What is art?

[Nick_A]

Yes, there's great objective value in a Pollock, and I could well describe it, but the description does not confer the value. All you need do is be in the presence of him, as that form carries as much impact as human presence.

And as you were posting while I was editing you may have have missed it, but the literalness and poignancy of identity is illustrated by de Kooning, who continued working well into senility, and that can be seen in his work even though he was an abstract expressionist more representational than Pollock.

It takes great technical skill and understanding to unleash on the canvas as they did, and it’s right there to be seen. It requires no proof of words. One might say, like seeing the ever presence of the divine. And then, to even go beyond that, to stay in the game is to become the game, the painting when all else that was, is gone. Amazing and natural. I think his work must have literally been breath.

It is obvious that you are moved by these artists and I can respect why. Since I define art as direct emotional communication where the viewer experiences the same emotion put into a work of art by the artist, you may be experiencing art via works of art by these artists.

I have a chess players mind. I need to know why the human condition is as it is in the world. It is obvious to me that the path of science leading to truth is legitimate. it is also obvious that the path to meaning coming through the paths of the essence of philosophy and that of religion are equally legitimate. The apparent conflict between them is the result of imagination

I think we would agree that intellectual knowledge has levels of quality and the greater the quality, the greater the value of intellectual knowledge. I believe it is the same with emotional quality. As opposed to the search for truth natural for science, the search for objective meaning is furthered through art of a certain quality capable of awakening another to the reality of a higher value and a natural part of our essence we are forgetting.

An artist can create sadistic expression and another can get off on it and feel the hate put into it but is it art? In one sense it is as communication but not so for the psycho/spiritual potential art is capable of.

As an aside, are you an artist, art student, collector, teacher, or just a fan? You have a lot of knowledge about modern art so I was wondering how serious it has become a part of your life.

[Greta]

A lot of things are being done but why call them art? You don't seem to distinguish between art and expression. This may be natural for a secularist but this failure to distinguish hampers emotional intelligence like few other attitudes can.

Making personal remarks may be natural for a theist but this failure to distinguish the personal from the topic at hand hampers the quality of discourse like few other attitudes can.

Whatever, art is inherently expressive of the artist. That's impossible to avoid. Expressionist art, of course, blurs your distinction completely.

Do you see Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles as "art" or "something a child could do"?

Secularism by definition is secular. its only concern is for one level of reality. Art and expression are the same for one level of reality. If you consider common sense personal then that's what it is.

I have no idea by what definition Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles can be considered art other than to say that art and expression are the same. The word art loses its meaning and only serves the purpose of flattery and making money. If a person has an exhibition of their expression no one will come. If the purpose of the exhibition is to display and sell "art" people come and buy. Art sells and expression doesn't even though they are now considered the same. Mark Twain must have had something good to say about this.

Commonsense, Nick, is not something one normally associates with you.

Most so-called "secularists" , ie. people not affiliated with any religion, don't think in rigid boxes like you, Nick. People often flow seamlessly and unselfconsciously from the prosaic to the profane to the spiritual, without feeling they need to filter and contextualise these episodes through some ideology.

It's just living, you know? Sometimes living is spiritual. That happens. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes mental, sometimes emotional. Spirituality doesn't need affiliation with any institution or ideology; it just happens at times in one's life and becomes part of our story. Sometimes spiritual / transcendent feelings are facilitated by art - including expressionist art. Blue Poles is not my favourite but I like it for what it is.

I am not one for treating "art" as something exclusivist. It's all art - good art, bad art and otherwise. Categories don't matter, just quality and effect.

Interesting that you, of all people, would dismiss expressivism - the raw expression of the individual through art, a real time representation of the human condition. You reject this representation of individual energy and emotion in preference for "technically correct" traditional pieces which essentially aim to faithfully reproduce the ideas of others. So in this you side with the Great Beast - the demanding conformer - over the anarchic individual.

Or maybe the Great beast isn't all bad? (I'm thinking of Monty Python's "What Have the Romans Done for Us" sketch).

[Walker]

It is obvious that you are moved by these artists and I can respect why. Since I define art as direct emotional communication where the viewer experiences the same emotion put into a work of art by the artist, you may be experiencing art via works of art by these artists.

