VJ: (deadpan) Eh, can I borrow $5,000?
K: Whatever for? Do I look like I’m loaded with cash? 
VJ: Borrow from your dad lah, I want to buy shares…
K: Huh? You want to buy what, chairs?
VJ: (bowled over in laughter) Why do I want to buy chairs? Not unless they’re musical!

During one of our heart-to-heart talks…

VJ: You need to stop being so defensive. You’re always hiding in this shell – I want to peel the layers away and sit in the shell with you.
K: My shell is too small, wouldn’t fit both of us…
VJ: Buy a bigger one lah!
K: Eh, you think I’m a hermit crab, is it?

And that may very well be true. We’ve arrived at a time where art comes in form of a dead shark disintegrating in formaldehyde…

Damien Hirst
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

…lights that go on and off every five seconds in an empty room

Martin Creed
Work No. 227, the lights going on and off

…and an unmade bed littered with cigarette stubs and used condoms on its side.

Tracey Emin
My Bed

While you might wrinkle your nose in distaste, these artists have been nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize at one point in their lives and have made critically acclaimed works in the last two decades.

You might wonder, do artists these days just have a tendency to out-shock and out-mortify one another, that contemporary works no longer exude a quiet beauty about them? Art school grads are equipped with knowledge to better understand conceptual works like these, but are prone to knowing too much to fully appreciate them. What about the man on the street?

Upon confronting Hirst’s piece – The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, an average person might experience a wave of disgust, followed by shock and then a burning curiosity. Unless you’re a marine biologist or an avid diver, chances are, you will not ever see a shark, albeit a dead one, at such proximity. Its lifeless body, injected by formaldehyde for preservation, is suspended in a giant tank; its sheer size is overwhelming. The shark, is no longer a silent stalker waiting to maul unwitting seals, but has risen to the status of art.

But is it beautiful? Not in the most natural sense. His work doesn’t evoke a sense of calamity as compared to Claude Monet’s Water Lilies – which easily captivates emotions.

Wikipedia says, “An ‘ideal beauty’ is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture, for perfection.” Art can be beautiful, but can it be perfect?

Now, art should never subscribe to perfection. It takes the fun of appreciating art itself. It’s the niggling flaws that may annoy but similarly rouse intrigue and questioning.

When New York Times reviewed this particular work by Hirst, it was quoted:

“Mr. Hirst often aims to fry the mind (and misses more than he hits), but he does so by setting up direct, often visceral experiences, of which the shark remains the most outstanding. In keeping with the piece’s title, the shark is simultaneously life and death incarnate in a way you don’t quite grasp until you see it, suspended and silent, in its tank. It gives the innately demonic urge to live a demonic, deathlike form.”

If you can’t put a finger as to whether the quote was a compliment, you’re not alone. Perhaps Hirst wasn’t hoping for one. The shark is the only object your eye sees and it’s that impact, no matter how horrifying, Hirst hoped to achieve. I suppose he wasn’t out to make a viewer go, “Awww, how lovely”, but to use art to shake the senses.

Sticking a picture of Tracey Emin’s art work in this blog post is probably biasedness on my part. During my time in art school, I was fascinated by her work. Perhaps it was the matters she dealt with – love, trauma, emotions, identity and sexual intimacy – that I could relate to in some shape or form.

Crude and strangely feminine at the same time, her works are a commentary of her life and relationships. Her sketches of the female body are not the most anatomically correct; its lines are almost child-like – scratchy and aching with emotion. But you ask, what worth is there in a work that looked all of five minutes to produce?

For me, it’s the hastiness which speaks to me the most. I am awed by what a mere few lines can convey – the jagged strokes, the drippy streaks. Legs splayed open, what a grotesque portrayal of a woman, you say. But does this drawing also seem a little more human since many paintings of old immortalise beautful woman on canvas? May imperfection have a chance to be exalted to such a status?

While others may lament on the rawness of Emin’s sketches, her works grow on me and I find her wonky, flawed drawings; beautiful. And perhaps, “A thing is not beautiful because it is beautiful, it is beautiful because one likes it” stands true.

Some art works may speak to you, others may sing. What melody is it for you?

Art is undoubtedly subjective and it is this quality that instills fear in many who believe there should be a distinct right or wrong, black or white. This grey area confuses and Art makes no apologies for that.

A recent conversation with a colleague about Art gave birth to the idea of this series of blog posts – Art for the Uninitiated. I will not claim to be an expert in Art, but I want to believe Art can be shared and appreciated by all. So in my attempt to unravel the mystery behind this elusive term, these blog posts may serve as a guide to understand and perhaps these casual writings will pave way for discussion.

So to all who shrink at the mere sight of the letters A-R-T, let’s replace this term with something less intimidating. Like, hmm…Cherry. Yes, the fruit – small, fleshy, juicy with a tough seed in its core.

First question, what does one have to see/feel/think when looking at a piece of Art…I mean, Cherry?

Cherries are very visual and it is what the eye perceives that speaks to you.

In this blog post, let us focus on the choice of medium. Whenever an artist has an idea, he selects a medium as his channel to convey these thoughts. Whether it’s a sculpture, painting, a video or installation – it is this medium that houses the artists’ thoughts, ideas and intent.

When one thinks of the Da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa, you picture a brooding woman – unsmiling yet sitting calm and poised against a vast landscape. She exudes an aura of mystery and the viewers get the sense that she’s aloof.

