The institution of art professionals – museums, dealers, artists themselves, universities and critics – I am certain, deal with this problem. I presume some deal with it better than others. If I imagine being involved in one of these circles, I think I’d see my goals as: identifying or creating the art I want to see in the world. Some of that could be setting up criteria. That criteria could mean broadening what is considered art. As an artist, that may mean using a different medium to communicate a certain thought. As a university, that could mean promoting non-traditional works of art or classes. As a museum, that may translate into lectures about the breadth of art.

Conversely, criteria could be limited. A toaster is not art (unless it is transformed by place, medium, juxtaposition or something else we haven’t thought of yet). Graffiti tags are not art, but graffiti is. Paintings of flowers are not art, unless they look like vulvas. Dangerous, no?

If there is a philosophical, perhaps logical benefit to opening up the definition of art, there is then a requisite public relations problem. Another goal of the institution is to promote the value of art. That’s a tough goal to achieve when the end user doesn’t have the institutional context to differentiate his $14 toaster from the one in the museum.

There is another public perception problem that plays off those conundrums: the perceived inaccessibility of art. Rather than being groomed to like or dislike a work of art based on merits (which could be as simple as prettiness or as complex as how well it conveys statements about art itself), people have been groomed to believe that like or dislike of especially contemporary and modern art is directly proportional to their artistic perceptiveness, which to many translates as being ‘cultured’. It connotes pedigree and a certain position in society. I’m not sure, but perhaps the perception is that only the wealthy have time to art-gaze; only the wealthy can actually purchase works of art. None of that is true, by the way.

Generally, though this is changing, art is protected. It’s protected against damage, it is housed in safe museums, or even in private collections. It’s not something you come across as part of your day (you probably do, but may not recognize it outside of its home). These long-time constructs of art for the wealthy never made an about-face. They never succeeded in bringing art into everyday exposure, save the few famous paintings reproduced (and some would say diminished) on coffee mugs and hung on college dorm room walls.

With the proliferation of everything on the internet, and the greatly-increased accessibility to information and culture, the past 50-odd years would have been a perfect time for the institution to bring art to people, or bring people to art. The consumer culture makes a good breeding ground for it: if you can use reviews, comparative specs and brand knowledge to decide which vacuum to buy, then you can use critiques, a pinch of history and a dash of period-knowledge to decide what you, the individual think about a piece of art. Except just about the time that might have become a mainstream idea, the art institution turned introspective.

Introspection is just as much of a hindrance as the aristocratic tinge to the public accessibility of art. I think often the most challenging art for the average viewer is work that attempts to challenge the construct of the institution itself: to the non-institutional casual observer, that’s a very oblique perspective. Is it valuable to challenge the constructs of the institution? Of course! But that’s not the only important conversation to have.

To be perfectly clear, these are generalizations and trends I’ve observed. There are plenty of artists and art-lovers out there making the strides to be innovative yet accessible. In sum, I posit! that the institution does have a responsibility to bring art to people. Not all people, not all the time, but there are some simple changes they could make in curriculum, in advertising, in writing and in the kind and volume of interactions they have with people in everyday life, and not just within the museum walls.

…however. I feel that the institution does an adequate job of reaching out to all people. It can be better. But… Art is in the streets. Children feel capable of making art and have at least an entry level access to resources. It’s not the responsibility of anyone or any entity to storm into artless houses and shovel impressionism down their throats, or furtively hang Dalis in the bathrooms of the unappreciative. Most museums are free or very inexpensive for the breadth and quality of work they display. St. Louis alone has several coves of sculpture, murals, an arch, half a dozen museums and more galleries. Those who have not experienced art in this town simply don’t have a desire to, and that is something you can’t force upon anyone.

I guess the end argument is that the job of art of the people has begun, it just doesn’t know where to go next. I’d recommend targeting the reasons people don’t interact with art, rather than just plopping it down in front of them and hoping they… get it.

Quite the anathema to earlier that evening. My scattergraph of home friends are, on the whole, wicked brilliant and sew tropes like there’s no tomorrow. Language is sport and ideas are ecstasy. They’ll go at them like dogs strip meat off of bones because bones are what they want. They want to collect bones of knowledge; bones don’t decompose, and truth is marrow. If that sounds slightly unpleasant, well.

The subject of that particular evening in December was a/Art. Big A. Little a. To re- or de-construct, briefly:

An artist obscura come up in conversation. Then another. Soon, the art students are in a heady discussion about big-A Art, leaving some of our party at a distinct disadvantage. Non-art students note the inclination toward snobbery, both with the specific-academic-speak and the obfuscated “meaning” of the art by these obfuscated artists.

