What makes art legitimate?

• Does a work of art have value outside its historical and cultural context?
• When is it appropriate to attribute significance to a work of art?
• What have we gained or lost between Renoir and Rothko?

Tonight’s discussion, which included such memorable phrases as “no-nothing boob” and “posters of kittens in bikinis,” opened with a YouTube video of Andy Rooney complaining about works of modern art in public spaces. His proletarian sensibilities were offended by the apparent lack of skill and care evident in these works. The Roundtable, however, generally agreed that craftsmanship is secondary to the meaning of art. After all, how can we know the quantity of effort, both physical and intellectual, an artist has invested in a work? Instead, perhaps, we should value art for its ability to influence our consciousness, communicate what is otherwise difficult to express, and capture social and cultural meaning.

Art, we agreed, is tangential to meaning. The medium is essential to certain forms of expression. Furthermore, unique ideas may emerge from the process of composition. But does art’s meaning depend on intention? In other words, is a work of art only legitimate insofar as the observer’s interpretation is consistent with the artist’s purpose? Joe suggested that the value of art is really democratic. The aggregated preference of individuals, he said, provides the only reliable metric. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and only the beholder.

What, then, should we the beholders consider in our valuation of art? Danie suggested that value is inextricably associated with experience. Its content provokes the observer through reference to the observer’s memories and ideas. The degree to which that provokative message resonates with the observer may provide a standard of judgment. On the other hand, some were uncomfortable with a pure relativist approach; instead, art may be directed toward an objective truth, and its success in expressing that truth is a normative criterion.

One way to avoid both the problems of normative assertion and relativism may be simply to judge art on its own terms—namely, as Joe suggested, to value art based on how well it accomplishes its goal. Of course, the meaning of a work may vary widely depending on context.

The final and most contentious subject of the evening was that of the explication of a work of art. Should a work stand on its own, or should we allow the possibility that external analysis (an artist’s note, an essay, or the like) can legitimately contribute to the work’s artistic meaning? If a work’s representation is verbalized (or even able to be verbalized), is its meaning necessarily diminished? Or can the verbalization provide an essential piece of the artistic puzzle? Or can we in fact consider the verbalization itself part of the piece of art?