The Relativity of Art

Recently, I have been seeing videos and social media posts about the atrocity of modern contemporary art, like that one banana stuck to a wall, or seemingly ridiculous displays of artists doing abnormal things in public to an audience – such as that one guy who was stacking buckets of sand, then let them fall. To some, yes, this all seems like a massive waste of time – yet to others, they stand there willingly and are intrigued – nay – captivated by the display. I am also to guess that these exhibitions aren’t exactly free to enter. So why, then, does one portion of society laugh at these “artworks” as if it were a joke, while another portion adores and celebrates the art? It is a concept that is widely known, but to me, not talked about enough: the relativity of art.

Simply put, you and I likely have different music tastes. You might love the thrill and, to be frank, disgustingly noisy vibe of heavy metal, while I prefer to enjoy more peaceful bossa nova tunes and performative folk pop (yes, Beabadoobee and Clairo I’m looking at you). You might try to put your friend on to the latest Lady Gaga album, and they’ll audibly gag while listening to it, as they show you their meticulously curated playlist of underground alternative music which sound exactly like Yoko Ono in that one clip of The Beatles where her mic had to be unplugged to save the rest of the members’ ears. Yes, if you haven’t noticed already, I make far too many references to pop culture in my writings, I just hope you are cultured enough to understand them.

Music is probably the most popular form of art and has likely held the podium status for many millennia now. Yet, with the rise of the 21st century, we now have an even greater number of art forms, such as film, and bananas taped to walls (yes, I’m bringing this up again). And if it isn’t obvious enough, not everyone will agree that all variations of these art styles are necessarily “good”. By not being “good”, what they really mean is “it’s not my taste” or “it doesn’t fit my vibe” or “holy shit who enjoys this garbage?”. And that’s alright. We, as a society, have accepted that now. It’s been said many times, and been experienced many times, that we, as a society, never seem to agree on a single thing. But why?

In terms of art, I truly believe the reason why art is enjoyed so differently by everyone comes down to one vital point: art is meaningless. This does not mean art does not have a meaning or purpose that the artist intended for it, or intended for it not to have meaning. No, this means that there is no singular sole purpose for a piece of art. It is quite literally impossible to assign a specific purpose to a piece of art, because humans never seem to agree on a single thing. Even if the art is painstakingly obvious to represent some sort of concept or idea, there will be others who perceive a completely different perspective. This brings me back to that banana on a wall, which I still don’t truly understand. Is that fine? Yes, of course it is. You don’t have to understand everything, or anything for that matter. The best thing to understand is that you have the freedom to not understand something. That sounds deep as shit but it really isn’t, it’s just common sense. In fact, that brings me to my next point: art seems deep as shit, but it really isn’t.

I remember in my last year of high school, I was in my literature class, and we were told to write a short story based on some image prompt. I believe the prompt related to some sort of fisherman, but I can’t quite recall exactly what. I don’t remember in what context. Doesn’t really matter. What matters is, I tried to give my story some sort of hidden meaning – some sort of depth so it wasn’t simply a flat story that was easy to understand.

Seeking this complexity to my story, I added a few metaphors here and there, symbolism, blah blah blah. I just remember something about the story ending up with the fisherman pulling something from the ocean, although I never quite specified what it was. I just stated that it was “hope”. Heck, I didn’t even know what that fisherman probably pulled out from the ocean, and I don’t really know how he could have fished out something so gratifying and remarkable that it could be hopeful enough to be the ending of my “deep” short story.

Anyways, when I finished, I thought to myself “Wow, this is pretty good, isn’t it?” And yeah, my egotistical writing skills were fuelled for a few minutes after this. I remember we had a substitute teacher, and I submitted my work hoping our real literature teacher would read my story. In my head, I imagined her telling me “Wow Edan this is some good shit, how did such a young gentleman like you come up with this masterpiece?”. Yeah, maybe that was the real hope the fisherman pulled out of the ocean.

In order to assure I impressed the absolute balls off my teacher, I yanked my whole story and chucked it into ChatGPT for advice, which is ironic since the whole concept of art is formed by the uniqueness and human emotions of, well, humans, and I asked a machine for advice on whether my story was humanly emotional enough to be considered “deep”.

