” …. shall come forth wisdom”, as the Good Book says. I was startled this evening, looking at my facebook feed, to receive a message from my daughter-in-law. She wanted to know what I thought about a remark by our seven-year-old grandson. “You can’t be a perfectionist if you want to be an artist, because art can be anything.” Wow!
Several hares were started running by that one …. first of all wondering who he has been talking to …. or perhaps this really was a spontaneous remark. Either way, it set me thinking, and pondering what is going on inside his head.
He is right, of course, about the incompatibility of being and artist and an attitude of perfectionism. It is one thing to strive constantly to improve one’s work, but if we set ourselves the goal of perfection we would all die of despair before very long. The other problem with this view is that I wonder whether we would be able to recognise perfection if we saw it. This assumes that we are able to grasp perfection in our imagination. Perhaps I have a pessimistic view of the human race, but I see us, in art as in everything else, as constantly striving and hoping for transcendence but not really capable of envisaging it clearly, let alone attaining it.
I’m less happy, however, with the idea that “art can be anything.” This appears to be a restatement of Duchamp’s notion of the “found object”, of course. It’s not something with which I can agree. For me, art implies an element of intentionality. Duchamp’s error lay in his supposition that the finding of an object in itself was enough to render it a piece of art. In fact it was the presentation of the object with some intention in mind that gave it this status. In his case, of course, his intention was that we should think critically about the boundaries of “art”.
There is a lot more to be said on this topic, of course. I can only say that I can’t wait for the current restrictions on sociability to be lifted to the point when I can get together with my grandson and hear what else he might have to say about art.