What is so bad about modern art?
For many, the question has an easy and perhaps rather cynical answer.
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Americans are notorious for their reticent endorsement of the arts but seem to be particularly suspicious of modern paintings and sculptures.
From what I can decipher amid the several heated debates I’ve had with skeptics of modern art, there seems to be a general sense that modern artists have not earned their place within galleries, universities and other gate-keeping institutions of high culture.
I think this general dismissal follows from the apparent lack of technical skill and realistic representation present in modern art. It is a “my kid could do that” sensibility.
The bevy of strange spectacles and public relations disasters that have become media frenzies for the art world probably has not helped either.
In recent memory, there was the infamous “Comedian” by Italian sculptor Maurizio Cattelan. The piece was simply a banana duct-taped to a wall that went viral after selling for $120,000.
While familiarity with Cattelan’s larger body of work would contextualize “Comedian” as a prank of sorts within his signature absurdist and satirically self-aware style, for many, this was simply a gross summation of an elitist, incredibly corrupt high culture that had little to do with what sane people consider “art.”
I would like to advance a defense of modern art. Not an uncritical defense, of course, but an argument for a cultural reconsideration of what these more recent traditions of visual art have to offer us.
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I do not see how it is fair or particularly useful to see things like realism or technical complexity as the only standards of artistic excellence, especially when many would be hesitant to retain those criteria when speaking of cave paintings, medieval icons and the purely geometrical art of the Islamic golden age.
I ascribe to a sort of benevolent relativism when it comes to different traditions within the arts. By this I mean that an artwork’s merit is dependent upon its execution within the specific conditions of its purpose and what is appropriate for the kind of art that it is.
Perhaps another way of thinking about this is in terms of the “rules” of creating art. After all, a break with the rules of European academic art is how modern art came to be in the first place. Perhaps the history of modern art might even be described as a continual subversion of traditional expectations.
This issue of whether artistic creation should be tied to rules is a complicated one. I find it a debate that, at least in public discourse, too frequently gets over-simplified between two warring camps.
On the one hand, some with a more Romantic sensibility claim that artistic creation is all about an individual’s subjective expression and imaginative liberty. In this view, there are no rules in art; only the artist’s pure freedom.
Meanwhile, the other position tends to be more conservative in tone, arguing that the development of great art is necessarily tied to specific historical processes and aesthetic sensibilities. Interestingly, some have posited that this view is derived from a Renaissance interpretation of Plato’s philosophy of art as well as the era’s general obsession with emulating the accomplishments of classical antiquity.
I buy into neither position. On the contrary, I am enamored with the belief of 20th century philosopher Jacques Maritain, who states that, for the artist, rules and conventional procedures are tools that should only be used when they work to benefit the individual artwork at hand.
Maritain goes on to describe beauty, which is the objective of fine art, as an infinite, all-encompassing concept that cannot be restricted within a particular style or artistic tradition. Many different things can be beautiful, but nothing can exhaust beauty entirely.
Hopefully, these philosophical insights, complicated as they may seem, can be helpful in seeing how modern art stands alongside the great art of the past, simply by using a different configuration of tools to build something with a novel view of the same old inexhaustible beauty.
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All that said, I am not without my own qualms regarding certain tendencies in modern art.
Admittedly, I face a roadblock here given my more traditional approach of seeing beauty as the distinctive characteristic and primary goal of art.
This is because there is a strain of modern art that explicitly seeks to elude the aesthetic and assert its value in other ways, whether that be social commentary or cultural subversion.
Perhaps this non-aesthetic sentiment can be traced back to someone like the French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp and his infamous 1917 readymade sculpture “fountain,” which consisted only of an overturn urinal with the name “R. Mutt” splattered on the side.
In some ways, “Fountain” was the “Comedian” of its time — a witty, elaborate joke on elitist attitudes in the established art world. However, Duchamp has had a much more profound and lasting effect on the trajectory of modern art.
While I can certainly appreciate the Dada movement and certain aspects of readymade sculpture, specifically its ability to aestheticize the mundane, I am unsettled by this apparent attempt to drive a wedge between art and beauty. Moreover, I fear this sentiment has only become increasingly aggressive and lauded.
However, it would be ridiculous to dismiss the entirety of modern art on this objection. My objection to the artistic principles behind Duchamp’s “Fountain” by no means implies that I must part with its much more worthy (in my view) contemporaries in the work of Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse.
Our public discourse should be more open to serious discussions about these potential issues within art culture. The value we place on art matters; we, as a culture, should be careful to nourish and take pride in the artistic accomplishments of our time.
Evan Leonhard is a 20-year-old English and philosophy major from New Orleans.
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Category: WHY
