Art is hard · 5:01am Apr 26th, 2013
[Summary, maybe:
1. Anything that wasn't hard to create isn't art.
2. An article in the Atlantic Monthly warned that stories shouldn't be "about" anything. That's why their stories suck.
]
ADDED: This post is hopelessly muddled, and you should probably avoid it.
I don’t know a lot about competing in the Olympics. I’m not good at figure skating, fencing, diving, basketball, or curling. But I have a rule of thumb that I nonetheless expect works for all Olympic sports:
If you’re not willing to break a sweat, you’re probably not going to the Olympics.
(Well, maybe you can in curling.)
Art is the same. Not because suffering makes art better. Because many people do it, and no one is so much better than everyone else that they can be the best without working hard.
I say this because of some animations, some stories, an essay, and a blog post.
The animations were by the Quay Brothers. I had an extended argument online with several people, all of whom love the Quay Brothers’ animations for their quirky, creative visuals. I said that was all very fine, but they didn’t have interesting characters or interesting stories, so they were bad animations.
It may seem unfair to demand the kind of quality from homemade animations that I expect from an animated movie made by a team of 1000 people. But fairness doesn’t enter into it. If you’re not a writer, and you’re not willing to go the extra distance to hire a writer to write a story for your animation, you will make a bad animation. I don’t care how talented you are; there are other people who are willing to go that extra distance, and some of them can do the visuals every bit as well as you can.
The stories came from the Atlantic Monthly. I read them to learn what is currently considered a good short story by the literary elite. They were all written with great style. Most of them didn’t speak to me in any way. They were convincing, detailed, emotional stories about realistic characters doing stuff. But I couldn’t figure out how they connected with anything outside of themselves.
The essay, “Don’t write what you know”, by Bret Anthony Johnston, also came from the Atlantic Monthly. It cautioned writers against writing things in their stories because they happened in real life. As has often been said, “Stories must be truer than fiction.”
I thought that quote meant that real life doesn’t package things in a way that makes sense. The purpose of the artist, whether a writer or painter, is to draw connections, and interpret life meaningfully.
But Bret Johnston said the opposite. He said that stories should not be like life because they should not have meaning: "Aboutness is all but terminal in fiction. Stories aren’t about things. Stories are things.... The idea of a writer “wanting” to do something in a story unhinges me. At best, such desire smacks of nostalgia and, at worst, it betrays agenda.... And writing what you know is knotted up with intention, and intention in fiction is always related to control, to rigidity, and more often than not, a little solipsism. The writer seems to have chosen an event because it illustrates a point or mounts an argument."
Well, yes. That’s what writers do. I like Dramatica theory, which is a little crackpot-ish, but insightful. It says that every story is an extended argument for or against some proposition.
But now I understand why I don’t understand the stories in the Atlantic Monthly. I thought that I just wasn’t smart enough to make the connections and figure out what the stories were about. But this essay, probably selected by the same editor who chose those stories, says stories shouldn’t be about anything. The most difficult step in writing a story, of figuring out what it is about and directing everything towards that, is (Johnston says) superfluous.
Most of the writers I admire, like Fitzgerald, Kafka, Hemingway, Arthur Miller, Borges, Joseph Conrad, Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell, deliberately wrote stories that were about something. Perhaps they didn’t know what their stories were about when they began, but they figured it out by the time they were through. If they were like me, they then went back and re-wrote them to focus on what they were about. (Ray Bradbury doesn't do this--I don't know how he does what he does, but his stories all have a central theme that I can relate to.)
The blog post was by Amit. The post was about Fiddlebottom’s stories. Nothing I say here is about those stories, which are disturbing, but have a sense of about-ness to them.
In the post and the comments, some people explained why they like terribly violent and brutal stories. Amit said, A Fun Day “is a work of art; the unending, unyielding sadism and the depiction of Scootaloo's ever-present consciousness is continued well past the point one might expect it to go. There is no looking away or back; there is no cop-out or palliation. It is a constant train of the completely unabated infliction of misery. The characters stay as true as possible to their roots and in doing so they make me laugh a little even as the bile rises in my throat. It goes to the heights of delightful absurdity and masters the idea of saccharine horror.”
I don’t trust strings of big words. What do they really mean? Apparently to vary a story, and have some things extreme and others not extreme, or to have pacing sometimes fast and sometimes slow, or some characters who are sadistic and some who are not, is a cop-out. Taking something just far enough is not as good as taking it too far. The very things that I think of as key to the art of a story disqualify a story from being art.
No. A Fun Day is not a work of art. I assert this even without really understanding what Amit is saying, because AFD is simple. See "If you're not willing to break a sweat" above. The author didn’t have to make any difficult choices or trade-offs. There’s no dramatic structure to speak of, no theme, no connecting arcs to draw together, no restraint. One must simply begin with cruelty, and continue with it until Scootaloo has been dismembered, disemboweled, baked alive, and eaten.
(I'm a little uneasy about that last paragraph, because my over-the-top comedies are also pretty simple in structure. But they at least have distinguishable characters who have understandable motives.)
