Alan Kaprow's "Art Which Can't Be Art"
Kaprow has a very interesting perspective debating the essence of his 'Art which can't be art.' He begins by reviewing the principles of where we have defined and placed value in art. By putting a frame of a theatre or a gallery around art, he says, we project value onto the art, contextualizing it as how art should be. This seems quite contrasting to Kaprow's attempt to find art in the mundane context of daily life.
If we are able to agree with this suggestion of taking daily life as art, we enter another collision of logic, best described by Kaprow: "why should we want to estheticize 'anything'." His predicament is why should we want to see the artistic beauty in just any old thing. Perhaps in doing this we run the risk of simultaneously making everything and nothing art. By changing what we believe to be the standard, our definition becomes meaningless.
And yet he is able to climb out of the hole he has dug himself simply by reminding us what by simple definition this art is supposed to be: lifelike. He describes how art shifted from the classical convention to an urbanized, metaphysical, and digital age that has begun to focus more on art that is lifelike. Even art that is or comes from a typical behavior has its power because of how it resonates in the individual. This resonance does not require a frame or a theater. It may be as simple, in Kaprow's example, as brushing your teeth daily and having a moment contemplating yourself. I see that this is the art all around me, this is modern art, this is conceptual art, this is everything. Most specifically, this is not only Kaprow, but everyone as an artist. This is how I come to understand how "an artist concerned with lifelike art is an artist who does and does not make art."