Art Rules

I've thought about the confinement of artistic rules lately.  I find it interesting that someone like J.S. Bach could create such a vast amount of astounding music and still compose within the established rules.  Renaissance and baroque painters and sculptors also created timeless masterpieces without breaking the rules, although they would occasionally push against them and stretch them some.

There is nothing wrong with breaking the rules if you have a great working understanding of the rules and what they represent.  The evolution of each art form is seeded and fertilized by those who broke the rules.  But I think that we often glamorize the rule breakers without holding them accountable for their finished art.

I think of composers like Igor Stravinsky or Philip Glass who wrote music that defied convention and angered audiences and critics.  Over time there music was accepted, then welcomed, and eventually loved.  Picasso and Pollack painted in styles that confounded.  And Andy Warhol's style still makes some wonder if he was a genius or a gifted joker.  But we, as audience, have come to embrace them even if we still don't understand their art.

Not all were looked at disapprovingly of course.  Walt Disney created masterpieces that have been loved by generations and some of the films of Steven Spielberg have truly challenged us but we cherish them still.  The writing of Hemingway and Capote pushed against convention and we hung unto every word.

There are many other examples, of course, and I apologize if I neglected your favorite.  My complaint usually is that many others have tried to be "artistic" without doing the due diligence.  If you're just going to break the rules then there is no sense in learning them in the first place.....right?  Just a couple of decades ago some "artists" were displaying common household items and inventing elaborate "meanings" for their art.  And the art world bought it.

I've heard music that sounds like two dogs fighting over a piece of meat.  And a personal favorite of mine is 4'33" by John Cage.  Which is exactly that many minutes of silence and pantomime. I will admit it takes a peculiar kind of talent to "not" write music and sell the results as a masterpiece.

Then I listen to the music of John Rutter, whose music follows all the rules and leaves us breathless.  The beauty is comforting and inspirational.  Russian composer Nikita Koshkin has written a series of Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar that are amazing.  They are contemporary without being pretentious and use a very old fashioned form.

Just as bending the rules is okay, so is not bending them.  There is still a lot of fruit on the tree.  Being creative within the rules can be very satisfying to the artist and audience alike.  Just doing weird stuff is not necessarily artistic.  It's just weird.  Or, at its worst, a fraud.  So I often find myself asking the question, "Is this art?  Commerce?  Or a variation on The Emperor's New Clothes?"