Whitney Drake

What is art? That’s a question that comes up every so often in regards to modern art installations. For those unfamiliar, installations are typically more than a show at a gallery. Usually it’s a showing by a single artist with an over-all cohesive theme that’s been put together specifically for that specific space. At the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, there’s currently an installation by Marina Abramović entitled Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present where Ms. Abramović sits at a table where guests may sit across from her, while models (some nude, some clothed) pose around her. While this is hardly controversial, it’s an excellent example of an art installation.

When I was in high school, I spent much of my time at The Performance Studio, a dance studio with space for a gallery. I took part in several performance art pieces that combined the spoken word and dance, and got to see quite a few installations go into the gallery. Some were simple- with sculptures and paintings of the abstract. Some were a little unsettling (the one with headless children’s dolls and started girls’ dresses that had been painted black come to mind). But it was all art.

Many things have been accepted as art. Buildings are art. Music is art. Writing is art. Movies, naturally, are art. Roger Ebert, maintains that video games are not art. Not only that, he says they can never be art. The linked article is interesting, but inherently flawed. As Roger Ebert is not a gamer, he is critiquing a TED talk by Kellee Santiago to support his belief. Having not seen the discussion, I cannot vouch for her arguments, however, seeing what games she mentioned- I can see why she might not have won him over.

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Originally published at The Fabulous Whitney Drake. You can comment here or there.