, and then we can move on to the more important question of contextual value?...
I don't feel that the licensing of doctors or lawyers has much in relation to the question of what makes an artist. After all, we license them (and architects) because their work has the potential to harm us, if done improperly. A bad artist may harm our sense of taste, or belief in a just god, but not our health or well-being. At least not yet.
But the comparison to a business person (and the correlation between and MFA and an MBA) is a solid one. Any one can call themselves a business person or entrepreneur. But you will not be recognized as one by the public until you actually attempt to create and run a business. Dreaming about business, running a weekend lemonade stand, these do not count. You have to dedicate time, energy and part of your soul into your endeavor for it to be recognized, and you to be so annointed.
The nice thing about the comparison is that a business person can be recognized as such without having to be a *success* at it. You can fail, miserably, at your business, and still be known as a business person. A bad one, an unlucky one, perhaps, but a valid one.
Much the same with art. As long as you make a serious substantial attempt to create art, in full view of god and country, you have the right to be called an "artist". Whether you are successful at it or not, well, that's another story.
To self-declare as an artist is even easier than making a work of art. This, like being a business entrepreneur, is as easy as printing out a business card: "YOUR NAME / ARTIST."
Your question is whether *other* people should agree, which, just as the observer is not the appropriate person to define whether or not a thing identified as an art is indeed an art, the self-proclaimed artist is not the appropriate judge of whether or not she is an artist.
Yes, declaring it "art" should set the direction of the conversation.
Obviously art making shouldn't be a meritocracy, that should be only when declaring you are an expert at something and one should ask "what makes you at expert?" Most artists don't declare themselves experts because there are no fixed points of reference in art and no immutable truths. Perhaps the moment there are these things in art; art is then dead.
On your question of what makes a person an artist and if they should have accomplished something to achieve this title - I would argue that with the amount of money that is poured into validating an artist's work by their dealers, would offset the objectivity of the achievement. For example if an artist has a wealthy connected family and uses these connections to glamorize what would be normally an achievement on the same level as another less connected artist with what might be viewed as more ground breaking artwork, the art viewing public and press would be slightly drawn towards the one they hear about more (the one with money backing them). Another example would be collectors who stumble on the lesser known artist and want to increase the exposure of their purchase for inflation purposes; would use their status as a collector to leverage this artist onto the galleries they think can increase the exposure of said lesser knowns.
Anyway you can see how muddled it is.
Recently I saw the Leo Villareal installation in SF and if you compare is merit to is family connection, one could draw a different conclusion. His family are wealthy collectors, friends of the Bush family and have been collectors in NY for sometime. He is married to the co-founder of Art Production Fund, who his father introduced him to and told him he should marry for career purposes.
Remove the background and the connections and what's left is the question of whether or not it is good art? The paradox of this is that Villareal's work is very expensive to make and an artist without the financial background could not make this work even on the most small scale. Costing what is around $1000 a sq foot in materials, that doesn't even count the computers, software, space to build and time to make/program it.
I like your distinction between esthete and artist.
It's an interesting dilemma, at a time when independent efforts to attain visibility are accompanying the more customary route through gallery "accreditation." The gallerist's role as editor, facilitator or even as impressario is still something of value, I think; but artists will still do what they must do. The question arises whether this is better or less good for the advancement of culture, if there is no modulation between artist and audience.
It seems to me that making a distinction between aesthete and artist such as discussed here is also a value judgement on par calling something art or not art. Wasn't Sartre, in effect implying with his quote that the work Jenet did before this book wasn't art?
When we start picking and choosing what art can or should be... it opens the door for oppression. The Academy felt that Impressionism was not art. Imagine how different our little art world would be had the Academy won the debate.
I no more have to accept someone's claim that something is art any more than I have to accept someone's claim that something is true. Calling something "art" is a request for a certain kind of regard. If the object is in the categorical center of art - a painting or a marble sculpture or something else recognizable from tradition - I'm likely to grant that regard automatically. If the object is at the categorical edge of art - difficult to distinguish from other kinds of objects or activities - I may not.
