A man stands poised, paintbrush in hand. His mind is racing, “What next?” he wonders silently. His passive contemplation is shattered by a lightning bolt of purest inspiration. Groaning in near ecstatsy, he convulsively paints, brush stroke after brush stroke of inspired movement, a frenzied orgasm of delirious knowing fills him and the room as the painting seems to come to life of its own glorious volition, each moment a fulfillment of the promise of things to come. The brush seems less like a tool than the very hand of god, frantically calling forth life from clay and canvas alike. In a paroxysm of purest joy, he stands a moment apart from his masterpiece, panting, splattered, and reeking of the bullshit of artistic pretension. This does not happen, this is not art.
A man walks into the hall of a silent museum. It is after hours, dark and quiet, the only sound that of the guards snoring down the hall. This, he realizes, is his canvas. This wall itself is the stretcher, the drywall and plaster his canvas. He has been commissioned by the museum to display an installation piece here. He has, in fact, been given the whole room. The walls themselves are context, the museum a frame so much the larger. How often, he thinks, is a man given a frame within a frame to begin with? And so large a frame indeed. Where does one begin to border the piece within the room? Can he add a third boundary? A fourth? It is the self referential nature of the place itself he cannot seem to escaape. Everything he does here is Art. If he were to shit on a plate and put it under the lights just so, it would be a marvel. It must be, for this is a museum of Art, a place where the divine go to die, and the rich come to flaunt their misunderstandings. What does one “install” per se, in such a hallowed place? This is not, he understands, a room designed solely for the appreciation of great art, but also for the celebration of the commodification of the same. There is a cover charge here, a required donation. Everyman a patron of the arts, everyman a Medici. It is, in fact, a perfectly democratic auction hall, everyone buys the experience for the same price, and everyone who walks these halls owns a piece of everything here. He wonders about that for a moment. He has sold pieces before. So, whose pieces were they now? Once they were sold, did he still have a claim on them? Whose were they? And if ownership of the piece can be so readily tranferred, what of meaning? What great shoulders does that behemoth sit upon? Who decides the meaning, the man who views it, the man who owns it, the man who creates it? It is all too much to define. Sighing happily, he picks up his hammer. He will a nail a banister to the wall tonight. It will be his greatest work.
Art is not the artist, nor is it an inspiration, a technique, a methodology. Art is neither the created nor the creation. Who can say what art is? If we can not decide what Art is, then maybe we can choose, at least, when Art is. Art is only when something is considered as such. It is the moment when someone, pay no mind to who or whom, thinks for a moment, “That is bad art,” or, “that is good art,” or “that is not art at all! “ It is the act of artistic consideration when art is born. It emerges into the world whole and complete, inviolate. It cannot be contradicted anymore than a minute can be said to have not passed. It is, by virtue of its acceptance or rejection, it becomes, and that becoming is complete, entire, and inescapable. We may buy it, sell it, burn it in a pyre, it may be shat upon or worshipped, but it is none the more and the none the less Art. The moment of its genesis creates it, and it continues as such for as long as that consideration is held, regardless of verdict. The innocent here are merely proven to BE, we shall leave questions of guilt to the gods.
