Art Critics - the other guys... (Jaeda's Artists' Cafe 11/16/99)

Last year I read a little book by Clement Greenberg about art. The title was Homemade Aesthetics. I was trying to figure out what art is. Mr. Greenberg, as I recall, said quite a few things worth thinking about. Here are some of them, paraphrased because I can't find the damned book right now:

Art is good if the viewer has a surprising aesthetic experience;

Good art will be appreciated by everyone with good taste;

Good taste is developed, and the proof is in universal appreciation and recognition of old art judged by all (with good taste) to be good. (That one is a tricky circular concept, so Mr. Greenberg refers back to Kant's Critique of Judgement allot.)

Claims of social content don't make something art. Only beauty makes art;

And, most surprisingly, he says that claims by critics that they understand the meaning put into art by the artists are bogus, because he recognizes that artists don't always put messages into their work intentionally.

Shortly after reading Greenberg, and buying Kant to remind myself that books transliterated from German, with unusual meanings assigned to every other word aren't readable, I picked up Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

This little book is about working at your work. Making art. I mentioned the book in passing a post or two back. Buy it if you can find it.

If you've kept up with my angsting posts and all, you probably believe that I worry about things that aren't relevant, or I'm too cheap to buy a blank journal. Mostly it is that this is very important to me. It is not very important that anyone approve, though I like approval. It is most important that I approve of what I do, and that I approve of the reasons and the method. Thus an artists' cafe seemed a good venue, because no one else would bother to hang out with a bunch of people that wear allot of black and angst all the time.

Back to the ramble. I thought that learning something about art would help me understand. But the more I read, the more I realized that understanding is only something other artists can do. Critics may be versed in the evolution of some school or method, but they don't make art. And people that love us may be sympathetic, but they don't understand either.

From Fear I learned that what I am doing is just working on my work. Learning my materials, learning from the last piece what I need to make the next piece, doing what I have to do. Most of my stuff is crap. I don't show the stuff I think is crap, but some think what I show is crap, anyway. But enough think it's interesting that I just go off and make another one. And another one. And the pictures change depending on where and when and why and how I make them. Sometimes it's a dead end, but sometimes I see a little potential and try some more there.

I've planned and aborted quite a few bodies of work in the last two years. Things that sounded good, but didn't work with the materials. But I've produced about four distinct types of work that are consistent enough and good enough to please me. And I'm always chasing that fifth style, looking for something better with less flaws. Something more beautiful.

It's getting late. Even more angsting and artsy-fartsy stuff in the next consignment.

-Don