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Why Difficult Art Is Important ABOUT BANANGO

BY: RACHEL HYMAN BANANGO STREET: A LITERARY JOURNAL

I’ve been thinking a lot about art and life and what art can do and should do and all I have to talk about these ARCHIVES
things is a single introductory art history class (20th Century Art) under my belt and my own observations
[and these two things are what are bringing up these thoughts, in large part] which may lead to something SUBMISSIONS
very dilettantish or amateurish but this is the only way I know how to talk about these things, is on my blog
plus through a quasi-academic lens, and at least I can use SAT-level vocabulary to talk about how I can’t talk
about things…right?

So. Much of my tangled thinking has been sparked by two texts we read in my art history class. One of them
I attempted to give a quick sketch of in my last post (Modern Art, Avant-Garde, and Literature): Viktor
Shklovsky’s “Art as Technique,” [PDF] which talks about how art should require of spectators a prolonged
concentration. In Shklovsky’s view, art should defamiliarize us to what’s around us and make us look at it
anew, thereby revitalizing our consciousness and apprehension of the world around us–not just of art. The
content of the art is almost beside the point, for Shklovsky–the act of perception is an aesthetic end in itself.
AD Jameson over at HTMLGIANT has been riding the Shklovsky train for awhile and productively applies
his theories to contemporary art and literature in particular; he can give a more nuanced and better summary
of Shklovsky than I can.

***

To Shklovsky I would yoke Clement Greenberg’s landmark 1961 essay, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” which Banango Lit
you should really read in full and spend some good time thinking about instead of just proceeding on to me
flattening it into a few sentences, but so Greenberg basically posits a distinction between two kinds of art: Banango is a literary blog that talks about exciting literature.
avant-garde, which is the only genuine art, and the mechanistically produced kitsch which is geared towards We like to read stuff. We are also Banango Street, a literary
a mass audience. Avant-garde art is necessarily difficult and requires extended contemplation. Kitsch, argues journal. You can email us at banangolit (at) gmail (dot) com
the neo-Marxist Greenberg, is a pernicious tool used by the masters of society to keep the masses dumb and if you would like to send us stuff to look at, or you can send
happy. In kitsch art, “there is no discontinuity between art and life,” and this art is easy to extract meanings a link in our Ask box. We will try to look at it but we have
from and even “heightens reality and makes it dramatic, makes it "ready for the spectator’s unreflective learned to avoid making too many promises.
enjoyment.”
If you have questions that you would like answered in our
So kitsch, the art of mass culture, would be, like, a blockbuster movie like Transformers, or Terminator 2, if monthly mailbag, email us at the above email address as
you’re David Foster Wallace. Writing in 1998, DFW (and you thought you could escape one of my posts well.
without a mention of DFW) talks about how the economies of film investment hamstring big-budget-special-
effects movies like Terminator 2 into being brought down to the formulaic, insipid level of mass-culture pre- Also, email us if you feel like you would like to be a
digested pap exactly like Greenberg is talking about, to ensure that they bring a large enough return on contributor for Banango. We would like that also.
investment. And whether or not you’re aligned with him politically, this fits right in with Greenberg’s
assertion that kitsch is closely allied to the capitalist mechanism. Banango Writers
In contrast, avant-garde art, so much of which is abstract, is “about” art itself, seems detached from reality Justin Carter
and from society and requires not just contemplation about the art itself, but about the initial impressions that Rachel Hyman
the art leaves on us. The Greenberg essay begs the question, among many others–can you have an avant- Matt Margo
garde, meaningful, genuine art for the masses, or is that pure utopia? Is it even possible to reconcile good art Wallace Barker
with mass appeal?
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It’s not clear, but my major takeaway from “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” was that Greenberg is advocating for
difficulty as a fundamental value of art, genuine and good art. And this is an idea I’ve struggled with,
because the difficulty seems like it should be external to artistic merit, no? Just like the amount of effort you
S EA RCH PO ST S
put in, doesn’t necessarily guarantee good art, and something that appears like it was easy to make
(regardless of whether or not it was) doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad?

