The Pretensions of Art

Can a cat be an artist?  Is the work pictured above, produced by a cat, a work of art?  What is art?

The seemingly endless series of award shows we encounter each year, for films and film actors, TV shows and TV actors, plays and actors in plays, music and musicians, makes me wonder about art, or what we think is art, and about people in general.

As to people in general--people, clearly, like to win awards.  Some people, it seems, like to award other people for doing certain things and for how they do those things.  Some people also apparently enjoy watching some people give awards to other people.  Rather disconcertingly, to me, the awards are awarded by those who themselves compete for the awards and are sometimes given them; otherwise by those involved in the "industry" whose products are the subject matter of the awards, in one way or another.  There is, inevitably, a degree of self-congratulation, self-regard if not self-love, involved in award shows as a result; involved in the awards themselves, in fact, and the entire machinery by which awards are made.

As to what we think is art, an argument can be made that it is whatever we think it is.  This isn't a very helpful definition, but to an extent it's the only accurate one.  This isn't necessarily to say de gustibus non est disputandum.  It's merely a recognition that we say what art is and whether something is art, though we're often at a loss to say why "it" is art and not something else.  Philosophers, of course, have been busily telling us what art is for quite some time.  But it seems that few, if any, philosophers are art critics or connoisseurs.  At least, I know of none.

Explaining what art is, in abstract, doesn't seem of much help in assessing the quality of a work of art.  For example, except when used in an analogy or as a metaphor, "art" usually refers to what is involved in creating a painting, drawing, or other forms of visual expression, music or literature and the product created.  It doesn't follow that each painting, all music and all literature are works of art, however; do we call everything we hear or see or read of this nature a "work of art"?  It seems to me we don't.    Or perhaps all such things are art, in which case we may identify certain art as "bad" art and other art as "good" art.  "Bad" art then is art nonetheless.

But if a painting is art, isn't the pictured painting at the top of this post art, though made by a cat?  If not, it would seem to follow that art is necessarily something created by human beings, unless we maintain that certain animals in addition to humans can make art, but a cat may not.  According to the invaluable Internet, animals in addition to cats have produced paintings--various primates, a dolphin, a rabbit, an elephant and others.

It could be maintained that non-human animals don't really create art as humans do; painting animals capable of doing so physically have been trained to use brushes, for example.  But it's hardly unusual for a human artist to undergo training, isn't it?  It can't be training in itself that distinguishes art we make from paintings by other animals.  Can we make the good old instinct argument-animals do things unthinkingly, by instinct, while we do not?  It seems odd to speak of an instinct to paint, though.

There can be no question that we're more able than other animals to do certain things.  But we may not be quite as extraordinary as we've thought ourselves to be.  In making art we interact with our environment in certain ways, sometimes with a purpose in mind, sometimes without a specific, well-defined purpose but for a reason nonetheless.  So, we may do so as a way of expressing a certain feeling, or because we derive satisfaction from it.  Other animals interact with their environment as well.  We've begun to understand that other animals are capable of self-recognition, can use signs, even solve problems, seemingly.  Why shouldn't they be capable of art?

Pretension is something peculiarly human; and so we have award shows.  We've always indulged in it, and the belief that other animals exist merely for our use is as old at least as Genesis, and likely far older.  Perhaps there should be award shows for animal artists, actors.  But being without pretension, they wouldn't be inclined to watch, judge or participate in them.

Mencken's Prescience

How the Sage of Baltimore would laugh; or is laughing if he found, to his surprise, that there is an afterlife.  I've criticized him in the past in this blog for his elitism.  His dark view of American democracy is a part of that elitism.  But who can doubt, now, that what he said would take place has indeed taken place?

But I don't write to bemoan the lurching, baffling and often deplorable presidency of the current dimwitted occupant of the White House who, if what is alleged be true, suffers from dementia as well as he does from ignorance and incoherence.  Well, not to any great extent, in any event.

What with Oprah expressing an interest in running for president, and other luminaries such as Kid Rock being spoken of as fit for elective office, I wonder if "the inner soul of the people" of our Glorious Republic is as fatuous as Mencken clearly thought it to be nearly a century ago.  Are we, the citizens of God's favorite country, intent on trusting the leadership of our nation to persons not necessarily morons by the usual definition, but clearly--to put it kindly--unready to accept such responsibility, merely because they appear before us on TV or some other medium and appeal to us in some way?

If so, we are the "downright morons" if not those we elect.  One would hope that the average citizen would as a matter of self-interest if nothing else be interested in seeing someone with some experience in government and knowledgeable of it be elected, but the most recent presidential election shows that isn't the case.

