If you’ve ever looked at some abstract concept piece and wondered, “How exactly is that art?” you’ll enjoy this video of abstract artist Arno Coenen trying to explain to his father how his brewing beer can be considered a museum-worthy project.
I have to give Arno credit for having the courage to allows his parent to expose him as a poseur. When dad points out that his son has been brewing beer since high school and yet this is the first time he’s tried to pass it off as “art,” you realize that the younger Coenen is not just artistically uninspired, he’s downright lazy. Passing off an old hobby as a new and exciting piece of art is just lame.
But, of course, that it is the way of most contemporary visual art. Remember five years ago when 500 arts specialists in Britain agreed that the single most important work of art in the twentieth century was Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”? 
Now for most people, the selection of a urinal over the works of such artists as Picasso or Matisse might have come as a bit of a shock. But as art expert Simon Wilson said at the time, “it reflects the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most important thing – the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form.” [emphasis added]
Wilson’s comment echoes a remark made in 1974 by New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer:
Realism does not lack its partisans, but it does rather conspicuously lack a persuasive theory. And given the nature of our intellectual commerce with works of art, to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial—the means by which our experience of individual works is joined to our understanding of the values they signify.
In The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe writes that after reading Kramer’s innocuous comment he “experienced a flash known as the Aha! phenomenon, and the buried life of contemporary art was revealed to me for the first time.”
What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, “to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.” I read it again. It didn’t say “something helpful” or “enriching” or even “extremely valuable.” No, the word was crucial.
In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.
To the untrained eye, Duchamp’s “Fountain” looks like nothing more than a discarded urinal with a name painted on the side and Coenen’s “Eurotrash Hell” just a bad microbrew left behind in the museum after a homeless patron’s lunch. But once we know the theory behind the pieces (re: associating art with non-art subverts the traditional bourgeois artistic values) we can recognize that the creative process is the important thing. It won’t help us to appreciate the “art work”—it is, after all, still a discarded urinal, still a cheap brew—but it will allow us to appear sophisticated and “in the know.” Definitely not bourgeois.
And so this is the situation we find ourselves in at the beginning of the twenty-first century: contemporary art is mostly comprised of theory-laden nonsense.
But this depressing state of affairs offers a unique opportunity for Christians. As the Wall Street Journal‘s Daniel Henniger once lamented, the cultural values of the twentieth century included “discordance, challenge, collision, violation, confusion.”
“This is wholly out of sync with what people want or need in the current age,” adds Henniger, who argues that what we need in this age of global terrorism is “respite.”
If this is truly what is needed then it should be Christians who take the lead. After all, who is better equipped to offer the world a glimpse of true respite than those who can say with Augustine, “for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee”?
But for Christians to salvage the visual arts we first must recognize the importance of art in creation. We must recognize, as Francis Schaffer contends in Art and the Bible, that art is important for those who take the Lordship of Christ seriously:
The arts and the sciences do have a place in the Christian life—they are not peripheral. For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God—not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.
Can Christians save the visual arts? Can we lift it out of the realm of toilets and theories about micro-brews and help restore its proper place in creation? I think we can. I hope we can. But if nothing else, maybe we could at least start producing works—even abstract works—that our parents would recognize as art.
November 1st, 2010 | 12:37 pm
Perfectly said. Thank you.
Bad jazz music performance (i.e. music that doesn’t display mastery over one’s instrument), it seems, could never gain traction as art, even with the most avant-garde. And yet, this has obviously happened to the world of visual art. You say well what is needed to restore visual art. But I wonder if you have any idea how we’ve gotten here in the first place.
November 1st, 2010 | 12:43 pm
Arno Coenen has really pulled off a tour de force, there. He creates something for the sole purpose of it being misunderstood, refuses to help his father understand what he’s doing, and then pulls an overgrown misunderstood teenager act.
And, unless I’m mistaken, it’s this act, this bit of emotional and intellectual “performance art,” that supposedly makes his bottle of beer “art.” That’s twisted on so many levels.
November 1st, 2010 | 12:49 pm
It goes beyond “a bottle of beer isn’t art, silly,” to something more disturbing. He’s almost saying “anything at all plus what goes on in my head about it is art.” Art not only is not intended to please or inspire the viewer any longer, it actually exists *without reference to* the viewer, and likely even in defiance of him.
You can say, “Art should be for the glory of God” and come off as simplistic, but really, the insight that art is created for sake of communicating something worthy to the viewer, including the Divine Viewer, would probably be the most basic and simplest step to take, to restore a more Christian approach to the arts.