I have a chess players mind. I need to know why the human condition is as it is in the world. It is obvious to me that the path of science leading to truth is legitimate. it is also obvious that the path to meaning coming through the paths of the essence of philosophy and that of religion are equally legitimate. The apparent conflict between them is the result of imagination

I think we would agree that intellectual knowledge has levels of quality and the greater the quality, the greater the value of intellectual knowledge. I believe it is the same with emotional quality. As opposed to the search for truth natural for science, the search for objective meaning is furthered through art of a certain quality capable of awakening another to the reality of a higher value and a natural part of our essence we are forgetting.

An artist can create sadistic expression and another can get off on it and feel the hate put into it but is it art? In one sense it is as communication but not so for the psycho/spiritual potential art is capable of.

As an aside, are you an artist, art student, collector, teacher, or just a fan? You have a lot of knowledge about modern art so I was wondering how serious it has become a part of your life.

That begs a philosophical question that requires a bit of preamble.

- A scribble by a kid is not authentic because the scribble is not the kid, not in the way that Pollock was authentic with his painting. The kid hasn’t learned how to be authentic in the medium of pencil. There are natural talents, though. The natural talent in a painter is a knack for spacial relationships accurately portrayed via form and color, which requires seeing both an inch at a time and the whole, back and forth automatically. Natural talent, accurate observers.

- The biggies are good freehand draftspeople that put heart into their medium by training awareness through the medium, and that awareness extends to all states of consciousness that focus awareness. In this way, the work of art is also Pollock, just as the flesh and blood human was Pollock. This makes the work authentic. A primitive way is saying spirit has been put into the work, by consciousness focusing awareness in the creation of the work.

By now you must have realized that authenticity is not found only in paintings, but is stand-alone in whatever medium, of life. Surprising how many good instrumentalists are also good vocalists, and how many actors are also painters, and how many coal miners are also intellectuals (Razor’s Edge), and how many carpenters are religious (Jesus).

- Anyway, the question. Since Buddha touched the earth as the authority for knowing, are not stand-alone words that have been given the same attention as Boss Pollock corralled chaos with paint, not also authentic as stand alone entities?

[Nick_A]

Belinda

N: Even though secularism with its fixation on one level of reality is doing its best to destroy the
human conscious awareness of levels of reality, there is enough of art worthy of the name to serve its psychological awakening purpose.

"secularism" does not do this. Atheists are just as much inspired by art and ideas as anybody else.It is true however that spirituality has not yet caught up with the demise of the Form of God.

The Form of God is being replaced in the popular consciousness by no metaphysical idea so compelling. The Humanists do carry on the ethics from the age of faith, but lack a defining myth, apart from science. Maybe this lack is the price we pay for refusing idolatry.

Of course atheists and secularists are inspired. The question is in what direction and the goal of inspiration.

I agree that the idea of a personal god telling people what to do is losing its dominance but why must it be replaced by a myth – why not reality? As soon as someone suggests this they are bombarded by questions such as whose god and we all have our own truths. As of now, only a relative few are willing to be realistic. The majority prefer either to deny, argue, or profess blind faith. Under these conditions everything remains the same and actually begins to devolve.

There is a thread going on now which asks what is the future of humanity. The answer is easy: dust to dust. This is not the same as asking the possible future for a person on earth. The answer is far more difficult because the answer is human conscious evolution which is hard to grasp since we believe we already are evolved. Conscious evolution as the lawful continuance for mechanical evolution is nonsense for the secularist who is only concerned with life IN Plato’s cave. Conscious evolution is the process of leaving cave life. Where the future of humanity is dust to dust, the future for an individual is not promised. The calling is felt by the individual but not by the Beast.

Art of a certain quality arouses the emotion of awe which automatically makes us aware of something greater than ourselves. Once we admit something greater than ourselves the natural question is what the greatest quality of “being” is and what our relationship is to it. The idolatry of the Great Beast frowns on this since it dares to question the ultimate supremacy of the Beast – the god of secularism. This is why the arts must cheapen. It is what the Great Beast and cave life demand to sustain itself.

