or no?

From Anthropologist Richard Anderson - he defined art as "culturally significant meaning, skillfully encoded in an affecting, sensuous medium."

From a textbook: "According to some theories of art, meaning is what distiguishes art from other kinds of skilled making. Art is always about something. On brief definition of art, in fact, is 'embodied meaning.'"

Webster's:

this is probably the best, broadest description

SYN--art, the word of widest application in this group, denotes in its broadest sense merely the ability to make something or to execute a plan; skill implies expertness or great proficiency in doing something; artifice implies skill used as a means of trickery or deception; craft implies ingenuity in execution, sometimes even suggesting trickery or deception; in another sense, craft is distinguished from art in its application to a lesser skill involving little or no creative thought

Nothing is truly original, there are only degrees and types of "original." And emotion is hardly the only thing art is intended to express or produce interpretation of...

Actually, the problem is the word "art" itself.

nt

anything made to give a deeper insight into the human condition.

as it clearly isn't meant to give insight, or would it? i suppose it is intended to give insight into the human condition. most, meaning most everyone, would probably disagree with the insight it claims to have. were lenni reifestahl's (sp?) films art? whatever insight they would have given were intentionally fascist and racist and abhorent. but i would say they were art because they changed how everyone else used the medium. i don't think someone spraying racist comments on a wall are artists but she, making nazi art, wa an artist. just thinking out loud.

So is this:



That doesn't mean it's good art.

In a too small nutshell: Every work of art ever made has two basic components: form and content. Form is anything you can point at – line, shape, color, edge, surface etc. Content is what it means or why it is made. Each of those parts informs and defines the other. The measure of the quality of the work is the measure of the relationship between form and content. It's cultural importance can be measured in how long that relationship gives us an insight into the human condition within the context of cultural change.

So hate speech on a wall can be dramatically descriptive of the artist's understanding of the world and help us understand what their experience is. It can also give us an insight into the experience of an asshole. Self serving, narcissistic, exploitative art generally won't have any cultural legs because it doesn't allow us to share the experience in any meaningful way. Art that captures the zeitgeist of the time in which it is made and that offers others a way to examine their own experience in a way that transcends the extraneous trappings of culture gives people something to work with for a much longer time. That's why we still read Shakespeare even with the esoteric language.

eom

if Art is anything, he's fucking predictable. the rotten motherfucker.

Neil: Shows how much you know about art. The uglier the art, the more it's worth.

Pepe: This must be worth a fortune, man.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/After_Hours_(film)

of the beholder....


Tikki

image of people, places, things, or ideas. Good art is the same but it stops me in my tracks and makes me notice it.

and what made me ask this to begin with was watching a History Channel documentary on the Nazis while stumming my guitar, my song, however well crafted, if heard by nobody "conveys" nothing, to use your word.

a well done, out of the ordinary peice of racist graffiti would count. but my song i play to myself does not. i am willing to accept that, however uneasy.

So is it sculpture, performance, photography, or photojournalism?

art, not art?

i get it

could i then sell that post?

Art doesn't require another person to evaluate or be moved by it. Art is anything an artist decides is art. And absolutely these pixels on a screen can be art.


The only thing art requires is an artist to imagine it.

Even in the case of the found object. That branch on the beach may have been placed there by a hurricane but if I come along and find beauty or anything else in it - even if I simply like the way the limbs curve - I become the artist (by virtue of seeing it as something other than just a stick in the sand) and it becomes art to humanity.* It was art to itself all along.

*I'm not saying I speak for humanity. It becomes art to the little piece of humanity I am.


I feel bad for people who don't see art everywhere.

Nothing more. If you were tasked with writing a novel and the title of that novel was "ART" and you set out to describe art, you would end up with one of two outcomes. The book would either be the longest, or shortest book in history.

Personally, I would take the short route...

Chapter 1.

Art is.

The end.


Now the long route would be to attempt to answer all of the questions of not what art is, but what makes it art itself. The short answer is that art draws emotion. Art can draw emotion in as many ways as there are emotions. Art can also draw emotion from both the artist and observer.

Inside the artist.
A tearful poem, once written then burned by the poet is art.
A joyful song, never recorded, played alone and only once is art.
A hateful splash of paint on a canvas, later painted over never to be seen is art.
A gentle hum, or whisper of a melody in one's own head is art.
A sand castle, erected on a lonely beach, washed away by the tide is art.
A naked pirouette alone in the forrest is art.

