Hi, everybody.
Today, we are doing Art Assignment Book Club.
And we're discussing Dave Hickey's "Air Guitar."
Yeah.
I wanted to start by talking about this quote from the book
that I really loved.
Hickey talks about communities of desire.
They're like communities that are
built around shared passions, shared loves, instead
of demographics or age or sex or race or whatever.
I definitely think it's important to emphasize
that this book was written and published in 1997,
because he says that communities of desire
weren't really embraced at the time.
But I think they are now.
Oh, my gosh, fan culture?
We've had this argument for many years--
Yeah.
About whether love and enthusiasm
and unironic enthusiasm is OK.
Right.
Or if you have to be kind of intellectually
cold and rigorous when you're looking at a work of art.
OK.
So I remember when we were in Amsterdam--
Yes.
A number of years ago, and we went
to the newly opened public library, the central library.
Amazing.
SARAH GREEN: And so we were just riding the escalator.
And John was completely geeking out,
thinking it was the most amazing thing.
JOHN GREEN: I was almost in tears.
SARAH GREEN: And it was fine.
No, to quote Sarah directly, it's a library.
I was like, can you believe the immense amazingness
of this library?
And she was like, yeah, it's a library.
But you weren't saying why it was amazing.
You were just like, oh, cool.
But that was my only reaction.
That was what it did to me.
That is what Dave Hickey says in this book that
is extremely important.
It's not about what art is.
It's about what art does.
Yes.
Like there's that Hickey essay where he's talking about jazz
and his dad playing jazz with a bunch of other people.
Right.
And how it's what the music does to them,
the way that brings them together that's the magic,
that's what's good and interesting about it.
And he connects it with the artwork of Norman Rockwell.
JOHN GREEN: Right.
SARAH GREEN: Which is art that is really sort of every day.
It's on the cover of "Life Magazine," of course.
JOHN GREEN: Right.
Super popular.
SARAH GREEN: It's not high art.
You think of Norman Rockwell, and you think
of the perfect family scene.
But then, if you really think about it,
there's all sorts of weird strife
that's within the pictures.
JOHN GREEN: Yeah.
SARAH GREEN: But it's that strife that's normal.
JOHN GREEN: Yeah.
I really like that about sort of rectifying art
that everybody likes.
There's kind of the assumption in the more academic art world
that if everybody likes it, there must
be something wrong with it.
Let's talk about some of the work
in our own experience that has done something to us.
I'll start with the Amsterdam library.
OK.
So I think what I couldn't explain to you
at the time was the whole idea that appeals
to me about a library is that this
is a place where everyone can go and have access to knowledge.
Sure.
This is a place that is truly democratic,
that represents the best ideals of equal opportunity.
Yeah.
And the Amsterdam library, because it is so open,
it feels welcome.
And there's all those comfortable couches
and everything.
It feels like a place for everyone.
There's food.
There are computers.
There are books.
It feels democratic in its architecture,
but also in what it does.
And that's what made me love it so much.
Growing up in Alabama, I got to see
the artwork of Lonnie Holley, who went
by the moniker the Sand Man.
And he would make these amazing sculptures out
of trash and rusty old metal.
And he would create these amazing worlds.
But it was very welcoming.
It was opening.
And at the time, I didn't know the whole history
of appropriation in art and artists
doing this historically.
But it was so wonderful, and it was such a great entree
into that world.
One thing I love about "Air Guitar"
is that it doesn't draw the line between high culture
and low culture.
Right.
It doesn't pretend that this is art and that isn't.
I have to say, I know that we talk almost always
about contemporary art on this show.
But I also feel that way about "Starry, Starry Night,"
the Vincent Van Gogh painting.
SARAH GREEN: You mean "Starry Night?"
"Starry Night."
Just one.
Just one "starry."
Singular "starry."
It does something to me, right?
Yeah.
It has a transformative effect on me, seeing it.
And I don't know the extent to which it's
because I know it's a famous painting,
or if it's van Gogh's brushstrokes, or what it is.
But it works.
For me, I get really engaged in art
when it does something I'm not expecting it to do.
I do think a lot of people expect art to be beautiful
or to be optically interesting.
For me, I think it's more interesting
when it's disruptive.
So when I go into an installation--
But Van Gogh was disruptive.
Sure he was.
Yeah.
But that was a long time ago.
I still think-- I still feel disrupted by Van Gogh.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
I still look at that painting and I still
feel sort of altered.
I still feel like I'm being challenged somehow.
Another thing I wanted to talk about-- there's
a great moment in that Norman Rockwell essay
where Hickey's talking about populist art.
And he says that art that is for the people must
be accepting and forgiving.
This is art doing something to us-- accepting and forgiving
us.
That is such a great idea.
Yeah.
It reminds me of this book I read once
by WJT Mitchell that's called "What do Pictures Want?"
And it's such a great foil for thinking about things.
To look at a piece of art and to say, what does it want?
What does it want from me?
And to think about what it's doing to you,
whether it's making you angry or repulsing you.
Well, I think a lot of art, contemporary art,
isn't accepting and forgiving.
And I think that's a lot of what people react to so strongly.
I just saw this Old Navy commercial
starring Amy Poehler in which there's contemporary art that
isn't really art.
And Amy Poehler calls out that it isn't really art.
The real art is Old Navy Jeans, which
are available for just $19 at your local Old Navy store.
And as I was watching that, I was thinking, you know what?
People really are thinking.
They feel like there's something dishonest
about this whole pseudo intellectual relationship
with art, because they feel like it pushes them to the outside.
It makes me feel like art isn't for me, because it
isn't accepting me.
It isn't welcoming me.
Right.
It isn't forgiving me.
It's this cold, distant thing.
And I do think that art, populist art at least,
fails when it is that.
Well, you can think about an artist like Jeff Koons.
His work uses forms and objects from our everyday world,
like a blow-up bunny.
Is that more welcoming?
Is that a more populist art?
JOHN GREEN: I don't know that it's ultimately more welcoming.
In fact, I think Jeff Koons is a really good example of this,
because from Bubbles, the Michael Jackson
monkey to the balloon animals, at times,
I feel like he's almost making fun of me
as a regular American who actually kind of likes Bubbles,
Michael Jackson's chimp.
So I can't help but feel that we didn't really discuss
the book that much, John.
No, but we talked about it, like how
we felt about the book.
And hopefully, it'll be the beginning of the conversation.
So please share with us your takeaways
from "Air Guitar" by David Hickey.
And thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you in comments.
Yes.
And don't forget to keep doing art assignments.
Yeah.
They're so amazing.
So good.
Thank you.