This is a tomato. You with me so far? A tomato is a fruit, by which I mean, it is the seed bearing part of a fruiting plant. I know that sounds redundant, and if you ask a botanist, they'll give you a much more complicated answer, but for our purposes, that's the definition of a fruit. It's the plant part that has seeds in it, and has evolved to be enticing to eat, so that animals will take it and then drop, spit, or crap the seeds somewhere, and grow a new tree/bush/vine/whatever. That's what fruits do. And that's what tomatoes do, so, as far as Botany is concerned, a tomato is a fruit. And so are avocados, pumpkins, and peppers. But we, as human beings who eat fruit, aren't so concerned with the lifecycles of fruiting plants. What matters to us is usually: "What does it taste like?" "How do I cook with it?" "What does it pair with?" And since many of the fruits we consume are sweet, and are often used to make up desserts, while tomatoes are savory, and tend to make up part of the body of an actual meal, we tend to think of them as vegetables. And for our day-to-day lives as people who just want something to put on our fettuccine, these culinary definitions of "fruit" and "vegetable" are more useful, more practical, than the botanical ones. Especially when the botanical definition of "vegetable" is basically non-existent. So, in terms of actual usage, a tomato has two definitions: botanical and culinary. A description of what it scientifically is, and one of what it culturally means. But what a tomato means depends on who you're talking to. Whether a tomato feels like a vegetable will vary from person to person, from culture to culture, from era to era. For instance, my dad will hold a tomato in his hand and eat it bite by bite, like an apple. So, if to me a tomato is a fruit, it doesn't mean it has to be one to you. But, if to you it's a vegetable, you maybe shouldn't argue that position with a botanist. Botanically, there is no question as to whether a tomato is a fruit, because unless something new has been discovered about plant biology, the definition is rigid. It's built on science and consensus; there is nothing to debate. Culinarily, there is no question as to whether a tomato is a vegetable, because whether it tastes like a fruit or a vegetable is entirely subjective. No one opinion is any righter than any other, so there's nothing to debate. And when some snotty fourteen-year-old says over dinner, "A tomato is a fruit, actually", They are creating a debate where none was necessary. It's possible you didn't know a tomato is, scientifically speaking, a fruit, but it's just as possible you did know, and the kid knows you know, and you're within your rights to say, "Stop arguing across definitions, kid, you're being a ding-dong". It's important to recognize that both these definitions matter for different reasons. And we avoid trouble so long as we know, when we talk about tomatoes, which context we are speaking in. Now, maybe you've figured this out already, but this is not a tomato. It's a metaphor. We often find ourselves having these dinner table "debates" that are almost arguments and don't need to be either, when we discuss words that are more meaningful, and more abstract than "tomato". Words like "game" as in, "Is Proteus really a game?" Words like "indie" as in, "Is Saddle Creek really an indie label?" And, of course, one of the biggest three-letter words in English: Art. When speaking about science fiction, author Damon Knight's frequently paraphrased definition of the genre is (and I am myself paraphrasing now) Science fiction is what we point to when we say "Science fiction" Meaning, if I tell you "I'm reading this great Sci-Fi novel", and you say, "Sci-Fi? You mean like Star Trek?" and I say, "Yeah, Sci-Fi, like Star Trek," we can proceed to talk about the novel without confusion. We don't need to know what makes the novel Science fiction to know that it is Science fiction. We just need to know that Star Trek is Sci-Fi, and this is like Star Trek, so by substitution, this is Science fiction. And this is how we operate with much of culture. We don't often have definitions, we have points of reference. But if we have widespread agreement about what those points of reference are, and we have a pretty good understanding of what the experience of those points of reference is, we can talk about huge swathes of human endeavour without needing things to be defined. It's only when someone offers up a thing that doesn't feel like it belongs that we run into conflict. When someone offers up for discussion a work of art that does not feel to you like it should be called art, then we have the "What is art?" argument. Throughout the history of modern art, we have pretty much never stopped having this argument. Whether it's today, with "Are video games art?", or before that, "Is performance art art?", and "Is abstract painting painting?", and "Is free verse poetry poetry?" Someone says, "Leaves of Grass doesn't rhyme, but it's poetry because it feels like poetry." And someone else says, "But it doesn't feel like poetry, it feels like grandiose prose where someone kept hitting the carriage return at random points in a run-on sentence." And the only way to articulate why something does or does not feel like art is to give language to what has until now simply been a set of gut feelings we thought everyone agreed on. These are the fumbling conversations in which people offer up their own culinary definitions and each insist that theirs is the one true botanical one, generally assuming that they are authorities on the subject. So, you might then ask me, "What, then, is the "botanical" definition of art?" Are there any authorities who can provide us with rigid, peer-reviewed classifications for what is and is not art like astronomers determine what is and is not a planet? Anyone at the table who can put what it is to rest so we can speak freely about what it means to us? Well... No. ...but kind of. Look, definitions come in a few flavors. Some are quite rigid. A prime number is just fundamentally different from other numbers. A number is either divisible by only itself and one, or it isn't. They are an innate feature of the universe, and upon discovering them the definition was self-evident. We got that one for free. On the other hand, the definition of, say, "planet" is not innate. A planet is a planet simply because we say so. We look at the natural world and we divide