Art and Theory

I read something today looking at how art and theory go together that said that they do not seem to have a lot of bearing on each other. Many artists do not look at theory in an academic way and many theorists do not realize the process of making art is so different from the theory. This is a piece of the article.

The Art Newspaper: The topic of the Frieze panel is “Have Art and Theory Drifted Apart?” What are your thoughts?

Robert Storr: I’m not sure that art and theory were ever that close to begin with. There are some artists who read theory seriously but not all that many. And some of the theoretical writing that was done about artists was very important, but what people now call theory is a vast field and a relatively small amount of it bears directly on art, or at least on art production.

We’re in a very strange situation where some artists have derived a lot from their theoretical reading but never as systematically as people are inclined to think. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who I know read theory carefully, nonetheless made a point of saying that it was not to be read in a kind of rigorous, academic way, but to help unblock thoughts and open up questions.

A lot of artists don’t want to tip their hands and show how selective and shallow their understanding is; a lot of people who do theory full time don’t really want to acknowledge that the process of making art is fundamentally different from the process of writing theory. And, therefore, even though you may share a vocabulary, you don’t share at all the same kind of generative process or goals.

How much impact do you think theory has on art?

Response to Andrea

However, is success even applicable to art, if it is so subjective?

I think the ways you suggested success enters into art are absolutely true. If the artist is happy with it and the individuals involved and in the audience are happy with it is has been successful. This does leave the question of how many people need to be happy with it for it to be a success. If the director is the only one who likes it is it a success? If one member of the audience likes it is it success? I do wonder where financial aspects come into play. With a student production monetary aspects are not terribly important, but in many productions a goal is for the members of the cast to receive a paycheck. If people are to survive as artists there has to be financial gain and this is a kind of success. If a play is not particularly liked by the cast and crew but it makes money is it a success? Also if a student production is not well liked, is it still a success if the students learned something in the process? I think success is applicable to art but first it has to be determined what the goal of the art is. If the goal is making a profit and it does it is successful. If the goal is education then if people learn it is successful. If the goal is happiness and people like it then it is successful. A play does not have to make people happy to be a success though. If the audience does not like it but it causes them to question their outlook on something, that is a different sort of success. The artist could also create a work to release pent up emotions and if it does so it has succeeded even if nobody including the artist likes the final product.  

                What goals are typical of an artist when they produce a work and how can they determine if they are successful?

Response to Brycen

Now a question that I pose is could something that is ones skill also be something that they are talented at?

I think something one is skilled at is often something that one is talented at because I think people often enjoy things they are talented at so they work at them and gain skills. That is not to say that someone cannot learn something they are not talented at, people often do, or dislike something they are talented at. I do think that when people try something and are good at it they come to like it and want to continue. This talent may give them self esteem which allows them to continue the subject even when they struggle with it. They remember that they can do it and so they do not give up. When someone struggles with every aspect of something they learn it is much easier to simply stop and say they cannot do it. I think many skilled people began as simply talented and may have surpassed their natural skill as they gained skill or combined their talent with skill.

Do you think having talent inclines people to gain skills?

Response to Andrea

Can someone be better at an art form than someone else? Or is the skill just different?

                I do think that some people are better at an art form than others especially when it comes to skill. Skill involves practice and experience with an art form. Working 100 hours will increase skill more than 10 hours. I do not think this is elitist at all because anyone can achieve a high level of skill. To say that skill is just different is like saying that a kindergartner’s essay is as good as someone with a college degree in English because we cannot be completely objective. To take skill away as an important aspect of art production is equivalent to saying that hard work does not matter. No matter how little time you spend trying to learn something you are just as worthy of being an artist as your neighbor who never spent time trying to learn. Skill is a matter of levels which are not just different but important. This is not to say that simple or primitive artwork is not art because the work is not as complicated. It probably takes some skill to recognize the beauty in simple things and some art may turn out quite well without a high skill level. Talent certainly contributes to how well an art form turns out. I also think it is a mistake to associate skill purely with academic learning. Practice by working with an art form in your own way in your own time can also contribute to skill level. Someone working with a form the first time is not going to produce as well as when they work with a form the second, third or any future time. The more skill a person has the more they will be able to present their ideas as they imagine them. People with more skill will be able to express themselves to a greater degree.

                How important is skill in art?  

