AESTHETIC: Is My Mom an Art Connoisseur?

screen shot from the video where my mom talks about art. click here to watch.

The night before, in my aesthetics class, I made a statement that I didn’t really believe, but in some ways wanted to... I often make these kinds of statements when I’m in class, it’s part of the way I have chosen to perform as a student... I do so for the benefit of the topic at hand, as I consider myself a devil’s advocate- or perhaps a sacrificial lamb one who does harm to self in order for others to benefit. left her and shows me to be entirely egocentric, perhaps this short misses is an attempt to crucify that. Last night we were talking about the things that make art, art. We constructed a laundry list of ideas which included things like it “needs to be made, or appropriated,” it needs to be “talked about, or considered,” it needs to “move to people who view it.” A question arose about “who was able to make something art just by talking about it?” The general consensus was that anyone, anyone with voice could say “this is art,” and that that was enough. I disagreed. I suggested that not just anyone could say those words. I suggested that only people who have some kind of formal training, connoisseurs, were able to make such statements, with any validity. I went on to suggest, for example, that my mother was not allowed to say those words. The girl next to me called me a fascist. I went red in the face, but stuck to my statement, however damaging I knew it would become. There is good art and bad art, but it still is art, right?
I consider myself an artist. I have stated formally, I practice every day, sometimes I sell it. I have studied art history, and now investigate ideas about the rules in which we engage art, which some call aesthetics. I know what I like too. which is the argument made most often by Peter Swilling Sunday visitors to the museum. Of course you know you like and it’s not this Jackson Pollock piece. At a certain point in the history of art it became necessary to understand the rules by which it was constructed in order to understand it, so argues Authur Danto. John Dewey argues that you can look at a flower and appreciated, but to truly understand it you need also to understand ideas about soil and sunlight and wind and insects. I believe the same thing about art. People who understand those rules can make valid statements about art, in the same way people who are highly informed about a particular political subjects become the voice of certain ideas. I write this at a time of populist uprising in America. Everyone has been empowered to speak, which is good I suppose, but it gives birth to demagogues such as Sarah Palin. Thomas Kinkade is to art what Sarah Palin is to democracy. There is another aspect to this which I’m a little bit ashamed to admit. It is that I am interested in keeping people out of my field. I want to be unique, I want the word artist to carry some kind of weight. I am ashamed of these feelings, especially as I am in the business of empowering people to become artists, and to use art to extend and order their consciousness. Is there a right of passage to become an artist? Must you really and truthfully have an understanding of the theoretical and historical elements of art in order to feel it? I don’t know, I don’t want to know either.
Truth be told, I appreciate what my mother says about art... once I sent a paper to her that I wrote for class. It was about an art piece that I saw in the museum. I contacted her by Skype and asked her to comment about my writing. I recorded our conversation, her words, as they drifted from observations about formal qualities into sophisticated deconstruction. My mother could recognize that I see things that she doesn’t, and that she simply just looks. Thomas Kinkade’s work I despise. My professor also dislikes Thomas Kinkade. I asked her why. She suggested that the formal aspects of his work fail to mesh with the content of the piece. My mother loves his work though, and understands that it has value, not just economic value, but nostalgic value that evokes important feelings of the people who view, buy, and collect it.
Elliot Eisner has stressed the importance of the cognitive aspect of art and stresses the importance of teaching that alongside of it’s creative aspects. He talks about the idea of connoisseurship, I will quote him here:
Connoisseurship is the art of appreciation. It can be displayed in any realm in which the character, import, or value of objects, situations, and performances is distributed and variable, including educational practice. (Eisner 1998: 63)
Is my mother an art connoisseur? it must remain another unanswered question. Certainly if she’s interested in becoming a recognized connoisseur she could take the Christie’s Connoisseurship Seminar which: “Teaches the critical skills needed to look at art, write about art, research and evaluate works. Students regularly handle or view art objects from Christie’s Education’s study collection and visit artists’ studios, conservation labs, museums and alternative spaces.”

Tags: aesthetic, mom

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