What is art?

I wrote this an an answer to a question about my previous post. He asked my permission to disagree, and I want to extend my answer to any of my readers. Please, disagree. Confronting new and different ideas is one of the only ways we grow, and I am open to the idea that I might be wrong.** The commentor gave a hypothetical example of an artist who created socially abhorrent art but it filled the artist's need to express some deep therapeutic needs due to terrible circumstances as a child (the hypothetical art form was vomiting on a canvas). The follow up question was this:

"How many people need to think it good for it to be so? " 

So, without further ado, I dive into my unnecessarily long and at the same time likely insufficient answer. 

First, let's look at what art is. Art is communication or expression (I'll differentiate here by saying that expression is simply getting a message, experience or feeling out regardless of whether there is an audience. Art as expression has the process as the goal and is thus mostly for the creator. This is where the catharsis you mentioned comes in.). Art is expressed through a medium. The ancient meaning of art had to do with skill. In any medium there must be a certain amount of skill applied to create any effect.

If we take your example, vomiting on a canvas would require the me to cultivate a few skills: induction or timing of vomiting, choosing the food, aiming the vomit, choosing how to apply the vomit (is it projectile, is the artist simply lying down and letting the vomit roll over them), creating or choosing the most suitable canvass. These skills are developed aside from the expression. I can draw a line, but a true artist knows where to place that line to communicate an emotion, an experience, or an idea.

Also, I am going to limit the definition of Art to an intentional expression if that's ok. I can throw a number of sticks on the ground and someone could interpret them, but if I had no intent to communicate then it's not art. It may have natural beauty, but it's not art. If someone captured the moment by photograph, painting, literature, dance, etc. then the expression would be art. A beautiful sunset is not art, the communication of a beautiful sunset is. If there is no intent to communicate (or express) then it is not art.

Now let's look at your assertion there are no objective valuations to art. I could probably take your side on this, but I want to make sure that we cover the whole issue. You can look at art, whether you like it or not, and appreciate the skills required to create it. You could even apply those skills unartistically (remembering that art is an intentional creative communication of a message, mood, idea, experience, or feeling). I could play the notes of a piano concerto, if I had the skill, and it would not be my art but the composers. A copy machine does not create art, it merely duplicates it. However, a concert pianist could use their skills to present the concerto and include their own artistic expression in the performance.

This valuation of skill is separate from the aesthetic valuation of beauty. We can take this pretty far and say that the valuation of skill is also subjective. When cutting a log do you want straight lines or curved lines. If you want curved lines and your worker can only make straight lines then you may call him unskilled. I am not going to go that far. I will say that a skill is good if it meets the requirements of the project.

If you are trying to recreate the Mona Lisa with vomit then any vomit that doesn't look like Da Vinci's work is not successful. Taking a more mundane example, I have not the artistic skills to recreate the Mona Lisa by painting, drawing, or any other way. But I could develop the skills, theoretically, if I practiced and studied enough. As an example, I wrote a scene that I wanted my readers to feel excited about. When I got feedback I found out that my readers were confused and didn't understand the scene. The objective view is that my skill were not enough to complete the task. In that sense, my art was not good.

So, we have the skill side of art. Am I, as vomitist, skilled in achieving my goal? I have achieved catharsis, at least enough to keep me alive. I have spewed my hate, terror, frustration, anxiety, and wrath onto many a canvass. Most people who look at my art feel a repulsion. Is their repulsion exactly what I wanted? Are they feeling repulsed and now somehow they understand my message, or are they merely repulsed at the medium and so the message fails to penetrate? If I wanted catharsis, then my work succeeded. If I wanted someone to understand me, then maybe not so much. If I simply wanted my audience to be repulsed, then I have sufficient skill and achieved success.

However, the judgment of how aesthetically pleasing a work of art is falls completely to the subjective view of the audience. Good or bad. This is where “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” comes in. A piece of art can be good or bad to any person, and this is where numbers don't matter.

Now, one more level to this madness, we can also take in the popular success of art. This is where the artist considers audience. Evaluating an audience is also a skill, though most artists keep it in the background. The popular success of an artwork depends on how the audience perceives it. If 100 people think your book is good, does that make it good? The truth is that audience perception has a lot to do with how many people receive your message. I would argue that good art resonates with more people. If you are turning people off of your message with your medium so that they can't appreciate the message, then I think that it is bad art. If the purpose of your art is a self expressive catharsis, then no audience aside from yourself is needed. It is personal art, and unless you intend for someone else to take part in it then I'd even go so far as to say it is not art, but therapy. Personal expression is a positive and important thing, but it only sends a message when there is someone to receive it.

