|
"Art is whatever the hell you want it to be."
Although on the face of this I agree, it would be interesting to follow the line of reasoning through, perhaps as follows.
1. Art is whatever I want it to be.
2. Art can be anything.
3. Art can be everything: it is all embracing.
4. Art is everything: everything can be viewed as being a kind of art and seen from an artistic stanpoint.
5. Art is nothing: if everything is art, what is left that can be called art?
And this has become, in some ways, quite true. Because of the events of the 20th century, we have formulated a way of looking at the world that can turn whatever we see into art; hence Stockhausen's comments about 9/11 (before anyone gets into that, I think we can fairly say Stockhausen was a crackpot, and a mystic, but anyway).
I would not say however this line of reasoning is entirely true. Here's why: art is an industry, less so than the other industries (it has a large government and independant financial backing), but it is still a force on which many people's livelihoods depend. Money has to be made, somewhere. Therefore, if art is really everything, and therefore nothing, nothing can be sold as art. Instead, art has become whatever that is placed in the context of being art. I think this is what 4'33" really taps into: silence is an impossible thing for people who can hear; even in a perfectly soundproof room, we can hear the sound of our hearts and our bones and the nerves firing in our bodies. Sound surrounds us all the time. The way John Cage illustrates this is by creating a moment of silence, and therefore sound, at the point at which our ears are most carefully atuned to noticing sound, a concert. This sound becomes art because it is placed in the context of being art.
But more importantly, it is expressing this idea. The people have bought their tickets, found their seats, read their programmes, talked with their neighbours, only to be shown what they should have been noticing their entire lives. People going away complaining from such an experience seem to me to have missed the point.
For me, art does need to have boundaries. But the only boundary I can see, so far, is this one: Art is expression. The expression of an idea, as with Cage; a kinaesthesic feeling; beauty (or un-beauty); the power of systems and rules and structures; a narrative or scene; emotion; relationships; spacial, sonic, and/or visual balence/clarity for their own sake. The list can be extrapolated. But art is not anything and everything - if it were it would lose its meaning. Instead, Art is a powerful reminder of what things human beings have come to value, whether aesthetic, or more general in life as a whole, presented through expression. For me, this expression works best when I leave the theatre or art gallery or concert hall feeling enriched - a different person than the one that walked in. Art, at its most powerful, is the eternal transference of this expression.
L.
|