EAST VILLAGE STANDARD - July 8, 1989
What is art, indeed? This question has been tormenting critics, curators, and my Aunt Ruth for centuries. Every time I think I’ve wrapped my head around it, someone comes along with a toilet bowl, glues a peacock feather to it, and insists it belongs in the MoMA. It’s an exhausting pursuit, defining art, yet here I am, plugging away at the very notion. The deeper I dig, the murkier it gets. If art is anything we say it is, then perhaps it’s also nothing at all, which puts me in a tricky spot considering I’m supposed to be paid by the word.
Let’s start with the basics. Art, at its most fundamental, is... something. Or perhaps it’s not something but the idea of something, which exists only because we collectively agree to call it art. But if art can be anything, if every loose strand of lint or half-eaten bagel or sock with a hole can be elevated to high art just because someone said so, then by that logic, wouldn’t nothing be art, since everything is? It’s a troubling thought, though I must admit it’s also comforting to imagine my sock drawer as an avant-garde gallery installation. In fact, I might charge admission.
Now, some people will say, “Art is about intention.” They’ll tell you that art is only art if someone sets out to make art. But intention is a slippery beast. Just this morning, I accidentally dropped my toast and left an abstract smear of jam on the wall. My wife stared at it for a good five minutes, probably wondering if she’d married an idiot, but also, possibly, wondering if I was onto something. And there it is—the split second where an accident becomes art, just because someone looked at it for a little too long. Or maybe it was never art, and I’m just trying to justify poor hand-eye coordination. Either way, am I getting paid to write this?
And what about beauty? Some people say art is supposed to be beautiful. Yet, in the last half-century, we’ve seen “beauty” replaced by a vast spectrum of responses ranging from fascination to nausea. We’ve moved from the gentle pastoral landscapes to a dead shark in a glass tank. I don’t particularly enjoy staring at a preserved shark, but, apparently, it’s art—and quite expensive art at that. Somewhere, a wealthy patron gazes upon it with a sense of awe and reverence, while I’m left wondering if I can pull a similar stunt with a can of tuna and some dish soap. In this case, art isn’t just a noun; it’s a financial adventure.
It’s easy to spiral into a philosophical black hole here. What if life itself is art? A grand, unwieldy performance piece none of us asked to participate in, with no clear director and little coherence, except for those occasional moments of beauty that make us stop and go, “Huh.” Maybe all of us, unwittingly, are art, bumbling along in an unpolished opera with far too many acts. Or maybe we’re the art supplies—paint and clay and wire—being mashed together by some cosmic hand, an experiment in improvisational creation. Is my grocery list art? What about the way my socks never match, despite my best efforts?
If all of life is art, then nothing is art. And if nothing is art, then what am I doing here, expounding on something that, by definition, doesn’t even exist? I may as well be talking about unicorns. And still, I’ll send this off and wait for a check in the mail, because even if art doesn’t exist, rent certainly does.
So, what is art? I’d love to say I have the answer. Perhaps art is that indescribable hum, the itch we can’t scratch, the urge to capture something of ourselves, or maybe something more than ourselves, in a way that feels both trivial and vital. It’s the attempt to make sense of things, even when sense eludes us. Or maybe it’s just a word we invented to justify a bit of chaos.
In any case, I’ll leave you with this: if everything can be art, and nothing can be art, then perhaps I am art. Or maybe the real art is you, reading this. Or maybe, just maybe, we’re both hopelessly misguided. But, hey, as long as the check clears, I’ll happily philosophize us both into oblivion.