Confronted with Concept Art
I’ve been going through Jeff Curto’s History of Photography podcast which has been very good and educational. Not surprising since this is Mr. Curto’s lectures from the class he teaches at the College of DuPage. I did get out of it what I wanted, which was exposure to history’s famous photographers. However, there is one thing I can’t wrap my head around; which is not Mr. Curto’s fault. It’s this whole thing with concept art. The music world has an equivalent called “performance art”. I don’t think it’s so much that I don’t get it, but more that I don’t want to get it.
To me, concept art or performance art is what happens when your left brain attempts to do the job that belongs to the right brain. In essence you as the viewer or artist are supposed to thrust your own intellectual ideas on the object of art rather than allow the art to speak for itself. In essence, it seems to me like the mental masturbations of someone pretending to be an artist telling the world that this boring or non-existent thing is art. For example, someone sits at a piano for 30 seconds in an outdoor setting, closes the piano and takes a bow. Someone erases another person’s painting and calls it art. It takes no skill to do these things. You are supposed to contemplate the ingenious mastery of perception or some other such nonsense.
Sure I come to art with a preconceived notion that art is supposed to be beautiful. I can get abstract art. Art is always introduced by folks like Michelangelo, DaVinci, etc. We then learn about impressionism such as the wonderful works of art by a Claude Monet. I can even get Picasso. So when I see photographic art in the same style I can wrap my head around it. I can understand it. I can see the beauty in the subject, even if I may not particularly enjoy the subject.
What I don’t get is how something that looks amateurish is supposed to be a modern interpretation of art. It almost seems to me as if the art community has become so inbred on its own philosophies and community that it has lost touch with the world. The people who buy these pieces of “art” don’t do it because they enjoy what it looks like, but rather because they look at it as an investment. I have to wonder if the concept art will truly be remembered a hundred years from now?
Do I consider myself an artist? Hardly. Sure I am pursuing photographic art, but I don’t count myself to arrived. In many ways, I want the art to challenge me and impress me. Not to challenge my understanding, but to challenge my skill and knowing what is possible with the medium. I’m forced to deal with left brain functions all day with my job, when I view art I want to exercise the other half of my brain. Concept art (and in the same vein performance art) fails to challenge me or impress me. My daughter created better work when she was nine.
