Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts
Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts Kamhi, M. M. (2014) Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts. New York, NY: Pro Arte Books. 323 pp. ISBN: 978 0 9906057 0 6.Within the art world establishment, Michelle Marder Kamhi s Who Says That's Art? (2014) may at worst, be ignored, or at best, receive cynical derision as out of date and irrelevant. On the other hand, ordinary readers may welcome the book as a confirmation of their sense that the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" best describes today's artwork. For such folks, Kamhi will resemble the perceptive child pointing out the obvious in Hans Christian Andersen's tale. And, as in case of the naked Emperor, there is a lot of pretention to point out in the art world!Kamhi deconstructs the generally accepted art history of the past hundred years by questioning a host of assumptions underpinning both modern and postmodern art. Disdainful of the notion that "If an artist says it'sart,it'sart" (p. 91) she challenges the reputation of many figures championed by the art world from Mondrian and Duchamp to Rothko, Segal, Warhol, and Hirst. Further, she debunks 20th century inventions such as Abstract Art, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, and Performance Art by critiquing their inventors' stated aims in the light of what is known about human psychology and cognitive processes. And she offers reasons for excluding photography and architecture from the category of fine art. Finally, she argues that prominent art critics such as Clement Greenberg and Arthur Danto have exerted a disastrous influence on 20th century art. In her book, Kamhi defends traditional art against such innovators and innovations, indicting them as either irrational or nihilistic.Much of the groundwork for this book is found in a previous book, What Art Is (2000) coauthored by Kamhi and her husband, Louis Torres. That book dealt with philosopher novelist Ayn Rand's aesthetic theory regarding all the major arts. In contrast, this new book presents what Kamhi regards as a commonsense view of the visual arts. The result is a well documented argument against a culture in which art has been reduced to virtually "anything you can get away with"1 and for a return to traditional modes of art.The initial chapters identify four necessary and apparently sufficient criteria of fine art. Briefly summarized, they are skill, representation (imagery) embodiment of values, and intensity of vision. Based on cross cultural evidence, Kamhi argues that these fundamental criteria are not culture bound but are universal and rooted in human nature. She defines (fine) art as, "visual imagery that skillfully represents real or imagined people, places, and things in a form expressive of the maker's temperament, deeply held values, and view of life" (p. 34).In subsequent chapters, Kamhi documents how purported artists throughout the past century have abandoned these criteria, with the sanction of various "art experts," in an ongoing deterioration of the "once splendid realm of the visual arts" (p. 34) Duchamp's infamous readymade Fountain (1917) for instance, does not meet even the first criterion of being skillfully made by the supposed artist. His act of "creation" consisted merely of conceiving the idea, selecting a manufactured urinal, hanging it upside down, signing it with a fictitious name, and submitting it for exhibition. Yet, today's art experts insist that "Duchamp's conception of the readymade decisively altered our understanding of what constitutes an object of art" (p. 80) in spite of considerable evidence that Duchamp conceived the Fountain as a jovial prank rather than a serious work of art. The book abounds in such examples.Any need to identify standards can be philosophically questioned and debated, but it is difficult to deny their power to serve as conceptual and evaluative markers. When standards for art are philosophically rejected, then the concept of art collapses into a nonentity.