Rotten Art
Shouldn’t we expect more from our arts? From what should be the pinnacle of our culture?
São Paulo 2019
In perhaps the most controversial and memorable story in the arts over the last few years—which isn’t, at least recently, that grand of a claim—Maurizio Cattelan duct-taped a banana to a wall at Art Basel Miami in 2019, plunging far too many people into endlessly repeating all those insufferable questions about the meaning and definition of art. What’s particularly maddening for anyone who has attempted to discuss contemporary art since that month, or even for anyone who has attempted to enjoy a banana in peace, is that these questions are assumed to be novel. Perhaps it is the nature of speaking in clichés that it somehow must feel original to the speaker even when the listener finds it tiresome. These are questions, it is worth remembering, that have been touched by everyone from Aristotle to Montaigne to the most banal of contemporary critics. So it must be that only the most peculiar and solipsistic sensibility could ask what is art or is that art while visiting a museum and assume that the questions are new.
Of course asking timeless questions isn’t what’s tedious, as the best questions will always remain timeless and be forever hostage to dispute. It is arrogant, however, to assume that our most pressing ethical and moral and aesthetic questions haven’t been posed before, or to not understand that these are ongoing conversations with long and worthwhile histories, or to presume that museums, of all places, haven’t yet considered how to describe art.
Although it is easy to forget that a museum, in theory, is where we toss all the stuff that we value. Forget any grand artistic declarations or what’s politically trendy or even what’s historically significant and notice that these buildings are repositories. The equation is simple and easy to overlook: for the stuff we want to save, we already have a spot. We keep the doors locked at night and hire guards and put in a lot of effort to ensure that our stuff remains safe. We have paintings from two hundred years ago alongside sculptures from two thousand years ago, and we expect both to look exactly the same if we visit in the distant future. Art Basel Miami doesn’t exactly qualify as a museum, but the general principle still fits, and I will admit that it is rather curious that this not-even-green banana is about as disposable as it gets.
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And perhaps the one curious aspect of considering fruit as art is that its disposability mirrors so much of contemporary culture. Nothing profound is stated by noticing that we’re swimming in cultural products, in an endless array of choices and creations, with new releases in film and music and novels, and that the most dominant trend in all these industries is, unfortunately, disposability. Today’s hit is quickly replaced by tomorrow’s release. But if you missed yesterday’s groundbreaking work, that’s okay, because we’ve already moved on and forgotten it anyway. From the serials that fill every screen, to the endless chain of blockbuster films, and even to the interchangeable covers and plots of new literary thrillers, trying to stay up-to-date with the culture will always make you just a little bit late. To be a polymath today—able to comment on the latest trends, primed to absorb both the high and low arts—is to commit yourself to dry eyes, insufficient sleep, no social connections, and a failure to keep up with the relentless pace of creation, because you must have grasped that, in this culture, we’re going faster and faster and faster.
All this excess supply does come with a natural endpoint: a diminishment of artistic quality. There’s simply less justification in putting more labor into any single creation when the stress is on production. The basic economic principles of supply and demand aren’t lost simply because we’re talking about the arts. Glance through the release schedule of any film studio or publishing house or even a museum exhibit calendar and you’ll see the intensity—the goal isn’t to create a lasting impression because, alas, a lasting impression is yesterday’s game. We’re not looking for excellence, we just want that marginal customer, with quality at the expense of quantity. One banana, in other words, is equivalent to all the other bananas. Unfortunately, the subject here is contemporary cultural life, as this perpetual toe-stubbing would otherwise be hilarious: because more art is created, the speed of creation increases; because the speed of creation increases, new creations don’t last; because new creations don’t last, more art must be, once again, created.
And there’s nothing at all contradictory about how our creative industries produce temporary, disposable, and easily forgettable art while, simultaneously, they produce art that mainly recycles past eras or is derivative from older works or is a sequel to past hits. If you’re a film studio, why strive for something new that may fail when a sequel comes prepackaged and prewritten at half the effort and earns an equivalent amount? If you’re a museum curator, why take a chance with a new artist when you can schedule two retrospectives of known artists and be assured to sell twice as many tickets? If you’re a publisher, why gamble on untested and unknown literary writers when it is much easier to sign known personalities from politics or music or film?
At least tossing a banana against the wall is representative of this mess. Just remember that you’re living in a time when the contemporary contribution for exhibition alongside timeless, innovative artistry is a fruit that’s disposable and putrid. Although it is worth noting that this contribution—unlike Greek sculptures or Renaissance paintings—is only sensible in its context. To consider a duct-taped banana in isolation, outside its context of contemporary culture, is to take one step toward insanity. Imagine the sight of Michelangelo stepping into the year 2019, excited to ask about the current fuss in the arts, excited to see how far we’ve come, and being handed a stupid banana. It would be exactly right to state that something had gone horribly wrong.
Shouldn’t we expect more from our arts? From what should be the pinnacle of our culture? Perhaps that question is misguided, and perhaps the answer is simply that we don’t expect more because we’re not getting more—the tautology is true because we’ve deemed it true. Yet there are still some hints of frustration toward the arts. In the apathy of film audiences to critical acclaim. In all the unsold but award-winning novels. In the struggles of local theaters and small music venues and independent galleries. Although the typical conclusion from these facts is that not enough people enjoy quality art, perhaps it is worth considering whether the art that’s offered deserves the label quality. Audiences shouldn’t have to articulate a desire for something more than the endless slop of soporific and institutional and cautious art—especially because it is the job of artists to sweep the debris away. At least we can say that the time is certainly ripe.