My argument before is that many who study art extensively take their view of the aesthetics and ignore the skills. I might hate the Mona Lisa aesthetically, but I can't dismiss the fact that it took a highly skilled artist to create it. An literature professor may dismiss the Harry Potter series as trite nonsense because they don't like it. They could judge it as bad. But they should not ignore the fact that it has reached a large audience who has been affected by the books and their message about death. What I view as a problem is that many “art snobs” do just that. It is fine that they don't like something, but if they're really studying art then they should be able to admit the quality of the skill.

So, here's my answer in a nutshell. Good art can mean that the artist is skilled at manipulating the medium, it can mean that the message or experience is shared, or it can mean that the art is beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. I would argue that the larger an audience can relate to the piece as intended the better the artwork is. This requires both the objective skill(i.e. the ability to draw lines with the intended effect), and the subjective application of that skill.

This was a long post. I droned on forever. Did I miss the point? Sometimes I do that. Did I mess up the definition of art? What is art, and what makes it good? Am I right? What do you think?

**Edit - this should read: I've got a big ego, and sometimes it needs a bit of draining.  Cheers.

To Agent or not to Agent?

Once you've written a book and you want to get someone to read it (besides your kid sister) and possibly give you money for your hard work and tears. So what now?

There are plenty of proponents for e-books, self publishing, and doing everything yourself. Should I try to get published with a big publisher? Should I get an agent? Should I submit directly to the publishers? Should I sell my book online and forget about both agents and publishers? Should I publish myself and spend my time selling the book on street corners? Should I start up my own publishing company?

These are some common questions. Though the last two may be less common. Today I'm going to share my views on the agent question. Should you get an agent?

For starters we should figure out what an agent is. The very idea of an agent means someone who does your work for your. A literary agent is someone who will do just that, in theory. Currently a literary agent will go out and represent your book to big publishers. A literary is not giving you a product, they are providing you with a service. In the current market you shouldn't be paying your agent up front. Instead you pay your agent a percentage of the money they get for you (Usually anywhere from 10-15%). In this sense an agent is good because they'll be trying to get more money for your book.

A publisher, on the other hand, is not an agent. A publisher is also a connector, but they aren't just representing you. A publisher is providing a product, the hard bound or electronic version of the book. They are licensing (or purchasing) the right to use your words. With a publisher it's also a joint venture. They want the book to succeed as well. The difference is that the publisher usually pays the writer, you, a portion of what they make off of using your words on their paper. And just like you don't want to give all of your money to the Agent, the publisher doesn't want to give all of their hard earned money to you. Usually the publisher has the upper hand here, so an agent also represents you in bargaining with the publisher.

In both cases, the agent and publisher, one of the things you are paying for is connections. Theoretically you could do all of this yourself, but the publishers and agents are levying their specialization to take the workload, and some of the money, off your plate.

Let's look at it this way. For my chosen genre, sci-fi/fatasy, it is highly recommended to get an agent. Many of the bigger publishers won't accept submissions without agents, and even when the do it goes to a slush pile. If you want to see a movie and you've got 5 to choose from but you've never heard of any of them the choice becomes much easier if you have a friend recommend one of them. If you've taken that friend's recommendations a number of times and been pleased every time then even more so. Now take that list out to 1000 choices and you see what a publisher has to face. As a writer you're like the movie company trying to get the publisher to check out your stuff. A good agent is like the friend that makes the good recommendations. I still send to some publishers, but mostly I'm looking for an agent.**

Why?

For one thing I don't have the same connections. For another I don't have the capitol to print 1,000,000 copies of my book. With the advent of the internet e-book and e-readers I may not need either. That's still up for debate with some heavy hitters on both sides. So the question still stands.

Why an agent?

Well, here's the one thing that I can't get. An opinion. I mean I've got plenty of opinions. But professional validation of my work means a lot to me. An agent who reads and represents books to publishers for a living knows something about what makes a book successful. A publisher who buys and sells books in a desperate gamble to make some money also needs to know something about quality, or else they are soon an ex-publisher.