Point: Art students (creating it, not remembering it) argue that Art-as-Institution is accessible to the masses, and even if it’s not, why should it be? It’s striving to not be derivative or un-evolved, artists are trying to transcend and create something new, and therefore can’t appeal to the lowest common denominator (the woefully uneducated).

Counter-point: (backs arched, “Moi? So you think I am a woefully uneducated plebe?) What does Art matter if its point, message, idea stays locked in your jerk-off ivory tower and hardly anyone sees it? It never becomes part of dinner conversations or collective consciousness?

So, I’d like to tackle this problem. I think I’m the perfect person to do it. I like to make art (really, I prefer to call it crafts, as my only objective is visual pleasantry) but I’ll never put it in a museum. I worked at the Contemporary Art Museum-St. Louis (camstl), I think I sympathize with both demi-theories.

You could say Big-A Art is a subset of little-a art. It’s like an applied science, or British literature, or the Major League: still science, still books, still baseball. You could, however, say that they are separate entities that occasionally overlap: art is only sensory, while Art is experiential and imbued with meaning and historical/philosophical context. You could have Art that exists only as an idea; not sensory at all. You could have Art that is visual, audio, appealing, ugly, scary. You could have art that exists in your basement that remains purposeless. That scale depends on who decides, and how much the rest of the universe cares about their opinion, and it gets especially touchy when artists repurpose kitsch art or prescribe meaning to everyday objects, or give an aesthetic form to something functional.

Place = meaning

When I worked at Camstl, I was a gallery assistant. I watched people and made sure they didn’t touch or photograph or endanger installations. They hosted a range of artists, from graffiti artist Dzine to Cindy Sherman to Andy Warhol; photos, paintings, multi-media, video and even performance art. The question posed to me most often by visitors was “What is this supposed to mean?” Even the most art-illiterate guest understood that by walking into a museum, you were supposed to see (or hear) something and ‘get it’. If they didn’t ‘get it’ they’d feel stupid, think they had missed something, and generally conceded ‘I just don’t get it’ or ‘I could do that’. No one ever said “I don’t like this,” because someone much more ‘knowledgeable’ than they had chosen this piece and, if they disliked it, they assumed they must have missed the point.

Camstl did a good job of posting descriptions and printing gallery guides to explain what was going on with a particular show, and to describe why this or that piece was significant (a good word to avoid quality judgments). They strive to explain what the artist was attempting to say. Many of the skeptical guests didn’t read about the art, and I believe those types came in expecting not to ‘get it’, and after staring for a while resigned happily to the limitation they set for themselves. Other types “loved!” pieces I didn’t really care for; they “loved!” everything because they thought they were supposed to. When I stared at the same works of art for several months, I came to learn what I liked.

My answer to the question “What is this supposed to mean?” varied, depending on my mood. Sometimes I’d explain what I knew about the art or artist, sometimes I’d say “What do you think it means?”, sometimes I’d just say “I have no idea”. I think I was partially complicit in feeding apathy by shrugging and shaking my head to affirm someone’s confusion/disdain. Probably because I didn’t make much money.

Some artists throw twinkies on the floor and because it’s in a museum, it becomes art, not litter. Some paint graffiti and the public doesn’t realize it’s art until it’s in a museum.

Context provides richer experience

I am convinced that while art has been treated like a “higher” pursuit, it’s not much different than literature, or baseball. The job is considerably more esoteric than baseball, but the way the public experiences it is fundamentally the same. A bunch of guys running around a diamond doesn’t mean a thing to you unless you know the rules. Your experience is richer if you know baseball’s history, so you know when a play is significant, unusual. Same with art. If you know some history, you can say “Hey, that’s referencing this movement, and I know what that’s about!” If you know the rule of thirds, for instance, or chiaroscuro, or self-portraiture, you can identify it. Like literature, art is about a lot of things not housed within the strict study of art history or art creation, but the history of society, political movements, fields of thought. Understanding those aspects takes investment, but it enriches your experience. It gives you handrails. You can still dislike a work, but at least you can say why. Caution, though: being discomforted or challenged does not make a work ‘bad’.

So, with that background, I have several questions to pose about the Institution of Art: universities, museums, patrons, and even artists themselves.

First, what responsibility, if any, does the Institution have to make their art salable to the masses, i.e anyone who might happen across Art.

At what point does Art become not Art, either because it is pedantic and carries no meaning/value, or because it has become too obscure and caries no relevance?

Can art become Art through no intention of its creator?

What is the purpose of Art in human experience?

Can Art be purely aesthetic? Can Art be devoid of aesthetic?

Is the critic or the viewer or the artist the expert on the value and meaning of a work of art?

Stay Tuned.