All man-made objects are more or less conventional. When we first set out to create a thing, many of our
decisions are already made for us. If we wish to make a feature film, the
format is pretty much already decided for us. In terms of content, we’re most
likely going to present a narrative in which characters interact through
dialogue, facial expression, and body language; we may cut between certain
scenes for dramatic effect; we may present montages of activity to show the
passage of time or the development of a relationship; we may introduce
secondary characters; and ideally there should be a conflict that gets
resolved. These are some of the conventions of the feature film. Even if we introduce
certain unconventional elements in
the hope of setting our film apart from others of its kind, we must
nevertheless work largely within the conventions of the feature film, otherwise
our work simply will not be recognized as a feature film.
Take the 1994 film Pulp
Fiction. This was regarded as a relatively unconventional film, with its non-linear
narrative, harsh lighting, fragmented title sequence and self-referential characters.
And yet it was filmed in Hollywood with recognizable actors, shot on film, edited
to a standard length, distributed to theaters and is altogether recognizable as
a feature film.
Another way of articulating this concept is to say that all
man-made objects belong to various series.
Pulp Fiction belongs to the series of
feature films; another example from this series is Citizen Kane. Pulp Fiction belongs
to the series of movies about gangsters; another film in this series is White Heat. Pulp Fiction belongs to the series of gangster movies that glamorize
the main characters even as they are depicted committing horrible acts of
violence; another movie in this series is Bonnie
and Clyde. Pulp Fiction belongs
to the series of movies containing a MacGuffin, a series which would include
any number of Alfred Hitchcock films. Pulp
Fiction is a buddy movie, in the same series as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Pulp Fiction belongs to the series of, well, pulp fiction, a series
exemplified by writers like Dashiell Hammett and Elmore Leonard. And Pulp
Fiction belongs to the series of films in which the main characters make frequent
reference to elements of popular culture. This was another of the
unconventional aspects of Pulp Fiction
and can be seen as having initiated a new series, one which would seem to include pretty
much every Hollywood movie from Get
Shorty to Men in Black III (which
I haven’t seen).
The purpose of such an exercise is to place an object in its
historical context. This exercise is also employed in the practice of authentication.
Say I come across something at a yard sale that looks like a late medieval
altarpiece and I want to know whether it’s worth a hundred million dollars or
not. I’m going to try to determine what series it belongs to. It obviously
belongs to most of the series associated with late medieval altarpieces,
otherwise I wouldn’t have entertained the notion of its being such an
artifact. But when I look closer I find that it does not belong to the series
of objects made of wood, and it does not belong to the series of images painted
in tempera with gold leaf. It belongs to the series of objects made of
pressboard and painted in acrylic, neither of which existed in the Middle Ages.
We have a tendency to think of painting, sculpture, printmaking
and the like as "art" because these were for so long the dominant formats. Before
the twentieth century, these were the formats that constituted the broad
series of "art," and we continue to place contemporary examples of these
formats into this series. The painting of former president George W. Bush that
was recently unveiled at the White House belongs to the series of paintings
produced in oil on canvas. Another example from this series would be Rigaud’s
iconic portrait of Louis XIV. Of course, these paintings also belong to the series of state portraits. But the Bush portrait does not belong to another important series that the Rigaud portrait
does belong to, namely state
portraits produced in the dominant format of a given period in history. A
contemporary example from this series would be a campaign video, something we
are not typically inclined to call "art." (And while a campaign ad would be
inappropriate for a White House portrait, it is possible to imagine future state portraits being presented in the video format.)
Most of the objects that we learn about in "art" history belong to the
series of things found in museums, and so again we tend to believe that only
things resembling those found in museums are "art." But none of these objects
was initially intended to be viewed in a museum. Each was created for a
specific function, usually in the context of a highly developed social space. Raphael’s
School of Athens and related frescoes
were not intended simply as decorations on the walls of the pope’s library. They
were expressly conceived to present a specific ideology, and they were produced
using the conventional technique of the day (linear perspective). Another object
belonging to this series is The Social
Network. This artifact obviously uses the conventional technique of our
day (film); each of these techniques, incidentally, belongs to the series of
technological advances based on the science of optics.
The persistent objection to the inclusion of campaign
ads and popular feature films in the category of "art" is (among others) their
perceived lack of personal expression. But emphasis on personal expression engenders the most self-indulgent nonsense that is only taken seriously because
an ancient authority retains some interest in identifying it and only it as "art," to the
exclusion of other, often more vital formats. We’ve actually seen this movie
before. All the films, television shows, advertisements, web pages and the rest that are not considered "art" today belong to the same series as
the paintings of Courbet, Manet and the Impressionists that were rejected by
the academy in another place and time.
