Yes, No, Maybe

Miracle Max’s idea of “mostly dead” leads me to another Maxism, namely that there’s nothing better in the world than true love, except of course for a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Hang on to that idea for a minute, that there’s something better than the best thing in the world. Becoming a painter, an artist, would be the best thing in the world for me right now if I knew what art was. Thousands of essays, books, college courses, and street brawls have tried to define art and artists. I think they even quarreled about the question while doing the cave paintings.

I’ve not read thousands of essays, but I have read scores. The oldest aesthetics essay I’m familiar with is Plato’s dialogue on the beautiful cooking pot. The pot is useful; can it be beautiful? No, yes, or maybe? I’ve studied the history of the debate too. It’s cruel. Consider the French Academy rejecting Pissarro’s purple-tinged trees or the booing of Dylan at Newport for using an electric guitar. In time the artists’ views prevailed, but the times were brutal as they were changing.

I thought for a time that rancor clogs the debate whenever it focuses on art instead of the artist. Art may not be in the having but the doing, I argued. This was a bad idea, however, because shifting the question from art to the artist doesn’t resolve it. Monet paints. The lady who makes toaster covers for a Christmas bazaar sews. Both are creative. Are both artists? Same question, same outcome: No, yes, and maybe.

We are searching for a ruler, a scale, or a measure when we attempt to define art or artists, but measuring may be the problem. If true love (or true art), measurably the best thing in the world, can be bested by a good sandwich, maybe measuring is pointless. No, yes, or maybe?

Dismissing the debate as pointless would be an elegant solution if the debate were really about art. It’s not. It’s about money. I began my return to painting in 2005 by using ceramic tiles as surfaces. These tiles were rejected by galleries as “mere craft objects.” I’ve transferred the same techniques and subjects to canvas and now my paintings hang in these same local galleries. What’s the difference, other than one gets a price tag and the other is in a box under my workbench? Which is art and why?

Clearly I need a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Above: Tree Frog, acrylic on tile, not canvas. Copyright 2007 ptw.