its contents into categories because it helps us understand what we're looking at. And while there is a logic to this, it is also always, to some degree or another, arbitrary. Pluto stopped being a planet because the more we understood about the solar system, the more thinking of Pluto as a planet made shit weird. So, we changed how we thought about it. Now, if a prime number is a natural thing with a natural meaning, and a planet is a natural thing with a cultural meaning, art is a third flavor. It is a cultural thing with a cultural meaning. By which I mean the definition of art is a human invention, and so is art itself. When we started calling it a dwarf planet, Pluto did not change. It's the same lumpy space rock it ever was. But if the definition of art changes over time (and it has), then the art changes also. When we think about art differently, we start making it differently. So trying to define it becomes like trying to hit a moving target from the back of a moving horse. This softness on both sides means that the science of our scientific definition for art is not going to be the hard science we think of astronomy and mathematics as being, but a social science, like anthropology, or linguistics. Art doesn't come with a user's manual. All we can do is look at the way it is made, and the way it is talked about, and try to spot the patterns. This doesn't mean there are no governing principles, just that they are a bit harder to pin down. Many people in the art world have offered up workable definitions of art, and some are pretty defensible. But if you're looking for a universally accepted definition of what makes art art, I don't think one exists. But there are some generally accepted qualities of art that anyone who works in art history, art curation, or art theory is going to be familiar with. We may not know what the one true definition is, but we have determined some things about it. For example: (and yes, I am bringing this up) Take Roger Ebert's proclamation that video games are not art. An argument that was, seemingly unbeknownst to him, very, very, old. See, Ebert didn't just say video games aren't art. He said they are not, and can never be art. And that's not just a bad argument, it's an argument that has been bad for a hundred years. Around the time that a dude named Duchamp signed a fake name on a urinal and called that art, We had a conversation about what is, and isn't art. We had it over dinner tables, and we had it in publications. And the opinion that won out and became foundational for the following century of modern art is that while not everything humans do is art, there is nothing humans do that can't be art given the proper context. That's how a blank canvas, or a soup can, or 50,000 nickels with matches stuck to them can end up in a museum alongside Rembrandt and Hokusai. None of us individually have to call them art, if calling them art doesn't make them meaningful to us, but it's worth acknowledging that much of the work we do find meaningful would not exist without the art world's accepted belief that nothing can't be art. I've noticed that when someone says, "This is not art", whatever the "this" is, it's usually something the speaker either dismisses, or something they care about a great deal. But they don't seem very invested in the "art". Because they often make these kinds of arguments. Ones that would be a lot harder to make had they ever taken an art history class, or even just typed "art" into Wikipedia. It seems a lot of people don't view art as a practice associated with a sizable body of theory, they see it as a label. A status symbol. And they don't want to see that status applied in places that don't feel appropriate to them. These conversations have been going for centuries. It's always fascinating to me when someone at the dinner table starts one from scratch and figures they'll have it all sorted out by dessert. Now, I'm not saying that we should leave the art discussions to the experts-- I don't do the appeal to authority. It's not like you have to be a botanist to talk about plants. But it is somewhat foolish to argue about Botany when one doesn't actually care about Botany. If one doesn't actually care what the definition of vegetable is, they just like telling folks a tomato isn't one. I think the discussion of what art is and the discussion of what a given work means to us are both incredibly valuable, so long as we remember that they are two different conversations. And since I would hope no one actually wants such a discussion to spiral into an argument, I think it's most important to reflect when we begin to speak, on which discussion we're trying to have. When we talk tomatoes, are we talking about biology? Or are we talking about taste. Then we can have the conversation we presumably set out to have, which is rarely "is this art?", but rather, "is this good?" So that's why you might hear me compare this or that debate about art to a debate about tomatoes. That's the metaphor. Everybody follow? Cool. 'Cause I fucking hate tomatoes. [Outro Music]
This was very well made. Thanks for the post.
"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." - Miles Kington
I wonder if a lot of people don't have the idea that to be 'art' it have to be 'good'. They see something they don't like, and declare that it isn't art, instead of simply saying that its 'bad' art. Of course this is also a very subjektiv thing but I find that it is a more practical way and that it leads to more interesting discussions.
Statements like "this isn't art" lead to discussions on what art is. Statements like "this is bad art" leads to discussions on why they don't like it a conversation and analys about the piece itself. And I find that to be much more interesting.
Good content. I wish his voice wasn't so dismissive sounding. That made it harder to watch to the end for me.
He referenced Saddle Creek Records. Upvote!
I like to define art as that which is the product of both good work and hard work, where good work is defined as work which requires some special knowledge, skill, or training to produce and where hard work is defined as work which is mentally or physically challenging.
It's a broad definition but I think it makes more sense when you think about the product of work "as an art form" rather than "art". People are comfortable saying a bricklayer has it "down to an art form" where they might not be comfortable saying he is making art.