Alain de Botton, purveyor of the idea that art museums are not doing enough to help us solve problems like envying our friends and feeling the dismay of the digital age, will be writing new wall labels for museums around the world. This, he believes, will not only help humans to be happier, it will give art a purpose, make it useful and intimate again, like music or theater has remained, he believes. Art has become macho, distant, tough-guy, almost scientific in its coldness.
Art is for helping you figure out how to be a person, de Botton says. Joshua Rothman of The New Yorker writes:
Museumgoers in Amsterdam, Melbourne, and Toronto will soon be able to judge for themselves. For his part, as we walked out onto the sidewalk, de Botton said that he thinks art is always part of some enterprise or another. To focus on an artwork in itself, and not on the project of which it was a part, is to commit an error. âThe Chardin still-life is a political manifesto on behalf of the dignity of ordinary life,â he said. âSomeone who really loves Chardin tries to make life possible in a Chardin-esque way. The Lippi painting is an argument about tenderness. Donât just focus on the painting; be kinder to your kids!â
He paused, thinking about how best to express himself. âWhat are you supposed to do if you love art?â he asked. âDo you become a scholar of art? Do you become an art critic? Do you write about art? Our answer is that one should try to take the values that one admires in works of art and enact them, and make them more vivid in the world. Itâs too easy to âlove art,â and to not love the things that art actually loves. But the point is to try and love the things that the artists we love loved. Donât just love the artist,â he said. âDonât just love the work they produced. Love what they loved.â Inside the museum, these ideas had seemed contentious. Outside, on Seventieth Streetâwhere trees waved in the breeze, and clouds glowed behind themâthey seemed less so.
I'm with Rothman on thisâRothman is both dubious and supportive. In some ways, de Botton's ideas seem little more than those of a 19th-century sentimental education, the aesthetics-as-ethics school of thinking about what art is for.
Let's go through the exercise of trying to simply figure out what the artists you love, love. Take this year's Stranger Genius Winner in Art, Rodrigo Valenzuela. If we want to love what he loves, then what do we love? I'll return to what I wrote about him during this year's Genius season (the nomination profile, followed by the he-won profile). To break it down to its most rudimentary bits: He loves the women artists of this city. He loves people helping each other. He loves paying critical attention to the deceits of Hollywood products. He believes there is beauty in repetitive labor.
While completely awkward, spelling it out like this may not be such a bad idea. Isn't it what we do anyway? And this is not the same as seeking out artists because of the things that they love, but of following your irrational love of an artist to its rational ends: identifying some of the reasons, the real and concrete reasons, why you love them.
At the same time, what about the art you don't love? Is there nothing in that art for you? Should you discount it entirely?
Also, what if you love art that stands for horrible things? Or or orâwhat if you love art that stands for standing for nothing?
First world problems, man.