We continue this series of blogs revolving around the question: “What makes something art?” with a small dissection of what the phenomenon of art actually is. And as we learned in the previous one, it all comes down to these three: the Artist, the Artwork and the Viewer.

One could say that without anyone to make art, there would be no art at all; without anything to be art, there would be no-one to be able to look at it and experience it; and without anyone to experience art, there probably would be no-one there to make it in the first place. But is this devilish cycle really what is going on, or is there a deeper, less pleasant reality?

Artists like El Grecko, Matisse, Andy Warhol, Duchamp and Allan Kaprow have been reinventing this wheel for centuries; from distortion of formal norms of colour and shape, alterations to the understanding of the human body, making banal things like urinals into art, pushing morality and ethics further, even making pure copies of non-artistic objects and exhibiting them as art. And then there is of my favourites — the happening. Making whatever into a temporal happening of artistic expression.

I presented the defence of my master thesis as a kind of happening; for me it was a one-time chance to make the presentation of my work an artwork in itself  — I’ll explain!

My thesis was titled “Defining the concept of art” and I decided to incorporate all three building blocks that make up art and create an environment where they could communicate with each other. The presentation of my work seemed like the perfect occasion.

Such presentations usually take place in an atelier at the Academy. They go on for about two hours and during that time 5-6 professors/judges are present and evaluate every aspect of ones work; from the quality of the execution, the chosen theme, the smoothness and factual validity of the presentation to just how confident one is able to speak to an audience of ones “peers” while hiding the nervousness and panic that such an cluster of judging artists and philosophers can produce!

Well, to make it short and sweet, I made the presentation into an exhibition, invited friends and family to watch the happening that was my MA thesis. Filmed the whole thing to be archived and live-streamed it on screens as part of the presentation/happening. 

The judges and I were put into the position of the artwork, and the guests into the position of the viewer or spectator (we art folk like to keep things fancy, right). All in all it was great, apart from when the cameras stopped working and  most of the people invited had to either work or were sick, so the audience was sparse to say the least!

After the presentation I also had a nice half hour long quarrel with the judges who had absolutely no idea of what I would be presenting, expecting the usual exhibition of paintings and sculptures and a 10 min conversation about colour theory and getting some youngster rambling on about how modernism (apparently a holy time for Slovenian academics) was wrong about a myriad of theoretical explanations of art.

I did pass though.

I wanted to use this example as a segue way into the next topic — the spectator. Because I deem art to be fully and absolutely defined only by the person who is experiencing it. Not the work of art and not the artist, but the viewer decides. And though what I did as part of my thesis could be interpreted as a conceptual joke (it was), the theory behind the joke is as true as the law of gravity.

Those few people that came to my presentation and attended as spectators, having been given short booklets to guide them through the experience, became the audience of a happening. And the loose protocols of what an art major’s final defence can and should look like made for the perfect occasion to turn the whole thing upside down and instead of making an exhibition for the jury, I made the jury into the exhibition to be enjoyed by my friends.