2. Games Are Conceptual
Games presuppose a universe of their own. This universe is established by means of game pieces and fixed rules describing how to deal with the pieces. The game pieces have their individual significance, defined by the game constructor. Those who want to join the game must accept the significance present in the game.
In the game of bridge, there are four players using 52 different cards, ranked by value and suit. The rules of the game define how the game is played. In soccer there are two teams, two goals and one ball, and the game is played according to rules most of us know about. However, the playing cards are more than pieces of wax-coated paper, and the soccer game is more than the individuals with their colorful dresses, the leather globe and the goals made of steel. They have conceptual significance. This fact makes the game playable.
The system of the game is neither right nor wrong. It is valid inside the framework of the game and valid only for the participants of the game. When playing the game, one is outside everyday life and inside the universe of the game.
When we take a closer look at works of art, we discover that they have features similar to the properties of games and game systems.
The pieces of a game of visual art often are real stuff like the cards of bridge and the leather ball. As in other games the pieces represent concepts, created to be manipulated by the players, the artist or the spectator. Thus, the game primarily enacts in the minds of the players.
The fundamental rules of a work are quite simple: we have to identify the concepts at stake, often defined by means of similarities and differences, be sensitive towards the concepts emerging in the interplay of conceptual patterns, compare the emerging concepts of the game with your own concepts and see what happens.
If one cannot identify the elements of the game, one remains outside the game, eventually viewing the game as silly or incomprehensible. A lot of people take this attitude towards certain works of contemporary art.
Like all games, the game of art exists in a universe of its own. It can be played for pure pleasure. However, as works of art are based on concepts related to reality, the game may influence our concepts of reality, thus our way of thinking. The artist often has this in his mind when he initiates his project.
A game without players, pieces and rules is not a game. A work of art with elements that cannot be decoded as concepts by anybody is not a work of art. Persons unable to create systems and patterns of concepts that can be decoded by others cannot be considered artists. At most, they can call themselves auto-therapists.
Jokes and puns are simple conceptual games. They can be created by anyone with a sense of humor, that is, people able to consider everyday life at some distance. Jokes are illustrative for the basics of creative thinking and are kindred to the more sophisticated world of art.
A cartoon from The Times deals with the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The spectator sees an airplane on the runway with only one wing, the inscription “Blair Force One” and a speech bubble saying “There is no left wing”.
The concepts at stake in this cartoon are 1) the concept of a British Prime Minister named Tony Blair, 2) the concept of Tony Blair as a politician who has eliminated the left wing of his party, 3) the concept of Air Force One, the airplane of the president of the United States, 4) the concept of the airplane as a metaphor for the US president, 5) the concept of an airplane without its left wing, ready for takeoff, 6) the concept of flying as a metaphor for Blair´s handling of British affairs of state, 7) the pun Air Force/Blair Force, 8) the conceptual framework cartoon = joke.
The concepts mingle and blend in the mind of the spectator when he or she decodes the joke. One may start thinking about the British Prime Minister´s aspiration of being a leader with the same status as the American president. Of course, the PM needs an airplane similar to the airplane of the president. One may think of the PM´s political success, including the elimination of the leftists of his party. Politically, the PM seems able to walk on water. Why shouldn´t he be able to handle an aircraft with only one wing? It is natural for him to baptize his plane “Blair Force One” instead of the traditional “Air Force One”, surpassing the American president with a self even larger than that of the American president, his obvious model. And yet, how long could a PM keep flying = continuing his political career, without a left wing group?
Jokes are games whose concepts clash with each other. The player starts looking for the sense of the joke by investigating similarities and differences between the concepts. The significance of the concepts is refined and enhanced in the interplay and in the context of the game. The apparent conceptual mess of the joke is made orderly by the creative mind of the participant, filling out what is lacking in the game by means of his or hers own ideas and concepts.
Works of art can be considered conceptual games constructed in the manner of the Blair type of cartoons, often with a far more complex range of concepts included in the game. They are fit for challenging traditional concepts as well.