Outside the artist.
A hateful exhibit such as a hate message on a wall, that demeans, and belittles is art.
A pose or gesture by a dancer, that makes one uncomfortable is art.
A shocking display that leaves one feeling sick is art.
A play that makes us cry is art.

I'm a musician, I have been my whole life. I cannot draw, write poetry, paint, sing, dance, sculpt, etc... But if it has strings, I can make music. Music does not erupt from me, she takes some coaxing, and some work. But there are times when the music does flow, I'm talking her language, and she can pull something beautiful, or sad, or happy out of me. That is art, even though I'm the only one that heard the music. This is because there was an emotion there. Art is instant and fleeting at times. Other times, it is there for an eternity.

I stopped thinking of art as good or bad. Because I do not like it, does not make something bad. I am the one with the problem if I do not like it. Does that mean I like all art? No it does not. There is some art out there that I do not like at all. But that is my problem. But it's still art.

I'll give an example. I was at a museum and there was one exhibit that consisted of nothing more than naked people standing all over the place. They were in almost every exhibition room, hallway, and most doorways. At times you had to step sideways to get past without brushing up against one of the performers. I did not like it and at the time I thought it was a stupid exhibit that wanted nothing more than to shock people. Later that evening, I had a moment where it clicked. It was not bad, it was art. And that art was able to draw uncomfortable emotions from me.

At the end of the day, I realized that not only did the exhibit draw an emotion from me, it also drew emotions from everyone else who experienced it. And not only that, not one of them experienced it the way I did. We are all unique and take things in differently. I'm sure some were uncomfortable in their own way, and other were perhaps annoyed, angered, offended, titillated, joyed, intrigued, confused, or any other of our available emotions. This was art at work. The more I pondered, the more I liked it. I found pleasure in being uncomfortable.

We are all critics. We can look at something and state "That's stupid. That's not art.", but if one takes a moment and realizes that whatever it was that made them stop, have an emotion, then go out of our way to proclaim it isn't what it actually is, in reality... it is. We just don't like it.

So back to your question of "art vs. not art". It's all art.

I lament the lack or a rec post button.

maddening and very helpful, sometimes all at once. this is one of those times.

the art/music bizz is the sleaziest bizz of all do what you gotta do and pay no mind to the parasites .

Or, apparently not. I tend to reject as art some things that others readily accept. on occasional, whole exhibits. And get in prolonged arguments with art majors with whom i lived at the time over whether a (hypothetical) thing that they made would be art purely because they, as a trained artist, created it VS whether an a similar hypothetical item would be art if I, as a trained biologist made it. And if there were any inherent characteristics that defined something as art.

I will be following this thread. I find the question interesting.

but you can't decide it's not art for everyone else. If the person who made it thinks it's art it is art.


Now you may find a million people who agree with you that it's lousy art but that's a whole 'nother question.

break out of "trained" vs untrained. Artists create art. You, as a biologist can make beautiful art or terrible art. Heck, you could even make something for a different purpose entirely but someone else can see it as art.

the commercialism of art is also a different question. Not every artist can convince people to buy their art but that doesn't mean they are not artists and what they make isn't art.


Now I know some folks will say that if I consider anything as art and anyone can be an artist that it dilutes the power of "true art". Poppycock. The more art the better. (Subjectively) good art executed by tremendously talented artists will always be (subjectively) good art no matter how many drawings of cats and mommies and daddies are hung the world's refrigerators.

Cats on fridges are decoration --and the best of it may be art--for example, Charlie Harper or Norman Rockwell, or some of the newer cartoon graphic artists. Here's one I like--Tim Biskup:

http://timbiskup.com/work/medium/

But not all cats on fridges are Art, because they were not created to communicate, express, touch anyone--they were not created with a higher purpose (you might say, they have no soul).

They were created to make money as decoration. They are products, they are commodities. They are pleasing to many or they wouldn't be bought. But they are not Art, capital A. You could educate more people as to what art is, train their eyes to know it (just as people can be trained to sing)--and then there would be less confusion about what Art is. But that is not a priority in America.

Might not someone else find something artistic about it? Can that not be enough to equal art even if the whole purpose was to sell a magnet?


Perhaps I need education in capital "A". I think Fine Art and Commercial art are both art no matter how much (or little..or no) soul is present.