But people still need the experience of human meaning. The Beast offers all sorts of goodies including drugs to calm the question and to distract us from it. But still there are these questions such as “who am I” and "why am I here" which torment us. They prevent us from obediently dancing to the whims of the Beast.

You think we need a new myth to provide meaning. What if the answer is so simple that anyone bringing it up will be hated by disciples of the beast. What if the answer lies in acquiring the willingness and ability to “know thyself?” The great Beast and its celebrated progressive education will tell you what you are so why bother. Let the experts who know everything tell us. Somehow for some this is insufficient.

We don’t need a new god myth, we need a new Man reality. Art of a certain quality makes us aware of our nothingness in relation to higher levels of conscious reality. At the same time this quality also supports the importance of “ideals” necessary to make freedom and the desire to become fully human possible. The animal tamers who control the Beast are naturally opposed to ideals supporting freedom. They prefer ideals which support slavery through imagined equality. So far the animal tamers who people call experts are getting their way.

[Nick_A]

It is obvious that you are moved by these artists and I can respect why. Since I define art as direct emotional communication where the viewer experiences the same emotion put into a work of art by the artist, you may be experiencing art via works of art by these artists.

I have a chess players mind. I need to know why the human condition is as it is in the world. It is obvious to me that the path of science leading to truth is legitimate. it is also obvious that the path to meaning coming through the paths of the essence of philosophy and that of religion are equally legitimate. The apparent conflict between them is the result of imagination

I think we would agree that intellectual knowledge has levels of quality and the greater the quality, the greater the value of intellectual knowledge. I believe it is the same with emotional quality. As opposed to the search for truth natural for science, the search for objective meaning is furthered through art of a certain quality capable of awakening another to the reality of a higher value and a natural part of our essence we are forgetting.

An artist can create sadistic expression and another can get off on it and feel the hate put into it but is it art? In one sense it is as communication but not so for the psycho/spiritual potential art is capable of.

As an aside, are you an artist, art student, collector, teacher, or just a fan? You have a lot of knowledge about modern art so I was wondering how serious it has become a part of your life.

That begs a philosophical question that requires a bit of preamble.

- A scribble by a kid is not authentic because the scribble is not the kid, not in the way that Pollock was authentic with his painting. The kid hasn’t learned how to be authentic in the medium of pencil. There are natural talents, though. The natural talent in a painter is a knack for spacial relationships accurately portrayed via form and color, which requires seeing both an inch at a time and the whole, back and forth automatically. Natural talent, accurate observers.

- The biggies are good freehand draftspeople that put heart into their medium by training awareness through the medium, and that awareness extends to all states of consciousness that focus awareness. In this way, the work of art is also Pollock, just as the flesh and blood human was Pollock. This makes the work authentic. A primitive way is saying spirit has been put into the work, by consciousness focusing awareness in the creation of the work.

By now you must have realized that authenticity is not found only in paintings, but is stand-alone in whatever medium, of life. Surprising how many good instrumentalists are also good vocalists, and how many actors are also painters, and how many coal miners are also intellectuals (Razor’s Edge), and how many carpenters are religious (Jesus).

- Anyway, the question. Since Buddha touched the earth as the authority for knowing, are not stand-alone words that have been given the same attention as Boss Pollock corralled chaos with paint, not also authentic as stand alone entities?

I agree with the importance of technique. However is art just the technique necessary to express subjective emotion? The goal of art IMO is the communication of objective emotion. The rest is expression. Objective art is rare while subjective art is common. Both require good technique but they have different aims

[Nick_A]

Greta

Commonsense, Nick, is not something one normally associates with you.

Quite true. I lack the genius necessary for common sense. At least I am willing to admit it rather than hide behind puffed up egoism.

"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most so-called "secularists" , ie. people not affiliated with any religion, don't think in rigid boxes like you, Nick. People often flow seamlessly and unselfconsciously from the prosaic to the profane to the spiritual, without feeling they need to filter and contextualise these episodes through some ideology.

Secularists are trapped in the most rigid box there is. It is called Plato’s cave.

