A broom is a broom, unless it’s art

 

Recently, a local gallerist bemoaned a failure in art education, i.e., students aren’t taught what art is. Recently, she visited an exhibition to view the winners in  “established” and “emerging” categories. She described dead plants set in a taped off area of the gallery floor, honey dripping from a window. Something called “The Jeffrey Dahmer Interrogation Room” depressed her. She made a point of telling me she didn’t go inside of the Dahmer room, and I made a mental note that perhaps her reticence indicated a bias against conceptual art. Honey dripping down a window pane, however conceptual, doesn’t necessarily make it art. Perhaps the Dahmer installation wasn’t worth viewing. Perhaps it was.

Shortly after this experience, I visited Green Gallery East on Farwell, a lively and highly conceptual place, populated by mostly young intellectuals who would rather look at a broom dangling from Green’s ceiling, than an image of a cud-chewing cow. I can identify with brooms, having swept acres in my long life. But one dangling from a ceiling?

The Green Gallery guy, John Riepenhoff explained that the idea fueling the broom is that people living in apartment buildings frequently use a broom to bang on the ceiling, hoping to send a message to the noisy tenants one floor above. I joshed that I could rush home and make one just like it. I’ve heard that same thing when I’m at the Milwaukee Art Museum hanging around my favorite painting, “Untitled,” by Cy Twombly. Viewers are forever saying, “My kid could do that.” Yeah, but the kid didn’t.

As I write I’m wondering if art isn’t art unless it has to be explained.

Let’s pretend that we’re viewing conceptual art made from cheap materials, perhaps cardboard and tape or a found-in-the-trash object that’s been painted. If the concept behind the object is solid, does it then become art, or is it art when it stands with others of that ilk in a gallery noted for putting ideas together? Okay, let’s now imagine the aforementioned broom is removed from the gallery and hung from another ceiling. It could be any ceiling anywhere, the point being the broom is no longer part of a larger concept. Like a stand-up comic, it stands (or in this case) hangs alone. And what happens when a single broom is hung in a gallery, with no other art in sight and no lively curator to ‘splain what it means? Is a broom hanging from a ceiling just a broom hanging from a ceiling?

Now let’s pretend that an artist has painted dozens of odd-ball works (odd-ball being a relative term), and that they are most assuredly beautifully painted, sprung from the heart, hands and head of an unknown talent. The outsider art of Bernard Gilardi comes to mind. He’s dead but his work lives on in exhibitions at the Museum of Wisconsin Art and Lawrence University, and he’s become somewhat of an art star of the outsider genre. Does his work need explaining? Why?  Do viewers cry out for nifty back stories full of intrigue and in some cases sound and fury?

Now I’m thinking about my depressed friend, surrounded by paintings, sculptures, prints, etc., some quite fine. Visitors to her space aren’t interested in looking at a broom hanging from the ceiling. Perhaps they don’t want to think about art (and how silly it sometimes is), or perhaps they expect the art they buy to do the thinking, or perhaps they find comfort in the history behind a specific purchase. At the very least it gives the buyer something to chat about during dinner parties.

However, a broom, given the right context, is equally interesting isn’t it? Yes, a marble sculpture or an oil painting exude a sense of permanence, but that doesn’t make it art. Nor does the impermanence of a sculpture fashioned from cardboard, spit and tape make it “not-art.”

Perhaps it doesn’t matter a whit what art is.

If you know, tell me now, what is this thing called “art?” Does it become art when it is deified, media-fied?

After seeing that damned broom, I’m not so sure anymore.