Why you don’t get contemporary art | Jessica Backus | TEDxCornellTech

Not sure where you stand on contemporary art? Let Jessica Backus give you some strategies to help understand it better.

Jessica Backus currently serves as The Director of Learning and The Art Genome Project at Artsy, an online database, encyclopedia and discovery engine for art. She received an M.A. in Art History from Hunter College, New York, where her research focused on post-war German art.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

This is going to sound a bit
like a public service announcement,

but here goes:

Show of hands -

do you or anyone you love

suffer from an inability
to get contemporary art?

Anybody here? Yes. Me too.

Me too. I know.

You know, I've worked in the art world
for about 10 years now,

and I currently work
at a company called Artsy, where -

It's an online platform

where I try to make art accessible
to anyone who wants to learn more about it

and maybe start collecting it.

And, you know, this is something
that I encounter on a daily basis,

and I'm well aware of the fact

that a lot of people think
that contemporary art is a sham.

This is one of my favorite examples
of this sentiment in action.

This is a scene from the sitcom
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,"

and Danny DeVito is playing
this sort of eccentric, artsy collector.

So he goes around pointing at the art,

saying, "This is bullshit.
Bullshit. Derivative."

He comes over and finds a piece he loves:

"I love it. I want it."

And the gallerist
sort of leans over to him

and in this hushed, tasteful voice says,

"That's the air-conditioner."

Now, undeterred, he says,
"I want it. It's everything."

So, I think the takeaway here
is pretty clear, right?

Either contemporary art is a total sham,

or you have to be an insider to get it.

And if you're not an insider,

you might be made to feel inferior
for not getting it.

Now, I think that this is really
an unfortunate state of affairs,

so that's why I wanted to talk
to you today about this,

because I joke that,
you know, that this is a PSA,

but I really do believe that art,
especially art of our day,

is a public good,

and you deserve more from your art.

So I'm going to tell you today

about a few of the historic reasons
for why art today is so inaccessible.

But I'm also going to give you a few tips

that I think will help you
better understand

about 99% of the art that you see.

Now, before I dive into this, I just want
to start with a few ground rules.

I'm going to be talking
about modern and contemporary art.

The difference between
the two of those is really a whole -

a topic for a whole other talk,

but when I say modern art,
I basically mean art since 1900.

When I say contemporary, I'm kind of
talking about art since the 1960s.

And the other one is that I am going
to be talking about Western art here.

It does have its own tradition,

which is different from
what we might call "non-Western art,"

you know, this umbrella category
of anything that's not the U.S. or Europe.

But, okay, so let's get started.

Why don't you get contemporary art?

I think there are three reasons for this.

The first is it's the art world.

Now, the art world
relishes its exclusivity.

You know, instead
of trying to invite you in

and helping you engage with the art,

it sets you up to fail from the beginning.

You know, music and TV
and podcasts, as we just learned,

we can enjoy them
on demand - they come to us.

And, you know, many people have really
deep and meaningful experiences with them.

So why should contemporary art
be any different?

Well, I do think that part of this
is a little bit the on-demand model,

in the sense that with art,

you have to go out into the world
to experience it.

You have to go to a museum or a gallery,

and once you're there,

you're going to encounter
gallerists and curators,

and, you know, the art world, in a sense.

You know, with art, the institutions of it
are front and center,

and they're often monumental,
like cities upon a hill.

So you have to get past all of this
before you can actually get to the art.

You have to literally climb the hill -

like with the Met here, in New York -

to get to the art.

So, let's talk about the art a little bit.

The British artist Tracey Emin has said,

"Modern art is merely the means
by which we terrorize ourselves."

Art today can be conceptual or cerebral;

it can be boring and difficult.

We're going to talk about why this is,

but before we do,

I want to get to the third reason
that you don't get contemporary art.

And this also happens to be the one thing
that's within your control to change.

It's you.

It is, in part, your fault.

But the flip side of that
is that art needs you to be got.

Right? It needs you, the viewer,
to interpret it and to add meaning to it.

You might be asking now,
"Okay, so how am I supposed to do that?"

And to answer this question, we really
need to go back to the beginning;

we need to go back to a time before art
meant really what it does today.

Okay. I'm going to ask you
to think right now about artists.

Think about some of the traits
you might associate with them.

Right, I think a lot of us will think
they might be creative or original.

They might even be genius.

They're probably also difficult
and passionate about what they do.

They act as if the normal rules
of society didn't apply to them.

Well, we only have to go back
about 250 years

to encounter an entirely
different conception

of what it means to be an artist.

We can actually see this change happening,
right before our eyes,

when we compare two encyclopedias
from the 18th century.

So, right here we're looking at
Ephraim Chambers' Table of Knowledge

from 1728.

And over here, where he's mapped out
all of sort of human achievement,

under what we would normally
consider the arts,

we see two totally different groupings.

We see one for architecture,
sculpture and manufacturing,

and those are grouped
under the mechanical arts.

