that you`re gonna spend the whole day postless, life comes along and offers a hand. Or should I say a hoove.

We debated this just a few days ago. What exactly is art? And how can you tell what art is?

Personally, my point of view is that you can only judge art for the past. There is no art in presence and the future. Everything that is nowadays being labeled as art and artistic is usually just stupid, silly or plain dumb.

The whole idea of an art to me looks more and more like the story of the boy who cried wolf. Or the german variation of the emperor`s new clothes. On one side you have people who do…erm…well…stuff. Like putting a cow on a skyscraper. Or cutting themselves and then walking around with the blood gushing out. Or trying to create a program that will monitor every site on the internet written in slovene language (oh yes, we had those too). And on the other side you have loads of “good” stuff like Bach, Monet and Gone with the wind. The difference? Time. That`s all there is to it.

Art is something that tells the prodigy something of an era that is already gone. Art is not for “here and now”. It`s for the “back then and there”. It`s almost like wine. The older it gets, the better it is.

Art begins with the label “ART”. That label is everything. Basically, you can stick it onto everything and everybody, from a dead baby you found in a trashcan to a painting you`ve been creating for several years. With a sticker, it becomes art. Without it, it`s just dead tissue or some paints on a canvas.

The label “ART” is not defined, not even in the broadest of definition, since nobody wants to be the first person who cries wolf. Who points out that some of the things that are going for “artistic” are mere “bullshit”. The opinion that something is “bullshit” is a lesser one compared to the one that says something is “art”. In fact, claiming that something is art requires no further justification, cause, c`mon…it`s art! What more do you want me to say? While on the other hand, calling something a piece of crap requires lengthy justification and even then some people would just flat out ignore everything you just said and go on praising the bullshit as art.

The problem with the late 20th and the early 21th century is that the tools for “making art” have become so easy-to-use and so easy-to-obtain that almost everybody thinks that he/she is an artist. And that he/she is making art. Computers, digital cameras, video machines, sound recording devices… all the equipment needed to “make art” is available and you don`t have to be a billionaire to get it. People have more free time, since everything is highly automatized and so they have more time to think about their next “art” piece. Here is an example. The way this stuff worked in the past was that the important part of being an artist (since it was rarely a high-paying job) was to have a mentor or a sugar daddy who helped you along with your projects and materials needed to make it run. Now, all you need is somebody willing enough to kidnap a cow.

The label is actually hurting itself most. A level of quality and consistency must be maintained, otherwise the word/label becomes too broad and too vague and the point of it gets lost. Imagine calling everybody “darling”. What`s the point of that word if in the past it signified someone who was DEAR to you?

Most people think of art as something that cannot be graded, criticised or compared. That art is something so out of this world that we can only observe it. I often found it so funny when we were interpreting poems and the eternal question “What was the artist`s point in this one?” echoed in the classroom. Rationalizing art is one of the dumbest thing to do.

The point everybody is missing is that at one point the things we call ART had a rational component. They were there for a reason. They served a purpose. Even when the purpose was to get money out of the rich fucks who wanted a painting in their living rooms. Nowadays, art rarely serves even the most balant excuse of milking a cash cow. And artists are even proud of that. That…non-utilitatrism. That this art piece does not serve a thing in the world. Only itself.

And so they put cows on roofs.