"The point is, that every piece of art changes your whole perception of the rest of the world for the rest of your life.
And it's not a joke! And if it doesn't, then it's not art, it's a commodity."
- Lawrence Weiner responding to a question from Liam Gillick in "Between Artists"
One of the most dangerous traps to fall into in making any serious statement is to make it based on assumptions and generalizations. In this statement, Lawrence Wiener makes too many assumptions for comfort. This seems typical of theories linking art and consumerism. In fact, it probably applies more to earlier times, when it was possible to make a living solely as an artist, and thus the art being great was in a way secondary to the idea of it was a way to make money. Weiner’s quote overlooks the fact that art is not mass produced and assumes that the same work of art will effect everyone the same way.
Individuals are made up of their life experiences. These experiences affect and inform who we are and how we act. With artists, these experiences influence our work. Our point of view seeps in, even if we don’t think it does. Art is made by individuals and not all individuals have the same experiences. Take this, and look at it with the idea that our experiences affect our art. When these two ideas are put together, it makes the statement that if art doesn’t affect you it isn’t art absurd. Not all art will speak to an individual’s personal experience. True, the artist could make art that makes the message felt and seen to any viewer, but that is still no guarantee that it will “change your whole perception of the rest of the whole and the rest of your life.” And even if it does effect you, it could effect you in a more subtle way. It doesn’t have to change the rest of your life. And also, what if a work of art effect many people, but not everyone. Does that mean that it isn’t art then? Because a few were not affected by it? This is the danger of sweeping statements. They have too many holes in them to be valid. I refuse to believe that just because people aren’t falling over in epiphanies about an artwork that that means the art isn’t valid.
This brings to mind one of the biggest factors in how people react to art, one that Weiner left out. Time. Artists will often center their work around ideas and events relevant to their time, and this work will be very influential to many people. However, what can happen is that the art will not be as meaningful to people looking at it who didn’t live in the time and who will not know the context of the work. Does the art have to stand alone in changing a person’s whole world, or can it change their world because of how the artist was commenting on his time? An example that comes to mind is Andy Warhol. He used iconic objects and figures of his time, and a method of silk screening, all of which combined to comment on the consumerism of his time. This consumerism still exists today, but it was newer in his time. Now, most people I know don’t like his work, seeing it as mass produced and in this, not “true” art. But this was the very idea that he was trying to convey with his work. Because these people don’t appreciate his work, does that mean that we can write off his work as a commodity? The idea of art being a commodity as a negative is interesting in and of itself, hwen looked at in the context of art history. One thing I have heard over and over from my teachers is that being a gallery artists, that is someone who only makes money from their art, is very difficult. But originally, artists made art because it was their commodity, the sole way they made their living. It was an excepted job in ancient cultures. The individual only came into art making in the Renaissance and even then artists still had to center their work mostly around certain major themes, like religion, because they still had to sell their art. So, art had its origins as a commodity. Why should it be such a sin for it to be a commodity?
What I object to most with Wiener’s idea is that he makes a general statement about the validity of art but in terms of the individual’s reaction to it. Art can’t be determined by one person’s reaction to it and it has been a commodity for centuries. Weiner overlooks both of these rather important facts, and thus I can’t agree with his idea.
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