What is "art"?
 

Occasionally, the running question of what is art crops up here in various threads. More recently, a thread about a website containing "artful erotica" raised it once again. It raises the question: Is it art, or is it simply porn?

It's a question as subjective as any, the question of art. It's been asked and answered for centuries, and so you'll find a long history of aesthetics. Of course, the format of the forum isn't necessarily the best place to go into that in great detail. However, I'm interested to hear your own personal take on the question.

• What is art?
• What factors lead you to designate something the status of "art"?
• What factors lead you to deny it?
• What are some examples of each?

I find that the subjectivity will vary genre to genre, form to form, medium to medium, and so that would be an interesting way to focus on the question.

I'll start by stating some of the early formative concepts and ideas that have led me to formulate my own ideas of art.

First, I believe that, essentially, art is the philosophy of art. That is to say, art is a self-conscious exploration of the meanings, values, and cultural influences that are at play within art as it takes form. It is about itself and its aesthetic status within that context. The manifestation is the message, which can be found at its core. Its purpose is to differentiate itself from reality in that it carries a message about one or more aspects of reality. [This idea is not my own. But, alas, I have forgotten its source. I'm sure it has an undercurrent in many ideas of aesthetics.]

Next, I would like to draw attention to the artist by pointing to the book Art Lessons: meditations on the creative life by Deborah J. Haynes, a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado. In her book, she states that art is about more than making forms and such (i.e. the manifestation side of art). The artist him or herself must be "a citizen of the world, knowledgeable about the past, analytical about the present, and reflective about the future." More poignantly, she states that the artist must realize that "the future is at risk." This unavoidable reality, Haynes suggests, gives importance to the work of the artist.

Finally, one of my foundational teachers of poetry and criticism was a classically educated Oxford scholar. He taught what I think to be the best, most cogent definition of poetry: "Poetry is the longest distance between point A and point B."

I would later be taught by another great influence of mine that there is a reason why the poet simply doesn't just come out and say what he means. Why does he take six stanzas of blank verse wrought with metaphor to tell the reader his dog died? It's because such a poem isn't about communicating this fact; it's about poetry. It's about art. It's art.

When you read a masterful love poem, realize this: the poet likely has a greater love for language than he does the subject of the poem. There are far better ways to express and reciprocate love than to spend god knows how many hours writing a poem about it. Despite what you might think, poets don't necessarily make great lovers. Language is an alluring mistress.

So there you have it. To me, art is about art; it is created within the context of the future being at risk; and it is a playful displacement from reality and direct communication of meaning. This, of course, is speaking in a general sense. I will reserve further thoughts until the thread unfolds.

So, tell me: what is art?

I am of the belief that art is not owned by people or made by people.

The longer I live, the more I believe that art is here first, all around us.
Some people capture it, manipulate it (or not) and put it on display.
In humans, I think the essence of art is manifested in inspiration, love, despair...sometimes even mundanity.
And it has the ability to reach out of its medium and communicate with others.
Therefore you hear, 'I don't know what art is, but I know it when I see it.'

Granted, my views conflict with those of many people who 'create' art and believe that it is something that belongs to them - an expression of their talents - 'yay me!'
When really, I believe, the ability to 'capture' art is the gift. It should be humbling, rather than self-fulfilling.

That's just my idiosyncratic opinion on the subject, though. I don't expect many people to agree with me. :)

Art is the way God communicates with ITself.
All the true secret hidden wisdom of the world moves through Art.
Song, Dance, Canvas, Poetry, Athletics, Theater.

Well, you get this current of philosophy that strives to remove the artist from the formula (consider Barthes' "The Death of the Author"). I see the value in that. And when you remove the artist from the work, you essentially get to that environment where the art has no "ownership."

I think art must be interpreted by the consumer, not the creator. With regard to text, this goes along with the idea of writerly text (again, Barthes), where it's the reader who creates meaning from what is read, as opposed to readerly text, where the reader is a passive consumer who is spoon fed by the author.

Art only comes alive when the consumer can generate meaning from it; otherwise, it's just "stuff."

