A is for Art part I: “I think we’re just going to have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that”

Theatrical poster for The Royal Tenenbaums

The moving picture has been around for over 100 years, and has been a part of the pop consciousness for almost as long. From the earliest days of nickelodeons, movies have been part of mass entertainment.

The earliest American film that can really be considered a work of art is most likely D.W. Griffith‘s Birth of a Nation. There are several other works produced during the first five decades of filmmaking, some of them (such as Leni Riefenstahl‘s Triumph of the Will) just as incendiary as Griffith’s film.

There are of course, more: Chaplin‘s The Great Dictator, Ford‘s Stagecoach, Lean‘s Brief Encounter, and Kurosawa‘s Rashômon, among others.

Even with all these avowed classic films, the medium was essentially scoffed at; the only awards came from the industry itself, and films were not critiqued for their merit so much as they were criticized for their content.

That all changed thanks to Cahiers du cinéma. Founded in 1951, this magazine fundamentally altered the way that film was viewed. For the first time, criticism of film became about the form as much as about the content. Essentially, films came to be viewed as objects as well as stories, similar to the fine arts.

The magazine is also responsible for advancing the auteur theory. The short version of the theory is that directors are the ones who put their personal stamp on the film, and because of it, nearly every classic film was reevaluated and directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Lean were recognized for the quality of their oeuvre. This theory still persists today; modern filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodóvar, and the Coen Brothers are considered auteurs.

Of course, Cahiers du cinéma is also responsible for introducing a bunch of fancy French words into the language of film so that obnoxious film students could let the entire world know how pretentious they are, so it wasn’t a total triumph.

Now, of course, only the stodgiest denier of reality will argue that at least some film is not Art. For over half a century now, the film medium has been seen as an arena of skilled craftsmen. Without the radical reinvention of film criticism engineered by Cahiers du cinéma, however, film’s ascendence to capital-A Art may never have happened.

A Is For Art, I Is For Introduction

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa

When we think about art, the first thing that generally springs to mind are the masterworks of the Renaissance period, when men such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles defined the visual arts for the next five centuries and counting. Painting, sculpture, and the other forms practiced by these masters had a long history even before their time, however, and have helped define capital-A Art since antiquity.

Music predates written language by several millenia. It has been used as a form of communication, and has over thousands of years and endless variations come to be viewed as the premier blending of entertainment and art through the powerful works of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and many others whom they influenced. Music in some form or other has equaled Art for centuries.

The modern idea of the novel has been around since the eighteenth century, when short fiction and epic romance became intertwined. For nearly its entire history (and in spite of pop novels, which continue to clog best-seller lists even now) the modern novel has been considered literature and, consequently, Art.

Everyone of any education thinks that they are able to define that capital-A Art. “I know it when I see it,” they say; so said Justice Potter Stewart about pornography.

But what about the pop arts? Is it possible for popular culture to transcend its vulgar origins and become Art? Of course it is.

Do What You Want If It Takes Your Mind

When I was in middle school (which, for me, ran from sixth to eighth grade), every sixth grader was required to take an “exploratory” class as an elective. Which, you know, required elective. Very funny, right?

Anyway: this exploratory class covered the four main classes that could be taken as electives as a seventh- and eighth-grader. You had one quarter each in basic (not BASIC) computer programming, tech ed (shop class), art, and home ec. As far as such things go, this was a pretty effective way of exposing kids to the choices available to them.

I learned several things from the exploratory section. I learned that sewing is pretty awesome (which I then promptly forgot for 13 years). I learned that (obviously) shop class is awesome, if for no other reason than you’re dealing with fucking METAL. Also, wood. I didn’t learn that art is pretty awesome, because I already knew that. And I learned that computer programming is not really my thing, to the eternal shame of my bank account balance.

After that exploratory section, I chose to take tech ed for both seventh and eighth grade. In retrospect, this was a monumentally poor decision, and I’ll tell you why:

When I was a pretty small kid, I was not a bad artist. I could draw well and had a surprisingly strong grasp of anatomy for someone so young (thanks, comic books!). However, I didn’t really focus on it, and didn’t get better. By the time I was in fourth grade, I was no longer the acknowledged best artist in the class, not even by myself. In retrospect, it’s possible to read a lot into my reaction, but it was impossible to recognize then just how microcosmic my deciding not to worry about art any more in fact was vis-à-vis.

In sixth grade, my particular rotation of the exploratory sections placed me in art for the third quarter. Each quarter was tasked with drawing a holiday-themed piece, and our holiday just happened to be Valentine’s Day. While I hadn’t grown much as an artist, my skills certainly hadn’t deteriorated, and when I showed my angel-winged, t-shirt and jeans-clad version of Cupid to my teacher, she looked at me and stated, in no uncertain terms, “You should definitely take art next year.”

Now, I’m almost 26 and considering going to school for illustration or graphic design. I’m the biggest sucker in the world for a well-done graphic image. I even became a writer because I wanted to script movies, a way of creating a visual art using a skill that I had actually worked on and improved. Obviously, I should have taken two more years of art in middle school and moved on to more advanced arts in high school. But I didn’t. Instead, I took tech ed both years, including one year as the teacher’s assistant, which means the only thing I learned that second year was how to cut a metal tube to length to help my friend make a pipe for smoking… tobacco. I then proceeded to take four years of gym in high school, even though only two years are required and your average Special Olympian is more athletic than I am. I did take two more years of art in high school, and I still wasn’t bad… but I wasn’t as good as I should have been, either, and I’ve barely touched a pencil since then.

I chose not to do art (or home ec, something else that would have been more functional for me) because of some possibly (read: probably) non-existent social stigma. I went against my own nature and skills because I thought other people would make fun of me for doing what I wanted to do.

This is the reason that children need guidance. I was still too stupid to live when I was 19; who the hell allowed me to make decisions that affected my life so adversely when I was 11?

There’s a reason that every rebellious teenager who says they’re not going to treat their kids “like that” when they are parents grows up and changes their mind: they realize that kids are dumb.