Art: A Disappearing Act?
Janice L. Mayer
How many of us remember Lily Tomlin center stage on Broadway portraying her loveable character, bag-lady Trudy? She held up a can of Campbell’s soup in one hand and a print of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can in the other and pondered “This is soup and this is art. Art. Soup. Soup. Art. No, this is soup and this is art.”
Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend I drove with friends from Sacramento along Route 5 to Lake Tahoe. We stopped for lunch at an Italian Restaurant, Dante’s, en route. I should credit their recent stellar write-up in the Sacramento Bee for our dining choice, but actually it was because they were dog-friendly and my usual sidekick, Fiona (a King Charles Spaniel), was along for the ride.
Dante’s chef and owner, Kevin Cairns, was an amateur magician and his penchant for illusion is evident in the décor. Period posters promoting acts such as “Lee Grabel Acclaimed World’s Greatest Living Illusionist” line the walls and his tricks-of-the-trade are in showcases. These days Kevin’s magic happens in the kitchen where he masterfully slices sausages in half instead of svelte assisting artists. We certainly appreciated the results of his culinary art, and the enthusiasm in his son Dante’s presentation of a couple of magic tricks taught to him by his Dad. (A third trick is still being routined; it may be ready to showcase, if you drop by later this summer.)
How and what we choose to showcase as art has been a question for me for many years now. As a former exhibitor at Western Arts Alliance and the trade shows sponsored by the many presenting service organizations in America, the question was raised in my mind time and time again. I will never forget the WAA conference where my booth was directly opposite an agent representing a magic act. As an animal lover, I was distressed watching the video loop of a bunny being shot out of a canon over and over again. I finally had to ask about the bunny’s welfare, and was comforted to learn that there were actually two look-alike rabbits used in the act! (Shhh, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.) As a small business owner and an artist manager representing thirty-six classical musicians, I was appalled. Needless to say, having a circus barker on the aisle deterred many a prospective presenter from traveling down our row. And those that did ‘brave it’ were not really oriented toward presenting the carefully curated vocal recitals that I was offering. I had a similar experience at the Midwest conference another year when I had the ‘good fortune’ to be assigned a booth next to giant puppet-people. It took an intrepid music-lover to get around them and talk with me about Schubert!
So do we draw a line between entertainment and art, and if so, where? Should the shows be juried? And if so, what artistic authority draws the line in the sand? I think most would consider the legendary Salzburg Marionette Theater to be an artistic enterprise, but then what about my encounter with the grotesque giant puppet people? Is sawing a ‘Vanna White-esque’ magician’s assistant in half, art? What about ripping apart a young apprentice in ‘The Donald’s’ Boardroom on his hit television show The Apprentice – art or entertainment (or, dare I suggest, neither)? As proposed by some song words from Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, do we need to present “Something for Everyone?” And if every form of amusement exists co-equally, then is there still room to contemplate the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen on our own artistic journeys as Gustav Mahler would suggest?