CAN EVERYTHING BE ART?

Xim Martínez Barceló

Illustration 17032958
Julie McCalden

The aim of this essay is to make a reflexive point and try to bring some light over one of the
consequences of post-modernist and post-structuralist philosophical theories. We will pay attention
over the post-modernist point of view that Everything is art/ Everybody can be an artist. The
reason why the essay will concentrate on on this two specific propositions is because I think they
express the post-modernist essence and, therefore a reflexive exercise over them can bring some
interesting considerations that do not only fall in the realm of aesthetics and art if not, on other
fields like ethics and politics.

The essay will be a philosophical approach to the implications of this two propositions. The way of
procedure will be, first of all, establish what ready made art is as I think is the quintessence
representation of the idea Everything is art. The essay does not pretend to make an analytical study
of the propositions or establish a defined thesis about what art is, if not, it will be an holistic
exercise to show how a deeper considerations of the propositions we use to describe the world can
help to create a better meaning of the concepts we use in order to be able to articulate more complex
and deeper thoughts that we use to give sense to the world. In order to achieve this, first of all it will
be necessary to sketch the difference between to show and to say established by Wittgenstein, as
our purpose is to create a map of thoughts and to show a critical approach to this propositions and
its implications. Second of all we will show how this two propositions have hidden in its essence
(what I will call) a destructive nihilism. Therefore, a deeper study of what nihilism means will be
needed. In this point I will give two definitions of what nihilism can mean, one as posture that
defends the lack of foundations in any kind of knowledge, and second, a nihilism (the destructive
one) that makes reference not only to the lack of foundation if not, also, to the lack of relation. This
last kind of nihilism, as it will be explained, can have very dangerous implications for the
development of our human condition and of our culture. I will conclude the essay explaining why is
our duty to be constantly reviewing the concepts and the propositions we use to describe the world
in order to create a strong structure and powerful REAL meanings through which we understand the
world.

READY MADE ART:

We call ready-made to any common object that an artist choose and proposes it as art.
Therefore it is a perfect example of what we understand for conceptual art. This kind of so called
art, was triggered by the Fountain of Duchamp. As it was said in an anonymous editorial of the
magazine The Blind Man:
“ Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He
CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance
disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object”

By this rule of procedure any kind of object can be art if its placed in the right place in the right
moment. When this happens, the object leaves out its normal condition and starts to work
artistically. The fact that Andy Warhol signed the Brillo boxes and placed them in a museum is what
made this work art. After saying that, we can say with no doubt to be wrong (and not in the positive
sense of Danto) that Art is dead.
Art is dead because if anything can be art, nothing is art: there is no references where we can
decide, argue or value any kind of creative production as art. If we are inside of a train without
windows, we can never determinate if its moving, because we do not have any references where to
establish the movement. The same happens with the definition of what art is. If any object placed in
the right place by the right person can be art, then everybody can be an artist and if everybody can
be an artist and everything can be art: we loose the reference with which we can value a creative
product as art and therefore (as we can see in any contemporary art gallery) art becomes banal,
meaningful, childish and lacking of talent. The Art has lost its essence, whatever it was.

TO SAY AND TO SHOW:

Wittgenstein makes a difference between two kind of propositions. A) Propositions about

the essence of a symbolic representations (scientific one) and B) Mystic propositions about the
Values realm. A) can be represented as bipolar propositions, this is to say, as truth or false as they
represent possible facts about the world. So, If I say “It's raining” I can always look through the
window and see if its true or not. But when a propositions does not depend of how the things are
(“This is good”,” your duty as a son is to...”) they are of the second type (B) because they are
related to transcendental propositions about the representation of the world. Therefor in this essay
we will show something but say anything.

POST-MODERNISM AND NIHILISM:

Postmodernism: (Sketch) The difference is unyielding, what is undetermined and

disseminated is what matters. It is a post-metafisic posture, the global explanations and the
foundations are abandoned in favor of what is concrete, in the contingency, to what is particular,
aleatory and unique. There is no truth, just symbols, simulacrums. Interpretations of texts, of
symbols, of signs that are determined by a historical context.

Nihilism ni-hili (nothing in Latin) > first definition.

Ni-hil comes from the latin ni-hilum that could be translated like: without thread. But in
biology and also in Latin, hilum makes reference, not to a sewing thread if not to the thread that
unite the bean to the plant, the baby to the placenta. This is the form of nihilism that is based in the
lack of references. And is the one underlying in the propositions “everything is art”.

This kind of nihilism consists in loosing the thread, the relationship. And that takes us to an attitude
of indifference. First, indifference as impossibility to distinguish, because there is no possible
relation if all is the same. And also it take us to a attitude of contempt. If all is the same, if nothing
can be related: THERE IS NO MEANING. If there is no meaning, there is no way to create
knowledge or to make any point about the world.

Therefore to resist nihilism in its most destructive way we must to defend the difference. Because
nihilism is a process, its an activity,a verb that creates the vacuum, the progress of the nothingness .
It's a process that take us to the void at the same speed that the human understanding alienates from
life. This is the nihilism of the void, and the nihilism of “all is the same”, of the homogenization,
of the loss of meaning, of the animality, of the dead of the humanity. The relation between what is
the same does not have meaning, in a situation of total homogenization, where there is no
differences, where to be and not to be is the same, THE MEANING DISAPEARS.
There is no possible orientation in the homogeneity, therefore nihilism is an absurd position.

Nihilism is not only the story of the fall of our culture and the categories we have been using to
guide our self until yesterday. It can also be relative to our most fundamental human situation.

[Conclusion must be done too, This is a sketch of the mine things I have done for the essay. Clearly,
they need more work and be organized in a way where the arguments follow the others.]