ART IS DIFFERENT FROM ART

I remember Tiger Jack Traver teaching those very words back in Juco. When I echoed those with my own response weeks later that "beauty is different than beauty", he yelled "Eureka". He had found an English disciple.

Actually, he had many in those days. Of course, he was spot on. Art is different from art and art is what you can get away with. But why? What makes a mature person want to get away with anything?

Whether visual art or the arts, referring to stage productions, literature, movies, et. al., it should make no difference. What barriers are there left to break? And why?

Decades ago a playwright, famous but forgotten by me, wrote a play entitled "Birth". I think it was on Broadway, but I'm not certain. I do remember seeing it on tv.

The crowd was all decked out in play-going attire, which back then meant suits and fancy evening dresses. As the play began, there was silence. Then the curtain opened about five feet. A baby in a cradle lay there crying. Whether the baby was really crying or it was canned, again I don't know.

After about two minutes, the curtains closed, the baby stopped crying and the play was over. That was it. Now whether it was a one-show performance or not, it was a colossal rip-off. But was it art?

Tiger Jack would have answered in the affirmative. He might have enjoyed the uniqueness, the brashness, the brass-ness. But only for the irony, only for the satire. Only for the satirony, a word he coined back in the 60's.