It's just living, you know? Sometimes living is spiritual. That happens. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes mental, sometimes emotional. Spirituality doesn't need affiliation with any institution or ideology; it just happens at times in one's life and becomes part of our story. Sometimes spiritual / transcendent feelings are facilitated by art - including expressionist art. Blue Poles is not my favourite but I like it for what it is.

Yes this is life in Plato’s cave. One day we kill and one day we cure. Life in Plato’s cave consists of reactions to universal laws as described in Ecclesiastes 3.

I am not one for treating "art" as something exclusivist. It's all art - good art, bad art and otherwise. Categories don't matter, just quality and effect.

It is the same with women. . They are all women - good women, bad women and otherwise. Categories don't matter, just quality and effect.

Interesting that you, of all people, would dismiss expressivism - the raw expression of the individual through art, a real time representation of the human condition. You reject this representation of individual energy and emotion in preference for "technically correct" traditional pieces which essentially aim to faithfully reproduce the ideas of others. So in this you side with the Great Beast - the demanding conformer - over the anarchic individual.

Expression is one thing and communication is another. Both have their value but they shouldn’t be confused.

Or maybe the Great beast isn't all bad? (I'm thinking of Monty Python's "What Have the Romans Done for Us" sketch).

The Great Beast is fine on sunny days when its belly is full. It is those damned rainy days when things go wrong. Then everyone must suffer to justify this abuse by nature and mother-in-laws.

[Greta]

Greta

Commonsense, Nick, is not something one normally associates with you.

Quite true. I lack the genius necessary for common sense. At least I am willing to admit it rather than hide behind puffed up egoism.

This is strategic "humility" a la Uriah Heep. Life reflecting art reflecting life ...

It's just living, you know? Sometimes living is spiritual. That happens. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes mental, sometimes emotional. Spirituality doesn't need affiliation with any institution or ideology; it just happens at times in one's life and becomes part of our story. Sometimes spiritual / transcendent feelings are facilitated by art - including expressionist art. Blue Poles is not my favourite but I like it for what it is.

Yes this is life in Plato’s cave. One day we kill and one day we cure. Life in Plato’s cave consists of reactions to universal laws as described in Ecclesiastes 3.

And you are above it? You strike me as pretty vindictive and aggressive, tendencies juxtaposed with your aspirations towards high morals. Someone as intense and driven as you may well be more likely to kill than more laid back types.

I am not one for treating "art" as something exclusivist. It's all art - good art, bad art and otherwise. Categories don't matter, just quality and effect.

It is the same with women. . They are all women - good women, bad women and otherwise. Categories don't matter, just quality and effect.

It's the same situation with men - gigantic, huge, large, average, small, tiny ... and Nick.

Not so nice to be objectified, is it?

Interesting that you, of all people, would dismiss expressivism - the raw expression of the individual through art, a real time representation of the human condition. You reject this representation of individual energy and emotion in preference for "technically correct" traditional pieces which essentially aim to faithfully reproduce the ideas of others. So in this you side with the Great Beast - the demanding conformer - over the anarchic individual.

Expression is one thing and communication is another. Both have their value but they shouldn’t be confused.

Most communication is not deliberate. The line between expression and communication is blurred enough not to exist. Most of what we communicate is expressed rather than intended; humans are tricky and we learn through bitter experience to read between the lines.

BTW, Jackson Pollock very deliberately communicated with Blue Poles. He needed to have a concept, to organise and plan his materials and movements before essentially throwing his (considerable) energy at the canvas in a strategic way. It's art no matter which way you look at it.

Or maybe the Great beast isn't all bad? (I'm thinking of Monty Python's "What Have the Romans Done for Us" sketch).

The Great Beast is fine on sunny days when its belly is full. It is those damned rainy days when things go wrong. Then everyone must suffer to justify this abuse by nature and mother-in-laws.

Derr, and ancient people learned to avoid crocodiles and big cats too. Not everyone was lucky. Yet, without the Great Beast, you would be a soon-to-die parasite-riddled, terrified, wounded, infected, uncomfortable creature out in the wild. Again, "what have the Romans ever done for us"?

[Nick_A]

Greta:

Yes this is life in Plato’s cave. One day we kill and one day we cure. Life in Plato’s cave consists of reactions to universal laws as described in Ecclesiastes 3.

