Like the heading asks, what is art? For example I draw an abstract shape to red and green background with MSpaint in three minutes.

Is that art?
Why it is/is not?
Who decides what is art?

Despite the example, the discussion may include any form of art: fine art, performance, sound in its many forms and any other you can imagine. So who dare to start...

I'd say that art must have meaning in addition to form. Purpose doesn't really count much towards making something art.

Yes. Intention is the key. Well...the tip of the iceberg of the key. Not only must the Art be intentionally committed- thus eliminating monkeys and typewriters or elephants and house brushes- it must be explained, and at great length. Said explanation must take ever so much longer, and be ever so much more complex than the Art 'work', or the work will fail. Oh. And publicity, and all the paraphernalia that that entails.

Oh my... what a question, I remember in college taking an art appreciation class were the professor asked that question on the first day & we spent the whole semester answering it studying artist styles, themes, technique & work.
We don't have a semester (or more to the point I won't spend that long on the subject) so I'll cut to the chase. He said that art can be anything that a person finds value in. It's kind of the opposite definition of what a weed is ; an unwanted plant. So, any plant can be a weed (even a beautiful rose) and anything can be “art”.

I was going to disagree, but your use of 'value' isn't sufficiently clear. Either way: An object created and used without consideration given to anything other than its suitability for such use is not art. It can potentially become art, though.

Artistic value is not an inherent trait. It must come from a creator, user, or perceiver.

To expand on my previous post, I would note that "This is an aspect of Beauty" counts as a meaning.

Art, especially modern art, is an expression of Self. People express themselves in many ways: music, painting, writing, etc. To some, a small white circle in the middle of a large black canvas if just a waste of perfectly good materials, but to others, it could have meaning; it could mean a small speckle of hope in a void of despair, a bit of success in a sea of failure. It could also have a religious tone if you swing that way. It could represent finding God amongst all the lies and evil.
In essence, art is whatever you make of it. Now I, myself, am partial to classic art, things like the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, David, etc. However, I can see the merit of modern art, as long as it actually is made with reason. If some slaps a white dot on a black canvas then makes up a bulls*** story, that's not art, that's scamming. With modern art, it's sometimes hard to tell.

I think that today's trend have been that if the artist is well known, his works are art but if no one knows his name, it's just some freaked-out's creations. I read some time ago a text that said: "The art is not made by the artist, but the viewer." That's not really what I personally think, but that's how most of people think.

This is how it goes in Finland. I didn't find any article in English but the picture tells it all. It's a gigantic vagina made by some third degree art student(woman). She got several awards with it including a large monetary stipend and the aesthetic act of the year 2007(don't really know what's the name of that prize in English). There was, however, much criticism on that. I'll try to translate one that had some good points in it:

"If Joe, 15 year old high school student draws a 2m penis on the closet wall, he get banned from school, got to pay fine about 2000€ and have to pay the cleaning. If Kati, 27 year old art student draws a 2,458m penis on the closet wall, she will get respect of all artists and artist's stipend(20000€)."

In my opinion that work had a clear message of freedom of speech. Many people didn't think that as art but as a grotesque monument of wickedness of some sort or something like that.

Uh, I think I wandered to offtopic a bit. Well.. I think that the artist decides whether his works are art or not. However, art must be made, not "decided to be". I mean that anything that has been made already can't suddenly turn into art, if the creator says so.

Uh, I think I wandered to offtopic a bit. Well.. I think that the artist decides whether his works are art or not. However, art must be made, not "decided to be". I mean that anything that has been made already can't suddenly turn into art, if the creator says so.
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The Dada-ists did it with ' found' objects. And with that and other things they did and said they pretty well messed up everybody's heads as to what art 'is' for... ever. Or to look at it in a more positive light, they freed people's perceptions of what 'Art' could be.

You know, decal, I've never seen one of 'those' on wheels before. Giant vaginas on wheels, Lordi... you've got it all, in Finland!

Yeah, that's true. However, dadaists still create their works as art. They don't just decide some objects to be art.

That vagina was quite unique here too. Would that be even possible in US(your American, right?).

He's British. I'm American, though. I'd say probably not. I doubt that would be acceptable. There's a fine line between nude figure art, and a giant vagina.

Oh yes. It would allowed in the UK. Probably have tone down the pink though. We can't handle much out side the blue/green/grey spectrum.