Several people commented on paintings that are simply a single color painted onto a canvas, and said why they are or are not art. I again say that if one can make a painting in 10 minutes, it is probably not good art. Someone equally skilled who's willing to take 20 minutes can probably make something better.
I also referred to John Cage’s song 4’33”, which is simply four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Again: Easy to make; probably not art. Or take twelve-step music, or art of any kind that is made according to a theory and a formula rather than by hard work.
I haven’t made any good arguments that these things are not art. That would make this a much longer blog post. I instead offer a single simple unifying explanation for them.
I think what has happened is that people have found it is easier to make impressive-sounding arguments that something is art, than to make art. Those who are adept at these arguments out-compete people who are skilled at art. They’re able to produce their “art” and their arguments faster than people who work hard at it. In an academic environment, where there is no consumer market to speak of, what eventually dominates is whatever viewpoint is most advantageous to the most artists in the debate. As most artists aren't the best, most of them prefer arguments that imply that they are in fact as good as anybody else, and could produce great art if they just had a moderately-clever idea.
Clever ideas may (let’s suppose) be necessary to produce great art, but they aren't sufficient. I don’t mean that sweat itself makes art better. I mean that if someone shows you something and says it is art, and yet they haven’t bothered to do some of the basic work in that art form, such as getting a story for an animation, or having figures within a painting, or building a dramatic structure within a novel, or figuring out what a story is about, or trying to understand and confront a bleak situation rather than simply hyperbolizing it, it probably isn’t very good compared to things made by other people who took those extra steps. If appreciating it depends more on listening to a complex explanation than on experiencing the work itself, it's suspect. If it could been produced by an eighth-grader, it’s more likely that it’s something people have persuaded themselves is art in order to persuade themselves that they can produce art without great effort.
Like the shock artists, I write a lot of bleak stories. Twenty Minutes, Burning Man Brony, Corpse Bride, The Green Hills of Equestria, Friends With Occasional Magic, Moving On, even Detective & Magician... these all go to bleak places. Some come back from them. Some don't. But they're not unremitting bleakness. I take the extra step of trying to show what happened, why people find themselves in these bleak situations, why they can or can't get out of them, and see what they can still do even with things as bleak as they are. It's harder to tackle a difficult issue than to make an argument why you don't have to, but I think it's worth it.
And this is why I hated my English 101 Honors course. The teacher said that it didn't matter what a story was about –or even if it was about anything. To back this up, the teacher used articles and papers that looked like a page from a thesaurus just for the sake of using big words. Needless to say, I got very little out of that class.
I believe that theories and formulas can be artistic. My holy grail is to produce a theory and a formula that produces stories. The stories thus produced wouldn't be the artwork. They're just the evidence. Formulas can be beautiful. The stories produced are effortless, but the theory isn't. Building it takes years of work. The better the output, the more I will have succeeded with the formula.
1035144 I had a creative writing teacher who said the same thing.
1035155 If you manage to construct that formula, someone else will be able to make better stories with that formula plus hard work.
1035164
Good! The past is the foundation of the future.
Is Mathematics art?
A theory simply stated doesn't reflect the proofs that are behind it. I don't like paintings that are simply one color on canvas, but with the right paint you can make the brushstrokes make something that resembles a picture or shape (or, for the cynically minded, you can count on human pattern recognition).
After re-reading the last four paragraphs, I was reminded of my impression when I started reading: If an artists wants to distinguish herself, he should learn how to relate it to other works, artists, color theory, etc. When I saw Bungie's panel about using concept art to build (and sell) a virtual world at GDC this year, I got a distinct impression that their artists knew their stuff (and, incidentally, worked their asses off)
Making me think, as usual. Thanks BH and g'night
I want to play devil's advocate a little here.
I think that there is art to be made in the areas you're – perhaps this is too strong – arguing against. I'm a firm believer that one can do great things by subverting conventions. This is something I discuss from time to time as it pertains to free verse poetry, which I tend to feel is either godawful or brilliant without a whole lot of middle ground. I think, though, that the art to be made in subverting conventions relies very, very deeply in the ability of the audience to perceive the subversion. A story without plot is a worse story, unless it does the hard work within itself of demonstrating that plot isn't necessary for the story to be great.
Continuing my devil's advocacy, I think there's a certain art to a canvas painted all in one color, too. Or to a story that strives to do nothing. But here, my feeling is that what art there is, is not in the product, but in the idea that formed it. The art is never displayed. That doesn't mean there isn't a heart of artistry to the thing, just that the product is of far less merit than the idea that brought it about.
Why am I playing devil's advocate here?
Because I like to be somewhat conciliatory, and because I'm arrogant beyond all reason, and because now that I've finished defending those things I can feel free to speak my mind.
The things you're talking about in the blog post, those things are shit. I have no interest in them, and I hold that they they can be objectively identified as the crap that most of us think they are. I could not agree more with this blog post (excepting my weak defense of art in things that are terrible).
I put up a post last week about Death of the Author, which more and more I feel to be the only responsible approach for any artist. This Bret Anthony Johnston idiocy sounds so far from Death of the Author that I can't really make myself take it seriously. Authors shouldn't "want" to do anything? The hell? "Wanting" is precisely what authors should do, arguably the only thing authors should do. If I wanted to give readers a blank page onto which they could project their own ideas about life, I would fucking publish a blank page. Because I ain't gonna write anything to get that point across any better.
