PROBLEM 0012: The Banana Peel of Utility

In which the author gets serious for a moment about utility. In which he wishes desperately that utility would exclude something from art. And where the definition of utility slips on a banana peel and becomes a non-word, because every stinking thing has utility.

A QUICK LIST OF THINGS FOR WHICH ART IS PRESSED INTO SERVICE

• Advertisement
• Religion
• Propaganda
• Artsy-ness
• Pleasure
• Entertainment
• Nostalgia
• Rhetoric
• Politics
• Self-Promotion
• Narcissism
• Business
• Eroticism
• Community
• Magic
• Decoration

The above list was written in 37 seconds. Hardly comprehensive. To be truly comprehensive, I would need to pull out my dictionary and find every human activity, desire, and need in order to catalog and cross reference all the ways in which Art has served human life. 

The problem that arises is “Can Art be put into a position of service and still be called Art?” 

It’s a valid question. Many people consider art to be a metaphysical, general, personal experience that is tainted when indentured. Unfortunately, if we look to museums or art books for our answer, we will have to say yes without further exploration. Art is serving them, and by serving them, serving us. So we can’t do that and just stop. It wouldn’t be fair. It would allow us to ignore the problem. And then I wouldn’t have a website.

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR ART?

So this gets tricky. Some of us like our art to be warm and fuzzy (pressed into service of Feelings); some prefer it cold and calculated (pressed into service of the Intellect); or stimulating and thought-provoking (pressed into service of the Ego); pretty or beautiful or erotic or ugly (pressed into service of the Senses); memorable and experiential (pressed into service of personal community); or monumental and meaningful (pressed into service of self). In Principles of Art (1938,1958), R. G. Collingwood makes the case against usefulness and utility as part of the “essence” of art. A few weeks ago, I would have agreed with him without question. He makes great arguments. They were written in a deep voice that commands respect. He brooks no possibility that he is wrong. He is against psychology and utility as hallmarks of art, against anything that intends to be anything other than art. But the question ultimately is, can any human activity exist without reference to its own utility? 

If something is made by a human, it is made with the human in mind. Thus everything made is an object/artifact/artwork made in service of the human. Perhaps there is no “message” in the art, perhaps there is, but I’m beginning to think that the simple presence of “utility” should not exclude something from the world of art.

This offends every fibre of my being. As you might be able to tell from some of the previous problems, I don’t like art to have utility. I don’t like it to have a message, a point, a social relevance. I don’t like things that lack in subtlety and so I don’t like much of what I see in contemporary art. I want “utility” to exclude certain works of art from my ideal world of art. I don’t think I can do that, though. Not yet.

Since Duchamp and the rest of the art after him has placed the onus of artness on first the artist and then the viewer, it seems to me that there is probably no “essence of art” at all. Something is art because someone engaged it as art. One does not engage a banana peel, but one will engage a screen print of a banana with the peel intact and then someone else will use it as an album cover. One might also engage the slippery banana peel of a one-reeler by Charlie Chaplin (created in service of laughter) in a way that Charlie Chaplin never intended (as a tragedy). I don’t believe this is abstraction or relativism, I believe this is human nature: we engage what we engage in the way we do because we can’t help but do so. No man can control the connections and leaps his mind or heart makes when encountering a created thing. 

At this point, I don’t really believe that Art is in the art object. I am doubtful, but my suspicions lay in favor of art being born in the mind of the viewer/reader/listener.

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