Non-Art

Don't get me wrong: I like art. I appreciate the time, talent, and vision it takes to create a great work of art. But what is art?

Tribune Plaza has these...things (pictured at right). I hesitate to call them art. I guess certain people refer to them as works of art, but do they in fact constitute works of art? Maybe I'm an uncultured moron, but I'd say no. They're definitely something, but they're not really art. Are they some objects that someone took the time to arrange? Yeah. Are they fairly interesting colors? Sure. Do those two factors make it art? Hell no.

The yellow one is meant to represent an Indian headdress. The gray one is meant to represent prairie grass. I mean...I guess. If you were on a ridiculous amount of drugs, maybe they would look like feathers and grass. I would probably appreciate them more if they were the creations of an actual Indian who grew up on a sweeping reservation somewhere. Not that that would change the fact that they're not really art, but it would make the story about the headdress and the grass somewhat more plausible. Instead, they're by some guy here in Chicago. He probably grew up in Oak Park or Bridgeport, or some other neighborhood completely lacking in both prairies and Indians.

The grey one in the foreground (remember, the one that's supposed to be prairie grass) was given by a donor to some small school in the western suburbs for millions of dollars. Do you think the guy has a good excuse for not giving the money for scholarships or computers? I'm sure the school's board of directors thought, "Now we have to figure out what to do with this massive gray thing that's not art, or this guy might not give us any more money. Man, we sure could use a new chemistry wing."

The litmus test for art should be: Something someone created that makes a significant impact on the beholder. You should tingle a little bit, either physically or mentally. It should make you think, draw some emotion from you, or prompt a deeper understanding of existence. Yet, all I think about when I pass by things like those is: Who the hell was ever moved by ten-tons of steel and some paint? Maybe if they were a little more something, they might provide shelter for pedestrians when it rains, thereby lending some useful purpose to their being. As it is, they're just a bunch of painted steel beams, taking up a whole lot of space and masquerading as art.

If I can do it, it's not art. This is particularly true when it comes to the visual arts. Namely, I cannot draw for crap. My doodles in school notebooks usually consisted of lines from songs, famous quotes, things like that. I'd occasionally draw one of those eight-point cube doodles, but I'd usually botch them in one way or another.

When I was little, and my dad went to the office every Saturday morning, he'd drop me off at the School of the Art Institute. He still has the little sculptures I made for him in his office, and they are pretty bad. One is a bunny, but it's a retarded bunny. The other is a little cup for paper clips that has a lid, but the lid doesn't even come close to covering the top of the cup. The only reason he keeps them handy is because he loves me, and not because I showed any sort of redeeming artistic talent.

My abilities in that regard have not improved at all in the twenty-odd years since I made those little ceramic objects. That being said, I know that tomorrow I could take a bunch of steel beams, weld them together, cover them in paint, and name them. I could easily finish both in roughly two days. I'm not sure I could convince someone to give me millions of dollars for them, but money shouldn't make something art.

Interestingly, they (I'm not sure who "they" are--the City arts council or someone at the Tribune, I guess) have replaced the grey one with a very different piece of "art." It consists of eight or ten metal rings, about three feet tall, of an awful rust color, arranged like a faulty Slinky. I can't find a picture of it, but it's completely unimpressive. It strikes me as the world's least-appealing bike rack, for the exclusive use of aliens who are twice as tall as us, blind, and goofy.

There's another statue in the plaza that definitely is a work of art: the Jack Brickhouse sculpture. Now, I certainly couldn't do a sculpture. Look at all the detail in his face, his hands, his clothes, his microphone. That's really hard to do. You could never do it in a week. It must have taken months and months of preparation and execution. Is it a stretch to say that the guy who came up with the grass and the Indian thing couldn't re-create the Brickhouse sculpture? If he could, then why didn't he do an actual representation of them, instead of some half-assed interpretation veiled under the cloak of "art"?

I know people might say, "There are different kinds of art, you myopic twit." And you'd be right, especially the myopic twit part, but not about the definition of art. There are different kinds of things that are referred to under the general umbrella of art. I know I'm taking a narrow view of the art genre, but it seems that defining things would require some sort of narrowing process. I'm sure there are some who might say that art needn't be subjected to semantics. Well, why should that be the only thing that gets a reprieve?

When I look at various decorative objects, I have to ask myself: Is that art, or is it Art? As I see it, within the major category of Art, there are works of art (things that took vision and skill, and have an enduring importance), and then there are works of non-art (things that marginally fit the broader description, but are easily reproduced by anyone with a pulse and ample time on their hands). If I didn't look at Art in this way, I'd go batty every time I walked past the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The MCA, which is a few blocks down my street, is full of things like droplets of black on a white cloth surface, containers full of old tennis shoes, and shapeless globs of indistinguishable materials. That stuff is not art. That's stuff you might find in someone's apartment. It's non-art.