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art is whatever one says it is. it's all situation. comrade skafe is right that in a wider sense it's a sociological matter--which institutions generate the consent required for certain types of phenomena (maybe material, maybe not--think sound art) to be defined as art. each definition is also a move in the game of cultural power for the intermediaries who make the definition. so art is a social game that enables the accumulation of cultural power. so the social game of art happens with only the indirect involvement of artists, whose statements and work functions as the raw material.
insofar as making stuff is concerned--if i say my work is (sound) art, then it's (sound) art. if i say it's music, then it's music.
the distinction is intuitively more evident than anything else. sometimes i get confused by the implication of a piano in this.
same kind of thing goes for anyone.
so defining art is not up to the consumer. audiences see what they're told they're seeing, and they can like it or they can reject it, but basically they have no power over definition.
and there's no obligation to be pleasing. none at all. but i often find myself in arguments about this point. in the end, the notion of what is "pleasing" is so nebulous that it really points to nothing at all.
same goes for anyone who makes stuff (
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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