I can e-publish my book and get validation from the readers (which is the end result I want anyway), but I have to convince a thousand people to read my book and respond. If I can get the half dozen people from agent to publisher to read my book and respond positively then I have professional validation. To me that means the same thing, but I didn't have to wait for 1000 people to find and read my book. Publishers and Agents may make mistakes, but if I have their validation then I can have some idea that I'm on the right track. (Again, this might be undermined by the e-book phenomenon, but I still hold publishers and agents in esteem for now.)

I have currently chosen to pursue publication with a traditional publisher, and I am seeking the representation of an agent. I don't want to send out my work unless it is good. I don't want the whole world to read my book if it doesn't meet a basic level of quality. Don't get me wrong. There are crappy books published both traditionally and as e-books. Proponents of e-books use this to downplay the importance of traditional publishers as gatekeepers. I'm not talking about other books. I want my book to be the best it can be. Could I e-pub? Possibly. That's a question for another post.

**I should of course make the qualification that Agents can also be that bad friend that Publishers duck behind the copier to avoid. Good agents have a good network and publishers that trust their recommendation (and so they will only recommend you if they think your work is worth publishing). Good publishers will only publish something they think will sell. You can be your own agent if you want to go to the conferences, keep up on publishers weekly, make your own connections. It's a personal choice, but I've made mine.

Ignorance is Bliss, but Knowledge is Not Sorrow

In my last post I spoke, perhaps a bit too harshly, against the artistic elitist. The main point is that there are many traits that make good art: Skill, style, social perception, contemporary work, personal opinion, etc. The trouble comes when someone puts personal opinion (a subjective valuation) above the other objective valuations.

One of my readers wisely observed that one aspect of good writing is knowing your audience. That is absolutely true. Writing to please your professor doesn't make your work good. On the other hand, writing something that is popular (which your professor wouldn't like) doesn't make your work bad. Writing something that is good makes it good, and there are subjective and objective traits that go into that.

When I first started studying I had a hard time with this. I think it's a pretty common journey. I was a young theatre student in undergrad and I am easily impressed by big words and "smart" people. Those two traits together worked against me to some degree.

I started to learn about writing. I breathed it all in like I had been holding my breath for years. I had just changed my major from a pre-med biology degree and I was astounded to learn that people actually wrote and created art (particularly theatre) for a living. I had been mostly indiscriminate in my consumption of art...well I say that, but it's not exactly true. I had been exposed to a wide range. I liked a wide variety of popular art, but I wasn't a big fan of art for the sake of art. I never liked obtuse art. (To be honest, I still don't have a refined artistic palate.)

But as I learned about what makes a play "good" I picked up a bit of my own elitism. I narrowed my view of good to exclude many of my previous favorites. Suddenly I was too smart to enjoy popular movies, musicals, etc. I echoed the sentiment of one of my professors that, "Les Miserables was the worst thing to happen to the theatre". Though I didn't know why. I started to seek out more and more obtuse material to challenge my concept of good.

Now, broadening my horizon was not bad, but I became a terror. Because I had a bit of knowledge and I thought I knew everything. I began to judge what I saw or read much too harshly. I forgot how to enjoy something and I focused on tearing everything down. My wife hated discussing (or even watching) movies with me because I continually berated everything we saw.

I think it's common among students to apply their knowledge. What else can you do? But I started to think that criticism was the only worthwhile endeavor, and I only listened seriously to other people who could tell me how bad something was. We enjoyed only the obtuse and exclusionary.

Then something happened. I took a class and I began to tear apart Shakespeare. Shakespeare!

I was unabashed in my criticism, but I was wrong. (To be fair, Shakespeare wasn't perfect and there are some viable reasons to dislike his work.) I realized that I wasn't enjoying anything. I had learned so many ways for something to be bad that I forgot that anything could really be good.

Fortunately I had my eyes opened. I started to look at popular art for fun again. I found that sometimes unabashed emotional fare is nice. Sometimes an easily understood message hits just as deep.

I had left behind some of my ignorance when I saw how the magicians did their tricks. I found out that sometimes God works through normal means. I learned that my parents were Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Leprechauns. My immediate reaction was repulsion. But when I managed to step back I realized that just because I know how magic is made, it doesn't mean I can't enjoy the show.

I began to love theatre again, but now with a deeper knowledge. I still have my own opinion, and sometimes I'm still a pain to watch certain movies with. But I've begun to mellow. Learning about an art form does take some of the magic away, but it opens you up to a whole new kind of magic. Knowledge is freedom, and it kind of misses the point to use that knowledge to oppress others by telling them their opinions are worthless.

I love the Fantastiks, but I can still love Les Miserables (which I do, by the way).