4. ART vs. art 🎨 💰

“In the early twentieth century, highbrow modern art was born in a frenzy of negation. The big new advances in poetry were eliminating meter and rhyme. In music, it was eliminating melody, harmony, and structure. In the visual arts, it was eliminating realism and technical skill. In literature, you had novels without plots and exciting experiments like Beatniks writing long essays without punctuation.”

IDEOLOGY VERSUS ART (See my #6 below)

Art: the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance -- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary

“That scene is an affirmation of life” – Leonard Bernstein upon seeing Gene Kelly’s “singing (and dancing) in the rain” scene.

Countless artists produce countless works of art. Only a very few of these works achieve the level described above -- which I here capitalize as "ART". The difference between art and ART is the difference between jumping rope and leaping into the stars.

I have given much thought to what, for me, separates ART from art, and have concluded that for a work to qualify as ART, among other things it must satisfy the following 7 criteria:

1. It possesses -- above its other traits -- beauty. Whether a symphony, a play, a painting, etc., -- first and foremost it is rooted in beauty. I’ll let you define beauty as you see fit. This is probably the most controversial of my points. That a great many modern artists believe beauty can be jettisoned from ART gives testament to how degraded our culture has become. (Let me know the next time you sit through, and enjoy, a two-hour concert of ugly music or a two-hour replusively ugly play.)

2. It moves me -- in a life-affirming way. Although I may experience a range of emotions, ART ultimately whispers that yes, life is worth living. It does not anger, irritate, or disgust (emotions that are infinitely easier to evoke than spiritual pleasure).

3. It amazes me. This is a major (and often overlooked) component of ART. Besides being moved, I am amazed that a human being could create this thing. It seems a small miracle, and typically part of this impression is an apparent labor-intensiveness and mastery of technique projected from the work. Be it a Mozart sonata, a Gauguin painting, or a Shakespeare play, I go home with the accurate impression that should I wish to replicate such a feat, a great deal of my time (years) and relentless energy will be required and that even after making such sacrifices I am still likely to fail.

4. It bears, with complete grace, repeated scrutiny. I want to keep looking, or listening, etc. I want to repeat the experience many, many times. This repetition serves to enhance, rather than detract, from the work's spell.

5. It does not need an explanation. Although its power may sometimes be enhanced by a modest amount of fact, ART works on its most fundamental level without needing additional “information”. Upon hearing the music, or seeing the painting, I am drawn to it or I am not. Whether the work is groundbreaking or trend setting is ultimately irrelevant. The biography, track record, age, lifestyle, politics, sex appeal, etc., etc. of the artist are also irrelevant – the work must stand on its own. No amount of explanation by the artist or critic is going to significantly change my impression, unless I so desperately desire to like the work (a la the emperor's new clothes) that my mind is able to overrule my heart.

6. It does not preach or propagandize. At most, it “suggests”. It may legitimately convey values, but not agendas. Typically, the heavy-handedness of the agenda is inversely proportional to the amount of labor and technique the artist exhibits. The miraculous “light” emanating from a work of ART originates not from negative emotions of the artist but from his aesthetic transport.

7. It is original within a set of firm (if somewhat flexible) boundaries. Originality unconfined by boundaries is the most easily attained of all components of would-be ART. This struck me many years ago upon viewing a photography exhibition consisting of photographs of dead fish placed upon various objects - a car, a bus stop bench, etc. Originality can be compared to a bullet – essentially impotent when exploded unless confined in a chamber where all its energy is directed in an extremely focused direction. Much of the necessary confinement for ART comes from satisfying the above 6 criteria. While it is easy to be original without boundaries, it is extremely difficult to be original within well-defined boundaries. For example, I can easily be original by writing a song about the moods of my refrigerator. On the other hand, to say something fresh in the context of a love song is terribly hard. This, of course, is one of the great challenges all genuine artists must confront, and one a great many modern artists have chosen to avoid.

A negative example: Warhol’s clones of Brillo boxes (these are 3 dimensional "look just like the real cartons" boxes) meet none of these criteria and are not, to my mind, ART.

Upon seeing this work I do not find it beautiful, I am not moved, I am certainly not amazed, and I have no interest in continuing to look at the work. If I did, I'd go buy a big carton of Brillo. I also recoil from its heavy-handed agenda, which preaches that anything can be designated as ART. Once, at the Guggenheim, these boxes were part of a much larger show, and a special guard had been posted next to them because passers-by were likely to think they were simply boxes and might therefore bump, kick, or sit on them.

I would like to stress that there is much modern art that I consider ART. However, I maintain that the majority of post-1960s works are the products of no-talent egotists participating in media-driven jerk-off contests.

NOTE: See "The Devolution of Art" link below.