Yes and No

Generosity and Art

After writing about the controversy around Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial last week, I started thinking about what art is supposed to offer the public, if anything.

One of art’s jobs, certainly, is to stretch people’s perceptions. To make people think and perhaps feel uncomfortable. I love this. But it’s a hard job to do well.

One reason I believe it’s hard to do well is that it involves giving something to the viewer. Saying yes to what is and adding to it—complexity, humor, depth, possibility, strange twists—but not at the expense of what’s there.

The generosity of what in Improv is called “Yes, And...”

And that perhaps this “Yes, And…” mentality is often what’s missing in contemporary art.

This week, post-minimalist sculptor Richard Serra died at 85. He created a controversial public artwork from the same era as Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial called Tilted Arc. Tilted Arc actually ended up getting taken down while Maya Lin’s memorial has become beloved.

For those who don’t know, Richard Serra is considered to be one of the best post minimalist sculptors in contemporary art, so the removal of Tilted Arc had nothing to do with his abilities as an artist or whether or not the sculpture was ‘good’ or not. But it had everything to do with how that particular sculpture made people feel.

Which, in a word, was disregarded.

So why is that different from the how Vietnam vets initially felt in about Maya Lin’s wall? They certainly felt disregarded when they found out her sculpture proposal had won.

Well, I’ve got some theories—so let’s pour more coffee in The Pink Teacup cafe and discuss!

“No, But”

While Serra is famous for making massive steel sculptures that are powerful expressions of monumentality, space, motion, and….even math really, I think the mistake he made with Tilted Arc was that his intent seemed to have been obstruction and interruption. He wasn’t offering, he was imposing.

If you look at an overview of Tilted Arc installed in Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan (photo below), you can see that it seems in opposition to everything around it. It says ‘no’ to the circle form of the plaza, it says ‘no’ to the tile patterns in the plaza walking area, and it says ‘no’ to the round fountain area.

“Tilted Arc” by Richard Serra. Image credit: artpictures.club

People have to walk through that plaza every day as part of their commuting routine. And he made moving through it much harder. He forced people to interact with his piece by creating inconvenience and opposition without offering them an upside. Nothing in that experience was transformed, elevated or made more interesting. And people pushed back.

Now, no one found this plaza particularly beautiful or enjoyable as it was, but essentially he made it worse rather than better. What if he had said “Yes, And” to Federal Plaza? What if he had created a tilted arc that improved one’s experience, that helped the space make more sense, or be more inviting, or more intimate, or more flowing?

Perhaps because he was already famous, the sculpture seemed good in theory, but in reality, was alienating in practice. The opposite, in my opinion, of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, which a lot of people hated in theory and then loved in practice.

So why am I bringing up all this now—over thirty years after Tilted Arc was taken down? Because I think contemporary art struggles with this problem still and yet.

I think contemporary artists who create challenging or less easily accessible work often want to open people’s minds or push people’s buttons without necessarily giving the viewer anything in return. To provoke but not offer.

I don’t mean that artists need to make work that anyone can instantly understand, find attractive, or find easily relatable, as Maya Lin so clearly demonstrated with her sculpture. Art’s job is not simply to be pretty or to decorate someone’s house.

But I do think it means perceiving art, perceiving one’s own art, as a conversation with the viewer and not a lecture, a forced march, or an opportunity for personal navel gazing. At least for art that is out in the world—in a gallery or a public installation.

I have often been taken aback in a gallery by what I perceived as the artist’s lack of consideration for the viewer. This attitude of indifference can get expressed in the smallest of ways—even something as simple as forcing the viewer to stand in order to watch a video that is several minutes long. In those instances, I always think: “Geez, at least when I go to a movie, they give me a chair.”

This also made me wonder if the focus on individuality and personal expression in art since the advent of Romanticism has fed the desire of artists to be understood, but not so much the desire to offer understanding—that is, to create work that serves as a portal of understanding or possibility for a potential viewer.

I’m not talking about controlling an artist’s subject matter, rather, I’m wondering about a deeper intention to include the viewer as part of the process. To take one additional step beyond expressing oneself or trying to make something ‘good.’

The Emperor’s Wardrobe

Often, when I’ve been at a museum or gallery with a friend who’s not an artist, I see them perceive their own lack of connection with a challenging show or work of art as their own fault; like, if they weren’t such a dang philistine, they’d ‘get’ it.

