"My Kid Could Do That!"

This is the cliched refrain repeated by people who don't "get" modern art. The question I have for these folks (if you're not one of them, feel free to method act, and listen) is this:

Why do you think so little of your child? Why is it that whatever it is that you think is Real Art is out of the reach of your poor disabled child?

The terrible reality of today is that almost everything is pretty easy. I read some remarks, at random, from a person engaged in a large embroidery project. The embroiderer was bellyaching about how you have to special order special magic needles from England, otherwise you get crappy needles which make it super hard. Later, the same person remarked that in these modern times you can buy unflawed thread for embroidery, identically dyed with unfading colors, literally by the mile. Both of these things would have been magic, 200 years ago, or at best astronomically expensive. Nowadays, with some classes and some practice, and for a modest budget your kid could do that.

Is a gorgeously joined copy of Ben Franklin's desk Art? With modern glues, methods, and tools, it's not even particularly hard. You gotta learn some stuff, you gotta buy some tools, you gotta practice a bunch, but your kid could do that.

Photography led the way, because it became obvious in the late 19th century that we were entering a world in which your kid can do that, which forced the Art Community to re-evaluate what Art might be. While it was once an undifferentiated cloud of decor, design, ideas, technique, and probably some other things, it became clear that the word needed some refinement.

If we refuse to admit any difference between one complicated object and another, then the amount of Art that's all basically the same becomes intractable.

It was clear, though, that this stuff isn't all the same. Some of it is, in meaningful ways, "better", and it was decided more or less by consensus that what made it "better" was something about design and something about ideas. And so we get Duchamp and his fountain, and so on, experimenting with ways to separate decor, technique, design, idea, and whatever other factors there are.

It doesn't mean that your intricate mobile isn't art, it doesn't mean that you're collection of quilts (170 hours of work each) isn't art. They are. But if they contain neither innovative design nor ideas, then they are different from work that does contain innovative design and ideas. And, to be blunt, if they lack these things they are rather commonplace. Mankind has a great deal of leisure these days, this sort of thing is being cranked out by the trainload.

What we rather dismissively call "craft" these days isn't awful, craftsmen are not bad people. What they are is relatively common. Your kid, if possessed of average dexterity and a moderate will, can become a craftsman. And perhaps your kid ought to, there is great joy to be had in fine craft. I endorse it!

Ideas, on the other hand, remain relatively rare, and therefore valuable. Your kid can't do that, or at any rate it is by no means certain that your kid can.