Angie McKaig - E-Business Consultant and Entrepreneur
oh, the masses2008.04.25
No, I'm not talking about web accessibility, but the accessibility of art.
Heather Morton chats a bit about a new site, WhatIsn'tArt, and more specifically a quote from Thomas Kinkade (arguing that "art", as the "art world" knows it, is elitist and anything that's popular with the masses can't possibly be art, or so "they" say).
She asks: "I'm not sure Kinkade's democratization of Art serves any real benefit, do you?"
I've been thinking a lot about this the last few years, particularly since my love affair with (and beginning collection of) pop surrealism much of which is either popular with the masses or an artistic rendering of something even more accessible to the masses (advertising and pop culture). But it's something I also think about now that I'm darned addicted to photography and would like to progress at some point past interesting one-step-above-snapshots to real honest to goodness art, even if it's just mostly for my own consumption.
Here's the thing. Arguing about what art is or isn't has always seemed to me a fruitless endeavour - not unlike fleas arguing over who owns the dog.
I think art needs to stir up some kind of emotional response in the viewer. But beyond that, even if that emotional response is just "pleasure at looking at a pretty thing", why can't that be art? Does the eye need to be trained? Can anyone determine art?
I say hellsurewhynot. I'm not sure what benefit Heather's looking for - a benefit to the artists? To the "art world"? To humanity's or even just North America's culture as a whole?
Put another way: for artists, creating art is an expression of something they need/want to express. But for we folks who look at it and admire it, isn't the admiring the point? Does it matter what I admire? If a few thousand folks have a Kinkade hanging in their homes and get in a little better mood for looking at it, then I'd say as a people we're probably better off (certainly, my day may be more pleasant from dealing with them) - culturally, I don't think art been diluted in the slightest. Certainly there is still art that is considered "elite", and there will always be people who think that hanging a Kinkade in your house is just one step above hanging an IKEA print. Do these two poles - the masses and the elite - ever really change?
On a related topic, I had a great chat a few weeks ago with a photographer friend of mine who insisted that the quality of photography has gone away with the advent of digital and the low barrier to entry. With the flood of "photographers" into a field previously populated with the "photographic elite", and with the flood and ubiquity of photographs now that digital is so cheap (taking hundreds of shots in a day rather than carefully choosing 36 perfect moments), the total quality was going down.
I had to argue with him, using a different kind of "art" as example. Back before mass literacy and affordable writing materials, writing was certainly more carefully thought out and certainly, many stories written back then were "rock stars" of writing.
But with mass literacy and cheap binder paper and pens (not to mention computers!), suddenly the "barrier to entry" was tiny and writing was no longer for the elite, but for the masses. And while certainly pounds and pounds of dreck are generated every single day, haven't we, as a culture, actually produced more incredible written works of art today than ever before? The ratio of wheat to chaff may have changed, but the overall volume of great work has expanded exponentially.
And that's my point about photography. Sure, more dreck - but I bet we'll see more "rock stars" (in fact, I already see it) than a higher barrier to entry would have ever allowed for.
Maybe we masses aren't such a bad lot, after all. :)
I have more to say - to tie this into web design and web culture in general - but that will have to wait for a later post.