This essay also validated the critical perspective that is so crucial to Banango Lit (about which I actually
wrote an essay for a job application), and that has been a source of contention within the alt lit community,
not so much from Banango in particular but just regarding the role of criticism within our circles.

To reiterate: art that makes you think about the work itself, about the processes around looking at art (such as
this post addresses), is good. And after studying modern art, reading these things, I have a more expansive
view of what “counts” as art and of what art that may seem obtuse or facile can do, if we give it due
diligence, which is to reinvigorate the way that we come to art and to the world around us. And in the final
analysis, this isn’t so different from something like Banango Street’s mission statement, which tells would-be
submitters to “remind us what it is to be human.” I have a broader idea of how that might be possible now.

Just so I’m covering all my bases–I’m aware that Greenberg is talking about visual art, whereas Shklovsky
was a literary theorist, and the article I’m about to discuss brings in opera, and maybe we come to these
different media with different expectations and come away with different things. But for the sake of making
this essay legible, I’m drawing a big circle and labeling it Art and layering all these theories over everything
that’s inside.

***

And but so we’re not done just yet. In the middle of where Shklovsky and Greenberg meet, I’m going to drop
this recent New Yorker article by Giles Harvey, “Notes on Being Busy,” which is so, so utterly apposite to
the discussion. (And here’s a bit of irony or whatever for you–Greenberg specifically singles out the New
Yorker as “fundamentally high-class kitsch for the luxury trade” that “converts and waters down a great deal
of avant-garde material for its own uses.” That’s right–the New Yorker, with its ridiculously pretentious use
of the diaresis, e.g. “naïve,” is kitsch. I remain unconvinced.) Shklovsky (writing in 1917) and Greenberg
(writing in 1939) are talking about art that requires protracted contemplation. I don’t need to link to any
articles about the extraordinary demands on our attention in this modern technologically advanced era and
the attendant decline in focus which has been widely bemoaned and so on…you’ve read these things. This
Harvey article is certainly in that vein, but less of a polemic. It quotes Geoff Dyer, who recently released a
book, Zona, that uses Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker” as the nucleus for a series of discourses on Dyer’s own life:
 At first there can be a friction between our expectations of time and Tarkovsky-time and this friction is
increasing in the twenty-first century as we move further and further away from Tarkovsky-time
towards moron-time in which nothing can last—and no one can concentrate on anything—for longer
than about two seconds.

Enter Greenberg: moron-time is what’s required for kitsch art; genuine, avant-garde, art calls for an extended
Tarkovsky-time that we’re losing our grip on. The article goes on, discussing how, with all the various
distractions that are constantly buzzing around in our minds, art that is easy to consume becomes more
appealing:

Why read a long novel when you can read a short one? Why read a short novel when you can watch a
movie? Why watch a movie when you can watch a TV show? Why watch a TV when you catch a
minute-long video of a kitten and a puppy cuddling on YouTube? As soon as we start to think of art
simply as something to be consumed, discarded, and replaced, we rob it of one of its greatest powers:
its capacity to free us from the grip of easier but shallower pleasures.

And again, echoes of Greenberg’s voice here: kitsch is easy and shallow and digestible. True art is difficult
and asks a lot of us, but as Harvey says, “the payback is handsome,” describing how the work of poet John
Ashbery has suffused his consciousness and energized his perception of the world around him. Harvey
writes, “Hardly a day goes by in which I don’t overhear a bit of conversation (recently, on the subway: “In
terms of winter, this is pretty scary”) or read something on a billboard or the side of a bus that doesn’t sound
like it comes from, or belongs in, an Ashbery poem.” Here’s Shklovsky: art changes the way we look at the
world, makes us look more closely and carefully. And I’ve found that the art that means the most to me has a
vise grip on my mind (okay, really on my heart): certain lines from poems and songs that basically become
part of me, are the truest things I know, profoundly affect the way that I orient myself to what’s around me.