indessed roscivs

Speaking of art, sonnets, kwansabas, and more, I particularly love Dinosaur Comics:

Why do artificial constraints on artistic works tend to make them more interesting?

The promised second half.

If something is well-crafted enough to repay attention to its fine details, I think the result is much “better art”. This [depth] is a part of the “skill” category, above, which I think you shortchange somewhat; if anyone can do it, we are unlikely to find something nearly as impressive or interesting. Come to think of it, that speaks to the “rarity” issue as well.

In terms of skill, again I think it’s looking backwards to state that art is good because it was created by someone skilled. If anyone can do it, we are unlikely to remark on the person’s skill. Humans are quite skilled at walking, for instance, but hardly anyone cares to remark on it. But it doesn’t make us unskilled at it. Similarly, if anyone could create deep, aesthetically pleasing works of art, hardly anyone would care to remark on the ability. But if we removed the ability from 99% of the population, the few who retain the ability might become more interesting and impressive—but they would be exactly as skilled as they were when everyone had their abilities. So while it may be true that “if anyone can do it, we are unlikely to find something nearly as impressive or interesting,” I think this has more to do with rarity than it does with skill.

With respect to the issue of rarity, let us try a gedankenexperiment. Let’s imagine that a really amazing piece of art, full of level upon level of meaning, is something that is created only once a century. So after five hundred years, only five such works have been created. Then let us further imagine that, after these five hundred years have passed, something suddenly changes such that it’s trivial to create a piece of art just as full of content and depth as the previously-created five. After a year, a hundred more such works have been created, bringing the total to a hundred and five artistic works.

Has anything changed in the original five? Nothing intrinsic to them has changed. Assuming the new hundred are (as our gedankenexperiment states) exactly the same in terms of depth of meaning, for any person who has access to only a single piece of art, it doesn’t matter whether they have access to one of the original five or the latter hundred. In terms of intrinsic value, I believe they would all just as enjoyable for someone who has access to only one.

However, someone who has access to the entire collection (growing by hundreds every year) will likely not find any of the works as impressive or interesting, simply because they are more common. Familiarity breeds contempt.

I guess what I’m trying to say in terms of rarity is that the original five works aren’t intrinsically worth more than the other hundred simply because they were created during a time when such works were more rare. The issue of rarity can affect the aesthetic value of all hundred and five as a group, but if the original five are better or worse than the following hundreds, it is due to some issue apart from rarity.

Hence if works with detailed fonts are difficult to create because they must be each individually hand-lettered, then suddenly they become exponentially more common because computers make the gruntwork disappear, then so long as the attention to detail really is identical, the original difficult-to-create works are not any better artistically than the later easier-to-create works. We may remain in awe of the people who spent hour upon hour in painstaking work. We may have decreased aesthetic appreciation for both the new works and the old simply because we see them so often. But if we see some new piece, it seems foolish to me to ask, “Was this hand-lettered or computer-rendered?” before making a judgment as to its artistic merit. If you can’t tell by examining it, I don’t think it makes any difference.

I’d like to take the time to respond directly to some of the questions posed in response to my earlier posts on the subject of art.

What about things which we find impressive or important, but not pleasant?

When I say, “touches our minds in a particular way which we enjoy,” I don’t mean to limit this to ways that are purely positive. Something that makes us think, but isn’t pleasurable in the normal sense, would still fall in the category I meant to portray here. (However, something that evokes an evisceral and completely negative response might not qualify.)

I see several different subcategories in the category of “touches our mind” but not pleasurable in the usual sense. For example, I “enjoy” sad, depressing movies. This is not to say that at the end of The Pianist or The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys I was sitting in my seat chuckling with joy. I was more likely close to tears with a wrenching feeling in my heart. But the movies touched me in such a deep way that I cannot say but I consider them to be great works of art.

There is another important subcategory, that of works that I greatly disagree with at a fundamental level, and yet are so thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating that I must also classify them as great art. I’ve often said that Rand’s conclusions in Atlas Shrugged I nearly universally agree with, and yet I disagree with nearly every one of the logical processes she uses to get there (either regarding the truth of her premises or the validity of her reasoning). The book is maddening because of this—but enlightening as well.