I gave a simple prompt: “What do you think this short story is about? Is it deep?” I just expected GPT to spit out exactly whatever I intended the story to mean. It didn’t. Instead, it painted my story to be an absolute piece of art; on par with the Mona Lisa; a work of Shakespeare, if you will. It gave hidden meanings in places I didn’t even think could have hidden meanings. This one sentence I wrote simply describing the ocean’s appearance? Yeah, GPT assumed that whole section represented the psychological trauma or some bullshit about the fisherman’s life and depression. But I wasn’t mad about it. In fact, this fuelled my ego even more. I was like “Yeah, yeah! Yeah I wrote that shit! That was me! And look how good it is! I’m a genius!”. I was not, in fact, a genius. I didn’t mean all those hidden meanings to be inferred from my story. Sure, I had some symbolism that GPT caught on to, but the rest? Bullshit. Complete and utter false praise. Why? Why did GPT think I was Shakespeare behind that laptop screen? Well, I guess even artificial intelligence is burdened with the undeniable truth that society can never agree on a single thing. Everyone, even AI, will have a perspective about a certain thing. And in this case, they just seemed to absolutely glaze my work. I wasn’t even paying GPT: I didn’t have premium. No bribery here. It just wanted to glaze me for the sake of it.

Truth is, whatever meaning the artist intended for their work: it’s bullshit. It’s a fugayzi, fugazi, pshhh… fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. As soon as the art is published to the world, there is a meaning and no meaning at the same time. Schrödinger's Art, if you will: As in, the meaning to the art is like a qubit in superposition, it is both 0 and 1 at the same time. Finally somewhere useful to put my compsci degree, eh? Even if the artist made the art without any meaning behind it, boom, society will give it a meaning. And the artist? Yeah, they’ll say “Oh yeah, that’s what I meant for it to mean”.

I remember seeing this one video about a man sneaking into a museum to stick up his own recreation of modern art to see if it would be taken down. It wasn’t. People took photos and gazed longingly at it as if it were a real art piece. What this creator didn’t realise was that he wasn’t mocking modern art by doing this. He had, in fact, himself become a modern artist.

The actual truth is, what inspired me to yap about all of this in the first place was when I had just finished reading Childish Gambino/Donald Glover’s screenplay for the album “Because the Internet”. I had trouble truly understanding what the screenplay was really about, and what the purpose of each section was. I found this video on YouTube breaking the screenplay down, and every time the creator explained what each portion of the screenplay was about, I went “ohhhh, that’s why that happened, and that’s what that represents”. Later, I spoke to my manager about the video (she put me on to the album in the first place) and I told her about how I had trouble understanding the screenplay’s meaning, so I watched the video explaining it. She told me that was stupid. I was a bit taken aback, but she proceeded to explain how there shouldn’t be a set meaning to the screenplay: it should mean whatever you think it means.

And she was right. The artist, Childish Gambino, actually did not intend for the screenplay to have any meaning at all. In order to not spoil the screenplay (seriously, go listen to the album and read the screenplay it’s amazing), I won’t go too into depth about what happens. I will say, the ending makes you ask “what was the point of everything I just read?” And in response to you asking that, I will say one thing. Roscoe’s Wetsuit. You’ll understand after you read the screenplay. What I’m really trying to say is, who cares what other people think the screenplay’s about. Have your own interpretation to it; that’s the true art. That’s what Gambino wanted for the audience.

So now I ask you: What happens if the audience overestimates the artist? What if the artist was in fact truly stupid and had one tenth of a normal brain? But everything they produced, we all praised? I’ll answer my own question. Does it even matter? Overestimating a piece of art isn’t really a thing. It doesn’t exist. Like I said before, art is meaningless; it does not have a single meaning. So how then, is it possible to overestimate art? That’s like dividing by 0 – it is not logical nor is it legal.

Now as we near the end of this massive article, I ask you, reader, what did you think was the meaning of all this? Everything you just read? Did it have any meaning at all? Or did it mean everything at the same time? Again, the beauty that God gave us free will means that you don’t have to be forced to make a decision about the meaning of this article. What matters is that you (hopefully) appreciated my article, and related to my stupid references, and agreed, or disagreed, with parts of it. That’s the beauty of art of which we can all, as a society, agree on. Art was made to be interpreted, not understood.

Although to be honest there is one meaning of which I did propose for this article, and that is that art has no fixed meaning. So does that mean since this article is a piece of art, it also does not have a fixed meaning? Wait, but I just told you this piece of art does have a fixed meaning? Dammit, we’re stuck in a paradox, this reminds me of my discrete math class.