What Is Art? Part 2
5. 10. 2013 // Stewart Home // Kategorie Randnotizen 2013
Roger L. Taylor in his 1978 book Art, An Enemy of the People came up with an excellent answer to the question: ‘what is art?’ Taylor argued that art was whatever those in positions of cultural power said was art. In 2004 I did an interview with Taylor about how his positions on art have evolved since 1979. You can read that here! Taylor’s book is way more effective at questioning ‘the meaning and legitimacy of every form of art production’ than the 1978 video piece by Rasa Todosijevic from which the current show at the Kunstlerhaus in Graz takes its title! While Todosijevic is interpreted by the Kunstlerhaus curators as making the case ‘for artists to take an even more active role in art discourse’, Taylor demonstrates the necessity of going beyond art discourse altogether so that we can actually understand what art is and what it might become if freed from cultural elitism!
UK and Brazilian (translated into Portuguese) editions of Roger Taylor’s book Art, An Enemy of the People. A very cheap English language Kindle edition of the book is available from Amazon here.