The Stupid Question of Art

This past weekend I visited both the International Erotic Art Exhibition (also called the DIRTY show) in Detroit and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).  I feel as though I can say, pretty confidently, that the works exhibited at the MOCAD had a lot more artistic merit than the majority of those at the DIRTY, but regardless, both exhibits essentially posed the same question: what is “art”?

Admittedly, I think that is an extremely stupid, overly simplistic question.  There are a million different avenues you can take to answer it and the secret Marxist in me is hesitant to say that only highly educated art historians and critics have the ability to determine “high art” from “low art” (particularly considering they continually get it wrong; case in point: Bouguereau).  When doing research for my art history degree, sometimes I feel as

though art categorized as “bad” can be the most useful to me, because it tends to be overly reflective of a historical moment or culture and, in critical terms, too obvious.  Too many symbols, too many allegories, etc.

In any case, the DIRTY show is more so asking the question of “What is porn” and where the boundaries lie between art and porn.  About 90% of the works seemed like they were just going for shock value and didn’t seem to have a lot of technique or thought to them.  There were a lot of poorly shot photos of S&M.  Maybe it’s the pretense of labeling these things “Art” that ruins them for me; ironically, I think I could find more artistic value in them if they would just become comfortable with the title of “Porn.”

The MOCAD exhibits were a little more thought provoking.  I love contemporary art and I’m intrigued by the fact that we are still in the process of sorting out its definition.  Many of the works made the same mistake as the DIRTY pieces, wherein they basically become a parody of themselves.  Contemporary art has no shortage of critics and caricatures.  There was one installation in the MOCAD that was simply a banana peel on the ground; the group I was with debated about whether it was an actual piece of art or just a dropped piece of garbage for about 5 minutes.  Maybe the actual “art” being made is just the provocation of the question about what “art” even means.