Art

Paid a visit to the SAM on saturday for the Xu Beihong exhibit. I have (AHEM!) very cultured friends you see....

After having a cup of morning java and a hearty breakfast in Dome, we made our way up to the galleries. The first thing that we saw, was this weird looking dog-like creature, that has features that are disturbingly human, dressed like a court jester, with a huge penis. It looked scary and well, distasful to me.

That got us into a discussion - when is art art? When is it not? Is there such a thing as bad art? (I flunk Arts in school, til this day, I maintained that it was perhaps too avant garde for the people trying to grade my work. No, correction, my masterpiece!) Art in Chinese is "mei shu". "Mei" means beautiful, and really, I don't see even 1/1000 of a milligram of that in that weird looking sculpture that the artist wants to pass of as art. There might be some people out there who might be able to see something in it that I don't. Art is very subjective. Art is about pushing the limits and being controversial, getting reactions out of people, be it negative and positive. Art gives us a way to be creative and expressive. Art allows us to form our own opinions and thoughts.

There has been so much talk about controversial art these days, from Abortion Girl to the artist who called starving a dog art. I do not know how, trying to self-inseminate yourself and then, eating some herbs to self abort has anything to do with art. I don't see the connection at all. The starving dog stunt, it seems, might be a hoax. According to the artist, Guillermo Habacuc Vargas intended the work to be a stunt to show how a starving dog suddenly becomes the centre of attention when it is in a gallery, but not when it is on the street. The work was intended to expose people for what they really are - "hyprocritical sheep". He said that in order for the work to be valid, he and the gallery had to give the impression that the dog was genuinely starving to death and that it died.

Remember how many many years ago, someone started trimming off his own pubic hair in Parkway Parade and called that art? Drinking your own pee? Eating a Corgi in protest of the royal family of England? What about advertising for a dying person to be displayed in his last few moments in this world, for everyone to see? The photographs of naked Chinese opera actors?

Like poems, sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't. Sometimes, after reading and re-reading, it becomes painfully clear and personal. So what is art? We will know it when we see it. Let's not complicate matters by trying to define art.