I suspect it's just not something you find particularly interesting. Personally, I think other people's reaction will be the fascinating part. I could easily see a segment of the population being incensed at the notion of someone flying a US flag resembling a flag of surrender. (Note: I'm in Dallas, Texas at the moment, so I expect slightly stronger responses.)
Art's always legit to somebody, but even if this is just a goofy prank, it could take on a life of its own after, sorta post-factor legitimizing it. At the least, it could be a neat catalyst for a few flame wars.
You're not old, it's just that nowdays "art" is defined as "anything that you can convince few people to call art", the more shocking and disgusting the better.
On the other hand, I think we should have much more "stupid juvenile pranks". Society is grumpy and boring nowdays.
Personally I’m all in favor of defining art extremely liberally and to then have a meaningful discussion about how worthwhile or interesting something is, without arguing about something as stupid as what is art and what is not.
In the end this is what it is and can stand for itself, whether anyone considers it art or not. Of course, this classification is potentially useful for putting it in a historical context (Did anyone else do something similar in the past? How does this fit in the historical context? What, if anything, is this alluding to?), but not much beyond that – and art is such a broad term, so that classification isn’t even specific enough.
Sadly “art” is commonly used as a seal of approval. By calling something “art” it is implied that it is worthwhile and interesting only by virtue of being “art”. So this word does double duty as endorsement and classification – and since obviously no one can agree on what art is worthwhile and interesting and what not it’s all terribly confusing and inconsistent. It’s a mess. The discussion about art then clouds and confuses the actually interesting discussion about what is worthwhile and interesting art.
It should be obvious that finding a definition of art that includes only worthwhile and interesting things (even if not universally but only for one personally) is a hopeless task and should better not be attempted. So why not look at individual pieces of art and have that discussion?
It's amazing to me to see the evolution of art and how so much of it has morphed into self-mockery.
I've seen enough things both wonderful and banal that I've adopted the rule that if something's only virtue is that it's "art," it's not worth my time.
If these guys were called "professional pranksters" I'd be fine with it. Good on them, great prank. Lots of laughs. White flags, just like surrendering, haha.
There's plenty of good modern art. I don't really think art should necessarily return to classic form. I'm writing this as I listen to some Steve Reich music and I have a Ryan McGinness print right over my computer.
But I'm afraid the art world these days is basically optimized around trying to produce output that's purely intended to confuse, shock or outrage. It's like the art world has lost the ability to recognize and evoke any other emotion. It's become so insular and incestuous that so much that's produced in the art world these days has any relevance or meaning at all -- it's almost psychopathic.
Except instead it's boring, pretentious and trite. Evoking negative emotions is easy.
In the last year I've visited a number of very well known modern art collections. Looking at the unbelievably epic size of the works...just huge canvases filled with random stuff the artists felt like throwing at it, or big squares or lines or whatever, and massive multi-ton sculptures that were basically the result of a masonry 101 class or intro to welding two pieces of scrap iron together class.
My only thought the entire time was that I was walking around a building composed of desperate cries for attention, "look at me! look at me!" each piece of screaming at me, but each showed me nothing of any particular note or interest.
I stopped and just started laughing when I got to the pile of flame retardant foam that had just been sprayed into a pile and delivered to the museum. Carefully noted and called out as a special work by the curator so I wouldn't confuse it with an actual pile of leftover flame retardant foam from a previous fire or something.
Half of the works were indistinguishable from a pile of garbage or a bad renovation project.
and I stopped regretting the time I was wasting instantly. It was beautiful, elegant, evocative, it worked on many many levels. There's not a lot to it. Somebody could probably set it up in 10 or 20 minutes. But it means something -- setting it up in the way it was provided all the context and meaning the work needed. It's interpretive. It's commentary. But it's doing something other than trying to say "look at me look at me! I'm art! I'm art!" It works in and out of the context of an art museum...which is more than a 20'x40' canvas filled with string and cat feces can claim.
At another museum, I had the same feelings till I got to a special installation by Ryan McGuinness. It's easy to dismiss McGuinness's work as just a bunch of random clipart printed out on a large format printer. But what was expertly done with the installation was an overview of the process behind his work. And it was really breathtaking.
A single piece is the culmination of hundreds or thousands of hours of behind the scenes work, and a real attempt to connect his art with the context it's placed in. And you realize as you walk through the process that there's no other way that he could have really arrived at his pieces except through this excruciatingly detailed and exacting process. Once you see the process, you learn to "see" his work and it's glorious and wonderful and exciting.
This sat in stark contrast to the many many other pieces of modern art I've tried to spend time understanding -- even going to entire classes of art appreciation. Where the more I learn about the artist and their process and the work, the less and less impressed I am with it.
During another visit, I met a local artist -- Matt Lively. And his thing is to paint bees on unicycles. That's it. They're usually done on small cuts of wood a few inches by a few inches, but sometimes on canvas. He's not trying to produce the next great world changing art movement. He's just making his little bees. And he could care less about what people thought about them.
"I don’t have a lot of control over other people’s feelings," Matt describes. "So, I rarely think about [how my art will affect viewers] when creating a show."
He's doing what he likes to do. It's not high art, but it's whimsical and does evoke an emotional feeling. And it's I think it's awesome. There's room in my view of art for low to high-brow stuff.
What I don't have room for in my view is stupid nonsense posing as art. I know 90% of everything is crap. And there's lots of crap art out there. But I'd rather not be exposed to most of that 90% as if it was fantastic stuff I just didn't get. I get it, people desperately want attention and to feel important. Well if you want that, do something worth my attention, do something actually important.
So when I say this flag stunt is a stupid juvenile prank, I'm saying it with lots of meaning and understanding of art behind the statement.
I agree, but only because you need a certain number of kids doing stupid juvenile pranks to raise the chances that some of them grow up to pull awesome adult pranks.
Is art really this dead?