I'm guessing the giant V. was more in the nature of a feminist political statement, rather than a purely artistic one. It looked more 'craft' than 'art'.

DuChamps' 'Urinal'; Picasso's handlebar goat: surely these fall within using real objects as art. Or maybe I'm not understanding your point.

Asking for a black and white definition of art is kind of impossible. There just really isn't a nice neat line where everything on one side is clearly art, and everything on the other side is clearly not. Instead, you should consider it a spectrum ranging from "clearly not art" to "clearly art". Ask yourself a few questions:

1) Does the work have inherent aesthetic value, or is its only value in the statement it makes? Consider concepts like color, proportion, etc.

2) Is it actually the result of careful creative effort, or is it like your MS Paint squares, just a random image?

3) If it has a message, how much of an attempt is made to present the message in a creative way? A 10' high "BUSH SUCKS" sign is not art.

4) If there were no art critics to label it as "good art", and the artist was not famous, would you still appreciate the work?

Etc.


A lot of modern "art" just fails all of these points. Consider the infamous trash bag "art" (the "artist" dropped his random trash bag on the museum floor and called it art... the janitor threw it out without realizing it was an expensive work of art). It has no aesthetic value outside of the statement it is making about the art world. Nobody would call my trash bags art, even though they look exactly the same. The only reason anyone called it "art" was because the self-appointed art critics declared it to be art, and stupid rich people feel a need to demonstrate their good taste to everyone else. If it had just been some random guy who did it, nobody would've given it a second look... but because it was one of the "artists you need to care about", it got tons of attention and a huge price tag.

So this pretty clearly says the trash bag had no inherent value as art, its sole "value" came from the circular logic of "this is art because I say it is art".

I just can't understand how the methods the work is made has anything to do with the "fact" is it art ir not. From some pictures you can't tell is it made in five minutes of five days. The only thing that matters is the completed work, not how your going to complete it.



Tell me why "BUSH SUCKS" is not art. I can express my political opinions in many ways even in art form. That sing is just one of them.

On the other hand, IF we pretend that the exact expression is not art, there can still be many things that could make it art. Or what do you think if I make very beautiful oil painting using half of my lifetime(pointing to your question 2.) to it and there's written crearly "Bush sucks"?



Would YOU? Is your point there that you can't think the work art then? I think that any critics or how famous the artist is can't affect whether the work is art.

If you see some painting fist time not knowing the artist, could you think it as art? If we pretend you don't think so, would your opinion change if you hear some good critics from it and that Da Vinci painted it?



Like I said before, I think that today's trend has been that artistic value is directly linked to the artist's famousness. Most people(too many anyway) are too dumb or lazy to think anything with their own brains so they just believe what they are told. If that artist is famous, his statements has more value than unknown artists'.

Um, maybe I couldn't say it clearly enough.. My point was that "extremes" like that always stir up heated conversation about what is art and does it deserve the merits it's gotten. And yeah, its actual purpose was to bring up the issue of sexual equality.

Still, I think that if it was a man who made such a big vagina, he would have been characterized as some perverted freak, not a creative artist.

Taking twenty, twenty-first century Humanities, we were always asked “is this art” from a number of examples. We even had to determine if ‘public reaction’ was in itself an artwork, which was precisely what Guillermo Gomez-Pena was seeking when he did his whole “network hijack”. To him, the reaction he received, both positive and negative, and the media and public confusion was priceless and a form of art.

Also we had to also debate and write about things that can only exist on a PC and cannot be produced any other way. Too, when someone said “art is anything that can be collected”, we dissected that and determined that some art is impossible to collect, Like wall graffiti or building architecture, especially the modern / postmodern, and poste-modern (yes spelled with an “e” to distinguish “on TV” or “on screen”).

Art has no one definition, and even someone creating an item / object for another reason can be ‘art’ to someone else, so even something that wasn’t created as art may become it.

Edit: (from the post below mine)
I never liked "da-da" art. Dadists never made sense to me, though I respected it for what it was - media art. Were they right? I don't know, but that may be in the eye of the beholder.

So... I suppose the Dada-ists were right. Art IS dead. And all we're left with is 'presentation'. And decal- plenty of famous creative artists WERE and ARE perverted freaks.

[Edit to the Edit above this] If you didn't like it, xen, then they are loving you from the grave. 'Like' an anarchist and you destroy his/her whole raison d'etre. And I think one thing we've pretty well all agreed on is that there is no 'right' in art.

