For Valentine's Day, Portland, the un-boyfriend for better part of a year now, called me a bigot. I called him to wish him a Happy Valentine's Day and our conversation ranged from the holiday to art to him saying I was no better than a bigot.
I don't remember the specifics of the argument. Even if I did, they would probably come out bias in my favor. I do have to defend myself! But at the core of our argument seems to be rooted on the definition on art. While I do agree that I do have elite standards and definitions on what can be classified as art, I don't think my convictions hider my vision in seeing creative attempts at creating art. I may not consider your poem or painting of a man eating on the bench or a depiction of some landscape as being art, but I will never belittle the attempt and work that went into creating such works. Perhaps I'm trying to qualify the argument that I had with Portland and I'm trying to make myself as the victim to you, but I still feel that it's necessary to point this out.
A central core of my belief: Not everyone can be an artist. Everyone can participate in art, but at the end of the night, you're either born one or not. Same thing can be said with doctors, athletes, politicians, chefs, directors, assassins, leaders, housewives, architects, cowboys, mad scientists, lovers and good boyfriends. No matter how hard you may try at something, I don't think you can accomplish you're striving for. I guess at this point, the argument can jump toward a discussion between genetics and environment, but this is the proper blog post about this subject.
The argument ended badly. I would say that I'm depressed that my strained relationship with Portland has taken a turn for the worse, but I'm more concerned with the term he used to describe me. Being from the South and being a minority, I've had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing bigotry and racism in public setting and in some cases, this uncanny disgust has been target toward me. I'm a believer that words themselves have no power, but it's the force that's put into the words -- or venom in this case -- that make simple six-letter word a force to dealt with.
He apologize; I accepted. End of the argument. I was left wondering, though, whether others see a shadow of bigotry in me. I won't deny that I am somewhat elitist when it comes to certain things -- art, music, books, movies, other banal riffraff that's on my Facebook profile -- but doesn't everyone have these similar perceptions? At least my friends have them.
In case your curious,
the definition of art that I used, which is only one of the many definitions that I have by the way: For a body of work to be considered art, a sense of awareness or intent -- whether it's from conscious or unconscious -- has to be present in the work to be art. It's vague and it sounds half-ass. Perhaps I'm not apt enough to convey my definition of art into words. At least it makes sense in my skewed mind.
The Art Guys are part Dada, part David Letterman, pushing the concept of performance art to the outer limits. Or maybe they're a cross between John Cage and the Smothers Brothers. Whatever. "That's the beginning and the end of the argument 'Is it art?' " said Jack A. Massing, the other Art Guy. "Well, yeah, it is -- because I'm an artist and I made it. So it is." -- The New York Times, Aug. 9, 1995