The choice of medium – oil paints – was telling of the period she lived in. During the Italian Renaissance, only figures of wealth and status had the privilege of having their portraits done. Mona Lisa was painted between years 1503 – 1506 and artists of the time relied heavily on oil paints to portray objects/subjects as realistically and life-like as possible. Though this painting has been subjected to much scrutiny and parody, there’s no denying that she has become an icon of popular culture. Is it her enigmatic smile or her lack of eyebrows? That mystery is wrapped under the layers of oil paint applied by Da Vinci.

Banksy’s piece, Naked Man, resides on the wall of a sexual health clinic. Take a closer look, what do you see? A husband returns home to a scantily-clad wife. Angered by her affair, he looks for signs of her lover, who is clinging onto dear life by the window ledge of the room. Do you think this piece would have made such a deep impact if it existed on an ordinary wall or a gallery space? Would its narrative be as blunt and truthful?)

Taking a look at contemporary times, quasi-anonymous English grafitti artist, Banksy, expresses his ideas that spill through walls of urban Bristol, UK. Graffiti or Street art, as its name states, is developed along the streets under the public eye. Unlike a painting hung against the white walls of an art gallery, graffiti is unrestrained by an ornate frame and its meaning is usually dependent on the location it resides on – or otherwise known as site-specific art (but that’s another blog post another day!).

Banksy’s works have been deemed sociopolitical with a twist. Relying on stencils, many of his pieces were completed in the dead of the night, only to shock passerbys the next day at the sheer size of his works plastered along the walls. Because his works usually touch a raw nerve with his viewers, it’s only apt that his stencil works take on the streets – blatant and to the point, allowing much public scrutiny and criticism.

At the end of the day, there is no one choice of medium that reigns supreme – each artist has an agenda and he seeks to portray this in its most ideal form. Can one compare Da Vinci to Banksy and challenge whose works are better? Their horde of cherries may speak of different things and appeal to different people. Da Vinci’s cherries can be ripe and choked with sweetness; others may think it’s too sugary for their liking and go for something sourer like Banksy. But who’s right and who’s wrong?

So have you had your dose of cherries today?

But it soon became clear that this wasn’t going to be my usual dazed and drowsy experience wallowing at the back of the lecture theatre. “You can see the coffee, but can you see the fields of Guatemala? Can you see the EU tariffs? Can you see the coffee workers’ pay slips?” I soon realized what he was getting at. The world as it is didn’t just happen. It is the way it is because of people, because of laws, because of attitudes.”

- Luke Sherlock, Oxford UK, Adbusters Issue #85, Sep/Oct 2009

One keeps our hands busy as fingers dance merrily across the keyboard; spelling words that bequeath a language that only we understand with our hearts. The other relies on the rhythmic strides; shirts reeking of perspiration, we talk of bicycle frames and museum-hopping. And we keep walking still.

XX.

But is it?

Should art exist only to be aesthetically pleasing?

My mother and I taking in to the installations at "At Home Abroad"

A recent trip to 8Qsam (Singapore Art Museum’s contemporary art wing) with my mother further dawned upon me how misguided we are when it comes to art.

Art should, in my opinion, provoke. It should effectively leave you questioning – vitalized by the stream of ideas you take home with you. Whatever medium the artist chose to convey his/her message, looking at art is an experience that only you can solely keep.

I once read “Whatever You Think, Think Opposite” by Paul Arden. In the book, Arden recounts how a man travelled to an art exhibition and ended up hating every single moment of it.He lamented how terrible the art was and the exhibition wasted his time.

However, one could put it across that because the art affected him so greatly, it was proof that the work was powerful enough to leave such a lasting impression on him.

But back to my mother. She has an unquestionably good sense of aesthetics and can testify that to her 20-odd years in the fashion industry. However, I did not anticipate the puzzled look, which was perpetually plastered on her face, throughout my entire journey at 8Qsam.

Upon walking into the At Home Abroad exhibition, she was greeted by Jason Lim’s installation ‘Last Drop’. She stared at the videos quizzically, studied the installation scattered with broken glass and a chair propped up on stacks of wine glasses, and asked almost nonchalantly…

“Like this is art meh?”

To be honest, I was stumped. How was I to define what was art, or what isn’t?

'Fountain' by Marcel Duchamp, 1917

It reminded me of Marcel Duchamp’s famous work Fountain. Signed off with a simple R.Mutt on a urinal, this work by Duchamp was the epitomy of post-modern, conceptual art. It signified a change in the art world and Fountain was voted by 500 British art world professionals as the most influential artwork of the 20^th century.

Of course I tried explaining Duchamp to mummy dearest only to be met by, “Wah, like this, also can”.

With a little bit of explanation, “Like this is art, meh” still made its special appearance at least five times that afternoon. But I was not so bothered by that, or that I could not convince her to comprehend conceptual art. Instead I appreciated how my mother willingly walked through the galleries with me despite her lack of understanding. She enjoyed the Wu Guanzhong exhibition at SAM much better, possibly because its message was more apparent and closer to the heart.

Art does not have to be aesthetically correct. Neither does it have a standard look and feel. Art should have the ephemeral quality that’s surely fleeting. If we open our minds (and our hearts) and begin to accept that there isn’t anything that can’t be art – that even life, as painful and dogmatic as it is, can be art – then we can begin to “see”.

(The writer is no expert in the fantastic world of art, but will admit wholeheartedly that she lives and breathes for it.)

INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM DAY 2009.