To "Art" or Not to "Art"

As I was trying to find a unique form of art to explore that also serves as social commentary, I stumbled upon Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung's Page. He uses popular culture, political figures, historical references and imagery found on the internet to a new image or video that questions identity, politics, sexuality and power. You might ask if this is real art since he is essentially using someone's original piece to supplement his own. I would say it is still is. His art has a motive, while others seem to don't (David Smith's sculptures as seen above) ... 

I took a Freshman Seminar last quarter on how we can use child psychology to understand what it means to be human. We read Descarte's Baby by Paul Bloom and he featured a chapter about art. We considered what it means for something to be art. A way that art is really different from other objects is that all other artifacts are designed for a purpose, but "there is nothing less useful than a painting or a sculpture, and the very idea of using one for a functional purpose betrays misunderstanding" (Bloom 86). So what is the goal of art? Some people find it pleasurable to engage in purchasing outrageous and unnecessarily expensive art because they serve as displays of status and power. Others go for the intellectual appeal. They like displays of skills, and conversation that can be provoked by visitors to their house. In addition, realistic pictures can serve as a substitute for the real thing. Examples are beautiful portraits of nature and scenery. For me, I would call something art if the creator intended for it to be art. It all comes back to intention.
 
Back to Kenneth's art, the piece I will focus on is his "The Fast Supper" and "Fat Free Nirvana". He is depicting the contemporary societal problem of obesity by using historical references. He satirizes the famous "Last Supper" painting by Leonardo da Vinci by showing Jesus consuming large amounts of fast food and unhealthy snacks, growing more and more obese until he finally explodes. This definitely fits into the category of social criticism because he is trying to raise awareness about the dangers of obesity. The fact that he used a famous religious event to parallel this growing issue is to relate the magnitude of the fast food industry in American society. Another detail is that all the foods on the table are labeled with religious terms and symbols, which seems to say that Americans treat their fast food as a way of life, like religion. The explosion of Jesus symbolizes his core message that Americans need to adopt better eating habits and stop the dependency on fat, greasy foods before health problems kill everyone.

In the "Fat Free Nirvana", he presents the solution to the fast food and obesity problem by showing how the man lost weight by eating more fruits and vegetables. But at the end, it showed a emaciated man, and I think that admonishes against the other side of the issue, anorexia. He did a really great job portraying this issue impacting America. Do you think his videos are effective?

For it to be effective, social critique should be reproduced and distributed to the masses. Hung does exactly this because the two videos are available to anyone around the world with Internet access. Granted not everyone has access to the Internet when considering third world countries, but computers are becoming more prevalent in our lives. I think art can produce "real" political, social change if the medium can be widely seen by everyone and internet is certainly the way to go for this. Art does provide a social good even with Kesha's Animal album. She has a song entitled "We R Who We R" and it can be interpreted to mean "be yourself". Granted her other songs on the album are more provocative and doesn't offer socially good messages (i.e. "Take It Off"). Nevertheless, classical music, such as Mozart might do society more good than popular music like Kesha, but they are both still forms of art. Both of the artists spend time creating their sounds intended for an audience to hear it. What do you think of Kesha's music as art?

Do you think social criticism will become more prevalent in art form?