A recent dinner conversation with friends rolled around to the question: “What is art?”
A long conversation ensued. Someone offered up Wikipedia’s definition: “Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts, expressing the author’s imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.”
This group of arts administrators was unsatisfied. As managers, marketers and fundraisers, we observed that a more useful definition would extend beyond what art IS to also describe what art DOES.
That got us thinking… What are the essential elements of what art does? We embraced a metaphor in which the conventional definition of art is represented as an entire HAND – and our question of what art “does” relates to how each finger specifically contributes to the hand’s functionality:
Entertainment is the THUMB. It provides opposing pressure for each of the other fingers – the necessary counterpoint for any grip. We are not claiming that all entertainment is necessarily art. But, without apology, we do say that art must aspire to offer some quality of entertainment – some access point, some resonance, some offering of substance and style sufficient to hold the attention of an audience. That’s entertainment.
To inspire is the POINTER. We wholeheartedly embrace the part of the conventional definition that says, “…intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.” “To be appreciated” speaks to the imperative of art to render a purposeful effect on the recipient of the experience. As arts administrators, our greatest satisfaction comes from providing forums for connecting the work of artists to audiences. That’s the entire point!
Education belongs to the TALL FINGER. The longest finger represents our responsibility to supply lifelong opportunities for arts & cultural engagement. The virtue of engaging children in the arts isn’t that they’ll attend as adults so much as it is to imbue them with necessary skills of curiosity, creative exploration and the willingness to see the world from different perspectives.
The RING FINGER signifies involvement. The same finger by which we bind ourselves in marriage is the perfect place to signify a perpetual commitment to friendraising – as arts & cultural organizations operate largely in the non-profit sector to which donors, sponsors, volunteers, leaders and stakeholders provide essential time, talent and treasure.
The PINKY stands for inclusion. Imagine the sensation of unknowingly shaking the hand of someone missing that finger – how momentarily unsettling that might feel. Our job as arts administrators is to extend a sincere welcome and a quality of service that is unfailingly mindful of the impressions we create. Our collective handshake must convey every bit of welcome, respect and gratitude for their participation.
Take this metaphor and grip it tightly and we create a single sentence – an extension of the conventional definition of art – that can be delivered with force:
“Art is an inclusive and community-built function of relevant entertainment that inspires people, throughout their lives, to think, feel and learn.”
Can we get a hand for that?
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NICE Matt. Wishing you a happy New Year and that we get to meet again to exchange ideas!
So Picasso was entertainment? Allen Ginsberg poem America was just entertainment?
Thanks for the question. My point is that for art to resonate with an audience it must contain some element of entertainment – by which I mean something to hold an audience’s attention. A work of art that is so on-point relevant and hard-hitting that it commands attention is a terrific ideal – but impractical for day-to-day operations of organizations that present/produce works of art on a regular basis. In your words, “just entertainment,” I hear the kind of disdain with which art snobs describe “lesser” or “commercial” endeavors. Clearly there is art that soars far above entertainment – and we relish it! To embrace a responsibility to entertain is not a denial of the desire to be visionary, provocative or profound – but of some recognition that even at that great height, there must exist something for an audience to enjoy.
As an artist of over 30 years experience at reasonably high levels in Australia I can only say that your sentimental analogy and “list” makes me ill. I am all for the Public having the ultimate say in art BUT I want to hear from the true radicals in the Public. What about people who dislike art, they have rights too.
Arts administrators are to me the great Problem of art now. I have lived through so many decisions by committee that has produced the worst art. Public sculptures that get taken away after a few years, on and on. I just disagree with your happy clappy words. Art is not palliative care for the small group of people who want baby creches with art attached. Art and Culture is a war zone and (like Sport) mimics the wider world.
In the end your thinking so downplays the artist that we now live in Art Without Artists. Please read this text by Anton Vidokle http://www.e-flux.com/journal/16/61285/art-without-artists/
I’m sorry but your sappy list makes me feel ill. Why not just go back to Church!
Agreed–very revealing that a group of “Arts Administrators”–already working in the field!–resorted to wikipedia to work out a definition for Art–and that there was no sense of embarrassment about this either. Lord help us–culture is in the hands of simpletons.
I second Scott’s sentiment.
As I type this it’s reported that Trump plan’s to kill the NEA and from an artist point of view, to be frank, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It hasn’t matter for years.
