I used to think 4'33" was the most ridiculously arrogant piece of pseudo-art in the history of pseudo-art.
But people still talk about it today, 70 years after it was composed [0], and they will still be talking about it 500 years from now. So I've changed my mind. It does exactly what good art is supposed to do: It makes you ask questions.
But if the alleged artists taping bananas to walls tell us that's the measure to judge art by, who am I to question their wisdom?
“The Course Of Empire” is a beautiful piece of art for many reasons: it’s clearly masterful, it represents complex ideas simply, it conveys emotions we lack words to convey, it beautifully displays the human experience, and so on. It’s art even if you didn’t have a human to experience it - it’s self evident.
Taping a banana to a wall isn’t art. A silent song isn’t art. These are just childish, amateurish displays only enjoyed by a nihilistic culture devoid of meaning. If what you make only counts as art because it “starts a conversation” about how stupid and garbage and insulting it is, then it’s not art at all.
We did. By making it relevant here.
> Taping a banana to a wall isn’t art
The one thing baser than taping a banana to a wall is people categorically, doubtlessly concluding that it is or isn’t art.
It isn’t art for you. That this point needs to be made almost singularly means that I do consider it art, if only on the first iteration. (Anyone could have done it. But Cattelan did.) I’ll sidestep the question, too, of whether any comedy is art.
Unless we’re elevating art to a Kantian ideal like math, or arguing it’s subject to the scientific method, art has to be subjectively judged. If that’s true, anyone drawing hard lines is bloviating or attempting coercion.
I have more sympathy for the claim that it's not "good art", not particularly interesting or meaningful.
With regard to the banana I tend to agree. This was just a small provocating artpiece which doesn't bring anything to the table and is unlikely to be discussed much in ten years, let alone 70.
4:33 however is still very much discussed 70 years later and will continue to be, and that may be because it's not just a random joke but fits within the work of an important composer (John Cage) which contributed significantly to the artistic debate of what "is" music, at a time where this question was suddenly much less clear than it had been in the past (i.e. the same piece today would be much less meaningful).
If an artist paints a wall white, and that doesn't induce any emotion, then it's not art.
If an artist paints a wall white and then tells you "hey, this is art", and that induces anger or frustration in you because you disagree, then it becomes art.
When the person above implies that this "makes you ask questions", the question in this case is "what is art?", which, as mentioned, is a contentious and interminable topic which itself arouses emotion, making it good fodder as a topic for art.