And you are above it? You strike me as pretty vindictive and aggressive, tendencies juxtaposed with your aspirations towards high morals. Someone as intense and driven as you may well be more likely to kill than more laid back types.

This is just silly. I’m a lover, not a fighter. What good is one idiot calling another idiot, an idiot? There is no way anyone with a sense of humor like mine can be violent. The fact that progressives lack humor indicates how dangerous they can be.

When a person becomes aware of what Simone became aware of, it becomes obvious how useless blind morality, vindictiveness and aggressive tendencies are to further some misguided belief in self importance. It is offensive to the Great Beast which relies on human gullibility to sustain itself.

“The supernatural greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.” ~ Simone Wei

l

N: It is the same with women. . They are all women - good women, bad women and otherwise. Categories don't matter, just quality and effect.

It's the same situation with men - gigantic, huge, large, average, small, tiny ... and Nick.

Not so nice to be objectified, is it?

Of course it is. You’re dealing with the man of the hour, the tower of power, the reflection of perfection and the number one selection. Why not be objectified? As far as tiny, Now I’m going to have to post references and bring additional meaning to philosophy now.

N: Expression is one thing and communication is another. Both have their value but they shouldn’t be confused.

Most communication is not deliberate. The line between expression and communication is blurred enough not to exist. Most of what we communicate is expressed rather than intended; humans are tricky and we learn through bitter experience to read between the lines.

And since we are hypocrites, we communicate hypocrisy. We do not understand each other. Objective art has the power for those sensitive to it to arouse the quality of emotions which do not originate from the hypocrisy of Plato’s cave but from outside the cave. As we are, the influence of experts makes it virtually impossible to transcend the subjective and experience the objective.

BTW, Jackson Pollock very deliberately communicated with Blue Poles. He needed to have a concept, to organise and plan his materials and movements before essentially throwing his (considerable) energy at the canvas in a strategic way. It's art no matter which way you look at it.

I don’t see any great meaningful concepts here. I just see egotism. If you find it, let me know.

https://nga.gov.au/International/Catalo ... =2&GalID=1

N: The Great Beast is fine on sunny days when its belly is full. It is those damned rainy days when things go wrong. Then everyone must suffer to justify this abuse by nature and mother-in-laws.

Derr, and ancient people learned to avoid crocodiles and big cats too. Not everyone was lucky. Yet, without the Great Beast, you would be a soon-to-die parasite-riddled, terrified, wounded, infected, uncomfortable creature out in the wild. Again, "what have the Romans ever done for us"?

Since the roman culture became a part of the Great Beast, why ask it to do other than what it does? The Great Beast is a creature of reaction lacking consciousness which responds to universal influences. Like other beasts It has no conscious choice. There are some within the beast who begin to awaken to their condition. They can become capable of conscious choice and freedom from the beast. Certain art aids in this awakening to reality by provoking the questions essential to rise above blind gullibility and slavery to cave life.

Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. ... It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoriing nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.
- Simone Weil, Prelude to Politics, completed shortly before her death in 1943
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 393

[Dubious]

I don’t see any great meaningful concepts here. I just see egotism. If you find it, let me know.

Re Blue Poles: If Pollock painted it, it's art; if not it's wrapping paper. There is no art; only the hypocrisy of money which capitalizes on the name, the merit of the work being immaterial.

[Greta]

BTW, Jackson Pollock very deliberately communicated with Blue Poles. He needed to have a concept, to organise and plan his materials and movements before essentially throwing his (considerable) energy at the canvas in a strategic way. It's art no matter which way you look at it.

I don’t see any great meaningful concepts here. I just see egotism. If you find it, let me know.

You are simply defining art as only applicable to works with "great meaningful concepts", as determined by your judgement. This is simply a wrong definition.

Personally, I would much prefer a Jackson Pollock to photo-realistic paintings, which is largely just a display of virtuosity. What of taste? What I'm seeing is that, if philosophy forum members deem some works unworthy of the lofty title of ART, then that's all that matters. No argument may be considered.

[Walker]

I agree with the importance of technique. However is art just the technique necessary to express subjective emotion? The goal of art IMO is the communication of objective emotion. The rest is expression. Objective art is rare while subjective art is common. Both require good technique but they have different aims

Do you have an example of objective art?

