On Creating Meaningful Art

does such satisfaction constitute art? John Dewey seems to think so. Explaining how art does not lose its aesthetic value because it possesses some utility, he asserts, “An angler may eat his catch without thereby losing the esthetic satisfaction he experienced in casting and playing. It is this degree of completeness of living in the experience of making and perceiving that makes the difference between what is fine or esthetic in art and what is not.” 24 According to Dewey, it is the experience of casting and playing just for the experience of it that is fine art. Eating the fish is just an added bonus. Or, in returning to Britannica’s definition, is it the kindred pleasure which one derives from witnessing or contemplating what one, or another, has made that is fine art? Would it be considered fine art to watch an angler cast and play in the water? Would it be fine art to hear the angler recount his fishing experience? Again, it can certainly be conceded that there is some aesthetic pleasure in watching an experienced angler cast and play, or hearing the story of how the “big one” was finally caught, but it seems a stretch to call this fine art. Perhaps, there is room to acknowledge the aesthetic experience within the τεκνη of fishing, but if experience is art, where are the boundaries? Is all experience that is complete enough to be called an experience, as Dewey would assert, considered fine art? To relate a personal story, I once visited an art exhibition where one artist created numerous familial scenes under glass globes. (Think of a larger version of a snow globe without the snow.) Each scene was created with children’s plastic toys and depicted an experience that would be considered typical of a nuclear family—but with a twist. The colorful plastic toys gave each scene a sense of cheap American consumerism. The twist was that each happy scene included the gruesome murder of one of the family members. For example, one scene depicted a family barbecue in the backyard: a modestly dressed mother placed utensils next to the paper plates on the picnic table, children played ball in the grass next to the tree with a tire swing, and a casually dressed father cooked on the grill. The twist was an eviscerated baby being barbecued on the grill. A horrific scene if it had not been for the cheapness of the plastic toys. The aesthetic value was supposed to be in the reaction—in the experience of the viewer. It was meant to be a collision of morals, the cheapening and profanation of that which was conventionally considered sacred. The political statement could not have been more clear, and the expected reaction was achieved, but fine art was nowhere to be found. As Scruton notes, “Art moves us because it is beautiful, and it is beautiful in part because it means something. It can be meaningful without being beautiful; but to be beautiful it must be meaningful.” 25 How are works like the one just described, or like that of Andres Serrano, or like that of Robert Mapplethorpe, for instance, classified as “fine art” when they not only lack beauty, but are clearly ugly? It might be argued that they are meaningful in the sense that they communicate a message, but what if the message is equally as ugly as the work?

24 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York, NY: Perigee, Penguin Group, 2005), 27.