To the extent that a work of art relies on the act of being named as art to become art, a viewer has the power to disqualify that work from the category of art. The artist is free to call his production art. The viewer is free to disagree. The artist said it was? So what? The artist may be an idiot. So might the viewer, but the artist is responsible for making a convincing request.
Calling oneself an artist is the same.
Most Painters are Technicians not Artists. Some of them make realy good Art.
If you don't need to accept that someone's creation is "art," though, Franklin, then no one else needs to accept that your creations are art either. Where I'm sure you're willing to let those chips fall where they may, it contributes to a needlessly confrontational aspect of the dialog in my opinion. I'm far more comfortable with the notion that you can call anything you wish "art" and I'll simply weigh in on whether I think it's any good or not.
That avoids having people who are not artists define "art."
But take a shot. I'd like to hear your definition of art.
And don't limit your definition to "objects in the categorical center of art" ... that definition is too easy to dismiss.
No one has to accept that my creations are art, and you're right, I don't give a bag of beans whether they do. Also, I usually do what you do - let stand the claim that something is art, and talk about whether it's any good. That's easier to discuss. But you're asking me to do something that can't be done when you ask me to define art in a way that includes the categorical edges. There's not a hard boundary, so definition is doomed to fail to include something claimed by someone to be art.
Instead, there are things that you'd have to be ignorant or prickly to say are not art, Chardin's Boy With a Top, for example. Even if you have philosophical misgivings about that, you have to admit that this fits a common, conventional understanding of art and you have to delve into specialized explanations to claim otherwise. This is the categorical center.
Then there are things that are not art, all the things in the universe that no one is claiming are art.
In between them is a soft perimeter, filled with objects and activities about which there are competing claims as to whether they belong to the category. It's important that these claims compete, because without the competition there's no interest in trying to make a work of art that operates there. If the viewer can't counter a claim that something is art, the world fills up with more and more things called art and more and more kinds of things called art until the category itself becomes enervated, meaningless, and boring. This is, in fact, taking place, because so few people are willing to counter such claims.
So the world fills up with things others call their "art." So what?
So what?
So how do you feel about working in an enervated category?
A genre needs a productive categorical edge in order to renew the center. Over the course of history, the pattern has been that the center comes to a crisis in which it becomes impossible to do something both good and different, and activity at the edge shows the way forward. Now that what passes for advanced art - Hirst comes to mind, but you could pick any number of people - is so self-evidently corrupt that the corruption is seen as part of the aesthetic, the center is going to have to come to the rescue of the edge. That may not even be possible. Fine art could easily go the way of classical music, with a beloved core of traditional masterworks and some modernist statements that people tolerate to some degree, while all the interesting things are going on in rock and pop. Except for us, it will be museum blockbusters of Impressionists and all the interesting things going on in comics, film, TV, and video gaming.
My father's girlfriend recently bought a piece painted by an elephant. The ditz really likes it. I will go out on a limb to say that the elephant definitely wasn't an artist and the person who placed the loaded paint brush in the elephant's trunk needn't be an artist. The person who cropped and framed the creation may, however, be an artist.
Enervation is a choice. The world's population is exploding. Communication is moving at light speed. Anyone can post their "art" online in search of an audience. Some of the "art" that emerges as such is actually quite good. You can huff and grumble about the loss of a center or you can get very excited about the coming change.
The way I see it, change now is so constant we need a new word for "change." It's not so much steady as speeding up. It's now more akin to a tidal wave. You can let yourself become overwhelmed and get dragged under or you can try to hop up on your surfboard and ride it out. Both might end the same way, but you still get to (and have to) choose.
Ignoring the tidal wave won't stop it from slamming into you. The suggestion that one can focus on the center and dismiss the edge as "corrupt" (as if the center isn't also corrupt) is to assert against massive evidence that we're in the midst of a (temporary at least) major decentralization. Even the museums are coming to terms with that (with their social media outreach and continual blurring of high and low).
