Originally Posted by Lindy

Art certainly doesn't need to be pleasing, any more than music needs to be tuneful. But does art require some skill or competence? If I get on top of a ladder and slosh paint on a canvas below me is it art? Jackson Pollock did it, and his work has come to be accepted as art. So, is my creation art just because I call it art? Or is it just self-indulgence? If I attempt to express something and (in my own eyes) fail, and my attempt makes no statement, is it art?
Composer John Cage wrote (?) a piano piece called 4' 33" where the performer comes on stage and sits on the piano bench for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, and then stands and exits. He called it music. If I noodle around on my clarinet for ten or fifteen seconds and call it a symphony, is it? Just because I say so? So, just because I call something art, the world (or at least the sophisticated art world) will accept that? I think that a lot of modern artists and critics want to have a monopoly on the definition of art only so the don't have to defend it to the rubes. They sure couldn't defend it to Rubens. As in Peter Paul.

Momma cat can have her kittens in the oven, and call 'em biscuits, but that don't make it so.

Lindy