 Image from Wikipedia. |
Art, or garbage? |
 Image from Taglialatella Galleries. Also, you can paint your own Marilyn at WebExhibits. |
Art, or mass production? |
 Image from ObeyGiant.com. |
Art, or graffiti? |
 Image from Microscopesblog.com. |
Art, or life? |
What is Art? Is it true that art is better defined by what it is not than what it is?
We believe that garbage is not art, but Marcel Duchamp proved that wasn’t true when he displayed a urinal as found art with his piece, Fountain, back in 1917. Andy Warhol went about proving that mass produced items can be art with 100 Soup Cans and Marilyn Diptych in 1962. Shepard Fairey has echoed the same theme in a new way begining in 1989 with his André the GIant Has a Posse street art sticker campaign, and more recently with his Urban Renewal Kit, which makes people part of the performance aspect of the art by allowing individuals to download, print and paste up copies of his André Obey images.
Usually, one can label things like urinals, mass produced paintings, and graphics as “design.” But the fact that Duchamp’s urinal, the Marilyn paintings, and the André graphics are considered art, points to a more subtle idea: the definition of what is art changes over time. Art is actually a moving object, defined by what has come before. Anyone else, at this point, simply displaying a urinal is a plumber, anyone making block prints is a factory worker, anyone posting an André sticker is a defacer of property.
(The exception to this seems to be when a work is a commentary on a previous work of art, but even then, isn’t it in fact further defining the previous work rather than defining itself? Examples of this are Stieglitz’s photo of Duchamp’s fountain, and Fairey’s self referential Giant Star. But this is a digression…)
The same might also be said of “Life.” Is it easier to define life by what is not life, honing in on the true definition (as science has over the ages), the definition adapting and evolving like life itself? In fact, can’t life be defined more by the questions surrounding its negative space than the answers that fill its matter?
Scanning electron microscopy works similarly, by measuring the angles of bounced electrons to discover what is not under the lens, just as photons bounce off objects to reveal what is not being viewed. And isn’t Duchamp doing the same with his urinal, by allowing it to define negative space, just as Warhol defines what isn’t mass produced, just as Fairey defines what isn’t street art, just as life defines what isn’t inanimate?
