We all know what I’m referring to. It’s the notorious line that follows the usually snide interjection – “that’s art?!” What I want to propose is that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Sure, you can also paint a canvas red. But have you?

The first and main thing to consider is this: sometimes skill is essentially irrelevant. I recall when a classmate (sorry, I don’t remember exactly who it was) once remarked “What I want to know is whether those artists who draw scribbles are also capable of drawing a technical work because then, I’ll think they’re actually artists.” I thought that was a fair statement, but then I started to think – Are artistic talent and artistic skill one and the same? Sure, there is a technicality to art. You need perspective (as the “rudimentary” Islamic art we saw the other day suggests), and a technique, and a specific kind of brush stroke, etc. etc. But a person who has mastered all these things isn’t necessarily an artist any more than he is a skillful brush handler with a good eye. I think that to be an artist you have to almost transcend all the empirical things and grasp something a bit more abstract – what I call artistic talent. You need a vision, a certain kind of creativity, a different way of looking at the world. To me, that’s what makes an artist.

If I see a pink canvas with a single white line down the middle, I’m not about to doubt the validity of the artist who produced it on the basis of it being “too easy” and that “anyone can do it.” In fact, I actually dislike that claim. If “anyone” can do it, then why haven’t they? Why was it only this one artist? What’s more, how do you know that what you are looking at is not the product of years of hard work? The best example of this that I can think of is Yves Klein’s IKB. IKB, or International Klein Blue, is the name of a painting by Klein. At first glance, it’s only a deep blue canvas, but it’s really so much more than that. IKB is actually a color that Klein, together with some chemists, developed. That’s right – that blue on the canvas was basically invented by Klein. He was looking for a color that would best express the concepts he wanted to convey through his art. When he couldn’t find one, he just made one. We have always known that sometimes, there is more than meets the eye. One of the best places to apply that concept is in the art world.

Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie"

Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie” is another example. It’s certainly a dazzling canvas, but if you look at it closely, it’s just a bunch of colorful squares. “I can do that too,” right? Maybe. But again, that’s not all there is to art. Mondrian’s genius lies in the title of his work, really. Knowing the title and looking at the work, the squares take on a whole new meaning. Something basic suddenly transforms into something ingenious. The grid of NYC streets, the bluesy boogie woogie  – it’s all there in those squares. So yes, you can draw squares too, but can your squares tell a story? Probably not.

There might be some of you who can argue that if you drew a bunch of random circles and called it something like “The Meaning of Life,” people would think that it’s an ingenious work of art too. But that would be accusing the art community of being opaque and capricious, which it isn’t (at least for most of the time). It is also likely insulting to those artists who do actually consider every minor etch in their work. To them, it’s mockery in its basest form. To be an artist requires that you take creative expression seriously. You cannot be flippant about what you are producing, even if what you are producing is satirical in nature. Artistry, when all’s said and done, is serious business.

(I acknowledge that I have neglected to mention the phenomenon of the ready-made, but that is because I think it’s an entirely different story altogether that I did not want to get into.)