And my reply to friends who say to me, “I don’t really get it,” has often been: “Well, the reason you don’t get it because there’s nothing really to ‘get.’ In the words of Gertrude Stein, ‘There is no there there.’” Because I too felt nothing when I looked at it and I’m both passionate about art and educated in it.

Sometimes the emperor simply has no clothes.

But it’s messy, right? Because just as often, I’m happy to defend or offer an explanation for a less than accessible artwork that I believe is ‘good’ or ‘great’ when someone ‘doesn’t get it’ or thinks it’s ‘bad’ or dismisses it with “My kid could do that.”

And while a person untrained in the arts cannot do a lot of art that might appear to be ‘easy to make’, it’s also understandable that they might find the endless variations of expression that makes up contemporary art a little……perplexing. Off-putting even.

In fact, an emphasis on concept in contemporary art has often meant that any aesthetic considerations have completely taken a back seat, so our long held cultural notions ‘good’ and ‘beautiful’ don’t even apply. And the capital A “Art World” exacerbates this confusion, I think, with a giant lack of communication.

Which to me, is a giant lack of giving.

This gets us back, I think, to the whole idea of approaching contemporary art as an ongoing conversation between creator and viewer rather than presenting it as an expertly curated parade of masterpieces that must be revered.

On the Sidelines

Visual artists want visual art to matter more in contemporary society than it currently does (a personal obsession for me certainly) and we’re super aware of the many obstacles that prevent that, not the least of which is the elite art markets that treat art as investment property.

But it’s also that we live in a sports and celebrity obsessed culture. This is particularly true in the U.S., where we spend much less per capita on the arts than other developed countries. And while most people in this country, even those uninterested in sports, can name at least a few famous contemporary athletes, I’d be surprised if the average American could name even a single ‘famous’ living artist. (And Andy Warhol doesn’t count because he’s been dead a while now.)

And the average working artist feels this cultural indifference in their day to day existence.

But if we’re honest, there’s a level of arbitrariness about who gets put forth as ‘great’ or the ‘best’ in the art world that doesn’t happen in, say, professional sports. In professional sports, those people are literally the best in their field. Because the measures of greatness are much more concrete.

Art excellence can’t be measured in the same way that athletic excellence is—there’s a level of interpretation, ambiguity, and taste involved that makes that impossible. But as a society, we still use that same language of excellence that we use in athletics—the best, the greatest—when talking about art, selling it, or showing it in big institutions—which is why, I think, that people can feel ‘had’ at a show they didn’t understand.

And to make matters more complicated—sometimes they feel ‘had’ because they were.

Either way, contemporary visual art is marginalized in our society today in a way, I think, that perhaps other art forms—contemporary music or performance for instance—are not. And while some of this marginalization stems from the indifference of the dominant culture for visual art, some of it results from the indifference of the art world for the viewer.

But what else?

Maybe some of it is also the result of a kind of unavoidable clubby-ness? Visual art reaching a place where all that’s left is a deep dive into less accessible formats of expression that might be only interesting to other aficionados in the way that’s true for enthusiasts of any arcane topic?

But should art be an arcane topic?

It’s Complicated

Trying to put these fragmented thoughts and opinions into words has felt awkward, complicated, and honestly, slightly tortuous. As soon as I’d assert one thing, I could think of how I’d experience it’s opposite.

I’ve also been thinking about the various Biennials that are happening right now—the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale and all the important “Art Fairs” going on in “Big Cities” (that are the opposite of summer fairs of artists in booths in parks.) I read all the reviews, comments and insider jokes in art magazines and newspapers about these shows and, because I got my art school training, I can laugh, nod and ‘get’ it all. And at the same time, I wonder what these events means to most people. Anything? Nothing? The Whitney What?

What do you think about wanting art to be more of a ‘conversation’ with the viewer? Or of ‘yes and’ serving as a creative mantra for visual art? Does this feel like what contemporary art is already offering?

As a viewer, have you ever felt like you didn’t “get it?” And did you wonder if it was because you weren’t worldly or sophisticated enough?

As a maker, have you ever wondered if art even matters in contemporary society?

What would make the currents in contemporary visual art matter more, in the average person’s life do you think? Or is that not even an issue?

I like to have a conversation and I like to ‘wonder about’ stuff, so I’m open to all responses. You don’t have to agree with me or even have a definitive answer or opinion. You can just muse about these questions and share those musings. Or you might have giant strong opinions; I’m chock full of those so feel free to lay it on me. Also feel free to try on an opinion if you want—you can always change your mind later. God knows I probably will.