I teach my students each semester that art is what the artists says is art.

It's funny you should mention that, because while I was writing my previous post I was thinking about the plurality of art that was created in the earliest days following the development of major religions - not just Christianity, but Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, etc. Much of the art created during those times was attributed to a confluence with the nature of God (or its corresponding entity or non-entity, depending on which religion we are talking about). Even though I am not a religious person, this perspective on art aligns much more closely with my own than one that emphasizes the individual.

Yeah, like warrrreagl said. And as for what makes an artist an artist, it's whomesoever calls oneself that.

You decide for yourself what constitutes good art or bad art.

That's it. Nothing more to it.

I view this "art as a communion with God" as the artist tapping into wider humanity. An artist cannot be completely self-indulgent and separated in his or her creation. Art cannot be created in a vacuum; "no man is an island."

This is why I think the artist must let go of their creation once it's in the public eye. At that point, it's no longer theirs. In a way, it never was.

My smile is too big to be contained by my face, old friend.

Can something be art if the "artist" makes no claims to what they do or what they are?

What if they simply claim that it's "just some crap I made"?

I agree with you up until the point that someone necessarily needs to recognize the work of someone else as 'art.' This hearkens back to another conversation we had here a couple of years ago when it was purported to me that art doesn't exist unless someone other than the artist sees it and calls it 'art.' Not only does that go against my grain emotionally, but it doesn't seem logical. How often are great artists not discovered until after their death? Was their work not 'art' as long as it was holed up in their attic unseen by others?

Perhaps the conflict (for me) is seated in the use of the word 'art' which, as you seem to describe it, is a commodity. Perhaps 'art' and the existence of what would be art are two different things.

If so, then I personally have very little interest in 'art' and much more interest in that other, unnamed phenomena. :p

I'll just say that "Art" isn't a value judgement. It can be of poor quality or offensive or derivative or facile or easy to do or all of these things. That doesn't exclude a work from being "Art".

For example, a coworker at lunch the other day said that Picasso's work wasn't Art because he didn't like it. He prefers old masters.

This makes no sense to me. You don't have to like Picasso, but what then are his paintings? A method for stress testing drywall? Good grief.

Well, it can be said that it was always art, regardless. :) If a tree falls in the forest?

For something to have a status, it needs confirmation. I think if something is created by an artist and never sees the light of day that it still could be art, but until someone else experiences it, its status as art is possibly confirmed solely with self-indulgent bias.

By "consume," I don't mean as a commodity; I mean it as an experience.

Oh, I know. I didn't mean commodity literally - I was thinking of it more as an exchange. That 'communication' part of the process.

A pet peeve of mine is when people are adamant about something "sucking" or being "terrible" or "trash." If I insist that what they mean instead is that "they think it sucks and it's terrible and trash" and they disagree and think it universally so....I tend to no longer value their opinions.

---------- Post added at 11:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:08 AM ----------

In which case you were differentiating between the manifestation of art and its concept?

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the old Warhol cliche:

"Art is what you can get away with."

I generally think that is true.

Within each period of time, there is a particular topic that appeals to a particular audience.

In the sense that art imitates life, they're both the same: you can't define it into a box.

i agree with art that art is what the producer says it is.

i don't particularly see consumer interaction as having the power to define what a piece is or is not. i don't see myself or anyone else owing a consumer any particular experience. i don't know where this idea comes from--well, i do---people confuse art with entertainment and they don't like to work real hard at being entertained.

but basically, for any piece "x" there are people find x accessible and people who don't. it's just like that, yes?


the way i personally think about it, art puts into place or motion (depending on the medium) the conditions that should enable the fashioning of any number of experiences. the artist's obligation is to make the elements clear and consistent as the constraints require.


speaking for myself and my own little things, i'm interested in how people interact with these environments (or don't).
but i'm not at all interested in telling you what it means.
what it is should be all on the surface (or in the machinery that makes a surface a surface).
the secret is there is no secret.
but shh.

Yes. It kind of circles back around to my original thought that art exists before it is 'art.'