The job of the artist is condensation. Crystallization. Communication. It's not loading a shotgun with one cartridge consonants, one cartridge vowels, and seeing where they scatter when you pull the trigger.
This is just...
Ugh.
I take comfort in the fact that Orwell and Steinbeck, Dostoevsky and Kafka, Hugo and Austin, are going to live on and be remembered for centuries, probably millenia, longer than the pretentious dicks who think stories are all about... not... telling... stories.
Trying to find meaning in meaninglessness is a growing and frightening trend, I find. A little shlock is to be expected, a little pure 'do it because we can' is always going to be around. But to actually try and put those things up on some kind of pedestal and say that's the goal we have to strive for? What real effort is there in any of those things? Is it some kind of reaction by people who are tired of being criticized? I just don't get it.
Why do anything at all if none of it is actually supposed to go anywhere? Why don't I just not create anything and try to say I'm actually creating through a rebellion against expression of any kind?
Gosh, I'm sure some people are doing that right now.
Okay, I'm not sure I agree. Or maybe I just don't understand art. I'll assume that you're using the broadest possible definition for art.
I had a discussion with Garbo802 recently about Double Rainboom, where I talked about something similar to what you were discussing regarding those animations. In the argument, I pointed out that beautiful animation with a poor story tends to not succeed, but that poor animation with a good story can be classic. I cited several examples, but ones I remember off the top of my head are A Charlie Brown Christmas, and early Simpsons episodes. Both are very successful in terms of conveying their messages and meaning, and withstand the test of time, but the animation is sloppy. Charlie Brown is actually a perfect example, because it's perfect, in part, because of it's animation, even though I doubt much "sweat" was put it to achieve the effect.
Another thing I was considering recently was the Harry Potter series. I read a chapter by chapter review, written by someone reading them for the first time. One thing he pointed out, that I've heard other places, is how bad Rowling's writing is at many things. But he also pointed out how talented she is at constructing and describing "micro-universes" (that is, Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, etc.) But what she was really amazing at in most of the books was constructing an adventure/mystery plot that kept you guessing until the end of the book. I don't think I ever noticed her writing flaws, I was too busy trying to find out what happened next.
Finally, I will mention some paintings I saw in the National Gallery. I can't remember the painter, but they were perfectly realistic. If I hadn't examined them, I would have guessed they were photographs. I have no idea what they were about, if they evoked any emotion, because I was so amazed by the sheer skill that went into them.
So in each of these cases you have a piece of art that's successful based, not on the idea behind it, but on one or several aspects done exceptionally well, while other aspects might be overwhelmed or ignored. Are these not good art? Can't these be great art? While I prefer my stories to be "about" something, someone could, in theory, write one where the characters are so interesting and perfectly realized that I don't care what it's about. Wouldn't that be a successful piece of art?
1035202 Yes, I agree excellence in one aspect can overcome for weaknesses in others. I was trying to say that it's in the interests of most academics to change the standards so that skill and hard work is not necessary; and that this doesn't make sense, and we should be suspicious any time someone tells us that something that wasn't very hard to make is great art.
This reflects one of the truths that has informed my life for many years: people will go to inordinate lengths to avoid putting effort into things, or to argue that their minimum effort given is sufficient to requirement. To phrase it topically, they will put a veritable deluge of sweat into their arguments and attempts to avoid putting arguably less sweat into the work itself.
The best reason I have for the phenomenon, as I've witnessed it, is that it seems like less work to someone to put energy into avoiding something than to put that same energy into the thing they want to avoid.
Monochromatic canvasses can be art, sure, but not very good art. Four minutes of blank tape is not a song. I'm sure that the creators and aficionados of these works would argue that 'I just don't understand it', but therein lay the issue - there's little to nothing to understand.
It's the artist's job to provide material to create understanding; at times, to also offer guiding context in that creation. This is why stories are about things, and in relation to those things, present characters and events in X or Y fashion. Is this to argue a proposition? In some cases, absolutely; hell, my own stories have such elements. In other cases, however, what 'propositions' a story is arguing are entirely the preconceptions the reader brings in with them.
So I would also submit that Bret Johnston and such company, those who so blatantly cast aside not only established literary standards, but the average author's common sense, are less interested in discovering what art is than they are in avoiding putting in the hard work of writing real stories. Because it's "easier" to engage in self-aggrandizing sophistry than distinguish yourself in a field loaded down with people who are willing to sweat.
No.
Painting is hard.
Composing is hard.
Writing is hard.
Art is an abstract concept based on semantics that serves no purpose other than to inflate egos and excuse confusing or offensive subject matter.
"Art" truly is purposeless.
Create beautiful and terrible things. Not "art".
I apologize in advance for the brevity of the following. I'm running late. Sorry.
