art confusion

"Art is the re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical values-judgments." This sentence jumped at me before I had even reached the first chapter of the latest addition to my collection of sadly unread books. It starts the introduction to Atlas Shrugged and was said by the author Ayn Rand to preclude any literary interpretation of or search for meaning in her fictional works.

The introduction proceeds to quote at length from Rand's notebooks, giving away the punchlines and, as the creator of the introduction warns, spoiling the book for those who haven't read it. To me, that does not seem a sensible way of composing an introduction. Or is Atlas Shrugged restricted to devoted followers that know the book by heart already? In that case, it seems pointless to me to issue yet another edition.

Enough of such contradictions already. Chance had it that the first sentence, reproduced above, was the book's way of telling me, Read me not! Do your homework first. One thing after another. And the book is right, of course. Something has been churning in my head that needs to be ladled out and presented in a satisfying way before I can ask my brain to cook up something else.

Yesterday, I went to Tate Modern to see a major exhibition that had just opened. Pop Life is a retrospective on Pop Art, starting with Andy Warhol in the late 60s and then meandering in unpredictable ways to the present, and to Japan.

The exhibition is quite amazing. I wasn't so sure of that when I left it Sunday night, but now I can see the point and the power. In ten brilliantly different rooms, one very different from the next, artists were presented as they were or liked to see themselves. There was quite a bit of the Tate's signature pretentious rubbish in the introductory panels, but overall the pieces were mostly free to speak to the audience. Controversy about art and commerce, about selling out and buying in, was left to the viewer to resolve.

One room was designed to look like Keith Haring's Pop Shop in SoHo. His cartoon figures were painted on walls, floor and ceiling as if it were one gigantic canvas, music was blasting from concealed speakers, and from a hole in the wall one could buy t-shirts and buttons. Inside a paying exhibition in London's preeminent modern art museum, to make that clear.

Another room was dedicated to the show that was the short-lived marriage between Jeff Koons (of balloon animal and animal balloon fame) and Cicciolina (of adult movie and Italian parliament fame). Like two others, this room was restricted to the above-18-year-olds. Koons and Cicciolina were shown/showed themselves copulating enthusiastically. The action was captured from all angles and in a cheerful Barbiesque plasticness that belied the medical attention to detail.

It was in that room that the idea for the current post took hold. You have to wonder – and I certainly did, not for the first time, by the way – what is art. Never mind the very first sentence of this post, to me this question is not at all answered. Not that it matters. I'm inclined to say that the more interesting question is, Who makes art.

It is not the creator because then we'd all be artists because everyone re-creates reality according to some values or judgments, to beat that first statement one last time. I write, you sing under the shower, he prunes hedges, she repaints the living room. None of this is generally considered art, and the reason for this is that no authority has elevated it to the status of art.

My favorite example is the story of the Brazilian tropicalist who was so upset with the arts establishment that he submitted the skin of a pig as his entry for the annual Salon. He reasoned that what he had done was clearly not art, but the system was so rotten and false that it would accept his submission thereby exposing its own degeneration most powerfully.

Surprise, surprise: His 'sculpture' was rejected on the grounds that it wasn't art. If the story ended here, no one would remember it. But in 2005, I saw a Tropicalism exhibition in the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art in which the pigskin featured prominently. It had become art – contrary to the express intention of the creator/artist.

Another vantage point of who makes art was presented in another room at the Tate. It was a video of two people having sex, for one slow-moving hour. How is this art? Well, the artist in question asked her agent if he could find her a collector willing to pay for a video of her having sex with that collector. A collector was found, the video shot and five copies produced. These are now considered art.

But does prostitution become art just because a self-proclaimed arts collector pays for it? You really have to wonder. And I do, I still do. I haven't come to a conclusion but have a least let my thoughts go freely and get out of my head. Though no questions are answered, I can now, with the respects that is due, approach the first chapter of Atlas Shrugged.