A Modern Conversation: What Is Art and Who Defines It?
Modern art is confusing. It blurs every single definition that is taught to us by parents, schools, and society. It blurs the mainstream beauty standards, the boundary between the artists and the audience, and the definition of art. That is why modern art is so exciting and liberating. However, I did not find the right thing to look for when I first encountered modern art. I had been trying to understand it by figuring out what is in the picture or scene, and what the style of the artist is. I was missing the bigger picture underneath it, until one day I walked into an exhibition in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and came to a new realization.
It was in one of the video art exhibition rooms in the corner of the top floor. The room consisted of televisions and mirrors. When I first walked in, I was not sure which screen to look at. I thought the TVs were playing video recordings of the wandering people. It was not until I found myself in multiple screens that I realized that it was a live recording, or more accurately, a reflection of everyone who walked by. Multiple mirrors created a stack effect of the viewers’ reflections, which were also recorded on the TV screens. I thought I was looking at the art, but it turned out that I was just staring at myself.
The first question that popped out of my mind was: What was the art here? Was I a part of it? If I was observing the art and simultaneously I was also part of it, was the art observing me too? I felt like I was falling into a loop: I stared at myself in the TV, which was recording me staring at the mirror reflections of myself. I was not sure if I could decide the content of the art since I was not the artist. Or maybe, it was the artist’s intention that the viewers decided what was in the art. Therefore, the second question I raised was: who should define the art?
The idea of getting the audience involved in art is not new. It can be traced back to some of Nam June Paik’s video art in the 1960s. In one of his videos, TV Bra for Living Sculpture (1969), he records both a woman playing cello nakedly and the audience watching the performance. In the video, some people look confounded, some look contemplative, and others look expectant. I guess what Nam June Paik wants to say is that everything happening in the same time and space as the art is also part of the art. Art is contextual; it should be an integration of the showcase and the audience.
I came across another interesting art piece on the opening day of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). It was just a line in the corner. There was nothing on the other side of the line. At that time I was confused, but reflecting on it, I think the line might be a way to concretize the boundary between the art and the audience. However, it is not defined that which side the art is. The art can be the flowing air on the other side or the viewers on this side. But on either side, we can put anything, so it seems unimportant to decide which side the art is. Although the artist presents a concrete image of a boundary, he does not separate anything.
I realize that I have been talking about all these assumptions about the intentions of the artists, but maybe they never meant for any of these; it can be just my own interpretations. Thus, it comes down to my second question: who defines the art? Is it the person who creates the art or the one who views it?
There was once a funny event happened in SFMOMA. A naughty teenager put a pair of glasses on the floor of the museum. In a few minutes, people started taking pictures of this pair of glasses, mistaking it as part of the exhibition. It was intended to be a prank, but it made me reflect on how most of the time we recognize art. Some people identify the glasses as art because it is placed in an art museum, so locality is a big factor. Some people decide that this pair of glasses is art because it is a way to represent the eyes of the audience viewing all the other artworks in the exhibition.
These people find their own interpretations, so does it matter if they find out about the “truth”? Does it matter if the original motivation behind art is not art? Art should not be limited to the creators; the views can be the side to start the conversation. Such thing happens in the museum of modern art for a reason. In the world of modern art, there’s not a standard or boundary for anything you see. If we play this trick in a traditional art museum, probably the glasses will soon end up in lost and found.
Conventionally, people identify a piece of artwork mostly by the person who creates it, the technics being applied to it, or the location it is presented. When someone mentions that he or she likes art, the questions being asked might be: Who is your favorite artist? Which art museum do you like to visit? However, the rising of art forms such as video art, street art, assemblage art and funk architectures starts increasing the flexibility and availability of art.
In the early 1960s, a group of students from the California College of Arts built a few sculptures right next to a highway in Emeryville, California and called them mudflat sculptures. These sculptures were made of very basic materials that were obtained from trash and debris. The students hoped to emphasize on the process of making art instead of the final outcomes and any individual efforts, so these sculptures were not meant to last.
I can imagine that at the time, most people who passed by those mudflats might not even recognize them as art, because the mudflats do not follow their set of rules for identifying art. They might think that it was just a bunch of kids building for fun. This transient art form completely disregards the authority and locality people use to identify art. However, those students did not intend to build a long-term artwork for exhibition. They create a new illustration of art. They see the experience of themselves making the art as a major part of the art. Therefore, art is not limited to the viewers either.
Modern art is the most intriguing art form for me because everything is opened for discussion and interpretation. The viewers can question what is in the art or if it can be even considered art, and artists themselves might be asking these questions too. Such an interaction of thoughts is much more intriguing than the situation where only one side is listening to the other side’s story.
Art is not just about the art itself or the creator, but also about the context, the viewers and the thinking process involved. The authority over art becomes indeterminate. The modern audience are no longer walking through an art museum, holding a pamphlet of museum guidance, and eagerly searching for the artist names and artwork descriptions.
It should be noted that we are not discrediting the artists in any way, we are just establishing an equality between the artists and the viewers through modern art. Artists are no longer controlling what the viewers see and interpret, and at the same time, the viewers are not preventing the artists from creating new definitions of art.
Lastly, I want to bring about the fundamental meanings and motivations behind all the above questions I asked. The reason we are able to come up with these questions is because of the fundamental philosophy of modern art. Before the modern era, art is like a beauty filter of the world, a nice portrait of the reality, or a vivid narration of a story. The way people usually see art is like the questions they are taught to ask in a traditional art history class: is it an oil painting? Who is the woman portrayed? What is the story behind it? What is the style of this artist? However, if we are asking the exact same questions on modern art, we will probably end up confused and uninspired, because modern art is more about concepts.
Modern art appears when people start reflecting on the higher level questions: How is art created? How to interact with art? What is art fundamentally? Then, people start pushing around the rules previously defined. They start readjusting all kinds of boundaries set for art. They are pushing them further and further to a point that they start asking: is there even a boundary to art at all? But if there isn’t a boundary then we can just point to anything and call it art, so there is no point to discuss what art is anymore.
From my perspectives, rather than arguing that the modern art is pushing the boundary of art, we should see it more as adding abstractions to our understanding of the world. Art evolves from describing a certain scenario, to expressing a certain emotion, and finally to interpreting a concept. Therefore, I think asking what art should involves and who defines the art is the key to understand the abstractions created by modern art. And, with the contributions of both the artists and the audience, we expand the dimension of art.
