A friend of Dr. Boli’s pointed out a sculpture by Virgil Cantini in Gateway Towers, a 27-floor 1960s modernist apartment building at the Point in Pittsburgh. Because this friend is the sort of friend who prefers not to leave stones unturned, he dug up a newspaper article from the Post-Gazette⁽¹⁾ announcing the choice of Cantini for the sculpture.

According to John H. Smith, manager of the building, the Cantini work will be “toward an abstraction in bronze, glass and steel, of a purely decorative nature.” No story or symbolism will be attempted, he added.

Can you imagine the screaming fits that would ensue today if you asked a professional artist for a work “of a purely decorative nature”? Art is supposed to challenge bourgeois assumptions (the art and academic worlds being the last known habitat of the nearly extinct term “bourgeois”) and show us what’s wrong with the world! You can’t make me do that lowbrow arts-festival trash!

We judge art entirely by its utility today. Do you think Dr. Boli is being too harsh on the art world? Let us look at the descriptions of the four exhibits by living artists currently on display at the Carnegie Museum of Art. You may visit the site and read them for yourself if you like, although you should be warned in advance that the Carnegie Museum of Art has the ugliest Web site in the history of museum Web sites.

For this new body of work, Watt partnered with the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective and Carnegie Museum of Art’s educators in engaging workshops that inspired a list of words in response to Western Pennsylvania’s industrial history and present-day concerns.

You will note that words are an important part of this particular work or set of works. We are not to be trusted with our own interpretation of a visual work; we need words to tell us what is important about it.

How do you see yourself, your body, your views, ideas, and experiences as you move within this museum? I want, I demand, I need, I insist.  Andrea Geyer’s Manifest actively acknowledges and embraces the idea that a museum is made of many people: from visitors and staff to artists, we make and remake the museum every single day.

This work is nothing but words. Dr. Boli has made remarks before about works of art that consist entirely of the artist scrawling slogans on a bedsheet, and perhaps some readers thought he was indulging in humorous exaggeration. “I DEMAND THE MUSEUM TO WELCOME MY SMELL MY NOISE MY INADEQUACY AND MY STRUGGLE.” That is the entire text of one of these bedsheet banners, in unadorned black letters. The words are everything; there is nothing else to the art. They are not interesting words. They are not poetic words. They are simply a statement of what the artist thinks is important.

Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape examines environmental history and degradation, particularly in the American landscape, as well as urgent concerns about climate change, through the camera lens.

Photography is an excellent medium for addressing the problems of modern life; but Dr. Boli would submit that a photograph that needs an introductory statement of principles to be appreciated is not a very good photograph. The curators who mounted the exhibition should have the courage to let the pictures speak, and should stand out of their way while they are speaking.

Launched as a response to the devastation of living reefs due to global warming and ocean acidification, the Crochet Coral Reef resides at the nexus of art, science, and environmentalism.

This is a gorgeous work of art, and it is only a pity that it needs a practical excuse. Furthermore, the excuse dilutes the message. Art that simply celebrates the beauty of the coral reef will make us love that beauty and want to protect it. Art that comes at us with a chip on its shoulder disposes us to place it in a political context of approval or disapproval before we have even seen the art.

Dr. Boli will make a prediction that will make him anathema in the art community: not a single one of these exhibits will fix what’s wrong with the world. But though Virgil Cantini is not Dr. Boli’s favorite Pittsburgh sculptor, he did make the world better, because he made spaces more beautiful. To increase human happiness is the only way to save the world. The only way art can increase human happiness is through beauty, and it is time for us to disclaim any other purpose for it. It is time for us to stand with Oscar Wilde and say, “All art is quite useless.”

Footnotes

1. “Cantini to Design Art for Towers,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 18, 1964, p. 2. (↩)