I realize that well, but look out of your window and these people there. Do you think they realize? I think in their point of view artists are not perverted freaks and other way around. Compare high-elves to orges in use of magic.

Can you see them too!? Thank...! And... I hope they don't realize. I've got to live here. They're already cross because I don't have a car tax disk. And they WILL NOT accept that it's a public art installation and not just a dumped old banger. What we artists suffer for our art!

Afraid, dec, you've lost me on this one: the high elf ref.

A persons past experiences and knowledge will determine what one sees in a picture. Not one meaning will be exactly the same given if 100 people look at 1 picture. So art is in the eye of the beholder, thus art is subjective.

I agree, Teeth - art is what one makes of it. One may look at an abstract painting and say "What the hell is that supposed to be?", while another person may look at it and say "It signifies a point in the artist's life." (or some other philosophical thing like that )

..my bad. I meant that in tes lore orcs just can't cast any spell except these pooty fireball starting spell and can't be mages(or smthng like that, you get the point). Most people thinks that perverted freaks and their "art works" just can't be art but some weird materialized sexual fetishes for example.



Do you(and teeth) mean that the means and messages the artist is trying to tell with his art work has no any effect to one's opinion? Only his background and such things? I think that the work itself has very minimal effect for most peoples' opinion but the artists own status has the greatest influence.

While I wrote this I thought that.. How do you think that whether one thinks the picture is abstract or non-abstract(don't know the word) has anything to do with that does he think it as art or no?

Representational?

Most people can look at a representational ( non- abstract ) work of art and say that they either like it , or don't like it. What casual art 'lovers' do not seem to realize is that representational work requires as much back story ( knowledge, education, research ) as non representational ( abstract ) work. Without the back story most people go on their gut reaction to a work. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing... just rather limiting: like judging a video game by only looking at the box and the developers blurb, and not playing it.

I mostly agree with ninja_lord666,art is the best to express your self...I'm a artist,so for example,when I'm in bad mood I'll draw something more in dark colors and stuff...I really love to draw,and something what is made on quick i wouldn't call art,that could only be sketch...

The "freudian" method of aesthetics study seems to be still the most used (and abused). I don't think this is so important, i prefer to consider the reaction of the viewer more than the state of mind of the artist.



Are you sure? let me remind you of the artistic vanguards in early '900: Kandinsky, Klee, Itten, and the constructivists Malevic, Chernikhov and El Lisitsky introduced a SCIENTIFIC METHOD based on pure geometric forms, abstract lines, color fields; studying the graphic perception and its properties, and trying to draw the lines for a new way of educating and discipline creativity.

I think what your saying is art can’t be a coincidence, has to have intent, purpose & cause.
For instance: a plumber tries to fix some leaks & inadvertently makes some cool looking plumbing work. You say it’s not art because the guy was just trying to fix a leak, I guess I can agree with that.
So ink blots are only art if the person’s goal is to make art…wait stop that means the exact same blot can either be art or trash, which takes me back to what my professor told me way back when.
Now I’m really CornFused, thanks.

Really what all of this sums up is: anything is art.

I didn't think a wall of TVs was 'art', but apparently it is, for it's on display in museum. To me, it's just clutter.

The plumber's pipes are art to someone else. Art doesn't have to have intent in the 'maker's eyes', it has to have 'intent' in 'someone's eyes'.

But in that regard, it has to be 'art' because 'someone else' has said it was art? You could make a clay sculpture and call it art, but if no on else on the planet thought so, then is it still art? Some say yes, you intended it to be just no one understands it.
Some say 'no', because of the very same reason.

Everything and nothing is art. And everything that is art will eventually become junk, for as things age they are valued higher provided they are not damaged or defaced (and even then some still consider them 'priceless'), though the physical aspect, anything that ages deteriorates. Thus everything today that is 'art' will one day be landfil.

Art or what one considers art it purely subjective. However, there are certain basic requirements of all art forms. I realize that people here have focused solely upon a very small selection of visual art, i.e. paintings and sculptures, but the word art encompasses so much more than these two forms. What of music? What of poetry? What of literature and photography.