I agree that art is not a priority in America and I wish that were not so. I believe it should be a top priority.


I have a hard drive with the top case removed to expose the platters and the read/write heads and other electronics standing up by my desk. I put it there as decoration because the mirror polish of the platters and the design of the internal workings is neat. It's art to me and I can picture in my mind an artistic installation of hard drives and hard drive parts. I doubt the guy at the factory thought he was making art when he built the hard drive but I wonder if he'd be happy to find out I think he/she did.

We agree basically. What I'm saying:

1. SOME "Fine Art" can be worthless schlock, not art capital A. (Don't get hung up on the generic term "Fine Art"--a lot of it is bad).

2. SOME Commercial art can certainly be "Art." (In fact commercial artists often have fine art training and it is a crossover world--all to the good).

----------

As far as "didn't an artist draw that cat?" Yes, and s/he might have hated doing it and even considered it crap.
Like a slogan writer for ads, or a bad pop song, or a schlock novel--people do it for the M.O.N.E.Y. Usually they accept this as what they have to do in the land of decorative, popular, or applied art. Doesn't mean even they think it's good. It certainly is not the same thing as someone who reaches for your heart and soul--like the best musicians (in any genre), the best writers, the best movie makers, the best visual artists.

Art is one of the few fields where the people who study it, know it, do it -- often for a lifetime--are given so little credibility as experts in their field.

People are doing a lot with computer components in art & installations. They are visually fascinating. But it has to be more than just "here is a cool component." A cool component is an artifact that MAYBE can be Art (if it's cool enough & how it is used goes beyond mere decoration.) In general I totally agree that many products not intended to be aesthetic when made, can be. That idea has been around for centuries. But whether it arises to the level of the highest Art takes time and just perhaps...a dollop of expert opinion.

In the big picture sense--Art is Everywhere. But you have to open your eyes to it. (Which doesn't take art degrees) Your eyes are open. Many aren't.

thanks for the further explanation.

I wish I had the time and money to go back to school and study art history. I do some reading on the internet but that's not the same thing as having a teacher guide me. (lol, assuming the teacher/professor wants to be there).

Even if for no other reason than to do better in CTYankee's weekly art thread!


I have taken a couple little painting classes - more of a hobby thing - they're a couple hours, they show you how to recreate a picture and you go home with a picture. Not terribly high art at all but it's fun and I have at least learned some techniques that I never new before so if I practice I can have a shot at making something that at least pleases my wife. I've done one oil and one acrylic and hope to find someone that will do watercolor. It is very frustrating to have the picture in your head but not know how to physically execute it for lack of training.

I've always drawn but never painted (until the recent classes - both within the last year). I have done a few things on the computer with a Wacom pad but I really believe I need to have better control of real life drawing and painting in order to make computer stuff effectively. I know what I did in the painting class was little better than paint-by-numbers (they literally showed us, stroke by stroke, what to put on the canvas) but I was pleasantly surprised and happy enough with the outcome that I want to do more. I at least learned how to load a brush.

I've seen that book all my life - well, since high school anyway, but I don't think I've ever read it...I'm gonna go look for it.

Thank you again for the ideas and support!

from my admittedly minor study of art, it seems to me that a lot of famous names in a lot of museums created their artwork as decoration for one rich patron or another, and that much of the rest was, if not created for a specific person, still crafted for the marketplace.

Is the Sistine chapel covered in art or decoration?

art was documentary & served a dual function--aesthetics (decoration) plus being a historical record & repository of collective thought. It's still true now that art reflects the times but of course we also have photos, movies, etc that overwhelm ye olde art forms for those purposes.

The Sistine Chapel reflected a time when only religious imagery was funded, aside from portraits. It was and still is considered among the best art of those times.

Now anything goes. Art can be purely for decoration or it can have other purposes. Art crafted primarily for the marketplace may be aesthetically pleasing but it's not trying to address the overall issues of art. And that's OK, as long as buyers want it to dress up their walls and don't expect it to appreciate in value particularly. Art that is not all that good tends to fade out over long periods of time anyway. An artist's work doesn't even have to exist in reality any more to inspire others (since we have photos of installation art, for example).

Old art forms have a very different function now in the age of screen imagery & the computer.

I think you can make a fair argument that many big name painters from the past were creating primarily for the marketplace.

