What is art? Where do we draw the line between art and not-art?
Background: I was reading about this and thinking, “it’s a freaking pile of newspapers, there is no way this can possibly be called art”, and then I wondered if I was being too elitist and snobby. Sure, we think of art in terms of the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo, but a lot of the most powerful and brilliant artwork isn’t what we’d necessarily term ‘beautiful’.
So, what makes art… well… art?
I think it was Frank Zappa who said the most important part of any piece of art was the frame, because that showed you where the art stopped and the non-art started. If Picasso ties a bicycle seat and handlebars together, if Duchamp puts a urinal in a museum and names it “Fountain,” if Cage turns on a microphone and tape deck for four minutes and thirty three seconds and records nothing at all or close to it, ta da, you gotcher self some art. The question after that, I suppose, is what makes for good art.
Your best bet is to look into the eye of bee holder.
To steal from Scott McCloud, “art” is anything people do that isn’t directly related to survival – eating, fleeing, or procreating.
I know it when I see it.
To quote Picasso: “What isn’t?”
I hope you’re not asking for a well-defined and clear answer on this. Seeing as you put it in GD instead of GQ shows that you understand the nature of the question.
I posted nearly exactly this same question a couple of years ago. It occurred to me when I was in a boutique. One item they had on the wall for sale was a board in the shape of an arrow. It was painted green, and in white lettering was the word “BEACH.” The paint was pretty faded. The store was selling it for $75.
If I bought it and hung it on my wall, would it be art? I’d certainly hang it on my wall for aesthetic reasons, not utilitarian reasons.
Some people claim cooking is an art.
There have been art exhibits dedicated to vehicles.
As for the last one, well modesty forbids.
Pretty much anything can be (and has been) called “art.” The question defies answering.
I don’t think art is as static as a painting, a sculpture, a song, or a big stack of newspapers. Rather, it’s a process involving a certain kind of (communicative) relationship between artist, audience, and a given medium.
Say that a mouse is walking along in a vacant artist’s studio and happens to glance up at some new masterpiece on a canvas. Is there anything going on just then that resembles our typical understanding of the experience of “art”? Perhaps, if you believe that there is a literally universal standard of objective beauty – but I think that that is a minority opinion. If you admit any meaningful subjectivity in artistic valuation, though, I think you’d have to agree that there isn’t any “art” happening in that studio just at that moment.
On the other hand, imagine that an avant-garde artist piles up two weeks worth of his own refuse in the corner of a museum – that night the “piece” has a poweful, more-or-less intended emotional effect on a particular patron. It may not be your cup of tea, but there is some art going on there.
This is similar to saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder (which is true). However, because art is something that is purpose-built, one also has to talk about the role of the artist, instead of only the object and observer.
I would say that art is a work created by creatures, which, by the design of its creator, evokes an emotional response in its audience. It need not necessarily be aesthetic or beautiful, and in fact, many pieces of art evoke negative emotions. But something which is not created by creatures (a sunset, say, or the Grand Canyon) is not art, something which is not intended to evoke emotion (a tractor, or a particle accelerator) is not art, and something which is intended to evoke emotion but fails (or which evokes the emotion of “What the heck is that thing? And they paid how much for it?!?”) is not art. Any piece which cannot be understood without reading the artist’s statement has failed in its evocation of emotion, and is therefore not art (although the artist’s statement itself may be art, albeit probably bad art).
Good art, then, is art which is very effective at conveying emotion. For a piece conveying positive emotion, aesthetics are a definite advantage, but a piece which very effectively conveys negative emotions is still good art. You might not want to hang it on your wall, but that’s a completely different matter.
What does or does not constitute art is totally subjective. My own opinion is that to qualify as art, the piece has to be purpose-driven by the artist, as VarlosZ said, (even if that means bolting a urinal to a wall) and it has to evoke some sort of emotion on the part of the viewer. Does it make you smile inside, does it disgust you, does it make you feel joyful or sad, etc.? If it does, it’s art. On the other hand, if it interests you not in the slightest and you just look through it or past it, then for you it is not art.
I’ve always said, “Art is anything you can get away with.”
As long as someone doesn’t complain that what you’re doing is art of some sort or another, it’s art.
