This is a draft in progress, and I'm very interested in hearing any reactions or possible additions to the list. Point things out to me, challenge me, disagree with me... OK? It's a list of assumptions I have encountered about art—some of them have been my own assumptions at various times in my life, but most of them have been attitudes I've encountered while teaching or while following debates on the web.
Art should be beautiful and enjoyable. There are any number of problems with this assumption. Many people are attracted to art they find beautiful, but there is absolutely no getting around the subjectivity of personal taste. Representations of on "ugliness"—again a subjective term—can be every bit as thought-provoking as those on "beauty," as can meditations on the quotidian.
Art should have political or cultural significance. This one really seems to divide people. At one end of the spectrum are those who argue that art should avoid didacticism, that it should be considered apart from the political sphere. (Who was it who refused to include Diego Rivera in an art book because they considered him a "propagandist"?) At the other end of the spectrum are those who believe that art is inextricably linked to the cultural and political context out of which it was produced. In twentieth-century literary studies, this divide has been most obvious in the supplantation of the New Criticism by the New Historicism and in the continuing debates over methodology and theory. I have more to say on this if anyone is interested.
Then there is the problem of determining what is politically or culturally "significant," which always seems to come down to a perceived conflict between "high art" and popular culture. Is art that which can be apprehended by a small group of people highly trained in the medium? Of course not, I say. But we run into all sorts of conflicts when we apply the term "art" to popular culture. The current debates over webcams are a good example. A great number people repeatedly pronounce webcams (or Mapplethorpe photos, or Karen Finley's performance pieces, or whatever) as Not Art. In that sense, their reactions to art are like the well-known conservative definition of pornography: I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I'll know it when I see it. This position doesn't allow for diversity in forms of expression, it doesn't allow for the fact that forms of expression—and reactions to them—are subjective, and, most disturbingly, it ultimately amounts to a kind of territorial pissing war. I know what art is, and that's Not It! (Can't you see how smart and practical I am?) What I find bemusing is that the naysayers seem to want to protect territory that isn't theirs to begin with. Since they can look at a webcam and get something, they assume they have gotten all there is to "get"—and why bother trying to understand someone else's project, the motivations behind it, and the training that went into it when you already know all there is to know about it? Pfft.
Art should have some sort of higher meaning. This has perhaps been the most difficult issue I have dealt with in my teaching. A student of mine once complained in a course evaluation that I never discussed texts with an eye to helping students "draw universal conclusions" from the material studied. Well, that's just not what I'm about as an instructor. Why even hold class discussion if I have a predetermined idea of what the text means and I consider it my job to impart that knowledge? If that were the case, wouldn't I just lecture and dispense with the pretext of conversation? I do think I can provide help where it is needed—I feel good about helping provide students with more interpretive tools. However, the ultimate responsibility for interpretation rests with them. If they want to take a "higher meaning" away from it, so be it—but I tend to mistrust universals and get off on plurality and ambiguity.
Some students appreciate the fact that I am "allowing" them to express their own opinions, and others resent the fact that I won't give them all the answers. Some abuse their responsibility by using "freedom of interpretation" to mean "freedom to write it off." I had some interesting reactions from students when we were discussing Brazil. While most students found it interesting, several seemed unable to say anything more interesting that "that sucked." Now, while I tend to like the works I put on my syllabi, I really don't give a shit whether or not my students come away from my class liking Terry Gilliam's work. However, I do give a shit about how they decide whether or not to like it. I don't mind "that sucked" as a starting point, but I refuse to give students permission to monopolize class time with kneejerk reactions and poorly thought-out pronouncements on the quality of a work they haven't attempted to engage critically. I don't like to see it from random people on the Internet, either. I suppose that means that ultimately, I value the act of interpretation over the ultimate interpretations themselves. I'll have to think about that more, though.
Art should be difficult to understand, but I should get it. This is, of course, a catch-22: interpretation should require intelligence, but not more than I have. God forbid anyone should know more than I do about something and express it in a complex way. Art is there to make me feel smarter. Hmm... sarcasm creeping into tone, here. Is it obvious that I have very little tolerance for this kind of attitude? I suppose what I believe is that if you feel you are intelligent and you want to understand something, then you should be willing to do some work.
