I fundamentally disagree with this definition of art, "consensus" as it may be. It's OK as an application to the field of "making art" but as an M.F.A. I see artists in this form of purely aesthetic/emotional production all over and it's not in service of what I see as its real weapon: the challenge to the viewer.
I can't say I'm challenged in my corner of art by the Mona Lisa or David so I won't speak to it. How about Ad Reinhardt's "Black Square", an obsessive pursuit of the pure object, the Thingness of the Thing stripped of the heart? Or how about Detroit techno that Jeff Mills described as "architecture" (you mean music can be architecture, can this be real?) and makes immanent that other artist Wagner when Godfrey says to Parsifal, "here my son time turns into space"?
That's the shit right there. That's the stuff that blows open your head and lets the good stuff come rolling in. That's worth fighting for.
Like I said, just because some art challenges, but not all art does. Some of it is just beauty and emotion for beauty or emotions sake. Some it was just art for a paycheque. Just because it's not your cup of tea doesn't mean you should discount is as not being art. I find "Black Square" neither invoking of emotion, nor of beauty, it doesn't appeal to me nor does it challenge me in the slightest, it feels far more pretentious than artistic, it seems of an intensely low effort and it says nothing at all about the human condition, but I won't discount it just because I don't understand why it speaks to you.
I can't say I'm challenged in my corner of art by the Mona Lisa or David so I won't speak to it. How about Ad Reinhardt's "Black Square", an obsessive pursuit of the pure object, the Thingness of the Thing stripped of the heart? Or how about Detroit techno that Jeff Mills described as "architecture" (you mean music can be architecture, can this be real?) and makes immanent that other artist Wagner when Godfrey says to Parsifal, "here my son time turns into space"?
That's the shit right there. That's the stuff that blows open your head and lets the good stuff come rolling in. That's worth fighting for.