Dialogue: Art is not just pictures to cover stains on the walls

By MICHAEL STEVENS*

Louisa Herd asked the question, "What constitutes art?" in a recent Dialogue column, and decided she had lost the plot.

Did she ever have it in the first place? She obviously belongs to the "I don't know much about art but I know what I like" school, but, hey, what other criteria do you need? Why on earth would anyone seriously think about what is obviously just a matter of interior decoration, some pretty pictures to cover the stains on her walls?

A noted music critic once asked: "Is this music, yes or no? If I am answered in the affirmative, I would say that it does not belong at all to the art which I am in the habit of considering music."

This was one A. Oublicheff in 1857 after hearing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the first time. He is now almost entirely forgotten except for the comical terror he displayed when confronted with something that forced him to think in a new way.

Louisa Herd follows in his footsteps. She enjoys the work of van Gogh, yet he died without being able to sell a single thing. His work was too modern. The society around him thought he was "ripping them off" and insulting real artists by calling his own childish scrawls art.

Then there is Louisa Herd's liking for Monet. But what of the controversy the Impressionists caused when they started exhibiting their work? They were described as self-deluded fools, people of no talent, a waste of time and money.

The role of the arts in society is, of course, always up for debate. There is no one answer as to what constitutes art. Everyone is free to offer opinions and criticise. Artists know that before they go into the field. Yet to make intelligent comments about art, literature or music, you need more than a jerking knee.

We live in an era when the world's cultures are colliding both with each other and with the new technologies we are being presented with almost daily. This means that artists are going to present their ideas to us in new ways.

This is one of the most important roles of the artists. They present us with a challenge to think. Coming from Scotland, home of some great European thinkers, I am saddened that Louisa Herd does not seem to get this point.

Art is not simply there to present pretty, reassuring pictures for the living room. One of the artist's roles is to challenge us and to make us consider things in a new light. It is hard to think of any great artists who were totally uncontroversial in their own times.

How predictable and dull the world would be if everyone thought the same way about art, music and literature. How nice, how safe, how very, very sad.

Many artists, composers and writers fed their audiences the same old pap for years and sold well, then sank into oblivion after their deaths. They were popular, they had a formula that satisfied the masses. They knew their market.

They were the producers of punter art. Think of a pretty, coy shepherdess with a flock of baa-lambs demurely blushing before a nice, clean shepherd. How touching. How uncontroversial.

Louisa Herd indicates that she hates modern writers. Which ones? Joyce? Nabokov? Rushdie?

Oh, for a diet of nothing but Agatha Christie and Jeffrey Archer. You know where you are with them: no nasty surprises, no invitations to think or question the status quo, no possibilities beyond the dull suburban world where a "nice Vermeer print" goes with any decor and women's magazines are all the intellectual challenge you need.

Art is about many things: representation, celebration, exploration. It is not about tirelessly and tiresomely repeating the same hackneyed themes and styles that have proved popular in the past.

That simply results in a tacky plaster David to go under the Mona Lisa print in the loo.

Had Louisa Herd been born 100 or so years ago she would be mocking people for admiring van Gogh and Monet, the very artists she now claims to enjoy. This view of culture doesn't appeal. I'm glad that I have some understanding of the history and direction of my 3000-year-old culture, and the role of the arts within it.

It allows me to see where ideas and directions in the arts have come from, and where they are heading.

* Michael Stevens is an Auckland student.