Is the Mona Lisa content?1 The question appears ridiculous, an easy no. But it’s asking leads to another, altogether more difficult question. What then is the difference between art and content? To understand this we must first define art.
Until yesterday, the definition of art was perhaps an academic question, keenly argued but of little relevance to those whose lives took place outside of this world. For us outsiders, the vast majority of the population, art was just the things we hung on our walls or visited in galleries when the weather was off.
Push us to define it further, we may land on a definition close to Aristotle’s, who saw art as a human attempt to replicate the beauty we find in the world. Press us deeper still on how we understand this beauty, we may answer something along the lines of it being based on its attributes according to claritas (clarity), consonantia (proportion), integritas (integrity/coherence). At this point we then begin to wonder why is it we don’t hear much about beauty in art any longer? Well, that is because any such classical understanding of art has gradually been entirely eradicated by a post-modernist approach, whereby anything is art. The post-modernists would say that an artist should not concern themselves with concepts such as truth and beauty, as these concepts simply do not exist.
As we have said before, when anything is art, then everything is art. Accordingly, it not take very long, in fact only until 1961, for Piero Manzoni to produce ninety cans of Artist’s Shit. He wrote to a fellow artist ‘I should like all artists to sell their fingerprints, or else stage competitions to see who can draw the longest line or sell their own shit in cans’.
Manzoni tells us much. For one thing, we had in fact already reached the absolute bottom of the “art as anything” paradigm way back in 1961 with literal canned shit. What have we been doing for the last 62 years except just so very much more of the same like some perverted human centipede version of Ouroborous (the ancient symbol of infinity, a snake eating its own tale). His comments also reveal that although we have abandoned objective truth and beauty, we still need some method to evaluate art. Evaluating art is not just critically assessing brushstroke, it also enables us to collectively share meaning. When meaning and value is derived solely by celebrity (the longest lines) or number of cans of shit sold, then meaning outside of this is redundant. There are critics that seek to undo this trend. For instance, AA Gill remarked about Tracy Emins unmade bed that:
“her bed is art because it is made by an artist, yours is not, because you are not”.
But it cannot only be due to her celebrity as artist, that we celebrate her exhibits. In her piece unmade bed she sought to truthfully reconstruct not only her bed, but laid bare her entire inner life across the gallery floor. She showed us the truth of her condition and in doing so it allows us to see ourselves outside of own perspective, even if only temporarily, to see something which is true and relevant across every human heart. We are lost, insecure and imposters, but we are not alone. This is what art does, it shows us something truthful, be it in a likeness, a drawing, a painting, or in our human condition.
So perhaps anything really can be art? If that is the case, then how would we define this? Perhaps with a definition which has lodged in my brain for the last 30 or so years:
Meaningful art is that which discerns something lasting from the flux.
Content on the other hand, is not concerned with such matters, it is generated sole for consumption. We do not today and we will not tomorrow ever need this content. Its sole purpose is to engage us in like, share, monetisation. However, we do need some form of art which gives us meaning in our lives. This means that we individually and collectively have some important decisions on how to spend our time and focus. We need a methodology which enables us to allocate our attention, else we lose our minds completely both individually and collectively (and you can argue this is well underway already).
So do not be content, seek out truthful lasting art.
The nature of Mona Lisa’s alluring smile has been a matter of considerable debate down the years, but most can generally agree that she appears quite content.