Sophia Levine, DNC 360, Reading Response 3

Experimental Art: Does it really matter what it is?

I am not sure if it has to do with the era in which this text was written or the maner in which it was written, but there is just something that I think I failed to grasp about this article. Experimental art is great, but why is the author so passionate about defining it? And how through defining it is he/she helping me as an artist? I am content not to label my—or for the most part anyone else’s—work as experimental or not. I think it is this labeling that often interferes with our ability to absorb a work of art and form our own opinion about it. Furthermore, I get the impression that the author values experimental art over other ways of going about art, but he/she never exactly pinpoints why. Why should I care about all this philosophical babble?

            I was further bothered by the fact that the author insisted that to do experimental art, one must not acknowledge the history of the art before them. To me, work becomes experimental when it acknowledges and then contradicts earlier traditions. And in my readings in my Italian class about futurism, I found that the futurists did not want to destroy museums to be “unencumbered by a seductive past that blinded them to the present”. They wanted to destroy the museums because they represented an aesthetic that they wanted to eliminate.

            What the author does acknowledge, however, is that in order to progress as artists, we must constantly reassess our concept of what we know and do not know, making a judgment as to whether to continue down the same path or try something new. But then he/she confuses me again, writing, “The university training that most artists receive today gives them reasons to doubt art and the means to both destroy it and re-create it.” This implies to me that you can be educated into being experimental—an idea that I don’t have much of a problem with but that seems to contradict many of the ideas of what experimental art is according to this article.

            And, much to my chagrin, I have to agree with Philippe on the fact that the ending is just silly. “This act is tragic because the man could not forget art.” Common. This sentence (repeated three times) reeks of stereotypical artist. This is what turns people off to art. And for someone trying to define, and therefore on some level, defend experimental art, the author seems careless to conclude his/her argument in this way.