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It is not the breaking of rules that causes damage.
It is the idea that when a rule is broken, it is gone.
Suppose there's a speed limit of 30mph on a certain road. One day, someone drives along it at 35mph. The next day, everyone is driving at 35mph, and the authorities put up a new sign saying the limit is 40mph. The next day, someone drives along it at 43mph...
It wouldn't happen, right? The rules are there for a good reason and are enforced by people employed for the purpose. If someone breaks them, that's bad for that person (and for anyone they hit) but the rule still applies to everyone else.
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp took an ordinary urinal, signed it, called it "Fountain" and submitted it to an art gallery. This was a Dadaist joke. By calling it art, he said, the artist made it into art. He broke the rules; the rule that says art has to be something you create, something you work at, something into which you put your soul; the rule that says art has to convey something, an emotion, an image, a story, an atmosphere.
And from that point on, those rules were gone. It didn't matter if the art was incomprehensible to anyone but the artist, or required two closely typed pages of explanation which rendered the art itself superfluous; it didn't matter that the art piece itself involved little or no creativity or craftsmanship. Jokes could be art. Anything could be art. A pile of bricks could be art, an unmade bed could be art, a dismembered corpse could be art. The rules were gone.
And that's what does the damage. Because when the rules are gone, you have to find other rules to break if you want to be known as a rules-breaker...and when you've broken them, they're gone too. You end up running out of rules. And in art, rules help.
It is the idea that when a rule is broken, it is gone.
Suppose there's a speed limit of 30mph on a certain road. One day, someone drives along it at 35mph. The next day, everyone is driving at 35mph, and the authorities put up a new sign saying the limit is 40mph. The next day, someone drives along it at 43mph...
It wouldn't happen, right? The rules are there for a good reason and are enforced by people employed for the purpose. If someone breaks them, that's bad for that person (and for anyone they hit) but the rule still applies to everyone else.
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp took an ordinary urinal, signed it, called it "Fountain" and submitted it to an art gallery. This was a Dadaist joke. By calling it art, he said, the artist made it into art. He broke the rules; the rule that says art has to be something you create, something you work at, something into which you put your soul; the rule that says art has to convey something, an emotion, an image, a story, an atmosphere.
And from that point on, those rules were gone. It didn't matter if the art was incomprehensible to anyone but the artist, or required two closely typed pages of explanation which rendered the art itself superfluous; it didn't matter that the art piece itself involved little or no creativity or craftsmanship. Jokes could be art. Anything could be art. A pile of bricks could be art, an unmade bed could be art, a dismembered corpse could be art. The rules were gone.
And that's what does the damage. Because when the rules are gone, you have to find other rules to break if you want to be known as a rules-breaker...and when you've broken them, they're gone too. You end up running out of rules. And in art, rules help.