How to know if it is art ? / P Krajewski – Juin 2018 How to know if it is art ? The case of video games Pascal Krajewski Context : Proposal for : Pascal Krajewski et Jorge Martins Rosa, Convocarte N°6-7: Ars Ludens, l'art, le jeu et le ludique, 1st trimester 2019. Index Table of contents: Prolegomena to the question Enrolment in an institutional artistic context Analogy with reputed concomitant arts Integration into an extended fine arts system Identification of universal art markers Election of (Ur) masterpieces Highlighting art compatible principles Conclusion: “to do as if” 1 / 17 How to know if it is art ? / P Krajewski – Juin 2018 How to know if it is art ? The case of video games What good would it be to demonstrate that video game is an art ? Or is not ? Why trying to link it to a discipline is not even eyeing ? Do we wonder if sport is art ? No, sport is sport, and that sounds OK to anyone. Yet, even sport do use occasionally some artistic terms : this player is an artist; that gesture was almost art; such game will stay as a masterpiece of great game; such a sport, played at this level of skills, is reaching art (fencing, skying); and eventually some sports do deserve the adjective of “artistic” since they aim at the beauty of a sequence and not the efficiency of a gesture (figure skating, synchronized swimming). Sport could – by chance, temporarily or specifically – produce “artistic” results, when they prove a perfect mastery allied to a gracious beauty. And even then, they remain sports, because, by vocation, they don't aim at being art. Did we try to show that game was art ? The question is less closed and some common grounds have been identified. Yet, formally, the question would be answered the same way that the sport's one : some hapax may be art, some specific games, but the bulk of them are only games, have nothing else than a playful vocation, and do not move into the artistic sphere. We would evoke the notion of « art » in this field, by contrast with « technique » or « science », to explain the unbelievable success of certain players. If this tennis player keeps on winning, it is because he is mastering his technique – if the physician heals, it is because he deeply knows his science – and if the poker player manages to earn his life playing, it is because he has a perfect command of his art. But here, it is only a lexical usage of a term that does not mean to plant play or game into the art field. Why is the question asked differently with video game ? Undoubtedly because it is a tremendous phenomenon, also because it is already flirting with neighbouring arts (film, animation, music), notably in taking part into the remediation and adaptation process ; but also because a large part of video games are likely to propose narration, representation and even poetry. A cultural content, a story, a message are conveyed by video game. Poetic or affective emotions can arise by using it. So why reflections about intimacy or transcendence would not be conceivable ? Nothing forbids a priori video game to produce percepts of affects, what defines the nature of art (Deleuze1). Nothing would forbid a game to be the « sensible manifestation of an idea » (what Hegel defines as 1 Gilles Deleuze, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie ?, Paris, Minuit, 1991. 2 / 17 How to know if it is art ? / P Krajewski – Juin 2018 Beauty, which is what the ideal art has to determine2). Nothing would forbid a game to facilitate « the knowledge of an Idea, knowledge in which consists the aesthetic pleasure » ( what an artwork does, dixit Schopenhauer3). Let's say it pompously : video game would be art because it is likely to elevate the soul of its player. Or, more mundanely : it would be art because it is able to « poetize », temporarily or durably, the life of its player, to be an operator of poetry, dreams, and a sudden suspense of the world's prose. Prolegomena to the question We are wondering if video game is an art, but we do not know how to steer our questioning. How the question could be asked ? How could we appropriately ask the question ? Let's begin by asking if painting is an art. If I look at what the house painter did in my bathroom, what my nephew did in class, or my grandpa sitting on the Bords de Seine : I can not see more than a human activity, professional or amateur, trying to cheering up an individual life or a tiny part of the world. If we walk through a Fine Arts museum in a small city, or worst, in its reserved sections, we may be on our way to art but not arrived : too many ancient paintings, still lifes, sceneries, portraits, mythological scenes, seen over and over. If it is art, art is quite dull. A visit to an international exhibition hosted in a prominent museum, could