I’ll side with The Hamster King here. Art is about conveying something, but it doesn’t have to be emotion. In many cases, it conveys perception. A lot of art is just trying to show how the artist sees the world.
This is why students, to this day, continue to paint still-lifes with flowers. Not because the world needs more, but because each student is unique in his or her perception, and the goal (one of the goals!) of the painting is to allow others to get the tiniest glimpse of how the artist sees.
Art is an attempt to break through the walls of solipsist isolation. If you could only see, for one brief moment, what another mind can see…would that not be glorious?
Just the picture does it no justice. If you have an opportunity, go and see it. Standing next to Tank Man, seeing he was a real person with a face… a picture can’t capture that!
The artist intended for him not to be cordoned off from the public. It’s sad they had to do that in the end, because too many people were prodding him. I hope you find him somewhere without the rope!
This is an example of my art. It has no title, no meaning, no explanation. It simply is what it is. If someone wants to give it meaning, fine. If someone else wants to give it a totally different meaning, that’s fine too. And if thousand people come up with a thousand different meanings, that, to me, is the purpose of my art: to joggle your brain and get it to discover its own meaning, not a meaning that came from me. I simply provide something to see and ponder. The rest is up to you.
panache45: I know you weren’t fishing for compliments…but… Nice! It is in a category I sometimes call “concrete abstracts.” It’s abstract, but is still very definitely about something. The viewer can definitely understand “what’s going on” in it.
I am curious where this definition comes from. Because it’s not my understanding of what art is.
I’ve seen plenty of art that doesn’t register any emotion in me. It may register an emotion in someone else, but if that someone else didn’t exist, that doesn’t mean the nature of the work would suddenly change. It would continue to be art because the creator would intend for it be art.
It is incumbent on people to come up with alternative labels when they pronounce from their mountaintops what is and isn’t something. For instance, if someone is going to say that rap isn’t music, they can’t just leave the discussion at that point. They need to put rap into its “proper” place for their argument to be complete.
So if you’re going to say that something intended to be art is NOT art unless it conveys emotion, then you need to come up with the more appropriate label for these types of creations.
I’m with panache. I create a ton of artwork that doesn’t “convey” anything except for whatever my hands made.
Routinely my eyes fall upon artwork that doesn’t register a single emotion in me. That doesn’t mean these pieces aren’t art. It just means that I’m either not on the same wavelength as the artist, or the art speaks more to me intellectually than it does emotionally.
If there’s genuinely nobody to whom it conveys emotion? Attempted art, or failed art. But if it does convey emotion, as intended by the artist, to a very small audience, then it’s still art, just very exclusive art. That’s fine.
But at always seems to happen in these sorts of threads you (and many others) are simply applying an arbitrary definition and disqualifying works based on criteria that ultimately boil down to “I don’t like it.”
The criteria you’re putting forward are:
It must be an object intended by its creator to convey specific emotions.
It must convey those specific emotions to a third party.
I’m assuming that when you say “convey” you mean “evoke,” in that the goal is to make someone feel that emotion. So this gives us a number of problems.
What if the intentions of the creator are unknown?
That’s frequently the case, and often these intentions are unknowable. How should we verify if something is art then?
What if there is no consensus about the emotions conveyed?
You’d be hard pressed to find any work people agree about. Do we get to pick and chose whose experiences qualify the work?
What if the emotions evoked change over time?
Does something that was art become not-art when people’s attitudes change?
What if an object that does not intend to or succeed in evoking emotions is treated as an art piece?
Something that is produced by someone who is known as an “artist,” sold by an “art dealer” to an “art museum” where it is shown to self-confessed “art fans” and is written about by “art critics”. If it’s not art, what is it?
What if an object is produced with the intent of evoking particular emotions and succeeds but would not be considered by the near-totality of people to be art?
Is a drive-by Internet troll art? I known someone’s going to say yes just because.
Anyway, all attempts at a prescriptivist definition of art always end up flirting dangerously with the true Scotsman. And in the end, what is gained by the discussion?
The art in the OP is not my cup of tea (never been much into photorealism), but if emotion is being used to define art, I don’t see how we can exclude that painting. It’s quite emotional and emotion-provoking.
So, as long as there’s at least one person, somewhere, who likes a given work, that work is art? Talk about your useless definitions! How could you possibly ever identify “failed art”? Simply the fact that some one has bothered to show the work proves that it’s not “failed,” because at the very least, the person showing you the art is getting something out of it. Hell, if nothing else, presumably the artist is getting something out of it, even if no one else is.
Art is one of those concepts where we can strive to be accurate, or strive to be useful, but can’t have both.
Yes, it’s a useless definition. However, the concept exists, and it’s accurate, as far as I can tell. Just because it’s nigh-on impossible to measure doesn’t mean we can dispense with the definition, create a new definition, and have no label for the concept.
Having some effect on a perceiver beyond its strictly utilitarian value is a qualia.
This is the plan for my current work; the piece itself is still unfinished.
The overall dimensions will be about 7 feet x 12 feet. The five panels are thin plywood, painted with acrylics, with the “swirls” cut out. The dark gray areas are the wall behind it. The foreground scallop-like elements are composed of thousands of thin wooden sticks, which play a major role in the piece’s stability, as do the “frames” around each panel.
Here is a much simpler piece. I had given it the title “Capistrano” at the time, but that was before I decided against titles.
I have a working title for the new piece, which convey my own feelings. But I don’t want to mislead people by implying they must share my emotions. I want them to come up with their own. I can’t understand why some people insist that I tell them what to feel. I think art that’s somewhat “interactive” is more interesting than art that people just look “at,” and are told what to feel.
