thespian86

Martian and I have been PMing back and forth about Art's place in society (basically). What art is in general. And I'm wondering what you define Art as. In your own words, what is art? And please refrain from quoting someone and saying "seconded" or "ditto" or what have you. Find your own words and use em'.

ME:

Art is expression with the purpose of inciting future interpretation, critical thought, and, at times, performance/performance evalutation. It is a form and works as such; a set of basic fundamentals and lines in which we can define a form. Within the very basic definition of said form, it is Art's intention to explore humanity and further it's understand of itself. It's creation can be a personal journey or defined by reception. It's definition and the right to change that definition, like anything else, belongs to those educated in the field.

Discuss.

__________________
EX: Whats new?
ME: I officially love coffee more then you now.
EX: uh...
ME: So, not much.

inBOIL

Wouldn't science fit into your definition? Or at least the branches of science that deal with understanding humans (e.g. psychology, medicine).

For me, (and I don't understand Art) Art is something that has as its primary or sole value the ability to make you feel.

__________________
And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.

Willravel

Anything anyone appreciates as art is art.

JumpinJesus

To me, art is something that is created to please one's senses aesthetically.

__________________
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

RAD61

Music is my fave art form. My fave is the piano player, composer, singer. A person that sings and plays to my soul. Lyrics that make you think, and open doors that were once closed. Once in your head, they can take you to places you have never been. My fave artists have done this to me many times.

__________________
You can find me between the click of the light and the start of the dream.
Arcade Fire

thespian86

Yes, and that's because I don't think the two differ on a basic level. Saying art is completely subjective is like saying it's existence is defined by it's non-existence. There has to be structure in some way for it to exist.

The big difference is in the first sentence. Art is expressionistic while Science is more evidential. Or something similar.

__________________
EX: Whats new?
ME: I officially love coffee more then you now.
EX: uh...
ME: So, not much.

ametc

Most art is mediocre and unoriginal. Very few artists have what it takes to be deep and thought provoking and subtle. I'm not saying I'm original.. I'm not. But, I know when others are.. and I've seen very few artists who are truly original. Not saying that I hate all unoriginal art. Just saying.. originality is hard.

thespian86

So art has no definition? How can art exist if it cannot be defined?

__________________
EX: Whats new?
ME: I officially love coffee more then you now.
EX: uh...
ME: So, not much.

Xerxys

I can't quote willrave and say ditto then. huh?

I'm gonna say it his way. I was in Paris and I felt AT FUCKIN' HOME!!! Brilliant place, beutiful buildings. Great people. Then I went to the museaums and saw the churches and the paintings and the paintingsa of the churches and I felt ... nothing.

I feel nothing when I see painted pictures of houses on a prairie hill. I feel nothing when I see statues strewn across the Cary Towne center. I feel some form of elation when I see a good painting depiction of someone but that's about it.

I however enjoy photographs, immeansly, even the ones on the EZ board, can;t get enough of those. I especially love the black and white ones.

So I'm gonna quote will again because he said it best :Art is something you enjoy. Be it collecting stamps, reading books, watching films, or fappin to tfp tiddy. It's all art baby.

Martian

The problem I have with overly rigid definitions of art is that it creates situations of exclusion. I can't put myself in a position where I deny someone's mode of expression.

Definition of art: Art is a symbolic representation created by an individual to make a statement.

Breaking that down, we find that art has two criteria:

1) It has to be created
2) It has to make a statement

If it does meet those two criteria, it's art. Architecture, sculpture, music, theatre, these are all unambiguously art.

The statement need not be profound or novel. If somebody wants to write a song or 20 about how their girlfriend left them, then they're creating art. It may not be art I enjoy or find interesting, but it is art all the same. Conversely, I may find other messages within the art. These may not necessarily be statements the artist consciously intended to make ('I like money' or 'I'm afraid of taking risks').

A landscape is not art. A painting of a landscape is. Traffic noise isn't art, but may be recorded and presented in order to convey a message of some sort, at which point it becomes art. Duchamp's dadaist work wasn't generally created by him, but he used it and made it into art.

Art itself is objective. It exists regardless of what people think of it.

But then there's the other side of it.

The artist is a conduit. The art is created by the artist. The audience gives the art meaning and significance. It doesn't matter if I write the most beautiful song in human history if nobody hears or appreciates it. Conversely, the most mundane and pedestrian music (taken solely from a technical aspect) could be considered profound and meaningful, if enough people deem it so.

