What is Art?

[Nick_A]

What is art? How is art distinguished from expression? If Susan Taylor paints a picture and calls it art, is it art or just Susan Taylor expressing herself? How can we know?

[Pluto]

We can't really know for sure because art is always on the move. Like life, we can come up with something that works as a model, while the real thing has already moved on. Art is a force of nature.

[henry quirk]

The skillful expression of a perspective.


How cleanly does the artist convey perspective?

The less room for interpretation of the perspective, the more clean the conveyance, the higher, or more refined, the art.

[Pluto]

It is a force which presents itself for use in every epoch every time.

[Nick_A]

Would you agree with Tolstoy that art as distinct from expression is a quality of communication? If so it is easy to see how much the idea of art has been prostituted in modern times in quest of fame and fortune. A person may be inclined to spend good money on Susan Taylor's expressions if others call it art. But if just called an expression, money is spent elsewhere.

http://denisdutton.com/tolstoy.htm

Art for me then is the direct communication of a quality of emotion. The artists uses their technique to create a work of art that has the ability to communicate the feelings of the artist into another. When a person just expresses themselves, the viewer can interpret it in many ways. There us no communication.

[Pluto]

Yes I read the book what is art and liked it very much, Tolstoy is human and his concept of art is in tune with the betterment of the human being. Expression and communication are tied-up together I think. Then to say art is when something you've felt and made material makes the viewer feel the same as the artist felt is too narrow. Though it has something to it all the same. Art is for looking at and the artist is in conversation with a potential viewer whether he likes it or not.

[Nick_A]

Pluto wrote:

Yes I read the book what is art and liked it very much, Tolstoy is human and his concept of art is in tune with the betterment of the human being. Expression and communication are tied-up together I think. Then to say art is when something you've felt and made material makes the viewer feel the same as the artist felt is too narrow. Though it has something to it all the same. Art is for looking at and the artist is in conversation with a potential viewer whether he likes it or not.

Would you agree with me that art worthy of the name must contain a certain degree of "quality" that is absent during normal expression? For example would you call pornography art because its creator was exchanging with a viewer?

[Pluto]

What is the 'quality' aspect you refer to?

Jeff Koons created photos of himself and his then wife in sexual positions, this is seen as art.
An artist had sex with a dealer and she filmed it, this is seen as art.

[Walker]

I still remember the way Nick Adams fished, the thick onion sandwiches carried in a big shirt pocket and dipped in the pure water of a stream to eat where the water pools, and where the stream runs clean. I would remember that when breaking bits of hard Irish bread and soaking them in tea. I still remember how Nick caught grasshoppers early in the day when they were too sluggish to fly away, and he put them into a corked bottle for fishing later, I think it had a string on it but maybe I made that up. I remember reading it fresh as a boy and thinking that’s right, that’s how I was taught. Out of millions of words read I remember that, for some reason. And other things by other artists. Art causes that kind of remembrance. Big change from the magnificent Jack London to Hemingway, the one who said he intended to invoke a predetermined emotion in the reader without naming the emotion, which brings to mind Hills Like White Elephants, from what I remember of it. Art is a participatory event until attention moves on in this age of overstimulation. From this we can say that the objective of art is to reside in consciousness via memory that influences future perception.

*

de Kooning created art when he was senile.
https://www.google.com/search?q=de+Koon ... 30&bih=734

[Nick_A]

Paul wrote: What is the 'quality' aspect you refer to?

Jeff Koons created photos of himself and his then wife in sexual positions, this is seen as art.
An artist had sex with a dealer and she filmed it, this is seen as art.

Yes it is defined as art in order to have it perceived as valuable. But is it art? Read this explanation of art by Fadeyev. He explains how art to be worthy of the name must transmit higher values not ordinarily present in our day to day existence. Of course it is insulting to many art galleries who make money by prostituting an important concept but what else is new. It is the nature of the Beast.

http://fadeyev.net/what-is-art/

[Melchior]

Art is what is man-made and has no direct useful purpose.

[Nick_A]

Art is what is man-made and has no direct useful purpose.

To the contrary, atheism is not art

[Pluto]

Paul wrote: What is the 'quality' aspect you refer to?

Jeff Koons created photos of himself and his then wife in sexual positions, this is seen as art.
An artist had sex with a dealer and she filmed it, this is seen as art.

Yes it is defined as art in order to have it perceived as valuable. But is it art? Read this explanation of art by Fadeyev. He explains how art to be worthy of the name must transmit higher values not ordinarily present in our day to day existence. Of course it is insulting to many art galleries who make money by prostituting an important concept but what else is new. It is the nature of the Beast.

http://fadeyev.net/what-is-art/

Is it art? Probably not according to Fadeyev, who has written a very interesting text there, that'd I'd like to thank you for posting. Monetary value is currently king in the art world and rides roughshod over all other concerns or modes of register and transfer within an artwork. I agree that art, for it be good art, houses and transmits values, as you say, not ordinarily present in our day to day existence. I think that's a good way of putting it. I see art and the time it finds itself in, important in defining what art is. Or at least what good art is, for me. The present requires art, partly to uphold ideals. To frame the present so that those experiencing it may understand it and get a foot-hold. Art is a force to be used in different ways. When I look around and see the state of our societies and the world, I want art to not only show where we are, to present this state, but to be a place, or show a place, untouched by that which currently has a hold over the narrative of contemporary society and the world. This might mean an art of new values. Then the question might be, how does the artist show this. In an unethical, corrupt and corrupting world, what is an ethical artwork, what are its properties. Maybe for something to be really considered as art in today's world it has to be ethical in some way. House an ethical dimension.

[Greta]

The label "art" is largely pointless and irrelevant. Compare the art of the most twisted experimentalists with the art of a sunrise. "Art" is often ascribed with some level of snob value. Take away the social status aspect and the word "art" becomes largely irrelevant, more dependent on the receiver than the creator.

[Nick_A]

Pluto you wrote:

Maybe for something to be really considered as art in today's world it has to be ethical in some way. House an ethical dimension.

I would agree. Today's art often has a moral perspective. (what to do) However would you consider the Sphinx to be a work of art? Is it constructed in such a way that a viewer capable of deeper experience can "feel" in a new way? If true, rather than telling you what to do the Sphinx reminds us emotionally of what we are in the context of a human conscious perspective which remains our being potential.