I agree "art" won't look like it has the past 400 years or so for much longer...the tidal wave will most certainly alter the landscape. I'm simply not convinced that's not for the good.
Enervation is a choice.
Hardly. At the essay linked in my last comment: "Successful styles, once they're established by great artists, draw in a great number of lesser artists. Over time, all of them working together on the same problem makes it harder and harder to do something both good and different within that style." More things qualifying as art speeds up that process. Entropy isn't a choice - fighting it is.
(as if the center isn't also corrupt)
It's not corrupt, it's short on viable new ideas. That's what happens to the center given enough time. Despite this, it's doing great in terms of drawing talent and audience. Reports of dark nights of the soul - the huffing and grumbling, as you put it, including the complaints of corruption - are issuing from the edge itself. This is why I say that the center may have to rescue it. And one of the striking differences between them these days is that people who identify with the center are willing to contradict claims that something is art. It seems like you can focus on the center and dismiss the edge as corrupt, which I wouldn't think was an option but for the fact that it seems to be working for a lot of people.
Innovation only takes place when a new problem presents itself that provides enough freedom to allow many solutions but has enough restrictions to create a categorical boundary, intuitively understood. My basis for saying so is that I just published an anthology, Comics as Poetry, which required first of all a discussion with a fellow comics-poet of who was in and who was out. I agree that the art world is decentralizing. In fact, I'd like to help it along. But it's going to break into units in which it's possible to make distinctions about who's in and who's out.
The center is corrupt. Just ask any student studying under a reactionary art professor or any artist working in a new medium. The center protects itself from innovation, compiling the problem of doing something "good AND different."
Saying that something is (or is not) art is a linguistic shorthand. "Art" is not a quality of a thing, it is an approach to appreciating that thing. It is a state of mind of the viewer (or experiencer). So we call things art if we have that state of mind in relation to them.
A good analogy might be a word like "friend" -- there is no single quality that makes someone a friend. They can be someone who you see every day. They can be someone you write to on the internet. They can be someone you met once or twice and have not spoken to for years. But when you call someone a friend, that is a shorthand for saying you have a particular state of mind in relation to them.
So defining an "artist" is comes easily from this definition of art. An artist is someone who suggests that we call things art. That is, an artist is someone who suggests that people have a state of mind in relation to certain things, such that they would signal that by calling those things "art." We judge the value of the artist by a few things
*) Are we able to get into that state of mind for those things the artist suggest we do? And to what degree are we able to get into that state of mind and enjoy it?
*) Do we feel like it would have been difficult for us to get into that state of mind, were it not for the artist's effort? That is, do we feel the artist has been clever or interesting or worked hard?
An "artist" is much like a "chef" -- A chef can be someone who puts a great deal of effort into making you a meal that you love. Or they can be someone who hands you a piece of fruit and suggests you take a bite. And your appreciation for them as a chef depends on whether you like the food they give you, and whether you feel they are doing so in a clever or interesting way. If all they ever do is hand you a piece of fruit, that will eventually get boring, and you will stop calling them a chef. But if, after a flawless 7-course meal, they hand you a perfectly-chosen piece of fruit, you might call it their most brilliant move of the night!
In general, food is a great analogy to art. As children, we like food which provides an immediate sensory reward like sweets. But through gradual exposure, we learn to appreciate food whose immediate sensory experience might have been repulsive to us as children, before we had been "educated."
And the art world is like one big never-ending meal with thousands of chefs and diners, who are all eating different things in a different order. The best artists/chefs are the ones who are delivering the food we happen to like in the context of what we have just eaten.
Saying that something is (or is not) art is a linguistic shorthand. "Art" is not a quality of a thing, it is an approach to appreciating that thing. It is a state of mind of the viewer (or experiencer). So we call things art if we have that state of mind in relation to them.
A good analogy might be a word like "friend" -- there is no single quality that makes someone a friend. They can be someone who you see every day. They can be someone you write to on the internet. They can be someone you met once or twice and have not spoken to for years. But when you call someone a friend, that is a shorthand for saying you have a particular state of mind in relation to them.