It's hard not to get completely off base here. I have a lot of ideas regarding this topic, and the meaning and significance of it. Art is the search for meaning within human existence, but it's a collective thing. At the same time, it is an individual process as well. I might find something meaningful and profound, even if nobody else does. The works that are likely to be preserved and held up as meaningful in the future are the ones that have a similar impact on a wide number of people.

If we look at the technical side of art, there is structure and coherence. There are rules. Music is what I'm most comfortable with, and there we have things like meter and tempo and key signature and phrasing and all the myriad other details that go into a composition. Individual instruments require skill and technique and a great deal of practice to master. I can judge an artist on things like fret technique, originality, improvisational ability, use of dynamics and tempo. I can use these to review a piece from a technical standpoint, much as one can review the technical strengths and weaknesses of a surgeon or engineer. But I can't deny the expression itself.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Willravel

I believe the subjectivity of art lends to it's definition. Some people believe that wind moving through trees is music. Who am I to argue with their own subjective experience?

Manic_Skafe

Art in terms of the art world is nothing, really. It's all too enmeshed and contingent upon everything that doesn't fit that perfunctory definition in order to be of any real meaning in it's own right. The idea that you can extract a form or a discipline from everything that suffuses it with meaning and elevate it to the art world while discarding all the rest is nonsense.

This is the reason why works as institutional critiques and works that question the boundaries between the ordinary and the art world are often the most interesting and controversial until those works and the forms from which they are created are eventually co-opted into the same baseless nonsense for which they were created against.

There's art and there's artists but only in such a meaningless and convenient sense that the terms are barely applicable.

For myself, there are simply works of various forms that are either evocative, communicative, though provoking or they aren't.

__________________
"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian

Shell

...ART, at the very least, must be either one, two, or three dimensional and defined by it's creator as "Art". Otherwise, anything goes...which is some circumstances is very unfortunate. Unless you're talking about things like music being an art or the art of conversation...but i don't think that type of art is what this thread is meant to be about.

__________________
..."Say what you think. Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" ~ Dr. Seuss

fresnelly

I'll just say that my qualification of Art doesn't require Merit.

In other words, I don't bind Art and Worth. Poorly executed or unengaging Art is still Art, after all. To me it boils down to intent and expression. Put those together and you have Art, no matter what it's worth.

Too often this sort of discussion is really about the Market and whether Art is worth paying for and for how much. I find that debate really, really tedious.

__________________
Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

squeeeb

this is a philisophical question. i've gone round and round with this, and it really really interests me. i dont think there is an answer.

if i pee in a glass and stick a crucifix in it, is that art? cause someone did and others said it was.


shooting martin luther king and jfk was making a statement. were those shootings art? i am not being a wise ass or trying to prove you wrong, i am legitimately asking if they were art.

most people say art is something that causes emotion, affects us, makes us think, makes us feel, etc. "performance art" is art, right? setting fire to someone makes us think, causes emotion, and all that, and i always ask if setting fire to someone is art.

if the king/jfk shootings are NOT art, then why? because they are negative? if it causes emotion, makes a statement, etc, by those definitions, its art, regardless of the statement being negative or positive.

i think of the joker in the first batman movie (played by jack nicholson). to him, he was making art. to others, he was killing and maiming.



---------- Post added at 09:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:07 AM ----------

why does it have to be deep and thought provoking?

__________________
onward to mayhem!

vanblah

I think you have to take into account the intentions of the creator. James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald did not intend for these assassinations to be considered art.

There are also varying degrees of art, but one thing they all have in common is that they are intended to be art. I don't think that art happens by accident--even so-called "found art." In this case, the person who found it and labeled it art has made a conscious and intentional decision.

So if an artist sets someone on fire as an artistic statement then yes, it's art. Likewise, assassination. We don't have to enjoy or approve of art for something to be considered art. It will still be a criminal act as well. Heck, I've seen some performance art pieces that should have been considered criminal.

squeeeb

hmmm, damn good point. Intention of the "Artist" helps to make art, art?

so for art to be considered art, it has to be intended to be considered art. i like it. lets go with that for now.

__________________
onward to mayhem!

fresnelly

Your examples meet my Expression requirement but not necessarily the one of Intent. You'd have to ask the assassins to be sure but I assume their motivations were political (crudely speaking) or selfishly emotional. Political and Artistic expression can certainly be intertwined but not necessarily.

If I remember my high school Law class correctly, the question of what defines a Criminal Act comes down to two aspects: the first being the nature of the act itself and the second being intent. "Actus Reus" and "Mens Rea" respectively. It's a similar debate, no?.