Or something with bad and therefore non-enjoyable aesthetics, but which was intended to be decorative? If I draw a picture (and, for the most part, I draw quite badly) is the result art even if no-one, including me, finds the product enjoyable? If not, is it failed art or non-art?

I would not qualify it as art if nobody finds the product enjoyable in the broad sense I described above. The distinction between “failed art” and “non-art” is probably only a distinction in intention. If you intended for it to be art and it ended up being non-art, then yes, it’s failed. If you never intended it to be art and it ended up being non-art, then it would not be failed.

I think I would add the concept of depth–both depth of execution and depth of culture. If something is well-crafted enough to repay attention to its fine details, I think the result is much “better art”.

I fully agree here. This is an important category that I think I missed completely before. Many of the works of Bach, I think, fall into this category for me. Initial exposure to the work provides a rather shallow but enjoyable experience. Further exposures reveal tidbits of patterns previously unnoticed. Careful study and research reveals surging depths of intertwining patterns of mind-boggling complexity. Surely this facet of art can be said to greatly affect what we call the quality of a work.

Another facet I feel I missed, or at least touched on insufficiently, is also related to the issue of depth and communication. Part of what makes art great is how it changes the way we think, how we see references to it in every aspect of our lives. Some books I’ve read keep popping up in my brain, suddenly pertinent to hundreds of different seemingly unrelated topics. Some pieces of music have patterns that I start seeing everywhere. Some paintings pop into my mind on a frequent basis, as if to say, “That expresses exactly how I feel right now,” or “That illustrates this precisely!” Even more impressive pieces of art are those that are not only a useful expression in and of themselves, but tie together many other works, connecting to other expressions in meta-artistic patterns, making me realize that seemingly unrelated artistic works—perhaps in different genres or even mediums—are profoundly interconnected.

I have a lot more to say on the subject, so I’ll continue with some more responses tomorrow.

In the same poetic style as found
in the haiku, sonnet, and other forms
which limit the poet in some way,
this form needs seven lines, and, besides,
each line must contain exactly seven words.
Not only that, but every word must
have fewer or equal to seven letters.

(The kwansaba was invented during the 1995 EBR Writers Club workshop in St. Louis.[1])

Yesterday I talked about “What is art?” Today I intend to tackle the slightly trickier topic, “What makes art good?” Let’s take an overview of some of the possibilities.

Lack of Utility: some argue that lack of a utilitarian purpose distinguishes art from non-art. A cup that is used for drinking is not art; an ornamental cup that sits on a shelf is art. I disagree; in my estimation, the best pieces of art are those which mingle utility with aesthetics. It’s true that a cup that is used for drinking may not necessarily be art—but this is because as an item of daily use, we don’t even notice it, and thus it is not aesthetically interesting. But an ornamental cup doesn’t lose its status as art simply by being used as a cup. (It may, however, lose its status as art if its utilitarian purpose becomes so prominent that its aesthetic qualities are completely passed over. Note that on this point there may be some argument about whether it loses some intrinsic “art”-nature, or whether the individuals observing it merely fail to realize that it’s art, but I don’t consider this debate to be any more meaningful than that of the tree falling in the forest.)

Skill: there is a prevalent idea that the more skill required to create some piece, the higher-quality the resulting work of art. I have some respect for this perspective, although it seems almost a bit backwards. When we take a look at some high-quality piece of art, we remark at how skilled the creator must have been. Likewise if we see some poorly-made piece, we comment that the creator must not have been very skilled. (Note that skill here does not equal time spent—a master might be able to create a complex and beautiful work in but a few moments, whereas a beginner would require hours to make something quite unimpressive.) We judge the skill based on the quality of the piece, not vice-versa. It would be odd to look at a piece of art and ask, “How much skill was required to make this piece?” before making a judgment as to its artistic worth.

Rarity: I spoke on this topic at some length in my previous post, with a bit of a harsh tone. If the Mona Lisa could be perfectly and exactly replicated, I see no intrinsic reason why the piece of art would be any more valuable (in an artistic, not a monetary sense) if only one copy were made as opposed to a thousand. However, I recognize that if millions of copies were made and plastered on every wall, that could certainly make a difference. Art isn’t art because it is rare, but it might lose some of its aesthetic value if it is extraordinarily common. (Of course, it may very well still be aestically valuable while being common or easy to reproduce, and be no less artistically valuable for it.)