Broadly I agree, especially about AFD, my contempt for which cannot be plumbed by any line. But:
I maintain that there is some art in these not-hard things. To wit:
1. 4'33'' is art, but it isn't music. It's performance art, or perhaps social commentary. The arty part was making the concept and getting people to accept a composition without any notes. Once done, it cannot be done again.
2. Don't diss monchromatic canvasses. Their problem is that they, by and large, can't be photographed. I went and saw a similar painting (it wasn't quite monochromatic, but it was of the 'smear of color' genre) and, in person, it's actually fascinating. Swirls and patterns, just incredibly textured. I'm no art connoisseur, but I certainly found it interesting.
So, to sum up, there is art to be found in strange places. But there isn't nearly as much of it to be found as the art community pretends there is. They merely focus on things which are simple to make and then invent elaborate word-salads to explain why that is the best thing ever. I've a couple of really good friends who are painters, and they swear up and down that I could probably make a sensation if I attended the academy. The fact that I can't draw to save my life is irrelevant. I can just talk up an explanation of why my scribblings are High and True Art, and it'd pass.
As for stories not being about anything.
Sorry. Ahem. That's nonsense on stilts. We've been telling stories (stories about things) for some six thousand years now. And suddenly, suddenly this blowhard is going to decide that, no, literature started just now. What a profoundly ahistorical, not to mention depressing, worldview. Is he claiming that Dostoyevsky didn't write about things? Or that Dostoyevsky isn't literature? I don't know which of those two things is more laughable.
Interestingly, I suspect that the stories published alongside it are an example of an author wanting something: Wanting to write in the prevailing cultural idiom. Wanting acknowledgement from their peers. Wanting to get published. They just didn't particularly want to say something. Or weren't allowed.
1035188
See exception that proves the rule
Anyone else here like photography? I agree with much of what's been said here, but the definition of art as something that requires great effort does have it's exceptions.
There's no such thing as an objective standard for art. There was, once, but the word's been twisted, muddied and spread like an umbrella over so many things that the original meaning is long since lost. Perhaps other languages don't have this issue; certainly, English is rather special in that we use the same word for parental affection as the desire to mount someone, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if so.
If we're entering into a conversation about art, then, you really need to start off with telling us what you think art is so that we then either tell you that's not what we think art is and have a big hissy fit or judge your conclusions based on that. You haven't, bluntly; most of this blog post is directed towards how to produce art, and your defining criteria for that. All fine and well, but unless I know what you think art is, I'm rather stuck.
Is your standard of art about the successful conveyance of emotion? Or the transferal of an idea or theme or thought? Is it about producing something that succeeds and transcends the drive which made it? Or is it about recording an idea no-one's had before? Is it about entertaining people in a manner beyond exemplary? Or is it making them ask basic questions about who they are and how they do things? Is it all of the above? Or none?
I don't know, and so I can't properly judge your criteria that effort's needed to create art. 4'33 counts as a piece of art if your standard for that is conveying an idea no-one's really had before, but it most certainly isn't if it's just about entertaining people well.
I'm confused. Clarify, please.
Also, Dostoyevsky is new. I shall be looking him up. Thank you.
I certainly can't:
Speak to art, but I enjoy working and reworking things till they crackle and hum in my brain. I mean, I just spent the last month writing my submission to the next Sword and Sorceress anthology, and I'm willing to bet I spent nearly half that time rewriting the story's first two paragraphs and last two pages.
I'll also point folks to this recent post over on the SFWA web site in which New York Times bestselling SF author Toby Buckell talks about the work he still hasta do to sell a story. Spooky!
Mike
Well, I won't make long speeches - don't currently have time or desire for that.
I will mention one thing.
In russian there is a figure of speech used to describe anything tedious, boring, plain, but mainly - anything simply not yielding any results. Usually it is used to describe ones' opinion on some activity they have participated in. When applied to a story it indicates that the person thinks the story to be mediocre at best, not worth reading and simply wasting time of the reader. "Ni o chom". Translated into english it means "(to be) not about anything". I think it perfectly illustrates my opinion on the mentioned above article on "aboutness" of the story.
A counter-example:
math.youngzones.org/Fractal%20webpages/Julia_set.jpg
1035308 I find it useful to have a word that means something like "the kind of stuff I like; the kind of stuff I want to make".
1035546 If we're entering into a conversation about art, then, you really need to start off with telling us what you think art is so that we then either tell you that's not what we think art is and have a big hissy fit or judge your conclusions based on that.
That sounds reasonable, but in fact I don't think I have to define art to do that. This post makes limited claims about art that are true for many different definitions of art:
1. Whatever it is, it's something that a lot of people work hard at, and any product that no one worked hard at is probably inferior to some other product that someone equally-skilled worked hard at.
2. People who aren't very skilled or don't want to work hard will always be motivated to change the criteria for greatness to not require skill or hard work.
3. For both reasons, we should be suspicious when someone tells us that something that skipped a lot of the "hard work" part is great art. This is just a heuristic.
1035638
Heh. Much the same (ni o chemu, actually, but that's neither here nor there) in my own native tongue, but I didn't make the connection until I saw your post. Well put.
1035551
Oh, please, do. If a gun was held to my head and I was asked what the very best writer ever was "Dostoyevsky" is probably what I'd say[1].