As to "Who" determines art? To me that's moot except to public body funders. (Again, the debate about what Art is worth). If I create a work of Art in solitude and there is no audience, it's still art because I made it so. On the other hand if an audience discovers the psychotic scribblings of a long-dead lunatic (not art by my definition) and then puts it on a wall at a gallery and tries to curate meaning (or an aesthetic) from it, then it becomes Art (and yet doesn't make the original creator an artist).

So the authority for defining art can go to both sides, thus cancelling out the question.

Art doesn't have to be deep or through provking. See the "Art for Art's Sake" movement.

__________________
Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

roachboy

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 (

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

Art can be nearly anything taken out of the context of its original purpose or function.

Art is the philosophy of art.

Artists are typically people who feel the future is at risk, and so they meddle with things to ensure we see them in a displaced light.

Without artists—without art—we would be blind to ourselves and the world.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

RogueGypsy

To me, Art is simple: It is an individual's interpretation of the world around them.

That's it, nothing more or less. Whether anyone else agrees if an interpretation is art or not is irrelevant.

__________________
Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

squeeeb

now that i think more about it...

Art is the guy who fixes my car. nice guy.

__________________
onward to mayhem!

Manic_Skafe

I meant to quote this in my first post but I was pretty far from sober and must've forgot. Care to explain what you mean by this? The definition of what exactly and what exactly constitutes a proper education in a particular field?

Surely artists can feel however they want about their work and define it just the same but history obviously has it's own ways of sorting things out - what are you saying?

__________________
"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian

mixedmedia

I tend to go along the lines of this definition. I have absolutely no qualms about the word 'art' being borderless and ill-defined.

I see the juxtapositions of nature and consequence in the manmade world to be art. Just because someone takes a photograph of it or draws it or sculpts it does not make it something that it was not to begin with. Same goes with sound, kinetic performance and any other artistic form.

Perhaps I think inspiration is art. That which makes one want to create something. Not only the product of inspiration. They seem like a whole to me.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

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

Martian

I actually quite like the commentary made by 4'33", but that's just me.

I find the idea of assassination as art intriguing, moral implications aside. In the end, though, I have to agree with vanblah; the intent is the thing.

I tend to think that what the 'sophisticated art world' accepts as art has little to no relation to what art actually is.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

filtherton

Art is whatever one wants it to be. Anyone who says different has money invested in it.

fresnelly

You're fixated on Quality as a requirement for Art. I think an expression can be poorly executed or unengaging and still be Art, as long as the intent is there.

Realizing that you don't have to respect a work of art, even though it is classified as such, is quite liberating actually.

__________________
Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

mixedmedia

or art.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

filtherton

Heh. Good point.

Lindy

I've never had a problem with that last part. I love some modern art, especially early to mid twentieth century, but some of it is just self indulgent crap, and I don't mind saying so. Just my opinion, of course, but some of it is outright con or scam, or a variation on the emperor's new clothes.

Lindy

mixedmedia

You realize there is an entire school of thought that believes the only true art is what you would term 'self-indulgent crap.'

I think the debate is a waste of time.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

JumpinJesus

Interesting. Is art defined by the artist or the audience?

__________________
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

ring

I don't do art,
I am art.

roachboy

jj: you point to a divide that i argue about with my brother alot. it turns on the cartegoy of the pleasing. for him, this is central. for me, it isn't. behind that we're talking about the same things, but in ways that are particular to the genres we respectively work with.

so--and i may add more to this later (i'm running late again)...

at the level of process, of making stuff, the person who makes stuff, who engages in the processes of making stuff, defines what it is that is being done.

the object (whatever it is) is a collapsed act--so from that viewpoint takes it's meanings from the process of making it.

socially, the object/outputs are the starting point, not the act of making: so socially what gets defined as art seems to me a function of the spaces in which it is encountered. (bad sentence)....the spaces are themselves social functions (controlled by networks of people) so access to spaces amounts to a type of social legitimation--be that space a loft, a gallery, a theater, etc.. this social legitimation repeats at the level of such wider reception as someone's work may get--the defining is done by the intermediaries that shape it's reception (and who legitimate themselves as intermediaries in the process).

audiences occupy a complicated role in this process---because i'm writing quickly, i think the above sounds more machine-like than i mean it to, but for the moment i'll live with that--audiences encounter what they experience in the way that experience is framed. so if the go to a gallery, by definition what they encounter there is "art"...whether they like what they encounter or not isn't terribly important from that viewpoint-->insofar as the definition of what is art is concerned anyway. at least not directly (they come in via another route, by generating demand, which feeds into this system)...

that's all i have time for at the moment.
the cage remarks above point to conceptual art practices, which are great fun to talk about, but i can't sit in my livingroom any longer right now.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

vanblah

I think I may have a bias here because for the last seven years my band rented practice space in an art gallery/studio space (if only we could be the Velvet Underground). I have seen a LOT of visual artists come and go. Some were good; some were bad (in my opinion). However, they were all very passionate about what they were doing. Some of it was derivative (like Lindy's Jackson Pollack statement) some of it seemed wholly unoriginal ... but some of it seemed incredibly original (although I'm sure someone could deconstruct it).

