What's Missing From The Discussion Of What's Missing From Contemporary Art

Roberta Smith's recent dig at concept-based art has triggered much debate in the blogs, much of it thoughtful. Here's the key nugget from her essay, in case you missed it:

“What’s missing [from the currently prevailing curatorial visions of major art institutions] is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. A lot but not all of this kind of work is painting, which seems to be becoming the art medium that dare not speak its name where museums are concerned."

We think she got part if it right. Art made out of "intense personal necessity" is certainly more likely to be experienced as authentic and not contrived, publicity-seeking or market-reactive.

But every time we read or hear critical debate on what is or is not "art," or what does or does not make art "good," we always come back to this:

"The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic: desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing."

-- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

In other words, if the initial, primary emotional response triggered by the work of art you're looking at - regardless of medium - originates in your gut or your groin, if it provokes anger, pity, outrage, lust, sorrow, repulsion, etc., then that's a clue the artwork may actually have fallen short. This may seem counter-intuitive, since we often prize art based on its power to provoke emotional responses within the viewer.

By contrast, if the primary emotional response to an artwork originates from behind your eyes, proceeding thence to the lower regions in waves, much like an earthquake rippling outward from its epicenter, then that's a clue the art has at least approached the sublime.

Anselm Kiefer, (die Milchstrasse) The Milky Way, 1985-87
Emulsion paint, oil, acrylic, and shellac on canvas with applied wires and lead, 12 1/2 x 18 1/2"
Image courtesy Albright-Knox Art Gallery

T.S. Eliot vs. Nature: Art and "Understanding"

A friend was in the gallery recently and, upon seeing Jacob Tillman’s paintings, commented that they were “just bad art.” He said they showed no “technique,” no “craft,” no “sensitivity,” and simply were not “beautiful.”

I of course sprung into action, mounting a forceful academic defense of the paintings, positioning them in the arc of art history, pointing out the choices of color and line, underscoring the brilliant craziness of Tillman’s compositions, et cetera. Predictably, my friend was not swayed. He said that for him art had to be beautiful, and if it wasn’t he had no time for it. There are countless reasonable people who feel the same way about art, and I’m guessing many of them would respond similarly to Tillman. Too bad. They just don’t understand the paintings.

But here’s the thing: We read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, listen to the dissonant works Schönberg, or watch experimental theatrical works by Artaud or Beckett, and we either “understand” them or we don’t. If we feel we understand them, we may very well perceive them as beautiful works of art. If we do not understand them, we my perceive them as ugly or, worse, not perceive them as art at all.


Yet do we need to “understand” a view of the Grand Canyon, a sunset over the ocean, or a giant sequoia tree to perceive beauty (or ugliness) in them? Of course not. While “understanding” seems to be a necessary first step to a complete aesthetic experience of art, it clearly is no such prerequisite to a complete aesthetic experience of nature.

For this reason, it is said, an artwork is not so much an object of sensory experience, but an instrument of conveying knowledge or information. Once the information is conveyed, it can create an aesthetic experience that feels strikingly similar to the feeling we get when we perceive beauty or ugliness in the natural world. And that’s what’s so wonderfully, frustratingly, exhiliratingly confusing.


Images: Jacob Tillman, "2 x 2" (2009), oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in; "Sitting Room" (2009), oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in; "Stage is Set" (2009), oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in.