I don't think that art requires its creator to call it art for it to be art. Is that what some of you are saying?

I think these matters of the status of art yea or nay? to say very little of the actual value of art.

Should a serial killer call his acts performance art, what are we to do with that? Should a man who exposes himself on playgrounds consider his acts performance art, what are we to do with that? Should a rapist consider his acts performance art and suggest we call him not a rapist but a "ravishist," what are we to do with that?

Okay, so I'm going to extremes. I guess my point is that I'm not all that concerned about what the artist thinks or calls his or her work. I don't see much value in it. I'm only generally and quite vaguely concerned about the biography of the artist when considering their work. I'm more focused on the work itself and what I can get out of it.

It also stands to reason that no one has any business determining what is art and what is not in any sort of conclusive way because it is not a 'thing' we can define like a pen or a telephone. Like rb said, it is a way of cutting through all of the annoying extraneous obligations of 'consuming' art, but it's also another way of attempting to 'own' it.

there is nothing that qualifies a particular piece as art or not art. the word is a name like any other. it comes from somewhere. i don't particularly see why critics should have the power to determine what is and is not art either. why not the folk who produce the environments?

and it doesn't bother me that there is nothing at the level of an "essence" that separates art from anything else.
art is a particular type of situation.


consumers are free to "get things out of an experience" or not. they can like or not like things as they like to like things. they don't have any power for that beyond the aggregated power of choosing to buy something or not. but people are also free to not like the books they read, yes?

people are also free to stop being consumers put in the time and energy and make their own pieces. that'd be a preferred response, yes?

if you think that, say, conceptual art is nonsense make something yourself. typically that shuts up the smug Consumer: if you think it's so easy, why aren't you doing it?

I'm not suggesting that art requires the critics to make it into being. I'm simply uncomfortable with placing it entirely at the mercy of the artist. This makes art, its status, and its potential for meaning all dependent on the artist, which I don't think is the case. What's dependent on the artist is the concept and manifestation of the art...the creative act. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of artist as dictator, when I think that much of the power rests in the minds of those who experience the work.

This is easily one of the greatest sources of animosity between the public and the artist. But I don't think this means the public plays no role in validating something as art and being a source of generating meaning from it.

Yeah. Again. Whatever someone wants to call art is art. Whoever calls him or herself an artist is an artist. It's actually important to leave it like that. Otherwise you just limit the possibilities of what art is or can be...

It seems that what you want to discuss is the quality of art. What makes art good or bad? If so carry on. I don't get too involved in that - except for having a few personal opinions.

Actually, I'm not even all that interested in whether something is or isn't art, and who should be the one to have the power to deem it so (or not). I'm more interested in hearing about what art is. What is it? How does it function (does it have a function)? Why do we make art? Why do we experience it? How does it affect us?

What does it do?

If it is a dictatorship, then whomever decides to call it art (or not) is assuming the role of the dictator. I don't see the difference.

Perhaps art, just like life, should not be over-romanticized.

For me, personally? Everything is art. That's why I'm interested in everything. Everything people do is art, as far as I'm concerned. Most of it is really terrible. Done for really stupid reasons. Like for money. That's a stupid reason to do something in this world. Or power - another dumb reason to do things. Or fame, really inane. I just consider everything people do as art. And I'm always surprised at how much bad art there is out there.

So we should all be ascetics? The ascetic life is the greatest artform?

well, i don't see there is a general philosophical notion of what art is or does. there's lots of possibilities. personally, i like john cage's definition:

art is imitation of nature in her mode of operation.

but it's the last part that's the key---in her mode of operation---that's why i use terms like environment or space rather than piece alot of the time. art is a kind of recursive environment that is open the emergence(s)...meanings are emergent phenomena, so effects of interactions between embodied agents and environment (with no clear boundaries separating them)...this is why it's kinda important for me conceptually to not determine in advance what a piece "means" but rather to think about a piece as a set of parameters that move in particular directions (and not others, by extension)....

i'm kinda interested in tampering with the limits of "normal" experience as a political matter and i'm interested in other work that i take as doing similar or parallel things in different media, along different paths often for quite different ends.

so for me, the art that i prefer to interact with provides a basis for learning more of what's possible or for opening up other possibilities. can come from any number of periods and in any number of media.

like everything else, it moves around.

but this is about my preferences, yes? not some ontological discussion of what art is.

o yeah: i learn a whole lot about "art" from listening to the salt marsh in the morning. more than i learn from looking at most art objects.