Now, in a separate category,

we have painting
and perspective under optics.

So, in other words,
this idea of like a unified artist,

a unified set of fine arts

doesn't yet exist.

Now, if we fast forward
a mere 23 years, to 1751,

we're looking at
Diderot's "Encyclopédie" here.

And now, for the first time,

we have a real grouping of art
as we know it today.

So music, painting, sculpture,
architecture, engraving -

these are all grouped together,

and what's more,

Diderot grouped them under
the realm of the imagination, right?

So the imagination,

it's this like higher realm
of human achievement

than even memory and reason,

which were Diderot's other two categories.

Now, what happens when we elevate the arts

to this higher transcendent realm
of the imagination?

It basically becomes a quasi-religion,

and artists become
these sort of secular priests.

And, you know, like all religions,

art starts to develop
its own institutions,

its own way of thinking,

its own behaviors,

and it's own intermediaries -

these people who can speak
directly to the gods

and translate for the rest of us laymen.

So it's these intermediaries
that I'm kind of calling "the art world,"

And again, just like in religion,
they have their own liturgical language.

You might recognize this, or you
might have encountered it elsewhere.

Here's an example:

"Humanity has aspired to elevation

and desired to be free from alienation
and subjugation to gravity.

The physical and existential dialectic,

which is in a permanent state

of oscillation between height
and willful falling,

drives us to explore
the limits of balance."

So, if you need an interpretation here,

this is kind of just saying
something about standing up.

Now, quite recently, two researchers,
Alix Rule and David Levine,

discovered that this type of language

has enough unique linguistic traits
to be considered its own dialect:

It has its own syntax;

it has its own vocabulary, so it uses
words like "aporia" and "transversal,"

that none of us use in everyday language.

Now, you might ask,

"Why does the art world speak like this?"

And, you know, in good faith,
there are some historic reasons

that have to do with theories
on the way that art produces meaning.

But really, this type of language
is a social marker;

it designates an inside
and an outside group,

which means that language like this,

whether it's in
a press release or an article,

it's generally not written for you.

Now, I know this is frustrating, okay.

I find it frustrating too.

I don't get this type of language often.

And the thing that I find
most frustrating about it

is, actually, the fact
that it's often used

to cloud what might otherwise be
a very simple work of art.

And what's unfortunate about this

is that it makes it easy to dismiss art
that might be simple or that we don't like

as bullshit.

So, for example, if I see
the cult horror movie,

"Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood," -

it's a - if you haven't seen it,

it's about some hip-hop performers

who accidentally unleash a leprechaun
from his magic prison,

and, you know, if I saw this,

I would probably feel empowered to say
that I don't like it, right?

But if someone presented it to me

as being about the existential plight
of urban youth and the barriers,

both real and imagined,

physical and uncanny,

that problematized their post-capitalist
pursuit of fame and wealth,

I'm going to call, "Bullshit."

Again, this is really unfortunate
because what it does

is it allows us to dismiss art
that we don't like as a sham,

and it would be preferable

if you felt empowered to just say
that you don't like this art.

Because if you don't like it,
it follows that there's art that you like.

And that means you have an opinion,

which is one of the first
steps of getting art.

I'm going to talk a little bit
about that art now.

So, again, you know,
about 250 years it's been now

that art has not been about beauty.

It hasn't been about craftsmanship.

It's really been about
the imagination - right? -

if we recall Diderot's groupings.

And if art is about the imagination,
about ideas, and the idea is primary,

then it follows that its form
and techniques are secondary.

Now, there was actually an entire movement
of art - conceptual art - in the 1960s

that took this premise
to its logical conclusion.

We see an example here.

This is Joseph Kosuth's
One and Three Chairs.

And the work is really asking,

how do we know what a chair is?

It seems like a simple question,

but, you know, Kosuth is wondering,

is it because we understand
photographic reproductions of a chair?

Is it because of its physical form?

Or because of the word "chair,"

whose definition
we agree upon by convention.

Now, if we extrapolate out the work,

it's really asking,
why do things mean what they mean?

Or as Kosuth has said,

"Art isn't about colors and forms,
it's about meaning."

Now, I'm going to guess
that after this explanation,

most of you get this work.

But you might not find it
particularly compelling or interesting,

and I have to say I would
sort of agree with you there.

You know, I think that the work is -

the ideas are a little bit too clean,
almost too perfect for me,

that they become a little boring.

And contemporary art
doesn't have to be like this.

You know, in fact, what I often find
most interesting about art

are not the ideas themselves,
but how they're expressed.

This "how" is something

that art historians might call
"strategies" or "modes,"

if you've ever heard those terms before.

And it's with these strategies, often,

that we find some of the most interesting,
creative solutions and great innovations.

I want to share five of these
strategies with you right now.

So, artists might just want to create
a new sensory experience,

simple as that.

James Turrell, whose work
we see here installed in the Guggenheim,

he said, "I wanted to create a light

that was like the light
you see in your dreams."

