Toulmin Analysis - "State of the Art"

Dillon Waugh

Hayes

English 100 – 9:10

2/3/13

Toulmin Analysis – “State of the Art”, Barry Gewen of the New York Times

CLAIM

Art has become so vague in its definition and purpose because a person who claims to be an artist is free to classify most anything they produce as art and, consequently, are not obliged to connect with or engineer stimulation of anything but shock or memory from their audiences.

REASONS AND EVIDENCE

Gewen sites pieces of well-received “performance art” and its impact – more elegant than cheap gag-reflex poking – on its audience.

-          Marina Abramovic’s “Lips of Thomas” in which she cuts and scourges herself in spite of audience protest; “human fragility and personal responsibility”. “House with an Ocean View” in which she lived on mineral water with only a bed, shower, and toilet in a small viewable space, inviting her audience to stay with her as the time passed; “living in the moment.”

-          Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Third Party”, surrounding spectators with video images of guests entertaining themselves alone at a cocktail party – the guests on each screen are separate from those on others, and as video clips, they’re in a world apart from visitors – simulate isolation in a crowd.

 

COUNTERARGUMENT AND REFUTATION

Less counterargument than alternative ideas on why modern “art” is the way that it is.

-          Many critics including Greenberg believe that art has degenerated because it has been too liberally treated by critics – standards have disappeared, idea that anything can be art and that appreciators therefore accept that perhaps everything that is presented as such is indeed art.

-          REFUTATION: Gewen emphasizes an idea that insisting that not just anything can be art is takeable as license for “artists” to be as outlandish as possible to create something that is. He earlier points out also that art criticism is often as incomprehensible as modern pieces and little help to understanding.

In drawing conclusions on what today’s apparent definition of art says about what art is and means, and whether or not it’s lost its class, Gewen lays out and examines the opinions of an array of modern art critics, such as Kramer, Ruhrberg, and Greenberg, who believe that “the avant-garde is running out of steam” – that modern artists have decided that “anything goes” and will reach out in all directions to grab ahold of anything that they believe they can label art without any cultural standards. Some believe that critics are too lenient of artists, following with the same mentality – maybe anything can be considered art, so who are they to say? Gewen poses an alternative theory on reaching the writings of Arthur Danto, a critic yet supporter of the anything-can-be-art mindset, who writes that art “was” once “constrained by moral impermissibilities”, combining it with the idea that art must be a very special sort of thing and theorizing that the trouble is that artists and those who claim to be are treated as a very special sort of people – allowed to do outrageous or simply strange things for their own sake and call it art, confounding or perhaps alienating their own audiences instead of connecting with and eliciting a response them. There have, after all, been pieces even of the controversial performance art form that have affected spectators in a way beyond repulsing or confusing them. According to Gewen, as humans are social creatures, the creation and sharing of art must be a social activity – it must be about the audience at least as much as the artist and not the artist’s excuse to release their inhibitions and act up for what seems more like his or her own amusement.