TRUE ART

The bad: Jackson Pollock, No 5.

What is art? And why is that a difficult question?

Let's start off by looking at two paintings. The first one is "No. 5"  by Jackson Pollock. The second one is a painting by Veronique Meignaud. 

The good: Veronique Meignaud, Illusion token.

The first one is complete random mess of accidental splashes of paint. The second one shows detail, imagination, good composition. When you look at the first one you know you are looking at splashes of paint. But the second one might convince you that the painter has captured something from another world. Or opened some transdimensional portal.

The first painter is internationally recognized as a great painter, and the particular painting that I showed you has been auctioned off for $ 140.000.000. The second painter is much less known, and that painting is used on a card of the game Magic: The gathering.


This obvious discrepancy between the quality of the artists' work versus their renown makes me mad!

And I don't think this is just an exception to the rule. See the other examples below.

I have witnessed the mass production of unimaginative crap because of heavy government subsidizing. I have witnessed the deterioration in product quality when you walk in a museum from the classical pieces to the modern. I have witnessed the widespread praise in big museums, and television shows of robotic, color-blind Neanderthals with brain damage, while the true artists are hidden behind a nicely drawn avatar on DeviantArt. Here I try to convince you of using a different, less ambivalent definition of art. If only to give credit to the people that deserve it.

TRUE ART IS COMPLEX

The bad: Barnett Newman

I think I can argue that true art is defined by complexity. But first let me show you what merriam-webster dictionary says about art: "something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings". Superficially, this definition seems all right. But if you analyse it you will see that it's not.

The first part "created with imagination and skill" says more about the way it was created than it says about the work itself. For a forger might make an excellent copy of a painting, but didn't use any imagination to create it. So according to the definition, the copy would not be art, but the original would, even though the paintings themselves are identical. That cannot be right. The qualities of the product, not of the method should determine whether it is art or not.

The second part "that is beautiful, or that expresses important ideas or feelings" is equally weird. Being beautiful is important, because to me, that's what art is for. But it is also subjective. You cannot analyse the work and see whether it is beautiful or not, you have to ask people. And "expressing important ideas or feelings" is again not a quality of the product, but of the method. No matter what political views the artists has, or what emotions he felt during the production of the work. What matters is the result.

The good: Клим Новосельцев, In the land of dreams.

Never mind that the psychotic killer thought he was doing the right thing when committing murder. What matters is that he killed someone. It does not matter how the person feels when giving to charity, what matters is how that money is ultimately being spent. What ultimately matters to art is how it appears to the viewer. Never mind the artist. What matters is what characteristics the work posses. Nothing more.

The last thing art is not, is what the viewer sees in it. I have often heard art connoisseurs talking about all matters of things they see in some abstract painting. They credit the artist for making an imaginative painting, while it's obviously their own imagination that should get credit. I think I'm safe to say that most painters can see all matters of things in a blank canvas. That does not make the blank canvas a great piece of art.

The bad: K. Malevich, white on white.

I would say that all true art is complex. Complexity in this case means 'the degree by which it can be created by one accident'. Works of low complexity are easily created by chance. For example, in my neighbourhood there are a lot of pieces of rusty iron standing on the side of the road. The people that 'created' these things call them works of art, but I don't. When you start with a piece of metal you get from the junk-yard, perhaps cut away a piece, and then let it rust, you create something that can come into existence without your interventions. Similarly, one could get a floor covered in peanut butter, or a flipped urinal by accident. Likewise, you can imagine that a storm could create the Pollock's, when you provide it with opened paint tins and canvas. But the things I call art would not happen by accident in a million years.

Art is not the immediate product of a simple accident. Art is created very deliberately, consciously, accurately. The more complex a work is, the more it is art. Note that if art is only defined by complexity, then all manners of machines are also included, like automobiles, and computers. But I think this is fine.

The good: Xeeming, NecroVenus.

WHO TO CREDIT?

The last thing I want to say is that one should be very careful when determining the artist responsible for the work. For example, someone could make a photograph of a beautiful tree. The tree is considered art on basis of its complexity, and the artist is evolution. The camera is art, and the artists are the designers, the robots and factory workers, all combined. But when starting with a tree and camera, the photo could be easily a product of an accident. It's only the press of a button, after all. Therefore, the photographer is not an artist.

Nor are many people who repurpose common objects. Often such repurposing reduces complexity, and so these people might be better called hooligans than anything else.