While I was performing the maintenance art I felt like I was suppose to have some passion for it but I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything profound, in fact I like the look of aged things and think that the sculpture had more character with its dust and scribbles. When it was dusty, to me, it meant that it was becoming part of the school, as the school aged so did it. It reminded me of a light post outside my middle school. It had hundreds of chewed up pieces of gum stuck to it covering the entire pole, and as gross as it was, it was like a piece of the school that kids added to every year for years.
As for Mierle Laderman Ukeles cleaning the steps and Richard Serra flinging molten lead against the walls, I can maybe consider them both art only because my definition of art is very loose and I consider anything humans create art. By that definition a chair can be art or shoe or a garden and I do believe in that. I don’t really agree that cleaning the steps are really art however because to me its more of an action of admiration or care which doesn’t equal art. I don’t see actions like running, showering or cleaning steps as art unless someone creates something with those actions. Therefore the cleaned steps themselves can be art and the wall of molten lead.
After the discussion of “women’s work is also art” I did not think much differently about art and “women’s work”. I already had pretty firm ideas about it and I didn’t hear anything to change my ideas or something particularly new about the subjects. As a women and as an artist I have two completely different views for both. “Women’s work” or taking care of a home, cooking, and raising children aren’t necessarily art just because they are beautiful concepts or the feelings evoked by them. To me, Beauty doesn’t equal art and nor does emotions equal art, although they are both very commonly associated with art. An example is like the Ocean, its beautiful and can provoke countless feelings but I don’t consider it art really because art is not a synonym for beauty or profoundness, if there is a synonym it would be creation, by my definition. This is also why I think no one can agree on a definition of art because to many people get art confused with beauty or feelings or even actions when to me they are all completely different and just happen to intact with one another a lot.
Art is not application or a canon of beauty but what what the instinct and brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a women we don’t start measuring her limbs.
Pablo Picasso
Now lastly, the lady cleaning Trumps star. Putting my views of the President aside I do think her action portrays very heavy emotions but, again this isn’t art to me. I don’t know if I would clean a particular star. If I were it would have to be of someone who had died and as a way of honoring them. Similar to how someone might clean a grave stone.
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