Second Draft

Too Many Locked Doors

My final check from my summer job finally arrives. After a long summer of refereeing whiny kids and dealing with bitter parents, at last I had enough money and enough time to enjoy something a little more relaxing. My first camera. As I got the notification that it arrived, I ran to my door as if a Harvard acceptance letter just came in. As I opened the box, the rush of excitement filled my body. I couldn’t wait to start taking photos. The excitement spread all over, as if the new pope got elected. My parents could feel the energy, and my friends soon felt it too. Except for one.

I was met with a brick wall. He was not with it. He couldn’t see me develop (which I’ve gotten before), but most importantly, he couldn’t see photography as being real art. And that’s when the question hit me: what is art? 

It’s the ultimate enigma. One aspect of art that everyone can agree on is that art can express many things, like emotions, beauty and skill. However, there’s the remaining question of what’s acceptable. This phenomena has therefore sprung up two sides to the debate; the liberals and the conservatives. 

Ibn Ruqeyeh and Jenika both tackle this issue. According to Jenika’s article “Photography Isn’t Art.” “The problem, of course, is that “art” is a valuable category, but there are no clear yellow-and-black stripes that stand out to say “this is art.”” (Jenika, 2013). Art is meant to be a form of self-expression regardless of the medium. There is no one and nothing that can really define art being Art. On the other hand, Ruqeyeh’s article “Why Photography Isn’t Art” argues that for art to be considered Art has to focus on representation. “A painting is art because of how it represents — how it communicates and transmits ideas […] That is the reason why photography isn’t art.” (Ruqeyeh, 2015). I agree that art should communicate and transmit ideas, but I also disagree that all photography doesn’t do that. Sure that some photography is performed under a more documentarian style, and in that case I agree, but wouldn’t the most hyper realistic painting of a swan convey that same documentarian feeling? Once again, medium is just medium; it is merely a tool to express anything the artist desires to express. 

Apart from the question of medium , restricting new and unique art has also resulted from this definitional issue. I remember dealing with this issue first-hand when I got an art assignment back in my final year of high school and received a failing grade for simply not following the guidelines to a tee. Worried about passing, I went back to abiding the laws like a law-abiding and considerate citizen would do, but I certainly felt constrained. This artistic backlash has unfortunately but inevitably happened throughout art history. A very popular example would be with Pablo Picasso’s cubist works. Another more recent example would be Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ where matters even became violent to show protest towards this avant-garde take on art. Additionally, more examples can be found in the music world, with musicians like Death Grips producing works like Guillotine and I’ve Seen Footage and JPEGMAFIA producing one of his biggest hits Baby I’m Bleeding. Additionally, a sequence involving a form of Gestalt’s Law of Familiarity has always been applied in art history. The Law states that humans have tendencies to “group visual elements when they form a meaningful or personally relevant object, item or visual scene” (Interact Design Foundation, 2014). When artists start to make art in a certain style that resembles each other, the art world will necessarily categorize those similar works as one style. This is completely fine, since we are organized beings, but we then sometimes become too comfortable within that style. Therefore, whenever someone breaks out from that style, we bash them until someone says “Hey, maybe this isn’t so bad after all”. Then the cycle starts all over again. We’re simply too afraid to break the rules. 

And why is this? It’s primarily the lack of creativity that we’ve been brought up with and when there’s a lack of something in any case when we’re young, our brains tend to block it out, deeming it as unimportant. Bronson and Merryman cleverly stated an example in their article “The Creativity Crisis” with preschool children. As the parents get more and more tired of answering their kid(s)’ questions, the kids will eventually stop asking those same questions. “ By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. […] They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.” (Po and Bronson, 2010). This problem isn’t only found in families, but equally in schools. An example of creative shutdown is when the wrong answer to a question is almost ridiculed. This therefore leads to kids not wanting to ask questions and even worse, kids eventually stopping to ask questions. This is absolutely crucial to creative development since curiosity plants the seed for all imagination and creativity, and if that seed won’t grow at home and in school, where will it ever flourish? On a final note, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from the University of Chicago and Gary G. Gute from the University of Northern Iowa made a crucial remark saying that highly creative adults usually grew up in families that promoted both uniqueness and security. A dogma to consider: remembering the past is equally as important as the uncompromised future. 

So in the end, maybe it’s good that I ran into a brick wall of a friend. Maybe it’s good that I failed that art assignment I worked so hard for only to get a failing grade. I’m going through what almost every new artist has, is and probably will go through for who knows how long. It made me feel unique. However, I’m pretty sure everyone would like to feel a little more unique and forward-thinking. Sure we all need to remember the history on which our entire world was built on, but the calendar pages are continuing to flip and clocks are continuing to tick. Change is inevitable, and treating it with respect isn’t going to hurt anyone. It’s your kid who wants to know why the sky is blue. It’s the Jehovah’s witness who’s at your doorstep every Sunday morning. It’s your friend who just bought a camera. 

Works Cited

Bronson, Po, and Ashley Merryman. “The Creativity Crisis.” Newsweek, 2010.

“Gestalt Principles of Perceptual Organization.” Willpower.blog, 18 Sept. 2014, wblog.willpower.art.br/2014/09/18/gestalt-principles-of-perceptual-organization/.

“Photography Isn’t Art” Psychology for Photographers and Other Creative Professionals, 10 Oct. 2017, psychologyforphotographers.com/photography-isnt-art.

Ruqeyeh, Ibn. “Why Photography Isn’t Art.” Medium, Muddle Mag!, 5 Dec. 2019, medium.com/muddle-mag/why-photography-isn-t-art-893cc144e241. 

Tomchuk, Kateryna. “Why Do Some People Hate Art?” Quora, 2019, www.quora.com/.