November 1st, 2010 | 1:13 pm
i think the line between “art” and “non-art” is simply impossible to draw without being arbitrary and subjective. the easiest way out of this conumdrum is to believe that in view of “creation ex nihilo,” every created thing is art. everything is art.
of course this would include urinals and fecal matter smeared on museum walls. but instead of calling such things “non-art” arbitrarily, perhaps they’re simply “bad art” or “art that is ugly.”
one need not give up objective standards of beauty when believing that everything is art. standards of beauty are found in God’s nature and are eternal. “everything is art” and “God’s nature is the objective standard of beauty” are not mutually exclusive propositions.
finally, tim keller and his congregation at redeemer presbyterian in manhattan have been doing the work of redeeming art for two decades…. joe carter might want to take a peek at the sort of “cultural renewal” coming out of that church — i often wish my parish would be so engaged….
November 1st, 2010 | 1:17 pm
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November 1st, 2010 | 1:39 pm
Doesn’t the claim that there’s no way to distinguish between art and non-art raise the question of how people were able to do it almost without effort until the last century or two? It is only impossible to do if you define art in a way that makes it impossible. But that’s part of the problem — the definition of art has been corrupted.
November 1st, 2010 | 2:38 pm
Anyone interested in such topics as this (and are willing to read a very heavy read) should check into Jacques Barzun’s “From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life”.
Amazon link for more info because I can’t adequately summarize the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Decadence-Western-Cultural-Present/dp/0060928832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288636529&sr=8-1
November 1st, 2010 | 2:55 pm
“Is it art?” is usually the wrong question. Following Hilton Kramer’s confession, we might better ask, “Does this artifact signify an idea we need or want signified?”
November 1st, 2010 | 4:31 pm
to pentamom,
if the definition of art has been corrupted, who had the authority to define it in the first place? was it a sensus fidei?
i think it is at least plausible to believe that in pre-modernity the question “what are art and non-art?” was simply not asked as frequently as it is now; the reason might be that some questions are not asked until cultural forces raise them to the fore.
call me presumptuous, but if i were sitting at a bar talking with vermeer and fra angelico and yes, francis bacon, about this question, i humbly think i’d at least have some traction…. and if a proposition is true, it is true at all times and places.
just wondering.
November 1st, 2010 | 4:49 pm
the barzun book looks great. thanks for the tip, scotty.
November 1st, 2010 | 6:17 pm
“if the definition of art has been corrupted, who had the authority to define it in the first place? was it a sensus fidei? ”
You could say that about any word, in any language. I can’t point to chapter and verse, nor an extensive linguistic history, nor any magisterium, but we function every day by accepting the idea that words mean certain things, and not other things. When it comes to nouns that describe concepts, it would be impossible to have any kind of discourse on ANYTHING if we did not all tacitly accept that there are fixed meanings to things. And if there are fixed meanings, by definition, the usage can become corrupted, no?
Again, this is the kind of thing that nobody had a problem with for a thousand years, and now suddenly not only is it a problem, it’s an insurmountable one so we must concede our heritage to the Philistines. All I’m asking is why we should be having a problem establishing something that people — including artists, poets, and philosophers — took for granted since history began. It seems to me here the problem is in an overly positivist, ahistorical approach to matters like this, not in human inability to understand and define the qualitative difference between the Mona Lisa and a toilet seat.
November 1st, 2010 | 6:53 pm
At the risk of sounding pretentious or irreverent, I would say that Christians have been practicing “performance art” since the beginning of the Church, in the way that they live their lives by witnessing to Christ. St. Francis stands out as a particularly fine example.
Of course, that idea stretches the concept of art perhaps to well past the breaking point: if art is simply “everything an artist does” then the word “art” hardly means anything at all. It ends up as a twisted knot of self-reference and irony. Perhaps we need a renaissance in the sense of returning to the achievements of the ancients.
November 1st, 2010 | 10:11 pm
Oh, I don’t have a problem with performance art per se, it’s the pretentiousness and vacuousness of this particular example of it. There is nothing *to* this bit of “performance art” except that Coenen says that’s what it is. Otherwise, it’s a guy brewing some beer, telling himself that he’s smarter than the average European, and whining that his Dad doesn’t try to understand him properly — but since he says it’s art, all of that is somehow now a “work of art.”
November 2nd, 2010 | 12:11 am
Wikipedia’s entry on “Fountain” is very interesting. Apparently, the original has been lost: probably discarded as trash after it was submitted to a gallery in 1917.
Artist-approved reproductions have fetched over $1 million and many are displayed in art museums around the world.
Even weirder is the phenomenon of “performance artists” going to art museums in order to urinate into their replicas. Any act that is pretentious and juvenile at the same time can count as art I suppose. Getting arrested for disorderly conduct or indecent exposure just adds to how utterly subversive and therefore artistic one’s acts are.
November 2nd, 2010 | 8:14 am
The father in this tedious little video said that a Dutch master still-life would have just a couple of “layers” whereas his son’s beer project has many. Sigh. I’ll take two good reasons to ten stupid ones any day.