So defining an "artist" is comes easily from this definition of art. An artist is someone who suggests that we call things art. That is, an artist is someone who suggests that people have a state of mind in relation to certain things, such that they would signal that by calling those things "art." We judge the value of the artist by a few things
*) Are we able to get into that state of mind for those things the artist suggest we do? And to what degree are we able to get into that state of mind and enjoy it?
*) Do we feel like it would have been difficult for us to get into that state of mind, were it not for the artist's effort? That is, do we feel the artist has been clever or interesting or worked hard?
An "artist" is much like a "chef" -- A chef can be someone who puts a great deal of effort into making you a meal that you love. Or they can be someone who hands you a piece of fruit and suggests you take a bite. And your appreciation for them as a chef depends on whether you like the food they give you, and whether you feel they are doing so in a clever or interesting way. If all they ever do is hand you a piece of fruit, that will eventually get boring, and you will stop calling them a chef. But if, after a flawless 7-course meal, they hand you a perfectly-chosen piece of fruit, you might call it their most brilliant move of the night!
In general, food is a great analogy to art. As children, we like food which provides an immediate sensory reward like sweets. But through gradual exposure, we learn to appreciate food whose immediate sensory experience might have been repulsive to us as children, before we had been "educated."
And the art world is like one big never-ending meal with thousands of chefs and diners, who are all eating different things in a different order. The best artists/chefs are the ones who are delivering the food we happen to like in the context of what we have just eaten.
Just to add on to my last comment: the food analogy also makes it easy to understand why people are constantly debating whether or not something qualifies as art. And it has nothing to do with the inherent quality of the art work. Just like with food, what one person finds delicious, another person might find disgusting. It is mostly about what you have been exposed to that enables you to enjoy it when you eat it. We tend to use absolute terms like "good" as in "this is good food" or "this is good art" -- but its more about your background -- and if you don't have the right background you are not going to appreciate certain foods from certain cultures, until you have spent some time developing a taste.
If someone from another culture makes you a meal and you find it disgusting, you might not call them a chef. But if you see that there are a lot of other people who do love that person's food, you might say "ok, I guess they are a good chef for those people, even if I don't like what they do." Or you might spend some time and learn to develop a taste for their food, perhaps by sampling lots of dishes from their culture, and gradually working your way up. Art and artists are the same way. You might not call someone an artist if you don't feel that what they are producing is art, or good art. But if you see a lot of people appreciating what they do, you might admit, that the person is an artist. And you might even spend the time to learn a little more and develop a taste for their work.
The center is corrupt. Just ask any student studying under a reactionary art professor or any artist working in a new medium.
I'm friends with a guy who runs an independent realist atelier here in Boston. He mentors MFA students at one of our myriad art schools, and one of them just told him about a talk given by a Documenta curator in which she said that anyone making a figurative painting these days is a racist. The student who wants to acquire traditional skills and can't because of ignorance or hostility on the part of new-practices instructors is a far more common story than the converse these days, which is how this contemporary atelier culture came into existence. In my experience, most teachers don't give a damn what their students are doing as long as they're working, but the exceptions run according to whatever the professor had in his skill set at the time he won tenure.
The center protects itself from innovation, compiling the problem of doing something "good AND different."
This isn't a problem of categorical centrality, it's a problem of academicism. Academicism is a bad thing and it has beset every style to reach critical prominence in the last century and a half - basically anything that hung on long enough to have a late phase.
""Art" is whatever an artist says it is""
This shifts the question from the work itself and privileges the "artist's" conclusions over the viewer's analysis.
Assume A is an "artist" working in abstractions, a recurring theme being carefully built up intricately radiating ovals.
One day there's a mishap involving a cat, two buckets of paint, a fan, and a canvas. Result is indistinguishable from the pieces that usually take the artist weeks to complete.
Is that canvas "art"?
What if artist says it is?
What if artist says it is not?
The only alternatives to something being "art" because the artist says it is are 1) something being "art" because the viewer says it is or 2) something being "art" because a subset of the viewing public (an elite authority body) says it is.
