Contra Conceptual Art: An Essay

A few days ago, someone asked me what my problem with conceptual art is. I didn't quite have an answer down pat, but I gave it a bit of thought and wrote an essay. Because apparently I have become one of those people who write essays to answer questions even when not in school. I don't claim this is a formal essay, and my personal expertise in any of the fields cited is not going to be bought up, at least by me. I thought it looked good, so I figured I'd post it here, and see what some of the smartest people on the web have to say.

Quote:

Despite the critics and their love of anything exciting and new, so-called modernist and post-modernist literature died a relatively quick and quiet death; Ulysses is a classic solely because of critical support, not from any individual merit. This may be an unfair statement to make, but I tend to view success as a function of the market, and traditional narrative forms have dominated the field so utterly that unless deliberately exposed to alternatives, none may know they exist. Now, why does 'contemporary' art still lumber like a Frankenstein's Monster? Why do we call people who take an object and, without altering it, claim it to be art... why do we call them 'artists', however grudgingly some of us may give them that title? And why do we call people who fill a canvas with paint, or splash paint on randomly with no control, artists? Because the market for painting and sculpture, unlike the market for literature and film, does not depend upon the public. It depends upon the critics, many of whom are all-too ready to support something 'edgy' and anti-status quo, probably with a harsh word or two for the general public for not supporting these monstrosities. And it depends upon the rich, who fund galleries and expect purchases to be made. And many of them, with no training in art history or interest in the field, rely upon the critics. But there is good news. Success is judged by the market; the popular market at large, in fact. And over the past fifty years, the mass public have voted with their wallets and feet in favor of traditional painting, be it Salvatore Dali or any number of pre-Raphaelite reprints, or the harsh lines and styles of the art-deco movement. I'll take a thousand Velvet Elvis or Dogs playing poker over one Equivalent VII - but I don't have to, because the market's already done it for me. Of course, some people may say that art is so subjective that we can't claim one style is superior to another; to which I answer that that is the whole point of a market. Others may point out that the market says that people favor reality shows over well-produced drama, which indicates that the popular voice is not a good arbiter of quality in general; to which I answer that 'reality television' is a vague classification (#1), that dramas and other such shows tend to be highly expensive and are taken off the air to suit a bottom line, not according to the desires of the audience (#2), and that for all its worth and value, television is still not directly comparable to paintings and sculpture. (#3) Television is a profoundly cultural entertainment, even today. It's broadcast in local languages, filmed or translated according to local cultural standards, and while large portions of it are translations of the latest Hollywood pablum, outside of the Anglo-Sphere the proportions are generally not as large as some may believe. A painting is an objective thing, though. It is a physical object. It can be interpreted, yes, but the general fact of its existence cannot be altered or denied. Same with a sculpture. We can go and take a modern Chinese painting (or an ancient Chinese painting for that matter) and bring it to Washington DC and put it on display, shearing it of all cultural and historical context, and it's still a painting that can be appreciated on its merits. We can (and have) take apart Graeco-Roman temples and ship their statuary across the seas, destroying or misinterpreting or ignoring their context, and we still have statues. Objects have a meaning in and of themselves that cannot be ignored; so powerful is it that even art from cultures long dead can be recognized and treated according to our standards. Like the sphinx. A memorial to some pharaoh or some god? I don't know, though my father probably would. One moment it can be deemed a threat and disfigured, under the same laws (though with far less finality and malice) that destroyed the Giant Buddhas in Afghanistan. The next it can be left to be covered in sand and weathered away for a thousand years. But it never lost its inherit artistry; revealed, even shorn of much of its glory and its nose, it is a powerful expression of ancient Egyptian cultural meaning. To go forward a moment... I don't like Guernica. I think it's a scribble on canvas, a mockery of the aims it hoped to achieve and the dead it hoped to commemorate. The vast majority of people out there disagree with me, it seems, so let's assume they're right and it IS a powerful expression of man's inhumanity to man. Five hundred years from now, unless we drastically lose the plot, someone looking at the painting should still pick up the raw emotions behind it; why? Because when we look at art from the 16th century, we can generally grasp the emotions behind it, even if much of the context has been lost. So long as cultural continuity in some form or another exists (and the paintings themselves, of course), a painting retains its existence and meaning. But what, pray tell, are they going to think when they find Equivalent VII? I'll tell you what they'll think. "Oh, we found the foundation for some strange building, but there is nothing on the plans to indicate there was a structure here." And then they will dismiss it, and that will be that. So. Is it art? For any given value of art, the answer is no.

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