A $150 million dollar national budget doesn’t accomplish much and it certainly hasn’t ended up in the pockets of our cultural producers-the artists and performers and writers of this country. (oddly writers still get NEA grants)
Mr. Lehrman, your words sound like they could be part of the Trump administration script. A script that tells artists what will be accepted, tolerated, and funded. “Make entertaining art or you are fired!”
Art has never worked that way. Art evolves, changes, grows, develops not from the arts administrator down but from the artist up. We call the shots. We don’t need your type of neoliberal advocacy.
It is revealing that Richard and Scott both chimed in to suggest that the audience focus of your essay was in some way a problem. Not wrong, necessarily, but lacking. They are both artists, after all, and when someone talks about art and leaves the artist hung out to dry its a real question what was missing. How can we talk about art and NOT consider what artists themselves think? How can we talk about the power of art and NOT talk about what motivates artists or WHY artists make art in the first place?
Are artists simply pawns in a larger game, or are they sometimes forced to play a game despite their own intentions? Do they have different motivations that are NOT aligned with serving the public? Is there a conflict between what art does in the public and why there is any art at all to begin with? Why do we make art? Why is there art?
A big question is this: Is art extrinsically motivated or is it intrinsically motivated? If extrinsic, then serving the ends of public goods may be all that matters. Art is a means, of entertainment etc. We can dispense with the artist’s own eccentric ideals and, perhaps, even the artists themselves. An artificial intelligence calibrated to public goods might be the art we prefer. Do we even need human artists? If machines made art would that satisfy us better? If serving the public were all that mattered, these might be serious questions.
In so many discussions it seems artists are the unspoken and neglected factor in art. By treating art as extrinsic artists themselves are forgotten. They are the humans we DON’T want to acknowledge. They are separate from the human public. We talk about art as being what art does FOR the public. Which is like talking about food as simply what it does for the people eating. You have a Hamburger and the point is that someone gets to eat it. But what of the cow that died to give us that burger? What were its dreams and intentions?
We think of art like we think of food: The consumer needs take exclusive precedence. The burger is simply what we consume. And art becomes more about consumption than who did what to get it to your table. Artists are like the cow that gets sacrificed for our meal. And until we respect artists and what their own motivations are we will continue sacrificing them to feed an insatiable appetite of the consumer. Is this right?
I don’t think so, and neither do most artists. STOP BEING A MINDLESS CONSUMER! If art matters to the public can it matter any less to the artists who devote their lives to producing it? To not even consider artists in the equation is inexcusable.
Why would artists support a public vision for art when they end up so inevitably and casually roasted over the fire? There are all these impressive claims for the value of art to the public, and yet artists themselves are devalued. They are removed from the point of view. Hidden under the rug. You want your art, but you don’t want the artists who made it. You don’t care about the artists, you care about the art.
Artists are treated like servants in a big house. “Do your job and don’t interfere. Don’t do anything to get noticed, but make sure the toilets are cleaned and the clothes are washed.” Results are all that matter. Some people want artists to be unseen, merely inconvenient necessities for the production of art. Who actually wants to know how the sausage gets made? If they could actually have art without the artists they think the world would be more perfect. Artists matter so little besides the public good that art does. Artists entertain like gladiators sent out to their death in the Colosseum. The spectacle is what matters.
But artists are not servants, not thralls, not slaves to your desires. When you say “To embrace a responsibility to entertain is not a denial of the desire to be visionary, provocative or profound – but of some recognition that even at that great height, there must exist something for an audience to enjoy” you are confusing the cart and the horse. A responsibility to entertain? Oh My God! There is a happy coincidence when art and the public find common ground, but to portray the PURPOSE of art as entertainment is to employ the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, namely that what follows from was therefore caused by. It imputes an intentionality that simply may not and usually doesn’t exist.
Entertainment may matter to YOU and to much of the audience, but don’t assume that artists are necessarily motivated by pleasing you. The audience enjoyment is NOT why most artists make art. They serve ART, they don’t serve you. They serve their own art. And if you really respected art you might better appreciate the artists who make it. They are more than your servants. They are human beings with their own intentions and own values. Stop sacrificing artists to the belief that their art is merely there to entertain you, that they are only valuable to the extent that they provide “something for an audience to enjoy.” Basic human dignity requires more from us than that…… Treat artists as people first, not as your servants.