Art can be anything; I’m tempted to say ‘anything that an artist intends to be part of his work’, but if I did that, someone will doubtless trawl up some smug postmodernist who makes a point of not being an artist and/or not producing deliberate works; nevertheless it’s not a bad working definition.
I don’t think, however, there can ever be a defintion of art that automatically defines descendant categories of good and bad art - no matter how excrable, offensive, dull, worthless, pointless, stupefying, contradictory, confusing or banal you consider a work, it’s just too easy for the artist to argue that he is a massive success because he wanted you to see it that way and that his work is in fact therefore a stunning piece of communication; moreover, even if you argue that the work makes you feel/understand nothing, he can still say “yes, that’s exactly what I intended, I’m wonderful!”
I just get a tiny bit annoyed by art that requires me to read the plaque before I can understand what I’m supposed to be seeing/feeling, but of course, I’m meant to get annoyed, aren’t I? - that’s what makes the work so clever. Bollocks.
In practical terms, I still like the definition that goes something like:
If you left the work unattended in a sidestreet, would someone snatch it up and sell/return/protect it, or would they call the local authorities to have it hauled off to a landfill?
Any creatures? Or humans specifically? What about an elephant or chimp that paints? What about a colony of slugs that leave behind an interesting series of slime trails? Is DNA a requirement?
What about something which was once meant to be only functional, but now speaks to us? Like a cave painting, or an antique pot, or the afore mentioned beach sign?
What if the creator intended it to evoke emotion, but it failed? What if someone comes along and is the first to appreciate it?
I don’t always know art when I see it, but as an artist, I certainly know it when I **do **it. That’s why I tend to think of “art” as a verb. When I look at my own work, I’m sort of reliving the period of time in which I created it, and when I experience other artists’ work, my mind always wraps around the “doing” more than the “being.”
Art has to be an **intentional **process, and it’s very different from all other process, intentional or otherwise. It always begins with two things: an idea and raw materials. The idea (and the “doing”) adds meaning to the raw materials – something that wasn’t there before. Even if it’s a stack of newspapers: seeing it in a gallery or museum – somebody’s intent placing it there – provokes contemplation, rather than seeing it in a dump.
If all of this seems rather vague, it’s because “art” is such a broad concept. It’s like trying to define “is.”
Art, it seems to me, is anything that is
It doesn’t have to be GOOD.
Any creature, and I only specified “creature” to rule out acts of God (if He exists). I have no objection, in principle, to calling an elephant’s or chimp’s work “art”. However, the other elements of the definition still hold, so now there’s the burden of establishing that the critter is deliberately conveying emotion. If it is, then it’s art, but I know of no way to determine this. Given a painting produced by an elephant, without any way of judging the elephant’s intentions, I can only say that I don’t know if it’s art.
If an object’s original purpose was purely functional, then no, I would not consider it art. A pottery shard may speak to us, but it’s not the creator of the shard speaking to us. I consider the communication aspect to be essential to art. However, an object which is not entirely functional could be, in part, art. If that old pot has scenes or patterns painted on it, or a decorative shape, that aspect of the pot is not necessary for its utilitarian purpose of carrying water, so the paintings on the pot or its shaping could be art.
Overall, I mostly agree with RickJay’s definition, with the possible exception of “goes beyond the purely literal understanding of language”. I can accept a poem or novel as being “art”, even if the language used is purely literal. On the flip side, a diagram for assembling something is deliberately created, expresses thought by engaging the senses, and goes beyond language, but I would not consider such a diagram to be art.
Art is something the creater produces to provoke appreciation by a audience, often in order to get sex.
Other artists have a repertoire. Annie Sprinkle has a repertwat.
I like this definition the best. The art is what’s inside the “frame”.
It takes a human to put a “frame” on it, where “frame” simply refers to the act of presenting it.
A tree can be rather beautiful, but I think we’d all agree that trees in and of themselves are not art. However if an artist comes along, puts a frame around a tree and presents it as his latest work, I have no problem calling it art. (It just wouldn’t strike me as very interesting, and probably wouldn’t go far for the artist in gaining the respect and admiration of his audience).
Anything you can convince someone else to pay for.
My personal definition:
If I can make it, it’s not art. Believe me when I say I’m not limiting many artist;)