Traveling the path toward understanding art is a fairly treacherous business. Once upon a time the only thing one needed to know was how representative of nature a work of art was to be able to evaluate that work. At least this is what, I gather, Plato and Aristotle say on the subject. One recalls HAL, the computer in 2001, remarking on the drawing the astronaut has done by saying that it is a very good likeness. A very good likeness would make something a very good work of art, from a Platonic, Aristotelian or a binary AI point of view. It is, if nothing else, an objective yardstick. The more real, or the more realistic, and therefore the closer to nature, the better the art. Unfortunately, even without stretching our brains too much, we are able to discard this particular art theory no later than the middle of the 19th Century, and perhaps a lot earlier (e.g., Turner). But to pick a most famous moment, around the time the Americans were fighting their Civil War, a handful of French artists were inventing Impressionism, at which point there is no question, at least in our 21st Century minds, that art need not be realistic/natural to be good.
Our problem is that, as we flash forward to the present from the 19th Century, we get progressively more complicated in trying to analyze the works that are presented as art by artists. The artists refuse to cooperate in our investigations by going off in one unified direction, and we get all sorts of movements and styles, and we have to contend, for instance, with the rather realistic Hopper and the rather fanciful Picasso who, if we were to hang their works on the gallery walls by chronological order, are right next to one another (they were born a year apart). How do we create an overarching explanation for everything we see at a museum of modern or contemporary art? How do we evaluate everything we see at these museums?
For a long time now I’ve been wrestling with aesthetics. Needless to say, I have found it impossible to find an aesthetic explanation, much less an aesthetic appeal, to much of what seems to inarguably be art, if one is to accept the word of artists that their work should be claimed as such. One could subscribe to Baudrillard’s conspiracy of art (which is reasonable enough) and say that art has become what the co-conspirator manufacturers (artists) and profiteers (art dealers, curators and critics) claim it is, regardless of any objective evaluation. But even if that is true, it is not as if there is any competing claim to art that trumps it. Art is that stuff all around us that is put forth as art. Our challenge is to understand it, not to disregard it.
Given the vast panorama of what is called art, it may be too much (or too little) to attempt to define it by what it is. It is certainly impossible to evaluate it merely by what it is. Let’s say we went with a simplistic definition that art is the creation of an object with no practical purpose. I don’t particularly like this definition, and it’s awfully close to the definition that art is the creation of an object that is a work of art, which even more obviously begs the question. I don’t necessarily believe that art is objects, or that all art must have no practical purpose. For that matter, one could question the human inherency in the creation of art: if a computer, or an elephant, paints a painting, is the result not art by definition? In any case, one can toss together various collections of words more or less like this definition, leading inevitably to both arguable premises and arguable conclusions. These arguments would allow us to waste much ink on art theory, intelligibly in some cases, unintelligibly in many others, and in the end we would be not much closer than where we started. Not that I don’t enjoy reading (some) art theory, mind you. I just don’t believe it holds the solution we’re looking for.
The good news is, there is no law that forces us to define art descriptively in order to understand it. Rather than taking a deontological approach, therefore, I will take a consequentialist approach. I will explain art not from a categorical perspective of its having certain aspects, but rather from its results. Art, I would say, is any created work that enhances human experience. Of course, there is an immediate problem with this, because one could easily say that the practice of medicine enhances human experience, but that’s why I include the word created, or better yet, use the phrase created work. We need to get a sense of somebody—an artist—doing something creative, of manufacturing something, whatever it might be, for the purpose of that thing being a work of art. My guess is that there is a better way to put this, but I don’t think the sense is unclear. On the other side of the sentence is the consequence: the work enhances human experience. Here I would mean it enchances the beholder and not the creator, and that art can not be measured by its intentions alone; i.e., if it has no effect, it is therefore a failed piece of art, however lofty the intentions of the artist who created it. Enhance may be a dicey word, human experience may be an overly general phrase, but again, I think we have a clear statement. Art is any created work that enhances human experience. That leaves only the determination of what we mean by enhancing human experience.
I think we can look to Aristotle here on what he says about drama, in that its goals are to provide emotional catharsis for the viewer, and to expand the knowledge of the viewer about the world. This is a simple emotion/intellect breakdown. I would say that enhancing human experience is exactly what Aristotle says, either providing an emotional arena outside of the self, or educating the mind from outside the self, or both. Either is okay, both is better. If Art is any created work that enhances human experience than it either heightens our emotional sensitivity (or gives it a thorough cleaning via a good solid workout) or it expands our knowledge of life, or both. I can now measure the success of art (or at least its relative success, vis-à-vis myself as the beholder) by its effect on my mind or my soul.
There’s more to it than this, but this is a start. Questions arise about meanings that are not the intention of the artist, for instance, but that’s a fine point for argumentation and not a deal-breaker. This definition, if you will, allows us to look at the most luscious Monet or the most improbable Smithson pile of dirt, and evaluate their effects and therefore accept at least that both may be art, even though they do radically different things. I mean, say what you will about the pile of dirt, it does make you think (if only about the conspiracy of art, but that’s beside the point). A book that makes you think about a lot of things would, in this analysis, be more of a work of art than a book that merely entertains you. You could indeed suggest that the book that is merely entertainment is no work of art at all, and perhaps make comparable arguments about paintings of lighthouses that are sold by the pound at tourist resorts. Of course, even the success of these low level attempts at art are tangible, if an emotional reaction (excitement at reading a good adventure story, a sigh over a pretty landscape) is all that is required (and perhaps it is). The more I work with this definition, prescriptive though it may be instead of a more satisfyingly descriptive approach, the more I like it. It could be improved in its actual words, but the point is, I think, on the money.
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