Will Christian artists save the arts? Not without commissions they won’t. From Michelangelo to Bach to Le Corbusier, the great religious art that we cherish was done on commission. We all have a part to play. Pony up!
November 2nd, 2010 | 8:49 am
[...] Pentamom forwarded me a funny link about some artsy guy trying to explain to his father how his home brewing is “art.” It’s an article with a rather long video attached. See Can Christians Get the Visual Arts Out of the Toilet? [...]
November 2nd, 2010 | 8:24 pm
to pentamom,
my ex-girlfriend — a wonderful young lady — used the same arguments as you when discussing this question. is your real name kate? :) incidentally, she is not “ex” because of this disagreement.
thanks for your thoughts. but why is it so hard to believe that defining “art” is infinitely harder than defining “pencil?” that some things are more easily defined than others is simply obvious.
i think it is very plausible that no culture has ever had a “fixed meaning” to the word “art.” and as i used to tell kate, i couldn’t care less if words are useful, but only that questions be honest, terms be clear, premises be true, and arguments be valid.
so the honest question “what is art/non-art?” is a fantastic question. i’d personally like to know the answer to this question, especially if my toddler son ever asks it.
why couldn’t “christ in the piss jar” be art? i happen to think it is a brilliant description of what actually happened on good friday…. why couldn’t an urinal be art? it was probably designed on autocad by a thoughtful artist who fused form and function…. on what basis could i deny that pornography is photography and therefore art? what about a man wearing facial hair? why is that not art? and photographs of aborted remains coming out of yale college? on what basis could i strip the status of “art” from such obscenity?
if we follow truth where it leads, i think reasonable people could agree that all attempts to draw the line between art/non-art are purely arbitrary. if this conclusion is true, it would be true always and everywhere.
but what of a satisfactory answer to our question? are we left with no answer? well, it is at least plausible that everything — the entire created order — is art because it proceeds from God who is the maker of all things, seen and unseen. to my mind, this answer is the only answer that avoids arbitrariness. so why not believe it?
some final thoughts: (1) “what is art/non-art” has never been an easy question to answer for anyone in any age or culture who has bothered trying to answer it. (2) that the answer was easy was simply “taken for granted.” (3) philosophy and aesthetics are necessarily ahistorical — so is 2+2=4. (4) the question is not “what is the difference between the mona lisa and a toilet seat?” but “why is a toilet seat not art?”
November 3rd, 2010 | 11:39 pm
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November 4th, 2010 | 9:48 am
John Gardner’s _On Moral Fiction_ is an excellent treatise on art which I highly recommend. It’s being reviewed in the upcoming issue of _The Christendom Review_: .
November 8th, 2010 | 12:26 pm
While I take Joe’s (and Tom Wolfe’s) point about certain strains of modern art, the despairing tone is unwarranted. To claim that modern art was “in the toilet” might have been fair in the 80′s or 90′s, when the NEA was in grip of the idea that art=provocation. But there’s a strong movement back to beauty today, both in the visual arts and in culture in general (more and more scholars in literary studies, my field, are talking about beauty now). Makoto Fujimura and Jacob Collins are leading the charge in visual arts with organizations like the International Arts Movement, the Hudson River Fellowship, and the Grand Central Academy of Art. Other artists like Gerhard Richter, Tim Lowly, and Ed Knippers are producing work that avoids theory-laden provocation and creates real beauty. So there’s just no reason to be pessimistic: the very revival you’re calling for has happened and is happening!
I respond like this because I’m bothered by the sense that many Christians are all too ready to decry the state of the contemporary art world without knowledge of the many good things that are going on. Yes, stuff like this beer-brewing guy is stupid. (What’s wrong with brewing good beer and selling it for people to drink?) But there’s going to be art made that you dislike in any period. There was no golden age. It’s long past time for Christians to stop acting like the age we live in is uniquely debauched and bereft of good art. Give up the declinist rhetoric (leave it in the 90′s with the culture wars), and embrace the good art that’s being made. There was some even in the 80′s and 90′s, but Christian culture was too busy complaining to notice. Now that there’s even more, let’s not make the same mistake.
November 11th, 2010 | 7:01 pm
I dont want to comment on the content of the discussion of the father and the son, but what we actually see (the two man, the table with pots and cups and oranges and the bottle on it) is a perfect modern version of an old dutch master. The scenary in it’s historic context causes questions about identity and this actually is the topic they are discussing. The video is not as simple as it seems.
One important aspect of contemporary art is to sharpen perception about what is happening around us, to understand who we are, what is forming our awareness. In this way contemporary artforms can be important tools we should not ignore. Where an artpeace will lead us depends on the motivation behind and not on the artform.
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