Most agree there has to be an intent to create 'art' but there's more to it than that. A true artist must have skill, talent, and an understanding of his or her subject. Art must be able to convey a meaning, it must evoke an emotional response to qualify as art. Despite my extreme dislike of rap I would consider it a form of art. The singer had intent, he understood his subject(or at least, he/she pretends to) and it evokes and emotional response. (In my case, it evokes anger and condescension.) In the same manner, I do not consider many contemporary painters and sculptors to be artists, nor their efforts to have produced art in any broad definition of the word.

Do we consider the scribblings of a child on a piece of paper to be art? Not hardly. So, why would or should we consider someone 'scribbling' with a paintbrush on canvass as art? Like one had referenced the trash bag story. A self proclaimed artist with connections says a thing is art, and the pathetic and gullible populace say it is so. Can anyone here tell me what emotion is evoked by say, a broad brush stroke and a splatter of droplets on a canvas? Would you feel anything if you were not told it was a piece of art? Would you feel anything or comprehend some fictitious deep affinity to the artist if the artist him/herself had not expressly told another what message he or she was trying to convey? This is the funniest thing about 'accepted' art.

I think photography is probably the most defined visual art form. A photograph isn't considered 'good' or art by anyone unless it induces either deep thought or emotions. I can take a picture of wildlife around my house, is it pretty? yes, is it art? no. I can only say, what a beautiful bird. A good photographer can capture the very essence of life and we can all relate to it and proclaim it as art.


Not sure if anyone else sees it all this way, but, it's my two cents and I spent them.

Practically here's been two types of opinion: one thinks that whether the work is considered as art, is a decide of viewer, while the other think the artist himself makes that statement. But imagine this: There's pile of rubble and pipes laid to ground in random form by someone. Then someone comes there and thinks "whoah, that's something great art..blah, blah.." Then the its creator comes up and says it's no art.

So, who's right in that kind of situation?

That happens, especially in architecture, when an old building (in these cases, "old" is a pretty recent work) generally considered ugly, loses his primary functions and can be demolished. but something of that architecture has put an unique mark, and somewhat of a unique "personality" to the environment surrounding that place, and is asked not to be demolished, and re-used for something else.

The architect, or more probably the engineer, had no other purposes but to make that building only for his functions, without any aesthetic solutions. But the people has found something in that building that is worth to keep it away from demolition or abandonment.

I'd think of it like a comedian. We can't really explain why he's funny but he is and he manages to fire up feelings inside of us that make us laugh and like art, not everyone find him funny. I hope we all agree that it is the feelings that drive us to look at art, after all the majority of the world likes to do things that... well, they like-- and I'm sure art would not exist if people wouldn't get these feelings from them. Hardly would they stare at some shapes and geometry if they wouldn't get *anything* out of it.

Just like it's hard to bring out hard evidence that the comedian *is* funny or not; it's hard to explain to someone that something is art or not. Because it's so subjective it's easy to effect and even manipulate these feelings, just like placebo effect and --like talked about before-- "This is art" propaganda. You must've noticed this, your mental state is a big factor what kind of feelings you get from various things, even thought it's just what music you're listening to while you're walking through a museum or smell in the air.

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I'm going a little off-topic now.
Many of us think that being affected so much by manipulation like "This is art" propaganda is bad, because it's not "true", or "true feelings" because we just like it because we're told to like it. I can't see any difference and personally I just think it's a good thing, I had a period when I was younger when I liked everything that was Japanese, I listened to songs wholly because it was Japanese not because it was really good. I noticed how many of the songs I listened to was just because the girlfriend sent it, it was Japanese or whatsoever and I thought: "This is bad!" but then I just thought: "Does it matter?" because long as I'm glad, it doesn't matter how it's done, after all we're all want to be happy in one way or another.
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Bah, longer reply than I wanted it to be, maaaa.

Vif...

You say that art has to be made with a purpose - it cannot be coincidence.

What about art that is random in nature - on purpose. Is it still art? If you write a computer program to output a random pattern, is the result art?


Incidentally, if anyone knows how to colour a single pixel in OpenGl for C++, please enlighten me!

Great comparison; and a joke isn't funny if you have to spend a lot of time explaining it, just like good art I think.

Darn, you're right! That the key to good art could be so simple!

Its so elegant. The artist's pompous explanations become the measure by which the art is judged to be 'good'. If you read the explanation and find yourself agreeing --> good art. If you think 'what a load of tripe!' --> bad art.

It makes the judgement a very personal one of course, though a 'better' piece of art would hopefully be one that appeals to more people.