Art and its narrative
This is an entry from my journal.
I just watched What is Art? by the ever-informative Great Art Explained channel. It focuses on the work of Marcel Duchamp. To me, there is a more general theme about the importance of narrative in our lives. It is how we frame the world and dictates what we understand therein by means of interpretation.
At one level, I find the salient point of modern art persuasive. Without the overarching narrative, any given item loses its original set of meanings or acquires a different set of meanings altogether. Art must then be alive, for it is always in a process of being discovered, being thought of anew as a stimulus that engenders thoughts and evokes emotions in its observer. There is no singular meaning to a work of art and, more importantly, it is not inherent to the artefact as such.
This is, for example, why a person of a different culture may think of ancient Greek nude statues as indecent (or worse). Such a person applies a different set of values to the objects, to the effect that what they interpret is conditioned by what they already believe to be good or true.
[ Also watch/listen to my long video: Why are Greek gods naked? (2024-08-18). ]
Modern art thus challenges us to keep an open mind and to not think of the world of human affairs as having clear delineations between its various facets. Our understanding of objective magnitudes, such as beauty, are underpinned by conceptual frameworks which are, in one way or another, subjectively construed through cultural processes. We can still express preference, in the form of liking some work of art more than another, though we cannot draw indelible lines that demarcate where art begins and where it ends. It is why concepts such as beauty cannot be perfectly defined: you know it when you feel it.
Still, I am not at ease with the lengths to which modern art has gone to make us tolerate ambiguity. I think that in its effort to prove its point, it becomes a caricature of itself that must always remind us that we cannot put it in a box. As such, the artist renders their self irrelevant in the process because everyone is an artist in some way, if we are willing to perform the requisite mental gymnastics.
For instance, in the video we are presented to a quote from Marcel Duchamp that “while all artists were not chess players, all chess players were artists.” This is, again, a statement about narrative although here we no longer limit the discussion to values and ideas but to the very activity involved. If playing chess is art because of all the possible ways it can be played, then so is digging ditches. You can do them by hand, with a mattock or pickaxe, in quick bursts of action or long sessions, while wearing a cap or being topless, during the summer or in the winter, et cetera. The conclusion from this line of reasoning is that “all is art”, perhaps once we rule out some exceptions to the rule. What does that make of someone like Marcel Duchamp then? Are there artists anymore?
Once we tear down all structures, we are left in a state of meaninglessness, where art itself cannot exist as a distinct category because it is indistinguishable from non-art. All such binaries collapse into themselves and there is nothing left to say about them. This is not because the original theme of being mindful of the prevailing narrative is wrong, but due to the absence of any frame of reference with which to discern—and thus order—patterns in our milieu.
So while I agree that, strictly speaking, the notion of art VS non-art has no defined boundaries, it still is useful for us to think in those terms. Perhaps we cannot define the concepts involved in the most precise way, though this does not imply that we are necessarily labouring under illusions. What we are doing may still be rooted in some objective magnitude, however elusive. Otherwise, the unique genius of a work like Aphrodite of Melos is equivalent to some 3-year-old moving chess pieces on a board for the first time.
It thus comes down to practicality. A frame of reference, however defined, has to be in place for us to be in a position to tell this apart from that. If all is the same, nothing means anything and the very idea of “art” is devoid of absurd. The question then is whether contemporary art has empowered us to express our selves by rendering conspicuous the function of narratives in our life or is undermining artistry altogether. If Marcel Duchamp can sign a bidet and thus transform it into art, then all we need is some public figure to label whatever they want as the pinnacle of aesthetics. Art critics will follow up on that to explain to us, in ever the obscurantist language, how we are too narrow-minded to understand the value therein and why this is, in fact, a stroke of mastery. Art then may be about the weaving of the narrative, decoupled from any tangible contribution.
In the absence of standards, we end up with an abundance of mediocrity that passes off as excellence. Indeed, “excellence” has no standing. The political and economic ramifications are far-reaching. Those who could spend a lifetime perfecting their craft may instead become social media influencers and use their platform to produce art out of toilet paper. But why even have people do that when AI can just as well mass produce “possibilities” the way chess players do, to return to the aforementioned quote of Marcel Duchamp.
This is ultimately not about art but about how we conceptualise our existence. Having a point of reference gives us the basis to not only appreciate those who try hard but also to call out the charlatans. In politics, we can tell apart a domain expert from someone who never read a book in their life. In the economy, we can identify productive entrepreneurs from snake oil merchants. In sport, we know who is elite and who is not fit for the game. And so on.
It is one thing to dismantle existing narratives. It is another to propose what we should be doing instead once nothing is left standing. Do we try to set up something again—and is that not yet another narrative?—or do we subsist in tautologies and confusion? This is how the thinker is undone by their own overthinking. It is why I value practicality in my philosophy and believe that what matters is not what we say, but what we do. Once we couch our ideas in terms of action, we develop a better sense of where to stop and not to generalise further, for the limits of the mind are not those of the body, yet the embodied mind is all we have as humans.