1035496
Photography isn't easy. To become even a skilled commercial photographer requires considerable effort. To create art with a camera, more effort still[2]. Not to mention the work in setting up shots, and so on.
Mind, I don't know anything about photography but I know a few amateur astrophotographers and what they get up to is anything but easy.
[1] Technically untrue. What I'd say is probably "Oh, please, oh please, oh pleas don't kill me."
[2] Not easy to bring out ZE MAGICS!
1035383 2. Don't diss monchromatic canvasses. Their problem is that they, by and large, can't be photographed. I went and saw a similar painting (it wasn't quite monochromatic, but it was of the 'smear of color' genre) and, in person, it's actually fascinating. Swirls and patterns, just incredibly textured. I'm no art connoisseur, but I certainly found it interesting.
The exception that proves the rule!
The proffered exception is monochromatic canvasses that are fascinating because of their texture. The proof of the rule is that they are not an exception, because canvasses that have both texture and an interesting painting are more fascinating. My example is Van Gogh's Starry Night, which I described in The Magician & the Detective:
1035496 It's true that a person can sometimes take a great photograph almost by accident. It doesn't usually happen, though. It's also true that a skilled photographer can be wandering down the street, minding her own business, and suddenly see something she knows will make a great photograph, figure out how to shoot it, pull out her camera, and shoot it.
I could say the skill is front-loaded, but anybody could also argue that the skill in knowing just what shade of red to paint a canvas is also front-loaded. So... I guess my heuristic doesn't apply to photography. You're own your own there.
1035803
I see your point, but remain unconvinced in that respect. When you have a painting which is not abstract, the texture is such that it must be subservient to the subject of the painting. Everything must be. And the "Starry Night," which is, by all accounts, magnificent, has to put its texture to work depicting the sensation of being lost in the sky. The use of texture is tethered to this emotion, and this goal. And that is a fine thing, but!
Malevich's Black Square, say, works under a self-imposed limitation of one color and one color alone. This is artificial, yes, but much other such limitations in art[1] it can be use to heighten something. In he case of monochromatic canvases, one can explore everything that a certain color can be -- using texture and layering and subtle variations to produce every "shade" of black, say, possible in bewildering array. It isn't easy. It can be said to be really hard, in fact.
What's easy about it, I maintain, is that it is remarkably easy to screw up[2], and remarkably easy to end up with something that looks like a three-year-old could do it[3]. The failure state of this minimalist approach that uses austerity to say things a more rich painting couldn't is child's drawing. Much like the failure state of poetry is painful doggerel.
[1] Like in poetry, the limits of rhyme schemes and scansion, or, indeed, the forced vocabulary choices of a sestina.
[2] Like poetry! Nothing more painful than bad poetry, yes?
[3] Because, of course, a three-year-old could. And, in my experience, given a box of crayons, would.
This is slightly off-topic, but I'm routinely confounded by the phrase, "the exception that proves the rule". Everyone seems to mean something different by it, and it's been used a few times in this thread – once as an isolated response to my earlier comment, which I found to be so abstract as to...
Oooohh. I get it now.
Performance art.
Anyway, have Wikipedia.
1035838 I think you're getting into nature presented as art. The texture of a canvas can be beautiful, much as the texture of my lawn could be beautiful. Stretching things a bit, it's related to how the Julia set is beautiful. A tree is beautiful. I don't use the word "art" for these things. "Art" is short for "artificial". Art is something people construct, not pointing at something that already exists. I define it that way because it seems more useful to me. If I ask whether something is art, I want to know if it's the kind of thing people should create. If it's beautiful but not the kind of thing people can create, it's probably not a helpful example to me.
1035852 I didn't know the original meaning. I used it the 2nd way.
1035875
Sorry, I spoke poorly, I didn't mean the texture of the canvas. I meant the texture, the, ah, three-dimensionality of applying paint in layer upon layer upon layer. That's artificial.
You can use variations in how much you put and how to paint entire pictures in only one color. It's an experience wholly unavailable via digital reproduction or color print, which is why I spent most of my life without getting it. I live very far[1] from prominent galleries as you may imagine.
[1] For European values of 'far.'
1035793
Thank you) I tried to think (somewhat)seriously for once.
On not really related note - I don't really like Dostoyevsky. But he is certainly much, much better in my opinion than, for example, Tolstoy. I almost hate "War and Peace". I don't really have an opinion on who would be the best writer(I haven't read enough in my opinion to be somewhat objective), but I admire Mikhail Bulgakov, Arkady and Boris Strugatskie, and Ray Bradbury.
I'll try to post something more thought-out tomorrow. When I'm not drunk after celebrating my cousin's 18th birthday.)
1035792
No, see, you still run into problems. Because we need to know where we're going in order to determine what the best route is. Or something.
In which places, for example, is placing the effort worthwhile? Your example of the animation placed its effort in creating the animation over creating the story. For you, this disqualified it from being art. For a story on fimfiction, not a lot of people place their effort in the cover art, focusing more upon the story. Does this exclude their story from being art? Which parts are important; which places to locate effort are worthwhile?
