ETA: and so is “Music”.
I think the “art/not art” debate is a sterile one about semantics.
To my mind, the issue should not be whether something is or is not “art”, which is unresolvable because the word is used by different people to mean different things, but whether a particular work being presented as “art” has anything to offer anyone.
Here’s my own, idiosyncratic definition of “art”: a work deliberately manufactered or selected for its aesthetic qualities which, when viewed or experienced by others, has the capacity for increasing their state of conciousness.
I do not pretend that everyone uses this definition. I do say that the conciousness-increasing ability of much of modern art of the “shit in a can” variety is minimal, because it depends on a koan-like shock to the mind which, due to unoriginality, can no longer be delivered.
Thus, all that is left for much of it is celebrity value. This can increase bank accounts for collectors, but cannot increase conciousness. Thus it may well be “art” under a given definition of the term, but in every sense save financial it is worthless “art”.
By this definition sandcastles can never be great art. But I’ve seen some pretty impressive ones.
It’s starting to seem like defining art is on par with defining a planet. The harder we try, the more futile it becomes.
Not the best analogy, since pretty well everyone will agree that the vaccum of space is not itself a “planet”. 
LOL!
They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: “It’s striking, but is it Art ?”
The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung,
While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue.
- Kipling.
Honestly, I concur, which is why I don’t bother to define it. It’s “art”? Okay, if you say so. I still don’t want it on my mantel.
My biggest problem with this thread is that there is a class of critic who cannot say “I don’t want that on my mantel” without ALSO saying “…because it’s NOT ART, I SAID SO.”
I don’t even mind the “It’s not really art” part so much, because that’s basically a semantic quibble.
What I mind is the “… and anyone who says they like this is either deluded or a scammer” part.
All tangible art is perishable to some degree, obviously–I meant simply that the value of a piece should last. If it’s a sandcastle, take a photo and see what people still think of it in 500 years.
Sure, you could do that. But a) a photograph is never going to compare to the real thing, and b) it’s the temporariness of a sandcastle that gives it a lot of its charm. One careless kid or rogue wave, and it’s all over.
Well, then, sandcastles may be great art, but we’ll never know. We may have suspicions or make arguments about their value, as we do with any other piece of contemporary art, but unlike with other pieces, we’ll never have anything even approaching an answer.
You may say that the value of a piece of art is intrinsically subjective; I disagree. Individuals may say that a piece has value to them, but to be called “great” in some objective sense, it should be able to demonstrate appeal beyond both the idiosyncrasies of the individual and the fads and fashions of its era. In other words, it should be archetypal on some fundamental level.
You can’t get that audience without connections, as my previous post and the other thread of mine I linked to demonstrate.
And how, pray tell, does one generate those connections in the first place?
Perhaps by impressing someone in the art world out of the blue, whether it’s a professor or a gallery owner?
There are many ways to impress people in the art world. Only a small fraction of those ways involve the creation of art.
Let’s take some other ‘wholly subjective social construct’ then, like ‘pornography’.
We can’t define pornography in such a rigorous sense that covers all cases of pornography and excludes all cases of non-pornography. This was famously stated by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who said But I know it when I see it
Just because we can’t rigorously define pornography does not mean there is no pornography or that there is no non-pornography.
People are making the mistake that just because we can’t rigorously define art that this implies that there is no non-art: Everything can be art, if someone states that it is.
If anything can be art, if someone states that it is, then anything can be pornography, if someone states that it is.
Could you list a few for ignorant lil’ me?
Money? Sex? A person in the family who is also a famous artist?
Is it really that unimaginable to think that people in the art world are just as susceptible to weaknesses that are seen everywhere else?
Art school, for one thing. Look at how many punk bands of the late 1970s were formed by art school dropouts (and believe me, comparing some of that music to cans of shit is entirely apt). Family connections, maybe, or generally happening to run in the right circles.
Zeriel, you yourself talked about using “a good sales pitch”. Fast-talking doesn’t necessarily mean that your product is the next big thing just because you’ve suckered someone into it.
Stephen Colbert once asked “At what point in an artist’s career can they just start phoning it in?” It’s a valid question–once you have a brand, your name is the “sales pitch”. After that, you have a lot of latitude with what you can get away with–certainly more than some unknown.
To be honest, I really have to wonder at what point we can stop accepting random crap as art. Don’t get me wrong, I know art is subjective. But what bugs me is shit like the classical music of the 50s-the 12-tone pieces. The pieces that sound like a bunch of pianos getting thrown down the stairs, or a bunch of people being thrown down a flight of piano stairs. Or 4:33. There has got to be some limit to what is defined as music, at least…