allow me to get acquainted with the very few painters and artworks, where presence and inspiration proceed together with the evident mastering of the medium. The spectators' body suddenly freezes ; his mind is dazed ; the artwork dumbfounds the one who dares staring at her. The same music is at play with cinema or fiction. Box office results announce best-sellers or block-busters denied by the savant critique ; the bulk of the production deals with sincere but trivial works, that would know a little audience, because they are of little interest or because their author is still developing. But, several times a year, a work of art stands out, imposing because of her universal, profound and rich quality, her impeccable form, and a very good subject. Then we shall salute the masterpiece ; then we will bow in front of the artwork. The same way, if architecture is an art, it is not owing to the numerous common buildings scarifying our cities or landscapes ; but it is only thanks to the rare monuments where an artistic gesture join the concern to last and to make location. 2 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Esthétique. Tome 1, Paris, Librairie Générale Française, 1997, p. 177. 3 Arthur Schopenhauer, Le monde comme volonté et comme représentation, Paris, PUF, p 341. 3 / 17 How to know if it is art ? / P Krajewski – Juin 2018 To say that painting, cinema, literature or architecture are art, consists of saving only a small portion of their productions, and forget the leftover as low literature, entertainments, mass art, consummation products. Is considered as an art, a discipline producing intelligible and sensible contents, whose certain pieces reach the status of artwork, by demonstrating literally exceptional qualities. And the one who would insist on the Sunday painter, the blockbuster movie or the soap opera book to prove that cinema, painting and literature are not arts, would be denigrated and his argumentation judged poor, sophistic and unacceptable. Inversely, some arts could not rise above the status of “applied arts” – so progressive and socio-cultural that this classification could be. The group of “n” arts set up in their pantheon has differed in history and is not universal. In Far East, the tea ceremony, the art of gardens, or the ikebana are next to calligraphy and painting, without anyone's complaints. Our actual fine arts – painting, sculpture, architecture – were discredited until the Renaissance (since they were “mechanical”). On the contrary, amongst the nine muses stays the one of pantomime, abandoned today. Why are the arts of stained-glass window making, tapestry or mosaic, that have been producing masterpieces for centuries, duly conserved in our museums or memory places, why are they not part of this very selective group of fine arts ? Why are ceramics or silversmith's art not part of it, they which fulfil our antiques' museums ? Is it because art is doomed to representation ? But stained-glass window making do represent, and architecture does not. Is it because art must not compromise into useful works ? In that case neither ceramic nor design could dream of it, but no less than architecture. Fine arts are born with Vasary, in the 16th century4. Some mechanical arts tried to distinguish themselves from the vulgar crafts and boasted themselves to reach the status of “liberal arts”. The Italian writer argues that painting, sculpture and architecture can pretend to a certain form of artistic ideality, insofar as the three of them are based on drawing, and more precisely on disegno. Giving the Italian term its hole extension, one can gather the drawing and the idea : the disegno is the visible expression of an idea, the manifestation of a concept we have in mind. Now, art aims at Idea, so the designo, half material half spiritual, oscillating between drawing and design, comes under art – and the disciplines stemming from it become in favour. On the other side, applied arts would be defined as those which are ballasted by their attachment to a too heavy or blurred materiality. The ceramist is a rough artist of the body and the gestures, the mosaicist can only compose granular images of limited resolution. Since the weight of 4 Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant l'image, Paris, Minuit, 1990, p. 65-103, p. 94 sq. 4 / 17 How to know if it is art ? / P Krajewski – Juin 2018 the matter or the technique prevents them from reaching an utter freedom of representation, those arts confine to the category of applied. Not clear if at that time, cinema, with its fragmented production, would access the rank of art… As to poetry, music, dance and theatre, they are considered since Greek antiquity as arts, precisely because unpolluted by any artificial making.