The Wringer | Issue Two | Art For Art's Sake

Are You Sitting Artfully?

It's a Big Question, right? What exactly is art?

If science is an empirical representation of what exists (in other words it attempts to explain what we perceive around us), is it okay to say that art is its exploratory representation (or non-representation)?

Go on, make a comment. Don't pass up on a chance to be part of the Wringer idiocy...

Lisa Marder (more here) says that art is ‘a symbol of what it means to be human’. Hippocrates is purported to have said, ‘Ars longa, vita brevis’ (life is short, art is long) and Picasso felt that ‘the purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls’. Some would add that art must somehow be infected with originality, although you might argue that some of the most beautiful art is simply a copy, overlaid with (or underpinned by) the artist’s perceptions, skills and intentions (or lack of any one or more of these). The most ‘modern’ of art is sometimes couched in discomfited ambivalence. It asks the observer, ‘Am I art?’ whilst pre-emptively insisting, 'Yes, I am.’

Art has been subjected to a wandering definition over time. Making art has been, variously, a process of: replicating, originating, expressing, socialising, politicising, undermining (including itself), experimenting, radicalising, moralising, challenging, and any combination of these and other definitions. Niklas Luhmann (Germany's leading social theorist of the late twentieth century) describes art as 'a complex social system' that uses perception (rather than language) to communicate. By doing so it transcends the usual barriers between perception and communication. This is not to say for a moment, however, that the definition of art is fixed, or even that his definition is necessarily helpful here. Art is no longer limited even to that which communicates an idea. It includes everything and anything. The punctuation mark at the end of this sentence is art. Does this devalue art? Or does it initiate an affirmative conversation about art? Is art philosophy? Is it the answer that asks a more beautiful question? Is science (the body of knowledge as well as the hypotheses that lead to new knowledge) merely a facet of art?

The dictionary (that vestige of all definition) almost invariably attaches to art the sense that it is creative. To make art, then, the artist must create. Many acts of art (at least, artefacts that are considered art), however, were ‘created’ unconsciously. There are abundant examples of ‘found art', ‘accidental art’, 'unconscious art', 'non-art', and so on. What makes these artefacts ‘art’ is a decision to include them in the category ‘art’. The decision might be made by a curator, a critic, a paying audience, or by the artist. It doesn’t really matter. Emin’s unmade bed, for another instance, is the result of a combination of conscious activity, inconsequential impulses, and unconscious activity (during sleep). The resultant 'artwork' exists because the artist determined it as art, not because of the act of arranging the detritus of which it consists. The ‘creative’ act is the naming of such disarray as art. Just as naming the full stop (above) on the page ‘art’ makes it art* (it is, however, somewhat amusing to visualise curators of such ‘art’ painstakingly locating every item whilst referring earnestly to photographs of the original composition).

So is ‘art’, then, simply the naming of things as art?

Whether art is understood as a means of replicating, originating, expressing or socialising (for example), its meaning is also evolving. What is not-art is not-yet-art. Algorithms may be art, although they are presently not (usually) considered art (unless, perhaps, they embody art or are designed to make art). Lisa Marder may be right, after all, that art is… human. Is art made as the result of code, through the manipulation of some medium, really art? Is not code the result of human endeavour? In artificial intelligence, some code is the unpredictable result of other code. Google’s Mike Tyka uses neural network algorithms to recognise and emphasise patterns in images. The technique creates, over multiple passes over the re-imagined image, an output that is intriguing and sometimes unnerving.

The question is, as always, is this art? The people who paid thousands of dollars for it may say so, as does Ben Davis, the national art critic for artnet News (although he also says it is not art, merely 'a complex filter', but also that, ‘there’s no limit to what you can classify as art’, thus creating a paradox that could, itself, be considered artistry).

So, again, is ‘art’ simply the naming of things as art? Is that enough? At The Wringer, we don’t think it is. However, it’s the closest we can get to defining art, despite history’s attempts to pin it own to a specific definition. Here are a few examples:

Art is a habit-forming drug.

Marcel Duchamp, artist

The writer[artist] is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do.

Donald Barthelme, author

Art… is the art of transformation - perceiving and realising the potential of rough, raw material. Not only is the material transformed but subject matter takes on a new significance, and can be seen and understood in different ways.

Jean Creighton, sculptor

It is easy to forget that there still is something called art which is not: a) a market, b) a component of academia, nor, c) political activism. That is not to ignore the problematics, influence and significance of these other realms. Art does not necessarily need be defended but, despite a century of 'deflation', self-deprecation and anti-art, some kind of art system seems to exist, especially maybe, in the peculiar corners.

Micheál O’Connell, artist, photographer, filmographer

The latter of these (as Mocksim) has recently designated the following as artworks:

a collection of images taken by traffic wardens to record parking contraventions;
courier company Point of Delivery signatures;
supermarket self-checkout machines receipts showing how the systems were used to buy nothing;
bank statements showing money (or no money) being moved unnecessarily around bank accounts.

These are reflections of our increasingly technological civilisation, made works of art because they can be, but always to suggest that the (sometimes unexpected) outcome of systems, and of art itself, can be considered ‘artificial stupidity’. One of his more recent ‘simupoems’ can be seen here.

We can only conclude, rather unsatisfactorily, that art is indefinable. There are too many variables, too many conflicting ideas, too many versions of what people think of as art. Whilst investor-capitalists consider ‘worthy’ artworks a sound bet, and even fund selected up-and-coming artists, they are part of a system that perpetuates regulatory and canonical art-criticism. Art is unnecessary and astonishing, affected and manipulative, truthful and deceptive. Picasso declared that art is a lie that makes us see truth but, as a result of making itself indefinite, art is dead. In presenting a measure of what it is to be human, long live art.

The first image on this page is a work by Christopher Wool (b. 1955) signed, titled and dated 'WOOL 1990 BLUE FOOL' (on the reverse), enamel on aluminium, 108 x 72 in. (274.3 x 182.9 cm.) Painted in 1990.

* The full stop (period) to which this refers is actually a scaled-down, increased contrast copy of 'Black Circle', a 1915 oil on canvas painting by the Kiev-born Russian Suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich. Just in case you had any doubts.