It may be that many of us have swallowed, hook, line and sinker that silliest of claims, that a business person would know what to do as a politician.  But what reason is there to believe this claim?  What we expect of government is not what we would expect from a for-profit business; we can't conceivably be considered shareholders in the government of the United States, and certainly not directors of it.  Besides, those like the current president have never even run a business that is accountable to shareholders, or for that matter to anyone else.  His business experience has been as master of a privately run business, subject to his every whim.  Thus, bankruptcy has been his recourse more than once when things go bad.

Is it possible that we've begun to confuse reality with reality shows, or more correctly with what we see and hear on TV, or movies, on what we download, on the video games we play?  Why not?  Aren't they becoming more and more a significant part of the world we experience?  Perhaps even the largest part; perhaps for some of us virtually (pun intended) the entire world we experience.

We are what we know and feel.  We know and feel more and more what is shown to us, what is provided to us by others.  Little or no effort on our part is required to know and feel what is fed to us.  There's no need to think anymore, not really.  The problems we encounter are manufactured, and the way to resolve them is more and more a matter of mere expression, played out before us by others who expound and emote as publicly as possible, whom we imitate.

Appearance is reality.  This has been a kind of foundation of marketing for many years now, and politics more than ever is marketing, and money.  But not only products are being sold, now.  Reality itself is what appears before us.  We live more and more in a fantasy world, but it's not our fantasy, which presumably would be pleasant for each of us.  Who do we want to see, hear?  Who do we want to be on TV, on our tablets and phones and laptops?  That's the world in which we live.

Mencken presumably didn't anticipate where our technology has taken us, but he was a journalist and a critic.  He knew people and politicians.  Even with the limited technology available in his time, he understood that thinking was in peril, and morons thrive on thoughtlessness.  Thoughtlessness will be an essential element of our future.

Alas, Alas Babylon!

One thing that can be said of the Bible is that it has provided titles to authors of books, particularly (and appropriately?) books of fiction.  The Bible is known to most of the West fairly well, as it was hammered into us by various and sundry adults we were exposed to as children.  It was the source of titles for William Faulkner,  John Steinbeck and Earnest Hemingway, and for Pat Frank who wrote a book entitled Alas, Babylon, which I read with considerable interest as a teenager.  I remember it fairly well, which is more than can be said of other books I read, whether under the compulsion of a teacher or freely.

The title of that book, and of this post, is taken from the cheery Book of Revelation, the favorite of so many of us Americans, who tend to associate Babylon, the great whore, with New York or perhaps Hollywood.  It seems likely the actual author (or authors) of the Book meant to refer to Rome, but Americans and others like to associate America or parts of it to ancient Rome or the Roman Empire, so maybe it makes no difference.

The book of Frank Pat or the Book of Revelation comes to mind as I observe the antics of our self-described stable genius and inadvertently amusing president and the ruler of North Korea as they revile one another, as Frank's novel was devoted to the describing of the results of a nuclear war on survivors in Florida.  They themselves bring to mind, to my mind at least, the Elvis Costello song Two Little Hitlers.  But comparing the president with Hitler, even to a little Hitler, is as tiresome as the president himself.

Sin and punishment of and for sin are of course the essence of the Book of Revelation and of the Bible itself.  They're also essential to any religion, and I think ethics, founded on the belief that right and wrong are determined by following or failing to follow divine commands.  Follow those commands and one acts rightly; fail to follow those commands and one acts wrongly.  As the commands are those of God, the failure to follow them must result in punishment of a particularly vicious  kind, and as what happens to wrongdoers in life is often thought to be insufficiently vicious, that punishment must come in the afterlife.  Naturally, if God decides to intervene in life, the punishment will be adequate, and in order to be adequate that punishment must be as mighty as possible, and nuclear punishment is as mighty as we can conceive at this point in our sad development.

An ethics or religion based on divine command strikes me as unsatisfactory, but I can understand the impulse to believe that our conduct presages some kind of disaster if it does not merit some kind of devastating punishment.  It's difficult not to think that bad things are bound to happen, and soon.  "Dangerous creeps are everywhere" as Warren Zevon and Hunter Thompson wrote.  We have cause to be afraid.

So it seems, in any case.  I take some comfort in the fact that it's possible we perceive ourselves to be in greater peril than in the past simply by virtue of the fact that information, good or bad, true or false, is so much more available to us than in the past, and instantaneously.  Perhaps we've always been this way and our nation and society has always been in this condition, but we were better able to cope with it, or at least ignore it, in the past merely because it wasn't there before us at all times, as it is now.

But an aspiring Stoic should be undisturbed by all of this, as it is beyond the power of our will.  Our business is to govern ourselves to do what is right, and treat what we cannot govern as indifferent.  A Stoic, and even an aspiring one, should be able to survive even our time without being disturbed.