That's really what this work is;

you go in and it is
this revelatory experience of light.

Simple as that.

Artists might embed meaning in materials.

So, in 2014, Kara Walker took over
the Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn.

This was a 130-year-old abandoned factory.

And she created this monumental sphinx.

So you might notice here that this sphinx,

it has what we could call
these traditional "mammy" features,

so it's very much a stereotypical image
of a black female slave.

Now, Walker used over 30 tons of sugar
to produce this work.

So, sugar. What does it mean?

I mean it connects the work
to its site, of course,

the Domino Sugar factory,

but sugar was also
a major driver of the slave trade.

So Walker is really trying

to get us to think about
our associations with sugar.

What it means in our everyday lives,

what it means in our violent history.

And then, maybe, how that history relates
to our present day and our own lives.

Artists sometimes
just want to evoke emotions,

whether it's joy or maybe nostalgia
for the balloon animals of our youth.

You know, whatever emotions
exist out there,

there's a work of art that expresses it.

[Art About Art]

Now, this is a little bit
more of a difficult one,

but artists spend their lives making art;

they're going to engage with it
and engage with its history.

This is a work of art by Mark Flood
called "Another Painting."

Now, imagine that you
are going to an art fair,

which is where galleries
sell their works of art,

and you've seen thousands
of works all for sale,

booth after booth,

and you finally see this:

it's like another painting.

Here's Niki de Saint Phalle.

In the 1960s, she started shooting
her canvasses with a gun.

So this is this great act of nihilism;

this literally taking aim

at the medium that has dominated art
for the past 500 years.

Artists also expand possibilities,

moving beyond just the normal mediums
of art and the normal spaces of art.

So Robert Smithson's
Sprial Jetty, from 1970 -

it's a man-made land mass that juts out
1500 feet into the Great Salt Lake.

So Smithson, here,

is literally making the earth itself
his medium and his museum.

Or here we see Azuma Makoto,
who teamed up with JP Aerospace

to blast bonsais out
into earth's stratosphere -

91,000 feet -

and filmed them with GoPros.

So, these artists are showing that,
literally, art could be about anything,

and it can be experienced anywhere,

whether on earth or even beyond.

This brings us to you.

So, I bet you're asking at this point,

how are you going
to start experiencing this art?

Well, I think a really good
first place to start

is that we saw now
that art can be about anything,

which means that, chances are,

there's a work of art out there

that's relevant to something
that you care about

or that's relevant to your own life.

Whether you're interested
in topics of gender and identity,

or maybe politics and
the Black Lives Matter movement,

maybe technology

or maybe just a fun and interesting
new way of interacting with people.

This is one of my favorite works.

It's by the collective
Electronic Disturbance Theater,

and it's called
the Transborder Immigrant Tool.

Now, this artwork actually consisted
of a series of burner phones

that were handed out
to undocumented immigrants

crossing the Mexican border
into Southern California.

And the phones contained GPS units

that could lead them to water
in the Southern California desert.

Now, the phones
also included poetry, right?

Because they're works of art.

And because these phones were being used
to aid undocumented immigrants,

this group came under investigation
by the FBI cyber crimes unit,

and during an interrogation,

the FBI asked them, you know,
why was there poetry on the phones.

"Is this poetry encrypted?"

And the group's response was,

"Well, isn't all poetry encrypted?"

So, art is a lot like this, right?

It's an encrypted form of meaning.

But there's not just one meaning, right?

There's not the meaning
that the FBI expected to find,

some kind of code word;

there's multiple meanings.

And to try to understand this art,

to try to decrypt it, so to speak,

we just need to think about
the strategies that I discussed,

right? those five strategies,

and we can use those

to reverse-engineer the questions
that you can ask next time you see art.

So first ask yourself,

what do I see here?
what am I experiencing?

can I touch the art? can I go into it?

If you're experiencing something new,

it might be enjoyable, it might not be,

but if you can notice that,
that might be it,

you might already get the art.

Another thing - what are the materials?

This is Damien Hirst's
For the Love of God.

It's a skull that includes
8,000 flawless diamonds.

So what is Hirst trying to say
by using this material?

What do I feel? Why?

What is the artist doing
that makes me feel that?

And lastly, what does this art
say about other art?

Granted, this might be
the most difficult question to answer

because it does require
some prior knowledge,

but you can, you know,

look at a press release, look
at a wall label, try to read about it.

And now that you know a little bit
about how this type of language works,

the type of language that you're going
to encounter in a press release,

maybe you can translate that into English,

and if you can take one idea from it,
that's a great place to start.

Now, I'm going to guess

that for about 99%
of the work that you see,

if you ask yourself these questions
and you still don't get it,

it might be that what's going on
is that you don't like it.

And you know what?

There's probably other people
out there who feel the same way,

and that's okay.

You know, I think, by all means,

I want you to go out there
and dislike art,

dislike a lot of art

because along the way,

you might actually find art that you like.

Thank you.

(Applause)