Communication: another school of thought maintains that high-quality art is effective at communication emotion, or arousing aesthetic or moral feelings. The more potent the triggered response, the better the art. Alternatively, the more universal the triggered response, the better the art. This idea is definitely one that has some merit in my eyes. As I’ve mentioned before, I like the idea of aesthetic response as a way of determining artistic worth. “Communicating emotion” is a good way of phrasing the same sort of idea. I’m not sure how universal the triggered response needs to be, however, when determining quality. If artwork A communicates a powerful message to 10% of its audience, whereas artwork B communicates an identical message to 90% of its audience, I’d say the latter piece of art is qualitatively better. But if artwork C communicates a relatively mild message to 90% of its audience and artwork D communicates a strong message to 10% of its audience, which is the “better” piece of art? It’s hard to say. As a great fan of “niche” art, and as one who finds art with massive appeal rather blasé, I must admit that I lean towards D as superior.

What is art? What makes art good? When it comes right down to it, art is valuable because we like it. Why do we like it? I don’t think anybody can ever really know. It’s different for every person. But when you get to the core of the issue, it doesn’t have to do with rarity, skill, or lack of utility—it all boils down to the communication of some ethereal concept. You can call it emotion, aesthetics, moral feeling, or whatever you like. But it is the transmission of that creative urge that is the heart of what makes art good.

In a previous post, What is art?, I discuss at some length what sort of things don’t disqualify a work from being art. I didn’t, however, give much detail as to what I thought qualified something as being considered art. The closest I came was this statement: “art is good because it touches our minds in a particular way which we enjoy,” which some found understandably lacking.

I don’t think it’s lacking because it’s too vague or subjective—art is, by necessity, a subjective thing. I certainly don’t have a magic formula or objective criteria whereby one can run down an explicitly-defined checklist to determine whether a particular something qualifies as art or not. Rather, I think it’s lacking because there are things, I believe, that “touch our minds in a particular way which we enjoy” (or, to say it less poetically, “are aesthetically pleasing”) yet I would not qualify as art.

What, then, of the set of things that are “aesthetically pleasing” are not art? Google (the new dictionary) defines art in many different ways. Apart from all the entries about assisted reproductive technology, the definitions have a common thread of “human creativity”. I would say this is accurate—a mountain or a sunset might be aesthetically pleasing (or even stunningly awe-inspiring), but most would hesitate to call it intrinsically “art”. Certainly if a person takes a photograph of the scene, or paints the image, or writes about the experience—that, then, can qualify as art, having been mingled with human intentionality. But not before.

What about the opposite direction? Is there anything that qualifies as art that is not aesthetically pleasing? Given a definition of “aesthetically pleasing” that is close to “touches our minds in a particular way which we enjoy,” I don’t think so. I would say that these two criteria—creativity and aesthetics—are sufficient for encompassing the entire set of what is called “art”. I can’t imagine a work that embodies human creativity and some sort of vaguely enjoyable aesthetic nature that I would disdain labeling as “art”.

All this doesn’t touch on the more debatable topic, however, of determining what art is good art. It was to this end that I began with the questions in my previous post of, “What do we find good, what is high quality, and what is not?” Tomorrow I’ll discuss some of the possibilities.

At the end of last Thursday’s post, I ended with the statement, “[Hollywood fakery is] not going to change, but hopefully our awareness of it will.”

I was referring to much more with that comment than simply digital doctoring of movies. Every single image we’re presented with—television, magazines, movies, billboards—has been retouched, altered, and manipulated so much as to be almost unrecognizable as the original. The benefit I think we have over yesteryear, when camera tricks and make-up were the primary methods of making things appear as something they aren’t, is that we can be aware of the fact that what we’re seeing is fake. The human images we’re seeing have been altered so much as to appear drastically closer to some non-existent ideal of perfection than the original flawed human that they (and each of us) are.