We can't know this unless we know what we're aiming for. If art is located most in story, then placing effort there is something an animation should do; if not, then its fine to ignore it. That's not something I personally believe, but your criteria can lead to it without a definition.
1035188 and 1035383 already said nearly everything I wanted to say
That's what I get for showing up late to the party.
An important qualifier of art, I feel, is the ability to invoke an emotional reaction. It can be happy or sad, overwhelming or muted, intentional or not (see Death Of The Author), but it must be there. Its absence means apathy, and without the audience caring, there cannot be art. (Obviously, this is not a comprehensive definition. Angrily thinking "this shit isn't art" is technically an emotional reaction.
)
Examples: I dislike Rarity. Worst poni. With mild embarrassment, I admit that I became extremely angry at her actions in Sweet and Elite, to the point that, forgetting this is a Little Girls' Show, I started screaming obscenities at my TV at the end of the episode, when it appeared she might truly abandon her friends. However, undeniably she is an extremely well-crafted character, because this internal conflict of hers was entirely believable and in-character, and it speaks volumes that her actions were able to invoke such an emotional reaction. And I can appreciate her for those qualities.
I also feel that 4'33" is in fact art. (How many commenters had heard of this song already, without having needed to Google it? Not that popularity is an indication of art, just that it clearly made an impact of one-form-or-another to be well-known.) Way back in middle school band class, one of the first things I was taught is that silence is often more important than sound. Hearing 50 musicians playing fortissimo, then a beat of silence save for the lingering echo, then blasting once more, is one of the most basic ways to give the audience chills. Should one of the performers goof up and squeak a note in this gap—just one piccolo—the effect is ruined. 4'33" extends this concept to an entire piece, where all musicians stand with bows raised and lips to mouthpieces, and the only sounds are the nervous fidgeting of the audience as they "wait for the song to start". Is that one of those "making excuses for lazy people to consider themselves makers of fine art"? Is it nigh-impossible to compare 4'33" and Dvorak's 9th in similar terms? Is 4'33" little more than the musical equivalent of a trollfic, albeit one that was creatively original at the time? Sure, probably. But it did provoke emotion (mostly "lol") and I was able to appreciate it for that fact.
Does this mean I think art is subjective? Yeah, basically. BH doesn't find 4'33" to be art, and I'd feel quite pretentious to say that he's wrong and that he ought to be feeling things. An aggregator of art then—a museum, an exhibit, a mixed tape, an anthology—should be concerned with collecting pieces that they think the target audience will be impacted by. Perhaps they won't be impacted in the desired way (Death of the Museum Curator?), but again, apathy is the worst possible result. If Johnston and his posse want to enjoy works where authorial intent specifically aims for a lack of meaning, then go for it. I can't honestly tell him he's wrong for enjoying them. But in return, the notion that he can tell me the art I love is Not Actually Art is preposterous.
One last point: in regards to the artist who is truly lazy, who invests as little time into their work as possible, and then, when they are met with universal apathy, they bristle with indignation and angrily fume that we're too stupid to comprehend their brilliance...
It feels very reminiscent of the Twisp and Catsby argument.
art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215499741_EEML7-L-2.jpg
1035963 Hmm. I should rephrase everything I wrote to say "this is not exemplary art" instead of "this is not art". The reasoning I used can't conclude that something isn't art; it can only conclude that something probably isn't great art compared to other works.
What I said in the animation debate was that it depended on what you were looking for. I felt that the others were judging the animations for how useful they were for study by other animators, while I was judging them by how much a general audience would appreciate them. From the perspective of an animator looking for new techniques, story doesn't matter.
1036052 We're getting into a purely semantic argument. I would like there to be a word for art that excludes trolling and meta-art (art that's really an argument about what art is; "this is not a pipe"), because my purpose is to learn how to write better stories, and those things are so different that they're not part of the same skill set.
1036216
Mmm... that's fair, but...
It seems "art" isn't the word you're looking for, so let's drop that. It's more that you're looking for a way to create works that are... compelling? Powerful? But this feels more subjective than "what is art", is it not? As the author, you can only guess at how your readers will react. Dvorak 9 is fantastic. If someone was to tell me "this sucks; not enough wubwubwub", I could most certainly start bitching about "kids today", but I can't tell him he's wrong for not liking it
Is it that you want a metric by which storied can be measured, solely by their intricate and skilled workmanship? In the same way that I dislike Rarity's character but appreciate her nuance? True, it is possible to have a good idea that is marred by execution. Fan animation Snowdrop is a good example of this, as it has a somewhat touching notion of a filly seeing beauty where others do not, and in Luna finding a kindred spirit but it is ruined beyond belief with a ham-fisted character introduction of "this filly is blind and has no school project partner and has to walk home in a blizzard by herself. FEEL SAD."
However, if workmanship is the only criteria of concern, this risks falling into the Twisp and Catsby trap. Pandering to your audience vs. writing solely for yourself is a delicate balance; either extreme of the spectrum has definite pros and cons. Should you write something which you feel is a beautiful masterpiece of skill and technical prowess, you can certainly take personal enjoyment from this feat, but hypothetically if none of your readers appreciated it, this would mar your ability to consider the piece a success, would it not? Similar if you wrote a wildly popular story which you considered to be trite garbage—the worst thing you'd ever written—why do so many people like that POS?
