I have often had all of the above opinions, BUT. I have just had a new different radical thought, and I am thinking it through out loud in real time, so walk with me on this.
If anything can be art if it is created (or positioned/arranged) with Intention, and the goal of art is to produce an emotional or intellectual response, then haterism and "I could make that" *IS* an emotional/intellectual response. And who are we to judge whether that response is valid or not?
What if when someone says that, we met them where they are and asked more questions about their responses? I'm saying that when you reach a certain level of radical acceptance of "All art is valid and all responses to art are valid" then you loop all the way back around to "It's okay and normal to feel unimpressed with a piece of art." Now obviously to experience a truly 'productive' session of Communing With Art, then you'd ideally want to sit with your feeling of unimpressedness and reflect on it: "Why do I feel unimpressed? I could make that -- but have I? Am i going to when I go home? Why or why not? Is it useful for me to make that? How would it feel if I attempted to make it and found that I couldn't? Why did the artist create something so unimpressive? What am I missing? What's the rest of the story?"
I'm thinking also of the way that most art-lovers (of the ones that I know, anyway) believe PASSIONATELY that everybody should have access to art, that art museums should be cheap or free, and that we should push back against the insidious cultural belief that art is Off Limits unless you're educated in how to properly experience/appreciate it, with emphasis on appreciation. This implicit messaging is part the reason why many people in the mainstream feel alienated by art and intimidated by the idea of approaching it: "I should know everything about this piece of art and how to properly admire it, because someone decided that it Deserves to be admired. But I don't know anything about it, so I feel intimidated, or guilty, or stupid. I don't want to approach the art and be humiliated, so I'm just not going to engage with it at all."
But then when people who Don't Know Things About The Art have the *gasp* absolute AUDACITY to walk into a museum and have uninformed yet honest, authentic, organic reactions to the art, then suddenly we all get very het up about them NOT DOING IT THE RIGHT WAY. Are we all kind of being enormous hypocrites about the juxtaposition between this "Art should be accessible to everyone" vs "You have to like the art in the right way though or you'll be shamed in public" dichotomy? Surely there is a better way for us to think about this kind of response?
For example: Someone walks into a modern art museum, looks at a pile of toothpicks, and remarks aloud, "I could make that." There's basically two options of response, right?
Option one: The stranger standing next to them scowls and slams hard into condescension -- "Ugh, no you couldn't. Don't you know that this artist collected these toothpicks for seventeen years before he made this pile of toothpicks as a commentary on the uselessness and disposability of restaurant criticism after his family's restaurant was shut down?? Have YOU been collecting toothpicks for that long? Get the fuck out of here, snob, no one cares what you think." Everybody leaves disgruntled, angry, shamed, or annoyed. Nobody had a good time at the museum today.
Option two: The stranger standing next to them smiles and chuckles. "Yeah, it's so interesting that way, isn't it! It really makes me think about how the hardest part of making art is just having the idea for it in the first place -- I don't think I ever would have had the idea that a pile of toothpicks could be meaningful. I'm a big fan of this type of art, actually; do you know the story behind this piece?" The person says no, they don't know it. The stranger explains the story. The person is amazed and surprised, and looks at the pile of toothpicks with new eyes and new curiosity. (Then two of them make out sloppy style in the museum bathroom, because I just decided that they should.)
ALSO!!!!!!! As long as we are on this topic! I was circling around the thought that "Hmmm, maybe 'abstract and modern art haters are so snobby' is the actually snobby thing to say" but then I realized! Photography is an artistic medium! And so the photograph in the original post is ALSO a piece of art, since it was made with a very obvious Intention to convey a belief/sentiment or evoke an response -- behold the composition of the piece, behold the stark background vs the two subjects as bright pops of color, behold the very faint silhouette of the photographer reflected in the glass over the blue painting, which perhaps invites us to meditate on our own role of Observer/Audience and lightly implies that we ourselves are complicit and involved in the conversation of this piece.
And since we are STILL having emotional responses to this photograph, that proves that not only is it Art, but it is interesting Art, and that's really cool actually! Some people's response to the photograph is frustration and rejection of the artist who created this, which is delightfully ironic considering that this work itself is quite explicitly about hubris and the Rejection Of The Artist. My response, on the other hand, is curiosity and intrigue and compassion, which arguably is going against the artist's original intention -- and then we're thinking AGAIN about whether the artist's intention matters in how we engage with art in the first place.
On the other hand, perhaps my compassion adds a layer of balance and symmetry to the experience, because then (going off of the idea of the audience being complicit in the experience of the art) you've got several layers involved here: first, the blue painting itself (made with sincere Intention by the original artist with the idea that Art Can Be Anything), then the photograph of the painting (commentary on Rejection of the Artist), and finally this rambling post about it (again returning to the idea of Art Can Be Anything)
WHICH MEANS!!!!! That for this to truly be a multi-layered and collaborative piece of art, the next layer of Art Engagement should be for everyone to respond to this post with "I could have written this tbh, ariaste", "Why did you waste your time on this", or "have you considered that you're stupid and anti-intellectual and I personally hate you" WHICH! WOULD! MEAN!!!!! That this collaborative art experience is represented abstractly by a pendulum on a wire swinging back and forth between two points labeled "Art Can Be Anything" and "Yuck, Why Tho"
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