Is photography art? How about snapshots from your vacation? They are documentary, they are (hopefully) aesthetic. Are those old portraits that were painted art? How about a landscape? What makes it different than a vista I shoot from my Ipad? What makes the Sistine chapel art, but not the ceiling my sister decorated with glow in the dark stars and a painted moon? It meant something to her. Possibly as much as the chapel meant to Michaelangelo, considering he apparently complained about the pope dragging him away from the work he actually wanted to do to do it.

if your sister is the next Michelangelo...fine.

But if her art looks like the art on my nephew's ceiling--glow in the dark stars and a moon is what he did too--then I would have to say a distinction should be made. Art--in the professional sense--has to be more than commonplace. (Like movies, like music, like books--there are different levels of achievement--but people like to ignore this about visual art for some reason--actually I am curious about the reason).

Now if you were a professional artist and you you went around to kids rooms in America documenting all the glow in the dark stars and correlated that with say, how many container ships came over from China bearing glow in the dark stars, and then you filled a whole museum gallery with glow in the dark stars, then maybe something could be said about the universality of the subject matter. Capiche? It's about ideas as well as interior decoration.

Humor aside--we all know that kid art is some of the best there is--and the doing of it has benefits other than what remains.

Snapshots from your vacay COULD be art --dunno, I or someone you trusted more would have to see them. I don't care if you use the generic term "art" for them. No biggie. Of course some photography is among the highest art there is. You have to make distinctions between the generic and the astounding. Doesn't negate the need or purpose of the generic art, but just saying some art is more unusual and more relevant to culture than others. Compare it to music and maybe you can see the point. Try not to think of it as commodity only.

Good discussion--thanks

This is similar to some late night discussions I had with my art major roommate.

I guess, I don't see it as clear cut. Which coincides with my view of most of existence... There are very few, if any clear defined lines. In my own chosen field of study, biology, there are things that blur the line between life and not life (viruses. Fire, some other things I cant recall the name of). There are things that blur the line between Plant and Animal, between Eukaryote and prokaryote. Etc. All the way from molecules up to complex things like humans there are judgement calls to be made, and it appears to me that most of our hard and fast definitions are mere conveniences for our ability to comprehend the world.

But back to art... taking it a slightly different direction. I don't much care for Shakespeare. Its my general feeling that his work is closer in quality to Independence Day or Gone with the Wind than to better movies like Casablanca or Marvels The Avengers. Im pretty sure I would have felt the same had I been there to sit in the original Globe theater and not just the rebuilt version. And none of us knows what will make it to the next century as art. So at some level art is for the artist, but at some level it is for the consumer. Some skews wildly to one side or the other. And then there is the "is nature art" question. Though my art major roomie, despite believing in a creator and creation scenario, insisted that it was by definition, not art.

everything is relative and a lot of science is subjective. True. In science there is plenty of debate but science does operate on well-established fact. And so does art really, though art is more subjective, there are a generally agreed upon set of parameters that qualifies it as art that is more accomplished, more compelling. These qualities cover all styles or genres of art.

One of the definitions of art is that it communicates to the viewer, the appreciator (if you use the word consumer, then you have to distinguish whether you mean owning or just viewing). But yes, art has to speak to the culture in a big picture sense. The artist must have a particular point of view that is relatively coherent.
So I would not only agree with you that art is for the viewer/consumer. It must be. (Not to acquire necessarily, but to appreciate).

Otherwise it's more in the category of hobby or therapy (which is not wrong--it's just more about the process than the product). As for your opinions about different artists or art forms--well that's what attracts you and no need to justify it to anyone. If you want to persuade others to prefer the Avengers to Shakespeare then you all you have to do is write convincing papers. Just having opinions about it--no need to be defensive about that.

Ah the debate about whether Nature is Art. That seems like a semantic game to me. It's circular. Art deals with the world, nature. Nature is the most amazing art form there is. That line is certainly blurred.

Form, content, imparting meaning, speaks to the human condition (how many of us lack responses to toast?); even the airier definitions of conveying emotion (why do these fuckers need eight pages to tell us how to use a blasted toaster dammit!). In fact it is more likely to do this to many than the inanities of abstract art.