[Conde Lucanor]

What is that essence of art that seems to be beyond the definable?

The essence of art is form. By form I don't mean shape or appearance, but composition. There's form in ballet, music, literature, etc. The other essential aspect of art is that it is a praxis, an oriented action with different degrees of autonomy in relation to form. In one side of this spectrum we'll find art that serves a purpose and its forms are closely tied to its functions. At the other side of the spectrum there will be art concerned with itself, l'art pour l'art.

person can be called an artist as opposed to an expressionist when they have the ability to communicate through a work of art the emotion they are trying to communicate. When people receive the same quality of emotion the artist feels when creating a work of art, then you can say art has taken place.

Such conception would put outside of art most of the works from ancient times that seem to be mostly intended to convey meaning or make symbolic representations. Some other works from the avant-garde of early 20th century, which is to be considered not only art, but highly influential and revolutionary, does not fit into that definition. Most scholars will agree both of these, ancient and modern, should be classified as art. The definition of art as the communication or generation of emotions is tied to a particular period of European art: romanticism.

Art is 1) in the doing, as Nick mentioned (one can even apply artistry to any activity, from music to accountancy to house cleaning). 2) Art is in the eye of the beholder. So attractive people or scenery may affect someone as if they were works of art.

Ultimately art, sport, games, pastimes, crafts, socialising and science/philosophy are the same thing - the things we enjoy when free from compulsory group-oriented tasks, eg. work, domestics.

There used to be a time (I think it was ancient Greece) in which art, because of its intrinsic relation to form, conveyed the concept of technique. So, there was the art of hunting, the art of speech, the art of war, and so on. Some of that meaning still remains today when we use the word art to refer to best practices in any field or activity, regardless of them not having any aesthetic dimension.

Regarding #2, art in the eye of the beholder, it might be interesting to note that not always aesthetics has been linked to beauty as pleasurable contemplation.

[Nick_A]

Dubius is right as far as subjective art is concerned. So if people believe the eperts who celebrate it, then it is worth money. It is all subjective

Greta:

Personally, I would much prefer a Jackson Pollock to photo-realistic paintings, which is largely just a display of virtuosity. What of taste? What I'm seeing is that, if philosophy forum members deem some works unworthy of the lofty title of ART, then that's all that matters. No argument may be considered.

So forum members determine quality. Maybe a favorable alternative to experts but it still seems lacking.

Walker

Do you have an example of objective art?

First you will have to understand what I mean by objective art. Gurdjieff explains its highest meaning to Ouspensky in this excerpt from “In Search of the Miraculous." If this makes sense to you I could elaborate but it wll be nonsense for secularism which only values subject art.

http://www.satrakshita.com/gurdjieff_on_art.htm

Classic examples are the Sphinx, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. They are all based on objective principles we are only beginning to understand.

I consider Aivazovsky’s Ninth Wave as subjective with an objective core which enables the viewer to contemplate hope from a far greater depth than normally considered through secularism. Faith, love, and hope are the three sacred emotions capable of evolution. Hope being depicted in the painting is not hope IN one thing or another but hope as a human attribute capable of evolving in its objective quality.

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitut ... rOSw?hl=en

Fadeyev explains the value of the painting in that it makes an ideal more objectively meaningful.

http://fadeyev.net/the-ninth-wave/

I know all this seems horribly old fashioned at a time when nothing is more important than glorifying man living in imagination. Objective art is based on the idea that objective reality can be emotionally experienced with the help of artists capable of objective art. But this is too insulting to even consider in these times of self glorification. That is why these qualities of ideas remain underground. They have to or secularism would trample them to death

[Greta]

Art is 1) in the doing, as Nick mentioned (one can even apply artistry to any activity, from music to accountancy to house cleaning). 2) Art is in the eye of the beholder. So attractive people or scenery may affect someone as if they were works of art.

Ultimately art, sport, games, pastimes, crafts, socialising and science/philosophy are the same thing - the things we enjoy when free from compulsory group-oriented tasks, eg. work, domestics.

