The Eye of the Beholder: A Defense of Modern Art
My perspective on how modern art became so ugly (and why I still appreciate it)
A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It might seem odd that someone as STEM-oriented as I am would be remotely interested in the art world, particularly modern art, since it looks so…trashy. And if you had told me that 2 years ago, I probably would have agreed with you. After all, a blue line on a white square or a messy potpourri of paint hardly speaks to the magnificent potential of the human imagination.
So, what changed?
Well, in my senior year of high school, I joined the Academic Decathlon team, and one of the 10 events we studied for the competition was Art in 1960s America. Initially, I was not looking forward to studying the humanities categories — not only did I find art to be dull, I knew absolutely nothing about the subject, so I had a massive learning curve to surmount before the competition.
Unsurprisingly, art ended up being my worst category at contests, but as I slogged through the history of the Renaissance and the development of Abstract Expressionism, scrutinizing the artworks of Robert Rauschenberg and (Carnegie Mellon’s most famous alum!) Andy Warhol, I gradually began to appreciate the genius that went behind their life’s work. Each piece we studied, from Jasper Johns’ Flag to Eva Hesse’s Repetition Nineteen III (both of which are on display on the 4th floor of MoMA), was bizarrely unique, offering a glimpse at a deceptively complex story of the artwork’s creation and the message that the artist was trying to send through it. The longer you linger, the more inspirational the artwork becomes.
But I don’t expect you to suddenly transform into an art enthusiast by just telling you this. Instead, let’s look at a few examples of some of the most prominent artists of the modern era, as well as a few artworks that explain how the art world evolved to where it is now.
Gustave Courbet: Rags not Riches
When you hear (or in this case, read) the word “art”, what does your intuition make you think of? In your mind, you probably see da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, or Michelangelo’s David —famous Renaissance artworks that appeal to a sense of grandeur, and where the eye can easily identify aesthetic talent through the basic principles of art, like form, color, and perspective.
Enter the Paris Salons in the early-to-mid 1800s, an annual meeting in the French art world first started by the luxurious “sun king” Louis XIV during the height of the Baroque period in art. Artworks at the Salons, selected by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, were intended to celebrate the type of “high art” that matches the style of your mental images.
But some individuals had had enough of Romantic art that only portrayed the rosier aspects of life. Instead, artists like Gustave Courbet chose to highlight the seemingly mundane through the new movement of Realism, elevating normal details of reality to the same status as “fine culture”. Courbet’s work The Stonebreakers, depicting two common laborers smashing away at rocks, was displayed at the Salon in 1850, much to the displeasure of the audience, whose tastes followed a far more conventional style for their time.
Courbet’s artwork was just as much a rebellion against the principles of Romanticism and Neoclassicism as it was a socially and politically motivated message, feeding off the spirit of the recent 1848 revolutions in Europe. In The Stonebreakers, we see the beginning of Western art’s shift from an aesthetic and emotional appeal to finery to a more grounded, thought-provoking method that is unafraid to offer contemporary social commentary.
But how far would some artists go to implement contemplative commentary through their work?
Marcel Duchamp: Potty Mouth
Fast forward half a century later to New York City in 1917, where a surging art scene wishes to seize the position of unofficial capital of the art world from Paris. Amidst this community, a man by the name of Marcel Duchamp plans out his next work of art: a urinal.
Duchamp was a pioneer of the readymade, an art piece that was constructed by assembling objects from daily life. Fountain is one of Duchamp’s more notable readymades, primarily because of how it egregiously violates one of the unspoken rules of museums: urinals are not art.
Yet, by taking an everyday object (for half of the population at least) and placing it in the context of a museum, Duchamp provoked an intense emotional reaction from the viewing audience and stimulated critical discussion over the nature of the material he displayed. If that is not the hallmark of a successful piece of art, then what is? Duchamp challenged the limits of our understanding of what art is, bluntly demonstrating how non-art can become art simply by the power of the artist’s choice.