Here's the thing though, originality doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. It's like the people who say that DJs can't be artists because they use other people's work--that's BS. Artists consistently borrow from each other. Painters go to a gallery ... see work by other artist ... and if it moves them they go back to their studios inspired and create something that has been altered by the viewing. Musicians hear a band or a symphony and if it moves them they go back to their studio (or work area) and write music that has been altered by their listening.

Case in point: I was watching the Sigur Ros film "Heima" and was so inspired that I took a song that my current band was working on and wrote a quartet arrangement for it (along with some other instrumentation). It doesn't "sound like" Sigur Ros, but those elements are there.

So, if you intended your 10-15 seconds of clarinet noodling to be art (it's not a symphony by definition) then YES it IS art. I may not like it but it's your art. If you're just bullshitting me with your "art" then that's your problem not mine.

Art IS self-indulgent; almost to a fault. Some people can see through the bullshit ... but I'd be willing to bet that if you spent any time with the so-called bullshitter you'd find that they really believe what they are doing is art. Of course, there are always posers. They're usually fairly easy to spot. They spend a lot of time talking about doing something grandiose and transcendent but usually produce mediocre and uninspiring work. (Sometimes I feel like a poser).

Of course, we're talking about a certain level of art here. I think most people get hung up on the whole "high art" vs. "decorative art." It's all art, in that it was created by someone with the intention of being art. There's spill over between the two. There's a pottery maker/sculptor here in town who creates some of the most phenomenal tea sets I've ever seen. When I see them I think high art ... but they are also decorative art. They are made to be looked at without making a statement. We have a couple of these sets (the more affordable ones).

kramus

I think art is organizing and binding of time and material with intent. The intent is to add quality while expressing some purpose in our lives. Good art does this with aesthetic intent, craftsmanship and the imbuing of the artists pleasure into their construct. A person can be an artist in the way they load a truck, mop a floor or care for a child.

It isn't necessary to intend to make art in order to have art made.

Art isn't necessarily brought into being by persons who claim they are making art.

A couple of clear examples of what I feel art is, where the intent of the creators wasn't necessarily creating art as art - sometimes the conjoining of form and function result in art almost as a default. This is a beautiful truth.

neolithic tool set


Longji terraced rice fields in China

__________________
And now to disengage the clutch of the forebrain ...
I'm going with this - if you like artwork visit http://markfineart.ca

roachboy

nice, vanblah.

for a while i was going to alot of gallery shows and found something similar as an audience member---i figured out at some point or another that the way to do this show thing was to hit the openings because even if you end up seeing an accumulation of stuff that you find utterly uninteresting, at least there's wine. going to these things ended up being a kind of zen hunt for surprise: you couldn't really look for it, you could only make yourself available to it, and sometimes i would turn up.

surprise didn't necessarily come from the Object either. more often, it came from the conceptual games the objects put into motion.

as an audience member, i seem to prefer two basic types of work: stuff that i can think about as a species of toy or game (neither of these in the trivial sense, tho---something that puts you into a network of relations or questions or problems while at the same time leaving you space to move around, think them through---it's a fine balance to locate, this---the skill of conceptual art is in finding versions of this balance. for me, this is probably the highest aesthetic value. sometimes i think that the sound stuff i do approaches this place--sometimes i don't. but it's the kind of relation it'd like to trigger to what i'm doing.)

the other type is something i just find beautiful---but there's no single thing that i key on. this is also a threshold space, an openning onto something beyond the object---but not in a representational sense. stuff i find beautiful in this sense is a more passive experience. it's rare to run into it. last thing i remember finding beautiful in this kind of sense was/is a recording of david tudor's rainforest. (actually, this is one of the few pieces that works in both ways)

but these are simply preferences as an audience element---they have no bearing on what is or is not understood as art, what distinctions follow from dividing art into high/low, aristo/popular etc.

this started out being about conceptual art, but the post above made it carom into another place.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

girldetective

Art = Communication

__________________
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons...be cheerful; strive for happiness - Desiderata

Cielamara

Art is that which is created that moves someone, somewhere, for better or for worse.

__________________

You probably don't want to know.