"So we should all be ascetics? The ascetic life is the greatest artform?"

No way. There's a lot of good reasons to do things on this earth besides money, power, and fame.

roachboy, I appreciate and respect your approach, and I like to think that much of what I do is related.

The good thing about money is that you can use it so that you aren't a burden on others. Money isn't inherently bad. What do you value otherwise? What are the best reasons for doing things?

---------- Post added at 01:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:04 PM ----------

I see art and the experience of art as a shared experience. In a very general sense, I see the creation of art as the artist making a statement about humanity. This means that there has been a claim made or question posed about something that doesn't belong solely to the artist; it belongs to everyone and no one.

Well, I don't have anything good to say about money. I know it's very popular. To me, it looks like the wrong reason to do things.

I suppose the best reason is to alleviate suffering. After that, it seems to me one might illuminate the territories of desire with something that helps oneself and others feel better...

That's a start.

I think art is like beauty,
the eye & mind of the beholder
will conspire to make it so.

Art, imo (respectfully said), is merely a way for one individual to express, and at the same moment, attempt to elicit, an emotional response from another individual, without necessarily dictating what that emotion “should” be.

Outside of portrait or specific story art, which intrinsically elicits an emotion (attempts to), that either the consumer wants (and pre-pays for) or the artist specifically wants an individual to experience (disgust over pictures of war, gore, arousal from sexual images, etc).

I think the best art is never interpreted by two people exactly the same, and each individual takes from it what they will, to either answer some question in their own mind, or deny the question to begin with (it's not art because I don't like it).

The question art asks is: How does this make you feel?

There are no right answers; each individual sees art through their own experiences in life. When we listen to each other try to interpret art we learn to look at something in a different way, in a way we may never have seen, had we not taken the time, to listen to the emotional responses of others.

Art is wonderment,
which we all have in common,
until disabused.

Nothing, really.

If an individual does something and calls it art, then I am willing to take his word for it whether I appreciate it or not, and whether I like it or not. To be fair, though, this also requires us all to accept that others may interpret what we do or create as art whether we intend or appreciate it as such. That which is intended to be satirically or obnoxiously unartistic is, in its own right, a form of art. The classics are art in that they convey meaning and were intended to do so by their creators. "fountain" by Duchamp is art not in the same sense, but in its intellectual value as a commentary on art as a whole. The scribblings of a graffiti tagger's name in spraypaint are art in that they preserve meaning in space and time. this isn't to say that all art is equal -- I still don't "get" Andy Warhol's pop art (although as my brother suggested, this may be due to a lack of the drugs that were popular when he was) but I recognize him as a cultural influence and acknowledge his talent.

The fascists of the early to mid 20th century tried to force their views of what is art on the people, and to emulate them in any way strikes me as senselessly and needlessly authoritarian.

Whenever I have witnessed miracles, each time they are bound together by the synchronicities produced between different Arts, and sheer irony.

Which leads me to believe that miracles rely on Art for transmission between minds.
They say God is Love. That is why he moves through Art, because Art is encompassed about by those who love it deeply.

Only reading the first sentence of the thread-start post, I'm gonna go ahead with what I've picked up from Art History class and my own interest in this topic.

All creativity's meaning is defined by both creator and observer/participant, if it is seen/made as art, then art it is! So then if it is made with the sole intention of producing a directly hormonal reaction in its participants, then we have a name for it, pornography.



“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.” -Marcel Duchamp (French non-artist, painter and tinkerer. Died 1968)

Ask me later; I'm playing with the floaters in my eyes.

Dodging the question is an art, so is safe-cracking.

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/h...3_ing_full.jpg