Now my definition is also imperfect in that it would run afoul of those who consider random splashes of paint or red squares with one black line in them to be art, but I would add to the basic idea of arranged materials and form the condition that the arrangement must demonstrate an uncommon degree of skillful organization not easily achieved by the average person. There is a difference between my bumbling efforts at piano pieces on Sibelius the software and the manual efforts by Sibelius the person. He was an artist. I am not. The form and medium and organization and even intent may be the same - I'm just no good at it. It would degrade the name of art, and render language useless, to apply the same word to both results. And when, as has been repeatedly shown, established art critics are incapable of distinguishing between human and animal "paintings", pretending that the latter is art that speaks to the human condition is laughable sophistry.

Abstraction is a sensibility. You probably wouldn't like a lot of abstract music. That is your preference.

Abstraction is just a genre, a means, a type of expression in visual terms. Animal made paintings are not high level art, like a lot of art is not high level--whether abstract, or semi-abstract, or realist.

Art is not defined as Form (realist) vs Non-form (abstract). All is form.

It is not either/or.

it actually requires a relatively uncommon skill. i say relatively because there are a lot of good songrwritters, photographers, et. in the world. but some skill is what you are saying.

measurement and I'm not suggesting it's valid for anyone but myself.

the one thing that I ask of art is that it move me- emotionally, spiritually or intellectually or any combination. It doesn't matter if it's negative or positive.

I love the work of this guy, for instance. I'm sure there are many who do not consider his work art, but I find it tremendously moving on many different levels:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-01/entertainment/37368328_1_wolfgang-laib-beeswax-wax-room

Wolfgang Laib (born 25 March 1950) is a German conceptual artist working predominantly with natural materials.

Laib's work is challenging to classify. It may be grouped with Land Art or Process Art, and he shows influences of Minimalism. Informed by the purity and simplicity of Eastern philosophies, he employs natural materials, most notably milk, pollen, beeswax, rice and marble. His works are more complex than being just about nature and the natural world. They involve ritual, repetition, process, and a demand for contemplation.

He made the first of his milkstones in 1975. They consist of a rectangular piece of polished white marble. The top surface of which is sanded to create a slight and almost unnoticeable depression. Laib then fills this depression with milk, creating the illusion of a solid object. While the artist makes the initial pour, it is the responsibility of the gallery, museum, or collector to empty, clean, and refill the marble on a daily basis while the work is on display.[3]

Laib is most well known for his use of large quantities of intense, yellow pollen. A slow and deliberate process, the artist collects the pollen from around his home in southern Germany during the spring and summer months. Working with the natural sequence of the seasons, he harvests the pollen on each tree or flower when it is in bloom, beginning with hazelnut, moving on to dandelion and other flowers, and finally ending with pine. Each type of pollen is unique in color and size. Laib exhibits the pollen in a variety of ways, most famously sifted on a stone or concrete floor, creating a field of brilliantly hued pollen. Final sizes are determined by the abundance of the pollen itself; with pine being more plentiful, therefore creating larger sifted areas. The pollen is also exhibited in glass jars or small piles. In addition, the pollen is sold to collectors and institutions in glass jars, without any stipulations as to how it should be exhibited.[2] For Laib, the pollen is the artwork, not the process of collecting it or presenting it sifted on the floor or in jars.

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Laib

the artis can't make art for herself alone

Art is the one activity where a person chooses the problem, sets the constraints and solves it. In all other activities we are given the problem and the constraints to solve it. It's done only the the personal reasons of the artist.

So this solves the question of good art/bad art, because this process is only subject to the satisfaction of the artists.

However, good art is different from bad art: it conveys a meaning to others. The meaning maybe nothing more that "hey, here's a problem and here's how I solved it. and others can enjoy it.

But great art also, by the choice of the artist' vision, materials and craft, evokes deeply personal emotions in others.

This is the view of art as a personal process; however, there is a further view of art as a social process. And this is the reason that no art should be censored: all art, good or bad, tells us something about our society by the themes of the artists. Society is a whole of which we are all parts; art is the feedback system of society. Just as our bodies have feed back systems to tell us if we are sick so does our society. Art is a symptom not a cause.

I like that...

In some ways artists (writers, musicians, performers etc included)--artists are those who are professional feelers. What they feel they put into form.

but a poor imitation of the real art found in Nature. no music can ever sound better than the wind and no painting can ever contain more color and depth than the sky.

interpreted by viewer. They don't always match and the art is not always successful.