You Call This Art?
Roger Ebert’s most recent blog post entitled “Video games can neve be art” responds to a TED talk given at USC by Kellee Santiago about whether a video game could ever be considered art. Ebert faults Santiago for failing to deliver a good definition of art on which to base her argument that video games can be art. Ebert later admits that settling on any definition of art is difficult. He gives a few different versions, but fails to settle on one. His main point is that like pornography, we know it when we see it. After all art appeals to the non-rational part of our brain. Some emotional responses cannot be explained. We simply feel something and we call what ever made us feel that way, art.
Ebert continues by arguing that art is a subjective matter of taste. Shit in a can or art, you decide. But I think both Santiago and Ebert miss something in their back-and-forth. Like Ebert and Santiago, I also have difficulty stating a satisfying definition of art. But instead of asking the question what is art, how about asking why does art exist? Why does the artist need to create art? Why are people compelled to seek it out? I think these questions give more satisfying answers. For me, the artist looks at the world and sees something missing. Or he sees something within himself that is absent from the world and he feels the need to express what is inside of him. This desire is not rational, neither is what the artist creates. Some people will respond to it. Some will call it art, many will not. That is the subjective element of taste to which Ebert refers.
As Ebert notes when words like: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management are attached to Ms. Santiago’s presentation her argument becomes a lot more difficult to make. But Mr. Ebert as a lover of film, surely an art form in his estimation, knows that the same words often attach to his favorite art form. Yet, beyond the agents, the corporate mentality, and the target marketing, art and film come together all the time. Some artists just require a little more corporate underwriting than others. Ultimately, the best test of art may not be asking what is it, but why it is.
(Photo: Kaschkawalturist/Wikimedia Commons)
