What makes art, ‘art’: a family tour

Jonathan drops junk onto the Gallery floor

I create a work of ‘art’ by tipping a box of junk upside-down in an art museum.

If I left it there and came back a day later, do you think it’d still be there?

Why not? Who would have taken it away? No, not the director, nor the curators… but the cleaners! The cleaners must decide whether it looks like it’s MEANT to be there.

So, to be seen as ‘art’, my work needs ‘meantness’.

Jonathan puts a frame around the junk

A frame helps an artwork’s ‘meantness’: it contains it, and acts like a fence separating the special (art) from the ordinary (non-art). A label could also help. But an artwork really needs more, like: arrangement, selection and repetition.

Jonathan imitates the symmetry of an artwork with his body

One good way to give a work of art ‘meantness’ is symmetry (even if it’s not exact): the stuff on the left balances the stuff on the right.

Jonathan demonstrates how a gestural abstract painting might have been painted

Sometimes, to make a painting look energetic, it has to be painted in an energetic way, almost like a dance. Here I’m imagining how the painting “New reality” MIGHT have been painted.

But it’s very likely that the artist had to try a number of times, each time on a fresh board, before getting just the right effect. If that’s true of this painting, then how long did it take for the artist to paint it? A minute? A day? A month?