Wouldn't you really rather artists have the say?
Wouldn't you really rather artists have the say?
I would like the artist to have a say. But like any other claim, it may be true, false, or partly both. We go about determining which via the same mechanism that we establish the truth of anything - if it's a contentious claim, then we analyze and argue.
I think having a BFA or MFA is actually more parallel to having an MBA.
I get the parallel, but isn't this quote implying that one can be an artist only with a BFA/MFA? In which case, there's already a bunch of people (i.e. professors, committee) that say who's an artist (or that has the potential to become one).
This is not to say that, much as one can start a business without an MBA, one cannot become an artist without MFA. But, be careful a bit when making this analogy.
The question about "accomplishing something" is pretty thorny. Does grandma count when she declares that the nephew's doodle is art (or artistic)? At the opposite side of the scale, is "accomplishing something" defined as only being in the art history books a century from now?
I don't have a good definition of an artist. In fact, not being formally educated myself and not entirely sure I have the tools to properly judge my works, I was answering someone's question "Are you an artist?" by a very convoluted "I make stuff with traditional artistic material which may be characterized as art" -- which, in addition to being long, seemed very anal and probably arrogant. So lately, when asked that, I answer "Yes" or "I make art" -- your definition, which possibly makes me an artist. Of course, from 9 to 5 I'm also an electronics engineer. So, two hats? Or only one hat and an evening/weekends bandanna?
Finally, it seems to me that a lot of people think of being an artist as a vocation, something integral to the artist's being without which the artist would not be the same/whole. In contrast, being an electronics engineer (or lawyer, or doctor) is a profession, something external to who they are (a coat they wear). Probably this is also why the question is so thorny: you are asked to give a good, concise, universally applicable definition for something that seems so intimate and integral to a bunch of very dissimilar people. It seems to me that suggesting the analogy with getting MBA's, you are trying to extricate the definition of an artist from this somewhat spiritual definition. (Something that you've explored in another post about artists retiring.)
As a child my art implement of choice was a stick and my canvas was a dirt lot across the street from were I lived. I covered every style of art known to man even thou I didnt know what i was doing.The fun part was watching them degrade over time. Then i would start all over.
My best friends Grandmother Was a Brujas she would babysit me. whenever we were bad she would draw a circle in the dirt lot and makes us stand in the circle as punishment. She had a White Cat and rolled her own cigarettes, She was the most feared person in the neighborhood.
Here is my take; Art functions like eyeglasses. You know it works for you when you have them on, it changes the way you see.
Art functions perceptually. Perception is a twofold mechanism. First, it is physical-the way the brain mechanically interprets the light passing through the eye. This is a very old architecture. Millions of years of evolution are in the foundations of making this process. Our modern brain is entirely based on this. Second, it is the judgements made about the perceptual process: "good, bad, dangerous, life-threatening....?" There are many, many perceptual judgements which can be made about the mechanical process of "seeing." But it always comes back to seeing. If it is "art," we see something through it, beyond it: the art acts as a lens, allowing us a new way of seeing. Art is a kind of framing device.
When the animal which would become modern man climbed out of the trees to look for food on the forest floors, our eyes were designed to make distinctions between food from predator. We still use this basic architecture today, despite the millions of years of our evolution. We now inhabit a world where we no longer need this basic function of the eye-brain system. This architecture is what our modern brain is essentially running on. It doesn't always work. And there is no codified way to pre-determine the results of what the stimulus will be given all of the variables.
One of the crowning achievements of mankind was when we began mark-making. It allowed us to position ourselves outside of personal knowledge. We no longer needed to remember everything. We could make notations away from ourselves, storing that knowledge outside of ourselves allowed us to know more. This allowed us to create more knowledge than any one person could carry. We could share knowledge henceforth.
To paraphrase Richard Tuttle, I abhor anything which limits art. This goes directly to your point, Edward. It is not really relevant if it is art to everyone, to many, to few, if it is only art to one viewer, it is art. Just like glasses are created to a specific eye, art can be seen only be specific eyes. Those other eyes might just need different art. This goes back to how personal perception is: how independent each persons knowledge is for any one given individual. It is a question of background of the viewer.