But anyway, I'm trying to not get bogged in semantics, but the question "what is art?" and the umbrella of related subquestions have been debated for centuries for good reason.
Would it be safe to say you're trying to determine a way to quantify how effectively the author was able to transfer their thought into text? Not necessarily in how much they forced the reader to have a specific reaction or interpretation, but rather in how effectively they used words to bring the... unit of thought (my brain and Google are both failing me here)... to life.
I agree with this post …
… which unsettles me, because the counterexamples are low-hanging fruit. What is "My Little Dashie"? Not art, by your definition (or mine). But you've argued strongly elsewhere that MLD is successful, maybe more successful than anything we'll ever write, because objectively speaking a large number of people have enjoyed that piece of crap, and to any extent success can be objectively measured in FiM fanfic, it's achieved it.
> I again say that if one can make a painting in 10 minutes, it is probably not good art. Someone equally skilled who's willing to take 20 minutes can probably make something better.
So, what does it mean for something to be "art"? Does "art" entertain, inspire, educate? Is there something that defines the class besides time spent? Adding time doesn't automatically create art: if I type the letter "a" 1,000,000 times instead of copy/pasting it, the prose is still equally meaningless. So what is it that the additional time adds to the work that makes it art?
It doesn't always take more time to create more meaning. Sometimes, by chance, the stars align and great art simply falls out of a pen. (But you're right: unless you're the luckiest son of a birch to ever sprout from a seed, most of your work won't get there without a lot of polish.)
>>Bret Johnston
> And writing what you know is knotted up with intention, and intention in fiction is always related to control, to rigidity, and more often than not, a little solipsism.
… as opposed to the nihilism currently in favor? Cripes. That's horrifying.
1035636
> I'll also point folks to this recent post over on the SFWA web site in which New York Times bestselling SF author Toby Buckell talks about the work he still hasta do to sell a story. Spooky!
Sweet stars, that's the most depressing article I've read this year. Do I want to write? Yes. Do I want to be a writer, if it means beating my head against a wall 40 times until the wall cracks, just for a few hundred bucks and a little name recognition? Holy crap, I've already got a day job.
Okay, time for more devil's advocacy.
(Also, 1035895, I'm taking a short break. Don't judge me. I do what I want.)
I'm always a little mystified at how quick everyone is to jump on this "art is subjective" bandwagon. Yes, I'm looking at you, 1035546 and 1036052 – I like what you've been saying, but I feel like this idea is often accepted uncritically without really pursuing it. Mostly, I think, because no one wants to stand up and say, "X is art; Y is not." I think 1035308 has a solid point here that the word 'art' has been cheapened by this attitude.
So what's the impetus behind this widespread notion that we aren't fit to judge what does and doesn't constitute art, that whether a thing is 'art' is a subjective notion rather than an objective fact?
I'm sure some people will disagree with me on this, but to me the idea of subjectivity in defining art stinks of relativism, and seems to be just as poor an idea here as it is in moral and sociological reasoning. These ideas come about because so many of us feel so uncomfortable making value judgments, especially when it seems difficult to put the rationale for those value judgments in a universal heuristic that can be recognized as having a basis in some form of well-accepted axiomatic truth. "It's not art because I think it sucks, and if you say otherwise, you're wrong," feels like the sort of argument a third-grader would make.
We all have a pretty easy time drawing distinctions between [creative works / moral decisions / societies & cultures] as long as we can do it without attaching value to those distinctions. But saying that one thing is better than another, worth more than another? That's anathema. And yet, that's how our world works day-in and day-out, and to abrogate our reasoning in the matter is to simply cede the decisions to mob rule, or to the gatekeepers and tastemakers like Bret Anthony Johnston who, you know, must have expertise that we lack and opinions that are... well... of more value. Because saying, "Oh, I'm nobody, my ideas aren't really that important," that's easy. We're perfectly happy, most of us, to devalue ourselves. It's the only valuation choice we feel comfortable making.
Well, as should be apparent, I think that's crap. I did say I was arrogant beyond all reason, after all. If someone wants to tell me that (in generality) stories without plot have artistic merit, I'm going to be perfectly happy to tell them that they're full of shit. If someone wants to tell me that a painting that looks like me using the 'fill' tool in MS Paint is art, then I'm going to consign their opinion to my "not worth a hill of beans" bin.
Again, some clarification – I'm not saying everything so-conceived is crap. I'm all for showing off brushstrokes, assuming that there's some interesting structure behind them. As I said earlier, I think if a story lacks [plot / character / setting / theme] and yet is so compelling that the reader never feels the lack, I'm happy to call that art. And I'm even a little okay with calling 4'33" art – though just barely, and it's definitely performance art, not music. And "performance art" is a pretty damn dicey category. Music, theater, dance, those are all pretty well defined, and you don't have a lot of people trying to pass off crap like (arguably NSFW youtube link) "Interior Semiotics" as art.
