Keep execution, remove intent: you get bathroom decoration, which definitely isn't art.
Remove execution, keep intent: you get modern art, which is still art.
Edit: this comment seems to be interpreted as being against modern art. It really isn't. It also doesn't try to imply that all of modern art is without execution (which would be a ridiculous proposition). The point is that there is still art when we remove execution. Some modern art has very elaborate execution, but sometimes modern art is pure idea, and then it is still art.
Yeah, that's not my point, but it's my fault for not being clear enough. I added a line to the comment you're replying to, to try to make it more explicit.
In your addition to that comment, you write: "The point is that there is still art when we remove execution. Some modern art has very elaborate execution, but sometimes modern art is pure idea, and then it is still art."
You seem to be describing some people's broadened view of art rather than modern art itself.
Modern art was made by many artists with many different views. Some of whom might have found execution more or less important than the concept behind their art -- if they even thought about it that way.
Speaking of which, it'd be interesting to see some examples of artists for whom execution (in some sense) was not at all important.
> In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his Readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice."
> The money was supposed to be used to create modern art. And it was — but not in the way a Danish museum expected when it gave an artist the equivalent of $84,000. In return, it received two empty canvases. The artist, Jens Haaning, says the blank canvases make up a new work of art — titled "Take the Money and Run" — that he calls a commentary on poor wages. One thing it's not, he says, is a theft. "It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work," he said, according to Danish public broadcaster DR. "The work is that I have taken their money," Haaning stated.
(I've been upvoting you because this is an interesting point of view).
At this point, one must ask: what is not art with such a broad definition? And is a definition that excludes nothing useful?
Is it enough for something to be art that some person, living or dead, at some point thought it was art? I know a lot of people think it is, but I really struggle with accepting this definition. Mainly because it's used to let things in that I -- subjectively, in my own opinion -- absolutely dislike as lazy crap. And no, I don't consider being lazy an art form.
The only thing everybody agrees upon is that everybody wants their definition to be the one. There are definitions of art almost as many as there are critics of art and artists taken together, and each and every one will defend their definition to the bitter end. I know I'm not helping the discussion here but the debates go almost religiously and you simply can't debate faith (nor should you). Maybe some even have some beef in calling something particular "art". Anyway. Easier is: if they call something art I let them call it art, and just don't buy it or ignore the discussion if I don't like it. So basically my take is: art is if I enjoy it - mostly as a sensorial pleasure or even as a metaphorial challenge.
> Easier is: if they call something art I let them call it art, and just don't buy it or ignore the discussion if I don't like it. So basically my take is: art is if I enjoy it - mostly as a sensorial pleasure or even as a metaphorial challenge.
Sounds healthy. I can live with that rule of thumb.
In Duchamp's case the execution of the art would be Duchamp's choice of which object to dignify as art. He did make a choice, so execution would be involved.
In Haaning's case maybe the execution is in the choice of blank canvas and coming up with the concept... would you buy that?
Execution is making something. Decisions and speeches and choice and "coming up with the concept" don't constitute execution. But they show intent, and therefore, IMHO, art.
Art is like crime. It's a bigger crime to think of something bad, and then do it. But in lots of cases, planning to do a crime is a crime, even without implementation.
So I guess for you that "something" has to be tangible.
How would you characterize a musical composition.. could that be art?
After all, a musical composition is nothing without being performed -- either on real instruments or in a sheet music reader's imagination. But that performance is not in the composition, so one could argue the composition itself has no execution and therefore by your definition of art a musical composition is modern art. Yet there are plenty of pre-modern compositions, arguably without execution either.
It looks like in some modern art and the artists behind it are lacking , I'd say, skill/labor not execution because the execution exists in some shape or form. But many of these artists are trained classically and could perform in a classical way if they really wanted to (though some can't), but choose to express themselves in novel ways. And that does get pushed a bit too far, sometimes up to the point that we wonder what could NOT be considered art. But even if you don't like most modern art, at some point you will find something that stirs something in you, something that would not be possible if we had very rigid/conservative standards. I find that modern art is more about processes, abstractions and ideas.
Modern art is art! I said as much. It doesn't so much lack in execution as it lacks execution: it's often not executed at all.
But that's good! In many ways modern art is pure intent: put something where it doesn't belong, or think of putting it where it doesn't belong, and you're done.
My point is not against modern art, or even about modern art; what I meant to say was actually quite the opposite: that intent is what matters, and if you remove execution but still keep the intent, then there is still art, whereas if you do the opposite, then there is no art.
I'll extent that widely: bathroom decoration is art.
Marcel Duchamp famously made scandal with his "Fountain", which is precisely a bathroom element.
What he meant is that the gesture of declaring that a readymade object is art is art by itself.
So pure intent is art.
Some may find it ridiculous, but please try and reconsider: the scandal it provoked and the questioning about what art is - that was the intent of Duchamp when he declared that urinal (that he put upsidedown and signed) a piece of art.
And truly that gesture is still considered today as an important moment of the History of Art.
Paradoxically, some crafts by non-artists are considered ad art, despite being without any intent of art.
It's called "art brut" which translated from French would mean something like "raw art". Some guys do their thing for their own but their artistic value is difficult to miss.
So what about bathroom decoration? Well, some people can turn their bathroom into a piece of art. They may be artists or common people.
But saying that doesn't mean that everything is art, just that we should pay attention and notice art when it appears to you, even in an unexpected place.
When you wrote "execution", you meant the material result produced. But the act of making art ... is also art.
