Found Art

March 27 2020

We emerge in spring

blinking in the glut of light,

layer by layer

shedding our clothes

in the unaccustomed warmth.

The snow on the roof

is slowly receding,

its moth-eaten edges

glistening with melt.

The sun is a sculptor,

shaping the soft ductile material

into bizarrely flowing forms;

Dr Seuss, crossed with Picasso

but in an austere modernist white.

I'm reminded of desert formations,

the spires and arches

pinnacles, hoodoos, and buttes

that are left behind

when the softer rock erodes.

Because, like sedimentary layers

not all snow 
is created equal.

Her art is fleeting, though,

and as you watch

you can almost see it change.

Another week, and there will only be wet brown shingles

and coldly dripping eaves,

waves of heat

rising up in late afternoons

as the spring sun strengthens.

But only if you notice.

So look up as you pass

and stop for just a moment.

Unintentional art

in the eye of the beholder.

I guess this is a variation on “stop and smell the roses.” So if nothing else, I can be proud of myself for at least avoiding the cliche! It's also what, by temperament and inclination, poets do: observe, detach, imagine.

It may just have been lifted from Wikipedia (or wherever it was my search landed on Google), but one of my favourite lines has to be pinnacles, hoodoos, and buttes. Even if it means I'm not so much the writer of original material as I am the curator of esoteric jargon. I've always liked using rich unfamiliar language like this in poetry: like the sculpted snow, its own found art.

I think the last 2 lines say more than they might appear to. 

In the more literal sense, they ask if you can call it art when there is no intention. Is a sentient creator necessary for the creation of art? Or is it good enough that the beholder experiences what art is supposed to do; which is to impart insight, aesthetic uplift or aesthetic revelation, deep emotion, and -- at its best -- transformation? 

And in a less literal sense, they're also about the way we impose intention, order, and ultimately meaning on what are actually random events.

Which is what we do when it's just everyday stuff, but we call it art because our eye makes it so. For example, to call it art, the beholder must imagine a creator and attribute intention. And if not that, then assume the role of creator himself: imposing order on chaos, transforming something stumbled upon not just into something "found", but into "found art".

Which is what we do when we confuse causation with correlation, or refuse to believe in coincidence.

And which is what we do when we think must always be a "why", even though some things could very well be meaningless. (The meaning of life? A perennial question, and the beginning of religion. But maybe there isn't one. Perhaps life is meaningless ...and we're not here for any reason ...and nihilism wins.)

I'd like to go back to this idea of art and intention, and whether “found” art is even legitimate. Seems a worthwhile thing to discuss, if only because of the title of the poem! One of my first readers, after being sent an early draft, wrote back with some thoughts on the age-old controversy “what is art?” He began with this: Art - Oxford suggests human created ...another dictionary recognized animal art ...So given what I’ve seen in some galleries  ...a crap on the lawn may count.

I responded with this short essay. (One reason I'm including this is because I write a lot of prose – certainly more than the poetry, at least if you go by the number of words – and it never gets included in this blog. Probably because lot of it is political, and the rest a bit too personal. But then there are pieces like this, that seem more than suitable. So perhaps it's time I featured some.)

I think this idea of "art" makes for a fascinating philosophical discussion. Maybe mostly because, along with language and abstract thought, art is what separates (elevates?) us as humans from the other animals. 

As always, we have to begin with definition. Art vs craft. The latter involves as much virtuosity and skill. But art is meant to transform; craft is merely (if "merely" is the word) useful or aesthetic. So art works on us to alter us. We don't just experience it; it has to change us.

Further to definition:  types of art. Visual ...literary ...performance (dance and live theatre) ...devotional (religion) ...and, of course, music. Which may be the purest. I say this because we respond to music without needing to process it:  it goes directly into our brains; in particular, our emotional brains. ...Can you come up with any more categories? Monumental/architectural? Multimedia, as in the design of computer games? Even culinary?!!

I'm partial to this idea of intent -- that to be art something has to be an intentional act of creation -- but also really question this. Because in order to be art it also has to be received. (In a vacuum, there would be no art. Tom Hanks on his desert island created Wilson. But without an audience, Wilson isn't anything.) And the question arises as to whether simply having a beholder -- without any maker --  is sufficient. This is where found art comes in. Can the beholder's vision add meaning to something that was never created to be art? Can an arbitrary random object catalyze some transformational change in sensibility or perception or thought in the viewer that it becomes art? Can it acquire, by virtue of the way it is perceived, some elevated aesthetic weight and presence? Do we turn the world -- the natural world, in particular -- into a work of art simply by virtue of our appreciation?

Another thought I have is that perhaps what makes something art is that we can revisit it and have as powerful an experience the 2nd or 3rd time. Or perhaps revisit and find something new in it, or learn something new about ourselves. Or perhaps it's simply the way a truly effective (and affective) work of art sticks with us:  how it keeps coming to mind for days after seeing it, and how different aspects keep revealing themselves the more we reflect on it. So one quality by which we might measure art and define something as worthy of that description is simply its stickiness. (Trouble here is that an ear worm of a formulaic pop song would too easily risk attaining the top tier of artistic virtuosity!) 

Another worthwhile topic is this question of whether we can separate the art from the artist. If a despicable person produces great art, does his/her character taint the work? Should we boycott Woody Allen movies because there are concerns in the wind about his behaviour? Should Picasso be shunned because he was a womanizer? An individual is, of course, free to make his/her own judgment. I guess the question is more pertinent when we think about a work's continued presence in the great collective canon of literature or of visual art, or even whether it should be airbrushed out of history entirely (like photographs of Stalin's succession of politburos, in which the purged apparatchiks, factotums, and panjandrums are disappeared as if they never were!) Or, instead of banishment, like Confederate statues, would a plaque indicating the controversy and context of their erection be enough? Does the work of art stand on its own? Or is it forever joined at the hip to its creator?