Competative Art

                Art is usually thought of as creative and imaginative, not competitive, but certain art shows involve competitions to see who will be allowed into the exhibit. One article, linked below, is about Nikaten which is a Japanese art show where judges choose which art is worth putting in an exhibit based on number of votes. The decisions are made in less than 30 seconds. I think art is often thought of as a slow and contemplative process involving a lot of thought and introspection, but certainly this is not true of all art. Also, even if the process of making art was an involved process, many people who visit museums or view art do not spend much time on each piece. Does it follow that art needs time to be properly judged, or is it possible to see a work of art and judge it based on one quick view? This is what many museum guests seem to do, but that does not make it the right way to view art. Also, if this is a legitimate way to view art, does it follow that judges should make decisions about art quickly? It would fit with the way many people view art, but it would also seem that they might miss minute but important details and they would not take the time to allow the art to provoke much thought or emotion, if that is the art’s intention.  

 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20090904a3.html

How do you feel about art as a form of competition?

Response to Natalie

                To be honest, I have no idea what a higher form of art even means. I suppose it could mean a few things. It could be another way of saying good art which is ambiguous by itself. It could be a way of saying art that is based on more than instinct. A higher art being roughly like saying a higher being to mean more evolved. Higher is used metaphorically and we often use it when we mean something is more than something else, like a higher price. In order to know if one work of art is more of something than another we would need to know what we are referring to. If the quality we are referring to is more unique then we might be able to make a case that performance art is a higher art, as Natalie suggests. In order for something to be higher it has to be in regards to something else. We could also say that non-performance art is higher if our standard is something like permanence. I agree that we could not say that a cellist is higher or lower than a composer because there are different standards at play. We could say that one cellist has a higher skill level than another cellist because we are comparing two things and using higher as a metaphor meaning more skilled.

In direct response to the question on art existing on a common plane, I do not know if everything in art could be said to exist on the same plane because I am not completely sure what plane is being referred to. Of course all art occurs on this plane of existence if we mean this world, but many forms of art require very different types of skills so we would not compare them directly. It seems odd to compare a cellist to an actor because the required abilities are different. If we delineate planes as groups of differing skills then different art is not on the same plane. Although, I think vastly different types of art would be more like parallel lines. They would be on the same plane, but they would not intersect. We would not talk about them together in conversation because they do not overlap each other, at least commonly. We can probably come up with a few qualities all art has, so the parallel line concept is by no means a perfect analogy, but it shows how something could be on the same plane without being directly related. We also use plane to refer to a state of consciousness or existence, mostly within religion, so I suppose if art all comes from the same aspects of consciousness it could be considered on the same plane. I think that different art requiring different skills would utilize different aspects of thought and so would not be considered on the same mental plane.

                When we refer to something as higher art, what are we really trying to say?

Character Identification

                I read something recently describing character identification in fiction and I’m going to try to figure out some things about the concept. People often say that they identified with a certain character when reading a novel, but it is difficult to describe what they really mean. To say that one identifies with a character it seems like they mean they become one with that character at least on an emotional level. It sounds like they take on the identity of the character. One of the definitions of identification on Princeton.edu is the attribution to yourself the characteristics of another person. If this is the case, character identification does not seem valid to describe what happens when we read. People often feel emotions that the character does not when they read. For example, the audience may know that the protagonist is in danger before they do so we feel fear while the character feels content. A character might also lose a family member and we feel sympathetic, but we do not grieve with them. People cannot be in the same emotional state as characters for much of the time that we spend reading and even if we feel something similar, our feelings are tempered by knowing the source is not an actual person. No matter how terrifying a description of a monster is, we are not going to respond the same way as a character because we never believe one is attacking us. Wikipedia has a brief section on character identification that says it is when “readers or spectators see themselves in the fictional character.” I’m not sure that we can really see ourselves in another character, we can relate to their emotional reactions and responses, but we never think we are part of that character. What I think we do is relate strongly to the character. We think if I were in that situation I would probably do the same thing or this situation the character is facing reminds me of something in my own life. I do not think that in everything we read we have to be able to relate in this way. We can enjoy reading about someone acting in a way we would not, like a text from the perspective of a vampire hunter, or be surprised by someone’s emotional reaction. We always see the characters as someone reacting to the context of the story, but we maintain our perspective as outside the action. There is never a point where we become so caught up in a novel that we think we become the character.

                Does this make sense? What do you think it means to identify with a character?