Jackson Pollock is a famous painter but he's mainly remembered for the videos of him painting. Watching him is fascinating. The paintings themselves, well, not much so (some will disagree, and they are right to, more on this later).
I never saw a Pollock's painting in a museum without a video next to him showing him painting. He never asked that. But it's no mystery that he wanted to be filmed.
So the act of creation is art by itself.
But many disagree on the artistic value of most of modern and contemporary art, usually saying that their infant or a monkey could do it, or themselves.
So what is the place of judgment in art? In fact, it's a non-question. A piece of art doesn't exist if nobody look at it and/or experience it.
A book exists not because it's written but because someone reads it. The vast majority of the production of artists, writers, painters, sculptors is forgotten. Most of books that receive literary prizes are considered piece of xxx 50 years later. To the point where it's difficult to apprehend why it was considered as art... So we are right back at the beginning, right?
Well, no: experiencing a piece of art is not passive. The watcher or the reader is active. Phenomenology as well as scientific experiences have demonstrated that our senses are not passive. We build what we see and what we read. For example, when reading a novel, we build in our imagination a representation of the characters, the places etc. That's why watching a movie based on a novel is almost always disappointed. What we see on-screen doesn't match with our representation.
So the audience is a co-creator of a piece of art. Artists are absolutely divided on this: some consider that the audience is passive and the art is totally theirs. But that's just untrue, it's nothing but an ego issue. And nobody care about their opinion on this. If a writer dislike how a character is understood by its readers, well, what can he do about it? Once produced, a piece of art totally escapes from the artist's hands. Other artists go totally on the opposite side, saying plainly: 100% of what you feel and understand from my work is yours.
So the question if something is art or not is ... a non-question. In the end, what matters is what you, as someone of the audience, experience from it, in an active way since each if us - actively even if often unconsciously, co-creates the art.
What you feel, what your emotions are, the questions that arise in you, that is the only thing that matters. Art doesn't need validation. Nor fom any authorities like museums, neither a social consensus.
A proof of that? Go to a museum and look at paintings from, let's say, the XVIIIth century. The craft is often amazing. It's obvious that all those guys were super skilled. But do you feel something?
Well, some do, but I rarely. I appreciate the craft but most of the time I'm bored. Quite often I go to an exhibition and ... I'm disappointed. Because I didn't feel anything.
That's also true for super famous artists. The Sixtine Chapel from Michaelangelo? I stayed quite a while but couldn't see it. So it's not art? Obviously it is, but my art education is insufficient to apprehend it. It's like classical music. You need to learn it. And once again learning is not gulling data. It's an active process where you train your mind to see the world differently. It's also having the basic keys to decrypt what's in front of you.
I was raised in Brazil and frankly, classical music is hard. I have started my own modest education, just by listening the whole symphonies of the melodies everybody knows and likes. Little by little, I learn to appreciate. I haven't go far but well, it's getting enjoyable while I'm still totally uninterested by the Sixtine Chapel.
Too bad for me, and who cares if I consider art or not. I could say it's just a church "decoration".
So the whole debate of deciding if it's art or not is ... pointless. The only one interested are of 2 kinds:
- those making money with art. It's art if it has a financial value. As if a book was judged by the $21 you pay for it. Ridiculous but price depends from rarity, so it's important to them to build a totally arbitrary wall between what is art and what is not. Most of the museums are also in the same logic, hence their incapacity in general to display the art of our time.
- those who need social validation to make their own judgment. The mastery in painting reality as it appears to us, as if it was the true thing, is a socially constructed norm to design art. Why? Because it only reveals the mastery of crafting. As if being able to write verses that rhymes makes you a poet. It doesn't, does it? :-)
Consider music. When you dislike it, do you question it as being music? 99% of the time I don't. I just don't feel anything or I plainly dislike it.
So finally, art is a continuum, with no segmentation. From the intent (Duchamp) to the execution (Pollock painting) to the "piece of art" (which can be anything, like a graffiti or the soup cans of Warhol, e.g. simple industrial reproduction of a picture) to the active work from the audience grasping what they are able to from it.
Sometimes, it's easy to experience it: a great song, or the melting watches of Dali - which is a weird case because it's difficult to put the right words onto them (for me at least) but absolutely everybody remembers that picture once they have seen it. Many people don't know it's by Dali but somehow they can't help not remembering it.
Art is where you feel it. I remember some bathrooms. Many people decorate them without any limit, as if everything was permitted just in that place because it's for poo anyway, right? You can let your inner craziness express itself because this is a place where nobody is supposed to judge you on. It's for poo! The decoration of your living room is the exact opposite, the place where you display were you belong in the social hierarchy. It has a view on the skyline or not. It's leather or a basic fabric. It's a basic stuff from IKEA or an stylish leather couch.
Bathrooms are definitely the place where there is "art brut" to discover, and to discover that your friend has an artistic sense that he refrains to express elsewhere. Maybe they paint but they are reluctant to show you. Well, it's too soon, my production is shitty still... And back to the bathroom we are!
Keep execution, remove intent: you get bathroom decoration, which definitely isn't art.
Remove execution, keep intent: you get modern art, which is still art.
Edit: this comment seems to be interpreted as being against modern art. It really isn't. It also doesn't try to imply that all of modern art is without execution (which would be a ridiculous proposition). The point is that there is still art when we remove execution. Some modern art has very elaborate execution, but sometimes modern art is pure idea, and then it is still art.