But I know you're not going to be happy until I give my own definition of art, my sine qua non if you will. So, if I were working off the top of my head (which I am – this could probably be productively refined), I would say that art is: (1) an expression (2) in a particular medium (3) that makes use of the essential character of its medium (4) to convey an intelligible and intentional message. I count emotional states, including awe, as intelligible messages that can be conveyed, but I don't think one needs to limit art to the conveyance of emotional messages.
So to me, if a work fails to be an expression, it isn't art. If it fails to have a medium of some sort, it is not art. If it fails to use the character of that medium (see: canvasses that might just as well have been dyed a color other than white, stories that ignore elements of storytelling without message necessitation), it isn't art. And – this is the big one for me – if it lacks an intelligible and intentional message of some form, that is a product of the character of the medium and not a matter of the audience's hapless search for meaning, then it isn't art.
I really don't think this is too much to ask. And I'm pretty happy chucking anything that can't meet those four criteria. I think they're definitely preferable to more "art is what everyday people like" and "art is what gatekeepers with agendas want to define it to be".
Well, somepony needs to defend 4'33", and this is where I came in. It's not, after all, a piece about silence; it's a piece about ambience, the sounds of the room, the murmurs of the audience. No two performances are ever alike. John Cage said of the audience at the work's premiere:
And anyway, Cage has nothing on Yves Klein, who several years earlier put together the Monotone Symphony, consisting of a twenty-minute chord followed by a twenty-minute rest.
This matters to me as an individual who writes fanfic (as distinguished from "a writer of fanfic," since I'm not entirely sure I've earned that title), because in the matter of dialogue, what isn't said is often as important as what is said.
1036495
I always think of writing:
As one of my four part-time jobs. It ranks #3 on the list as far as monetary pay-offs are concerned--like you say, a couple hundred bucks a year, just enough, actually, to require me filing Schedule C with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service--but it's the one I simply cannot live without.
It all goes back to the title of BH's post here. Whether anything is art or not is an argument I leave to others--I only started writing because I like light-hearted but emotionally-touching slice-of-life adventure stories, and they're so few and far-between that I had to make my own--but I comb my sentences carefully, nudging them here and there till they describe the pictures in my head as well as I can manage. And I just plain love every minute of it.
Mike Again
I've just gotta say, this entire thread has been remarkable reading. BH, you collect the best minions.
It's posts like these that made me decide to watch you. I'm don't agree with you on some of it but it is an interesting read and something worth thinking about nonetheless.
I have always enjoyed your blog posts, and I am once again to tell you: thank you, good sir; may your endeavors never cease.
"I think what has happened is that people have found it is easier to make impressive-sounding arguments that something is art, than to make art."
As someone who is on the tail end of three years of art school, this explains so much.
Nobody here seems to be able to explain to me what art is or what it is good for. The art world is full of charlatans who spend twenty minutes spraying a canvas with a paintball gun, wow the museum curators with a pretty explanation about how their artwork connects them with the divine soul or whatever, and then pocket twenty million dollars. That is why people don't respect artists anymore. Art no longer requires skill in its creation; art doesn't have to mean anything; art does not serve any useful purpose beyond fattening the creator's pocketbook. Utterly frustrating.
1036654 Well, somepony needs to defend 4'33", and this is where I came in. It's not, after all, a piece about silence; it's a piece about ambience, the sounds of the room, the murmurs of the audience.
1035838 Malevich's Black Square, say, works under a self-imposed limitation of one color and one color alone. This is artificial, yes, but much other such limitations in art[1] it can be use to heighten something. In he case of monochromatic canvases, one can explore everything that a certain color can be -- using texture and layering and subtle variations to produce every "shade" of black, say, possible in bewildering array. It isn't easy. It can be said to be really hard, in fact.
I'm gonna get very fussy here. I can't define art thoroughly, but I can lay out a distinction that I find useful: Art does not mean "the good and beautiful". It doesn't mean "the best things in life". Beauty, joy, love--these things aren't art. Art is artificial. The natural world is beautiful, but it is not art, by definition. Things produced by stochastic but semi-regular processes in the world, like trees, clouds, and stock markets, often have an organic beauty that isn't art.
The ambient sounds in a room are interesting, but they aren't art. Getting someone to listen to them may score some philosophical points, and make their day more interesting, and be worthwhile, but it isn't artifice. If the texture on a canvas is that produced by the process of paper-making, it may be beautiful but is not artifice. If it is designed deliberately, then it can be art, just as a photographer may choose to shoot a photo in black and white because colors would distract from the texture-like patterns of light & dark they're trying to contrast.
1036495 What is "My Little Dashie"? Not art, by your definition (or mine). But you've argued strongly elsewhere that MLD is successful, maybe more successful than anything we'll ever write, because objectively speaking a large number of people have enjoyed that piece of crap, and to any extent success can be objectively measured in FiM fanfic, it's achieved it.
There is something different about MLD vs. the modernist art discussed here: MLD didn't come with an essay explaining why it was art. It wasn't praised by the critics. People just liked it. The reasons I gave for suspecting things of not being art don't apply to it. Why people like it so much, I don't know.
Stop asking hard questions.