This discussion is rarely very productive. People at both ends of the scale mostly talk past each other as far as I can tell.
This, in part, is because the word art still carries a set of romantic connotations on the order of "pretty", "skillful", "elevated" and "genius".
Incidentally, a lot of modern art (which is not the same as contemporary art, by the way) had the goal of getting rid of and breaking free from these ideas, which had become an encumbrance. Which is why the people still lamenting e.g. Duchamp's bottle rack or his fountain are missing his point entirely.
You should be sorry you mentioned it now
It has been roughly estimated that you have to spend about 10,000 hours practising and and learning under the guidance of experts to become proficient in any field. That applies to sport, it applies to science, and it sure as hell should apply to art.
It is not an elitist attiude, it is a fact of life.
You cannot become a quantum physicist by attending the University of Google in your spare time. You must do the hard yards. You may be born with a talent for sport but, if you don't practice under the guidance of a trained coach for hours every day, you will never reach your potential. Why should art be any different?
This idea is wrong because by extension, when someone who's not an accomplished track athlete is moving quickly under their own locomotion, that could not be called "running", or when someone is whistling to themselves or singing in a non-professional choir, that could not be "performing music". Or a baby below the age of 13 months would not be "breathing". All of which are clearly absurd.
She should have stopped at the critical analysis, said that it was nowhere near the standard of the exhibition, and left "the Club" out of it.
Rom Tomkins , there is a big difference I think, is that while the classic fan (as I am) may not *LIKE* other music current, he can easily recognize that it is music (as opposed to random noise). There is about 1 or 2 composer I can remember where the difference between noise and music is blurry but the crushing majority is recognizable as music. I would not classfiy death punk metal (or techno) as "not music" and the crushing majority of the folk would not either, although they will readily they don't like it.
Have a look at the "What do rappers' hand gestures mean" thread, where a few otherwise sane posters have maintained for many pages now that rap cannot be defined as music. In other words, they dislike a musical genre so much that they try to define it out of existence.
People do this with art all the time. It's apparently not enough to just say that whatever art they dislike is bad art or failed art or just not very interesting, so they try to define it out of existence. Everyone else must acknowledge that it's non-art before these people are satisfied. You're doing it now.
Regarding the noise composers, a currently active one would be
Merzbow. He's not only widely recognized, his music is very much worth it to a lot of people. People who pay good money to go to his concerts and listen to him perform his music - which are among the basic activities that define what music
is - even though it sounds to the untrained ear like a really loud radio tuned between two stations.
Put it on the street, without explanation and price tag, and it will be removed every tuesday and thursday of the week, by the garbage collection man.
Yes, and rightly so, because in that case it wouldn't be art. Nobody will be looking upon it as an artistic utterance, which is one of the effects of putting things in a gallery or museum.
A lot of bad stuff gets put in galleries and museums, true, but in that case it's more constructive to call it out as what it is: Bad art.
And that is IMHO the main difference. If your average man/woman lead to be led by the nose to brainwashed "this IS art!", and they look at it very dubiously , then clearly, something is very wrong with either the majority of the folk, *OR* a few folk are trying to define as art , whatever pass through their mind and pretend it woke up their eomotion.
But that's just the thing: Culture consists mainly of humans imposing meaning and values on the physical world, which couldn't care less. What artists and the art establishment are doing is sometimes empty and pretentious, and you would be right in calling them on it. But the mere fact that they're exhibiting, viewing, critiquing, buying, selling (et cetera) this stuff makes it art.
Not at all sorry. I rather enjoy these type of discussions, even better in a bar with a few drinks. The only downside being I'll be simi-obsessed with the topic for the next few days.