Duchamp’s rise to fame by signing a urinal seems absolutely ludicrous, almost unfair. After all, almost every building in the world has a urinal — what makes Duchamp’s any different? To understand how artists rise to stardom and persuade world-class museums to adorn the walls with their works, we’ll turn the clock just a few decades forward to the shining gem of Abstract Expressionism.
Jackson Pollock: Splish Splash
Chances are you’ve probably heard of the name Jackson Pollock. Maybe you’ve even seen his work. If you haven’t, he became one of the most famous American artists of the 20th century and a leader in the field of Abstract Expressionism by perfecting the difficult skill of throwing paint at a canvas.
There’s an excellent video by Vox detailing how Jackson Pollock grew to become an American idol. In short, an art critic by the name of Clement Greenberg endorsed Pollock’s works of Abstract Expressionism, lauding them as the greatest form of art and citing him as an example that the center of the art world had shifted from Europe to New York. It was Greenberg’s glowing praise that first brought Pollock to national attention, but it wasn’t just a one-way relationship. As Pollock rose, so did Greenberg, vaulting his name to a legendary status within the art world, just as how Pollock’s fame grew to make him a household name today.
A common reaction to Pollock’s (or any other modern artist’s) work is to look at an abstract painting and disgustedly retort: “Even I could make that!”
That statement is probably true — anyone with functioning arms can drop a canvas on the ground and wiggle a brush to make a drip painting, but not everyone has an art critic like Clement Greenberg to dissect its creation, scrutinize its undertones, and promote it through popular media, enticing museums around the world to eagerly acquire their own Pollocks.
Final Thoughts: Banana Time
So with all this in mind, how can I enjoy visiting museums to view modern art, if their fame is merely the byproduct of an effective marketing scheme pulling the strings?
Let’s return to the art installation you saw at the very beginning of this article: Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, which was heavily scapegoated a few months back for its representation of the tragic degradation of modern art from aesthetic ideals.
I’ll make the claim that Comedian, marketing or not, is a true piece of art. Just like Pollock’s paintings and Duchamp’s readymades, there is no apparent beauty to be derived by gazing upon this supposed piece of art. Instead, the work’s insight comes from Cattelan’s absurdist message questioning how a combination of materials constitutes a work of art. Like the readymades, Cattelan’s art piece is composed of a dry wall, a banana, and a single, crudely torn piece of duct tape — common items you could find in any household.
Due to its material composition, there’s a degree of flexibility in Comedian that takes it a step further than Duchamp’s Fountain. Over time, the banana will rot, and the glue on the duct tape will lose its hold, so they will both need to be replaced. Once that occurs, are we still looking at the same Comedian? Cattelan has now forced us to consider identity as an aspect of art in a manner similar to Plato’s Ship of Theseus thought experiment. The high level of critical thinking that Comedian inspires merits its classification as a legitimate work of art (QED).
However, there’s a far more significant implication conveyed by Comedian that, in my opinion, Cattelan did not intend to communicate.
If everyday objects can magically be transformed into art by simply putting them in a museum and slapping a new name on them, then we should be encouraged to look beyond just the art displayed in museums, to look at all the wacky and wild ideas out there in the world that the art community has not yet come to a consensus on supporting. If any item in the physical realm can become art, then maybe the only factor stopping your classmate’s watercolor paintings or your personal doodles in the margins of your notebook from becoming the art world’s next big trend is the context of a museum environment, or the praise of an art critic. Yes, the museum installations make headlines and attract attention, but modern art seems to defy the aura of elegance and respect that museums are so entrenched in, encouraging us to disregard famous art and focus more on the smaller details we may be missing out on.
After all, isn’t this what Duchamp’s readymades suggested over a hundred years ago? If you move an ugly restroom to a museum and it becomes elevated to art, then what really is the value of art? As the viewer, we can only find the answer for ourselves by taking a closer look at the beauty of the world around us.