Jokes build upon concepts of our daily life. Games of art do the same. In both, the traditional significance is short-circuited in a way that breeds meaning, often introducing fuzzy and fertile new concepts.
Jokes imply aspects of reality. They shed light upon the intricacies of language, e.g. the word-pun Air Force = Blair Forcer, politicians, relations between generations, sexual issues or a number of subjects at a time. Works of art, too, touch on aspects of reality; only the range of aspects is greater.
It is possible to evaluate the quality of jokes. Everyone knows the difference between good and bad jokes. If not, we need only to study how the audience reacts.
If the joke was a good one, it might be due to the fact that it had a surprising point, in other words: it was original. This is not the case for most jokes about mothers-in-law.
The quality of the joke might be due to the fact that it treated the well known problem of generation in a different manner, e.g. putting the problem of mothers-in-law in a brand new light, completely reversing the normal way of tackling this problem. That being the case, new concepts have been implanted in the mind of the spectator. On might assert that the joke is of special relevance.
The joke might operate with several significations, all of the short-circuiting into a pattern of new significations with an overall unity, all related to the subject of the joke. The Blair-cartoon is an example of a tricky and complex sort of joke. Without the missing wing concept, it would still have been a joke, only simpler!
Works of art, too, may be evaluated in the same manner as jokes, according to a number of artistic ideals, including Originality, Relevance, and Complexity (chapters 8-12).
Occasionally works of visual art are jokes themselves. One of the ready-mades of the famous French-American painter Marcel Duchamp consists of a bicycle wheel mounted on a chair..
A bicycle-wheel is a part of a bicycle, intended for sport or daily use. Removed from the rest of the bicycle and mounted vertically on a stool it loses part of its trivial significance. It becomes more like a statuette on a base. The combination is ambiguous – is it a bicycle wheel on a chair, a mock-up of a work of art, or a metaphor for a work of art?
If this piece of handcraft is placed in an art museum, the conclusion is evident. Wheel and stool and the awe-inspiring surroundings must be decoded as elements of some overall conceptual pattern, comprising both.
A spectator declining the game and insisting that the artifact is nothing but a wheel and a stole in improper surroundings brings the game to an abrupt end. He tells his friends and family that Duchamp is an imposter and modern art is nothing but fraud.
A spectator who knows that Duchamp is a serious and professional artist who created a lot of interesting paintings strives to attain the sense of the arrangement.
An informed spectator might conclude that the environment, besides being a museum, is a metonym for what theorists call the “essence of art”. Hence, the wheel/stool must be metonymical for “prosaic reality. This means that the artist wants us to reconsider how sublime art and prosaic reality are related to each other.
If the spectator knows art history, he or she might wonder if the circle of the wheel has some special significance, thus being another element in the game. Since the Renaissance, the circle has been considered a perfect shape, a representation of the Divine and the Beautiful. How can a bicycle-wheel become divine and beautiful? This is another way of introducing the problem of the relationship between the realm of Art and everyday life.
By now the spectators, having some vague ideas about the concept of Art beforehand, play the game of Duchamp. They must draw their own conclusions. Duchamp offers no answer, the normal strategy of artists presenting problems without a definite solution. If the spectators are unable to reach any specific conclusion, their confusion has been qualified into a higher level.
By creating a work of this category Duchamp became an innovator within visual art. He became a founder of the ready-mades on display in practically every contemporary art museum and art exhibition. In a very simple and economical way, the artist has succeeded in creating of work of art relevant even today, 90 years later. An apparent joke has changed our views of the tasks and potentialities of visual art. The subject of the relationship between art and reality still confuses the experts. The institution of art has never been able to incorporate Duchamp´s way of thinking into aesthetic theory.
My disrespectful comparison between a prosaic newspaper joke and Duchamp´s work of art is in itself an example of Duchamp´s method of art. Duchamp´s ideas are very much alive even today.