Bad Art

[I'll preface this by saying... it's a rough draft for my English class. I didn't know where I was going with this even half way through. Then it came together :] The argument alluded to at the end is based on discussions from the past, but it isn't actually necessarily real. ok? ok!]

We are meant to believe that when you go to a museum and you see an exhibit of modern art and you see a lump of nothing that means absolutely nothing, you can’t call it stupid. That would be closed-minded. Instead, this art doesn’t speak to you, or maybe your life experiences don’t lead you to draw much meaning from this perfectly legitimate artistic expression.

In the late 1460’s, little Leonardo was getting slapped upside the head because he hadn’t quite mastered the vanishing point and his perspective was just slightly off. Now you can paint red a dollar ninety-five plastic headband and it’s a museum piece. One might praise the progress of mankind in being able to create art in anything and find meaning anywhere, but I beg to differ and posit that our standards have devolved. Good art takes talent, and I’m annoyed we forgot that.

But let’s not dwell on the art hanging in museums and exclude music. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin… To simply say “they had talent” is a sad effort at using the English language to your advantage. How they could compose a score of such awfully, breathtakingly good music – and for an entire orchestra – is completely beyond me. That takes capacity for musical genius that I can’t even fathom.

Fast forward to the 1950s. There was a broken guitar amp that created the first distorted electric sound, then Rock and Roll, now every buffoon with an instrument and two friends is a musician and a composer. Sure, there were the Beatles and some noteworthy acts along the way, but I’m trying to say that, again, we lost something. Art lost something.

“You can’t argue taste.”

I’ve heard it many times from many friends, and each time it annoys me. Yes, you can argue taste; we’re doing it right now. And yours sucks.

But you can’t just say that, can you? We go to college and learn there is no right or wrong, there’s only what you feel is right for you and that may be different than what is right for someone else. Well I call shenanigans.

Back to music! It’s a fair generalization that popular music in our era is played in small groups with guitar-like instruments (plus percussion and maybe a keyboard). And that’s not going to change anytime soon. Fine. If this is what musical art is now, then we will be selective and look for the good.

Good art of any medium creates a unique environment about which the soul is free to wander. It sets up a beautiful or terrible snapshot of life and invites us in to find our own way out. Good art is like the song “At the Bottom of Everything” by Bright Eyes, rife with multi-faceted metaphors one after the other, none of which ring insincere, forced, or cliché. Bad art is like Coldplay lyrics. “Closing walls and ticking clocks… etc.” That means nothing to anyone. There is no deeper meaning to it. Coldplay is bad art. I win, Chris.