REID: Art is dumb

Imagine two people. They’ve both just read the nonchalantly earth-shattering statement in the title above, and are feeling quite differently. The first groans mildly at even the slightest mention of capital-A Art, is now nodding and snickering, their expression as cool and effortless as the title — almost overcome by the warm waves of self-satisfaction coursing through them. The second is kind of pissed. This person — maybe an artist, or a humanities student or whoever — really likes art. Naturally, when reading that title, they begin to imagine with exhaustion, the aloof and senseless arguments of another aloof and senseless opinion article.

I like art, too. I don’t think any of us can safely say otherwise. Even the first person described above will likely be found later, still snickering, listening to a song on their walk home. They would have to admit to at least a few favorite movies, shows and epic online videos. But there seems to be a difference here. This person is, after all, not interested in making distinctions between what is art and what is not art — they just like what they like.

When they are reminded that in some horrible place, people are chattering about postmodernism and New Sincerity, an icy shiver goes down their spine. Underneath their outer resentment, though, lurks a sense that there is something obscure they are not getting — something that lies across the border drawn by that prestigious word. At the same time and for similar reasons, the second person, the maybe-artist, also cringes at the word, embarrassed to use it to describe themselves or what they do.

Both reactions reflect mistaken uses of the word “art.” With varying degrees of awareness and anxiety, each person is conscious of what the word implies: a special, walled-off VIP-room of things, with a vague ingredient in common, conceived in some shadowy and unattainable plane.

I don’t mean to say there isn’t anything special about art. There must be — we all like it in one way or another. But the conscious trick at play here is a sneaky one.

For a computer science project back in 10th grade, I was paired with an eleventh-grader who was keen on vocalizing his hatred for the arts and humanities. Once, he found out that someone in the grade above had gone on to art school, and after having a hearty laughing fit, he turned to me and, in the same breath, asked if I liked “Game of Thrones.”

Even at the time, it occurred to me that he was oblivious — he was essentially insulting the kind of people that go on to make the kinds of things he likes. But it would be making the story too simple, too uplifting, to simply say he’s a hypocrite and call it a day. If I had pointed out the contradiction to him at the time, it might not have seemed to him such a contradiction. Sure, he might say, if they went on to make something like that, if they’re actually good, let them study art. Then he might have asked: but how many people are actually good?

There is little doubt he had formed some kind of distinction in his mind between “what I like” and “art.” But, he also implied a distinct view on the choice to study art, to follow the vague, scattered, elusive picture of the path of the serious artist — the kind which produces the useless capital-A “Art” rather than “what I like.” His frustration might stem from knowing this is a vague and scattered course of study, too inconclusive and unbounded to call “study” at all.

In both praise and criticism of art, the cliché is that art is for free spirits. I myself have oscillated between periods of resenting math and science, resenting art, resenting math again, and so on — and I suspect I am not alone in this experience. The extent to which you are aware of the mindset varies — it might not be conscious at all. Maybe you don’t outright disparage the arts — maybe you would say you love them — but you privately understand it to be easier and more trivial of a thing to study.

Conversely, you might not condemn math or science outright as being so rigid as to be suffocating, less creative and less free. You joke about it being “realer” than what you study, but still privately tell yourself your brain wasn’t made for it, that you are simply too creative for a subject so rigid and colorless and lifeless.

Neither are trivial. One is not superior to the other. One is not inherently “harder” than the other, nor necessarily more “special.” You can study math and be just as frivolous as the cliché picture of the scattered artist. You can also train and develop your art as a skill, just as methodically and rigorously as any scientist or mathematician.

There is still a looming concern, though — I think what we might sense as false in the arts comes from a dangerous amount of room to “hide.” Where there is ambiguity there is more room to pretend. We hear math is more conclusive — there is a definitive right or wrong answer. We hear less about the ambiguity involved in solving complex problems, and even less about the wide-mindedness, the inner-space that must be developed in order to truly think through anything at all. We also hear that there are no right or wrong answers in art, but I don’t think this is exactly right. I don’t mean discerning what makes the cut — is this art, or is it not art — but by looking at each work as its own self-contained thing, and by looking at how each thing is built, how it functions, and what it does: You can start with what you like.