As to the question of the artist and who is one, if they endeavor to create new ways of seeing our world (irregardless of the success of that pursuit), they can call themselves whatever they please when they utilize knowledge (personal, societal, cultural, or whatever). This goes to the background of the maker. And the maker needs should be independent of the viewer desires. Anything can be art, however, not everything is art.
"what's at stake here is granitng license ..."
Ed you're scaring me with visions of salon membership walls.
consider:
"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way." E. M. Forster
or
"What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote."
I think thats why the edict to be of your time is important. Artists are but the first to speak out loud what we arlready think silently and unconsciously. They don't create new ways of seeing, but simply demonstrate the new ways we already see.
I think that one of the difficulties of this sort of discussion is that "art" is a word that actually is used as shorthand to describe numerous categories of ideas that are ever-shifting. Much like the suggestion that the idea of "friend" might be a closer analogy to "artist" than doctor (or MBA), when you start to look at it, you already have a subject object division between "a friend" and "friendship," for instance. My suggestion is that "art" and "artist" are by necessity ever-shifting philosophical nebula that overlay, intersect, shoot from, illuminate and obscure all of human culture.
But the problem is that we seem to have a (very typically) Western binary of "inside" and "outside" in the case of the producer of art. You're either and artist or you are not.
Imagine if we had an analogous diversity of artist-related words that we do with the term of "friend": acquaintances, blood-brothers, comrades, friends-with-benefits, frenemies, bad friends, soul mates, lovers, pen pals, buddies, partners, hook-ups, and on and on!
But maybe we do have a few of these: curators, critics, blogers, outsider artists, academy, historians, viewers, performers, painters, publishers, writers, teachers, professors, studio mates, collectives...?
Too much time seems to be spent determining which side of the coin everything is divided between, when in fact art (and artists) are defined by is massive cluster of plurality — a massive, twinkling, changing, interacting philosophical-cultural galaxy spanning and entangled with all of our endeavors that by necessity must include contradictions, confusions and collisions if it is going to be a living, dynamic, vital system.
With regard to what is art or who is an artist. The analogy to business is good as anyone can be a businessperson but weather or not they can make a business that is consistently profitable is the real test.
To say everything is art or even worth considering as art diminishes the virtuosity of master artists. 100 years ago there was little debate as to who the artists were. There were those people that had a level of skill in putting together images that other people didn't have. Everyone has an innate sense of this. The memory that strikes me most was viewing Michelangelo's David on trip to Florence. I first saw the replication outside the cathedral where it historically stood. And looking at the copy I wondered what the big deal was. Then I saw the real deal in museum and there is qualitative difference that is incredible. Looking at it one gets the feeling that one could work in sculpture their whole life and never be able to make a sculpture as good as this. Certainly the person commissioned to make the replication had done so and yet while they made it look somewhat the same it had nowhere near the power.
Many of the performing arts (music, theater, dance etc.) haven't lost the idea of virtuosity the way that the Visual Arts or what is now called Perfomance Art (which little or no skill seem required as a prerequisite and should not be confused with the performing arts). The are some older master Jazz musicians that periodic play near where my wife and I live. Every time I've gone to see them, I've left know I was charged too little for the cover. That same feeling of awe I got viewing David, I get when leaving their performance. I can't remember the last time I walked into a gallery of modern or conceptual and got that feeling.
It wasn't always this way where it was so hard to define, just looking a painting by Cezzane it's not hard to see the skill. We all know this as kids. I was struck the other day by a friend's 8 year son asking his father how he just drew a figure so well. The kid knows and appreciates the skill instantly when he sees it but to adults this is now something murky.
Frankly if you likely have to ponder over it. It may be art, it may not but either way it's likely not worth your time.
So if con man creates puts to together some pieces of junk and sells it to an old lady for a lot of money because he told her it was great piece of art. How would a real artist distinguish themselves from such a person?
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