The Motivation of Art

Like most people I love art in all its forms, especially literature, music and painting. We take it for granted that art exists; after all, the papers are full of reviews of it. Only last Saturday the Telegraph was stuffed with interesting art reviews. But as I read some of them I thought: is this art?

Take the case of ‘performance artist’ Marina Abramovic. A colour picture showed her sitting on a large mound of bloody bones, as if fresh from a butcher’ shop, her hands handling the bones, and her smock saturated with blood. Then we learn that she “stark naked … ate a kilo of honey, drank a litre of red wine, carved a pentagram onto her stomach using a razor blade, whipped herself, and lay down on a cross made of ice for half an hour, bleeding copiously.”

The reviewer, approvingly and with relish, goes on to describe further excesses as works of art – and doubtless proves it art because people queue to see it, including Sharon Stone and Lady Gaga. Wow! VIPs here then?

The article is nearly one and half pages in length – amazing exposure in fact. Again, it sounds fuddy-duddy to question whether this is art, but is it? People thinking something is doesn’t make it so, anymore than millions thinking Hitler was the saviour of Germany made that so; he wasn’t – and millions of people were deluded.

So it is in the art world. There seems to be a nihilistic and nasty movement, which is anti-art and so anti-life, masquerading as the real thing and it has got a grip on the media and critical establishments. We had a great launch of the Bournemouth by the Sea Arts festival last night at the Royal Bath Hotel – and here too we had one act of conceptual nonsense parading as ‘art’.

What is art? Art is the revelation through some media – including, but not limited to, words, lines and sounds – of the soul of the person, situation or thing. By which I mean: the truth of that person, situation, or thing is made manifest; so always, no matter how ugly, hideous, or distorted the object of artistic representation is in itself, art reveals its intrinsic beauty; makes visible its shining.

Thus art is never mere excrement on a wall, or condom in a bed, or random fall out, because the ‘soul’ of some one, some thing, some situation, is always complex, is always meaningful, has always the ‘logos’ present. For ‘conceptual’ artists this is too difficult to understand, so they simplify – they ‘soapify’ it and serialise chunks of reality, which is why cleaners at exhibitions frequently bin these items by mistake.

The anti-art marketing process is simple but effective: here’s a slab of excrement in your face – you know what excrement is, they challenge? – ah, so, you recognise my art. They do their ‘thing’ and it is done. Let us, then, be done with giving credit to conceptual termites pretending they are artists and this is art – it is not and neither are they.

Art like life portrays and conveys complexity even within the simple: a sunflower in the hands of a great artist suggests far more than ‘mere’ sunflowers. True art even when dealing with the evil and unlovely creates beauty – and beauty inspires and motivates. Put another way: our energies and capacities are enhanced by real art, and correspondingly diminished by conceptual drivel, muzak, and reality TV.