But mere rational knowledge of the trickery, unfortunately, doesn’t help our human brains much. When we see a cute girl walking down the street, we still subconsciously compare her with the non-existent façade we see the Hollywood stars present. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we think that—if only we were to work out a little more, or stop eating a certain thing—we really could look like that. The blessing of the Internet age is that we no longer have to be content with mere rational knowledge; we can see first-hand the extent of the subterfuge.

Take, for example, a typical retouching portfolio. This is the image we see in the media. This is what the person really looks like. (Well, it’s what she looks like with makeup, posing, and camera angles already in play. Seeing her walking down the street would take it yet another step closer to reality.) As you click through the images in the portfolio, some of the changes are more subtle, but every single one of them is an image burned into your mind forever of the power of the digital airbrush.

I could write for another dozen paragraphs details of how exactly the manipulation is done, detailing the tricks and techniques of the field, but no amount of words and rationally understanding how and why it’s done will affect you as much as seeing, exactly, how beauty is made:

In Thursday’s post about digital doctoring of movies, I said, “art is not art because it is rare, or because it is difficult to create”. I’d like to expand on this idea, using a quote from Cliff Stoll’s book, Silicon Snake Oil, as a jumping-off point.

… look at the corrosive effect on our creative community. We reward designers rather than illustrators. Magazines, for instance, have become playgrounds for fonts, photomontages, and color bleeds. These are easy to generate on any computer. Drawings and hand-shaded cartoons, well, they’re more challenging. So we find our literature littered with giant letters and italicized pullout quotes, but few illustrations or cartoons.

It seems that in the artistic world, the means is more and more being mistaken for the ends. ‘If art is easy to do,’ it is argued, ‘it ceases to be art.’ Likewise the reverse is often asserted–that because something is more difficult, it must be more high quality. Thus the use of computers is almost seen as “cheating”.

We must look first at the question: what is art? What do we find good, what is high quality, and what is not? To over-simplify things quite a bit, art is good because it touches our minds in a particular way which we enjoy. This idea of “art is good because it is rare” is absolute junk. “Flashing fifty great works of art across my monitor in two minutes cheapens the work. A part of the value of art is its rarity.” (p. 85) Utter nonsense. The cheapening, if at all, comes either from the lack of fidelity in reproduction, or your failure to take the time you would have taken in a museum to appreciate them. The former has nothing to do with its rarity, and for the latter you have no one to blame but yourself.

I’ve worked in design studios before, and just because some things are “easy to generate on any computer” does not automatically mean they are easy to do well. The Sunday comics are filled with painstakingly hand-drawn illustrations and cartoons, and yet many of them are pathetically uncreative and blasé. Imagine a way one could automatically generate cartoons on the computer, to instantly take them from mind to page without this painstaking process, while the end result was identical to the hand-drawn variety. Would these cartoons be any less works of art?

What is certain is that, with the ease of creating them, many more people would try their hand at cartoons. Predictably, the vast majority of them would be junk. But this doesn’t make the ones that truly were artistic pieces any less superior. The same thing has happened with the introduction of computers in the artistic world. Clip-art, fonts, and layout programs are all relatively easy to use. Predictably, the vast majority of new people trying out these tools produce nothing but junk. But the true artists are still producing quality output, and are thankful for the ease and new features which computers provide.

All that the relative infrequency of illustrations and cartoons when compared with fonts and photomontages tells us is that they are indeed more challenging and time-consuming to create. It tells us nothing of their artistic worth. Would a hand-lettered and hand-illustrated magazine, in which every letter in every sentence was meticulously traced, and every picture hand-drawn, be somehow magically “more artistic” than the identical computer mass-produced version? The quality would depend on the content–the quality of the prose, the quality of the fonts, the quality of the pictures, and the quality of the ideas–not merely the difficulty of creating it.

If it were more difficult to design than to illustrate, would you lament the corrosive effect on our creative community, pointing out how we reward illustrators rather than designers? Design, you might argue, requires much thought and care, while illustrations can be quickly produced by any unskilled hack. Such arguments do not show any inherent superiority of design over illustrations, or vice versa, but simply point out the relative ease or difficulty of creation.