I first wrote this way back in 2014 and today seems like a good day to revisit the post. Not much has changed… aside from the advent of AI. I said when that happened, and I don’t see a reason to change this, that part of the backlash against AI art and what laymen can make with it, is based on beauty. Suddenly, art can be beautiful again, so it is. That’s just not acceptable to a certain portion of ‘artists’ who maintain that the process is more important than the end product.

So what is art?

art

noun \ˈärt\

: something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings

: works created by artists : paintings, sculptures, etc., that are created to be beautiful or to express important ideas or feelings

Is a white-on-white canvas art? Does my opinion that no, it isn’t, really matter? I did find an interesting article explaining why (well, attempting to explain, I must be dumb because it went right over my poor lil’ head) it is, as well as why an canvas painted entirely black was art.

I’m fairly sure that anything my kindergartener could do, with no effort, is not art. So does the amount of skill that goes into a piece make it art? Maybe… that’s closer to a definition than say, paint spatters on canvas, because “existential” and heck, I’ve seen elephants paint with more skill.

I got to pondering on this after playing a game that involved my being assigned an artist, I had to look at their work and choose an example, with explanation of why I liked it so much. I was given Mary Cassat, who I was vaguely familiar with, and chose her lovely, luminous Breakfast in Bed. Why? Because it resonated with me, bringing back memories of being a young mother who just wasn’t ready to rise and shine with my active little moppet. Can we say the same about “art installations” that involve bodily fluids, revolting poses, or massive amounts of fabric covering a landscape? I don’t intend to say all modern art is awful, it isn’t. Check out the blown glass viruses, they are amazing. And again, we come back to skill, which this indubitably takes.

But Mary Cassat’s work also made me think of something else. She was a woman who was painting as an equal with the Impressionists, and her work is amazing. It’s also largely focused on motherhood. Ironically, the current feminist movement would deride her as though her accomplishments were nothing, because she portrayed mothers who were devoted to their children, not their careers. Yet she was an early feminist, and one who devoted her life to her art. Like me, she objected to being called a “woman artist” preferring simply artist.

I keep seeing these writing kickstarters and anthologies pop up, based on the premise that not enough women write science fiction (or whatever other genre) and they only allow women to submit works to them. I say no, that’s discrimination, and I refuse to take part in it. I am a writer, not a woman writer, and I want my male counterparts offered the same opportunities as I am. Besides, it’s silly. When you can write as anyone, anything you want to be, are they going to come to your door and order you to drop trou to prove yourself? Artists ought to be judged on their skill, their art, not their genitals.

So why has the nihilist art, the destructive, the bitter, yes, even I will call it the vile, become so prevalent? Are we so sunk in self-hatred that even our art reflects the soul of a society that has lost hope? Australian Ben Hourigan thinks that it may be a reflection of how jaded artistic communities and art critics have become. “Academics will tell you that what people vomiting into each other’s mouths has to do with naked thirteen-year-old girls, self-mutilation, and religious icons photographed in containers of bodily fluids, is that it is an act of transgression. That doesn’t mean that it’s an act of wrongdoing, necessarily, just that some kind of line has been approached, prodded, and then straddled or even flagrantly crossed.

This is supposed to be a good thing because the standard distinctions we make between good and evil, truth and falsity, and a whole range of similar pairs of concepts, are fundamentally flawed and an obstacle to proper critical thinking. Thank French philosopher Jacques Derrida for that gem of unreason.”

So the art community as a whole is a teenager trying to piss his parents off – literally. Great. This is what my grandkids will have to look back on? What will art be like in the future? Maybe we’ll all just give up on it entirely. I’m trying to think of a near or far-future science fiction story that deals with Art, and Sarah Hoyt’s gardens in the anarchic society of Eden come to mind, serving a dual purpose of utility and beauty.

I am an artist. In words, in paint, now even in pixels. What does this mean? Well, practically, I get paid for it. Which no doubt would have that transgressive community tilting their nose further into the air (careful you don’t do that in the shower, you’ll drown…) and labeling me as commercial trash. I’m reminded of the song, “That’s why the Lady is a Tramp” and I’ll take that with pride. Pay me, and I will make beautiful things for you.

When did all this transgressing start? Larry Shiner in his “The Invention of Art: A Cultural History” speculates that it began with the age of philosophers such as Kant and Schiller, who dictated how art should be enjoyed, and with the rise of that class of people who dictate what we the people, uneducated and small, should enjoy. Enter the gatekeepers of art, “To the rescue, enter a whole new caste of cultural intermediaries: curators, art dealers, and, for that matter, book critics.” So, somewhere in the eighteenth century, art both burgeoned, and brought about the demise of beauty.

With the internet, is this changing? I sell my work on DeviantArt, where you can find a range from the sublime to the workmanlike (me) to the horrid. We the plebians finally get a choice that isn’t dictated by the jaded art critics and academic world that is bored by anything beautiful. There are other places to find what pleases you. What is Art, after all, but a pursuit of beauty?

beau·ty

noun \ˈbyü-tē\

: the quality of being physically attractive

: the qualities in a person or a thing that give pleasure to the senses or the mind