The Performance of Food Art

I don't know if anyone still follows this blog, but I see no harm in posting as I see fit. I was browsing the New York Times today, and came across this interesting article about a piece of food "performance art."

A quick google search brought me to the artist's website, linked here:

To pull a few quotes from her bio section:

Jennifer Rubell creates participatory large-scale food projects that are a hybrid of performance art, installation art, and happenings. Often taking place inside a traditional art-world occasion -- gala dinner, opening night, gallery opening – her work deconstructs the meal or ritual, and reshapes it into a series of installations that prompt participants to partake without any instruction or guidance...

The projects fulfill the essential functions of the event itself while completely ignoring classic order, format and service. The event often unfolds in a series of spaces, through a series of installations that engage with the history of modern and contemporary art while at the same time providing food, drink, and wonder.

I can recall a time when I would scoff at such assertions and dismiss works like Rubell's as not art, but merely a stunt trying to play itself off as art, but now, I am not so sure. While I still insist that Jackson Pollack and Damien Hirst are not artists proper (rather, they are confidence artists, distorting the meaning of art for purely selfish goals), I see some merit and value in Rubell's works.

I shall leave a question for any who care to explore it: do Rubell's works, "performance pieces using food," fit into a traditional definition of art? Are works such as hers useful for exploring and understanding our natures? Or is it merely fun, a lesser sort of "decorative art," unfit to be put into the same category as the "high arts" of painting, sculpture, and classical music?

Exactly What They Deserve

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8486359.stm?ls

Personally, I think this guy's got the right idea. And that he should add more Damien Hirst pieces. To my knowledge, a great number of Hirst's pieces involve no direct involvement from him. He is a "conceptual artist," that is, he conceives the idea, commissions real artists to make it, and takes all the credit (and reaps the obscene profits of modern "art").

Though this begs the question: is there something aesthetic in the destruction of bad art? Is this pile of destroyed art pieces a work of art, itself?

My knee jerk reaction is to say, "no, it's merely what most modern 'art' deserves." But then I come to the question of what "Art" truly is. Could it be manifest in this destruction of artworks?

As a side note, I want to keep an eye on this... I'm curious as to whether Hirst will sue this artist for destroying his work.

Carroll's Response to Gaut

As you may recall from our readings on horror, one of Gaut's critiques of Carroll was that Carroll's definition discounts the existence of horror movies where the "monster" is actually human. He cited "The Silence of the Lambs" as an example of what is clearly a horror movie without a monster. He also brought up the hypothetical example of a person who comes from a horror movie, saying that it wasn't scary.

In his article "Enjoying Horror Fictions: A Response to Gaut," printed in the British Journal of Aesthetics, Carroll responds to both of these claims. (For those interested in reading the full article, it can be found by searching through Freel Library's listing of journals. I accessed the text via "Academic OneFile.")

In brief, his arguments are follows: Hannibal Lector is a monster, because he, and other psychotic killers depicted in slasher films, "constitute science fictions of the mind." They do not suffer real psychoses, but fictionally enhanced versions of psychoses, taking them from the realm of science to science fiction, and thus monsters, defending his monster hypothesis.

As for Gaut's example of Norman, the man who claims the film wasn't frightening, Carroll has this to say: "On the basis of my own -- admittedly unscientific -- sample of such pronouncements, I think that, when they are assessed contextually, these assertions (generally uttered by men, especially adolescent men) most often mean 'I'm too tough to be moved by something like that'."

He goes on to cite the commercial success of the movie (and preceding novel) Jurassic Park, and the success of the horror novels of Stephen King, to suggest that it is not an atypical person who consumes horror fiction, or a typical person in an atypical situation, but that they are, again, fascinated by monsters.

To end with a question: Do you feel that Carroll's response to Gaut adequately addresses the objections he raised? Why?

Art and Aesthetics

At his talk on Wednesday, Tom Wartenberg made a very interesting point about aesthetics and art. In short: "Aesthetics is what's visually pleasing. It's how we aesthetically enjoy nature. Not everything that we appreciate aesthetically is art, and in addition, not all art is aesthetic. Some art we appreciate for what it does for us, how it makes us think, rather than how it looks." I do not purport to claim that these were his exact words, but I believe this was the gist of it, if I recall correctly (anyone who was there, feel free to correct me in a comment if I misrepresented his view).

I find this view to be quite interesting. I had started my considerations of art and aesthetics from the premise that all art objects are aesthetic objects, that art objects are a subset of the category of items that we appreciate aesthetically.

Let us take this view and play it out. Some modern art certainly seems to lack any aesthetic value. I will take as my example Jeremijenko's Tree Logic at Mass MoCA (feel free to debate me on the aesthetic value of this "piece."). There is, to my estimation, no aesthetic value in hanging trees upside down, and yet this is on display in an art museum. Indeed, it may well be considered art despite its lack of aesthetic value (I will leave the contention of good vs bad art for another time).

This, I think, might give yet more credence to Weitz's argument that we cannot define art, that we cannot identify a conclusive list of necessary AND sufficient conditions.

To end on a list of questions:
1) Is "Tree Logic" art? Why?
2) Might it be possible to coin a definition of art that has the necessary and sufficient conditions to allow such diverse pieces as, say, "The Mona Lisa," Bethoveen's symphonies, and "Tree Logic" to all fall in to the category of art?
3) What might be some qualities that would allow a work to be art if it lacks aesthetic considerations, and how might these qualities differentiate the artwork from non-art works that share those qualities?

The Importance of Art in School

Tania asked: "In our country will it ever be the case that more schools rally harder to keep their art programs or will they always be the first to go?"

For the purpose of answering this question, I will assume you mean schools below the college level, and I will address my answer to elementary and middle schools in particular, and high schools to a lesser extent.

Much as I hate to say this, I think that, for the foreseeable future, the answer will be the latter. Particularly in today's economy, with budgets being slashed across the board, I sincerely doubt that many, if any, schools will fight to keep art programs at the expense of "core education" -- math, science, social studies, English. I do not like to admit this, but it's an unfortunate fact that many schools see art, and even to some extent recess, as merely frivolous, and unnecessary to the development of the child or the person.

To end with a question: Is participation in the arts from an early age beneficial to the development of a child?