There used to be a time (I think it was ancient Greece) in which art, because of its intrinsic relation to form, conveyed the concept of technique. So, there was the art of hunting, the art of speech, the art of war, and so on. Some of that meaning still remains today when we use the word art to refer to best practices in any field or activity, regardless of them not having any aesthetic dimension.

Regarding #2, art in the eye of the beholder, it might be interesting to note that not always aesthetics has been linked to beauty as pleasurable contemplation.

Yes, there is an "art" to everything. People are creative, improvise, have moments of inspiration and endure creative blocks in all manner of fields, not just "the arts".

[Greta]

Dubius is right as far as subjective art is concerned. So if people believe the eperts who celebrate it, then it is worth money. It is all subjective

It's not a matter of believing experts.People are capable of forming their own views without worrying what others think. I guess one's perception is different when one actually is an "artist". The semantic around the word is so snobbish and highfalutin that I hesitated to call myself an "artist" then because I'm a bit of a hack who happens to enjoy creating even if my "art" is ordinary.

Personally, I would much prefer a Jackson Pollock to photo-realistic paintings, which is largely just a display of virtuosity. What of taste? What I'm seeing is that, if philosophy forum members deem some works unworthy of the lofty title of ART, then that's all that matters. No argument may be considered.

So forum members determine quality. Maybe a favorable alternative to experts but it still seems lacking.

If you think that 'expert" opinion doesn't matter, try competing for gigs with those whom expert musicians consider a superior musician. You soon find out that post-modernism is a game for theoreticians.

Nonetheless, just as many will defend the right of free speech in a person while disagreeing with them, I defend the right of artists to define what they do as art no matter my opinion of that art. By the same token I defend people's rights to say that they dislike that art. Naive art, especially, polarises because it often has a charm that gathers more recognition than more educated, but less ostensibly charming, works.

I'm personally a fan of the magic moments in naive art. Often mediocre talents can produce pearls amongst the swine of their body of work, as long as they maintain authenticity. Authenticity, in both art and the social arena, is a challenge due to relentless pressures to conform from all sides.

You see that oppressive pressure as coming from "experts". Actually that pressure will come from anyone with power. Personally, I'd rather that people in power be knowledgeable than not, so at present sometimes it's "experts" who decide (alas, not in climate science, so it seems).

Classic examples are the Sphinx, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. They are all based on objective principles we are only beginning to understand.

:)))) Most of these are exactly the art of your "Great Beast". It's exactly why I say that the GB is not all bad.

No individual person could create most of those pieces - the pyramids, the Sphinx, cathedrals, orchestral pieces. These works all required institutions to be brought to being. So you are mostly a fan of the great art of institutions, of the Great Beast. Yes, the same kinds of institutions that bully and control us little people today. None of us enjoy inflexible utilitarian(-ish) LCD interference of institutions/The GB. However, they are the reason why we are not today scratching around in the dirt living in grass and stone huts. Or dead.

I know all this seems horribly old fashioned at a time when nothing is more important than glorifying man living in imagination. Objective art is based on the idea that objective reality can be emotionally experienced with the help of artists capable of objective art. But this is too insulting to even consider in these times of self glorification. That is why these qualities of ideas remain underground. They have to or secularism would trample them to death

Sometimes, Nicholas, you are as deep as a puddle, so caught up with the argument that actual reality is ignored. Who here cares if something is "old fashioned" or not? Anyone?? Art can provide both artifice and authenticity, from popularity-seeking to soul searching, the profane to the inspirational. Artists balance expression and impression.

Why go to the trouble of defining and trying to nail down the word "art"? In everyday communication the conventional definitions will tend to get the point across most smoothly.

Why gatekeep the term? Snobbery and elitism (aka insecurity)? Reviewers and middlemen keeping themselves employed or dealers' affiliates talking down the competition? In truth it's all art. Just because something is "art" doesn't mean it is good art, ie. satisfying, interesting, pleasing, amusing, inspiring, affecting, etc.

In truth, "art" is such a broad term that we can put any spin on it that we please. "Art", as noted by Condor above, includes the overlapping fields of fine art, commercial art, pop art, naive art and the artistry that passionate practitioners of any field apply to their efforts.

Arguments often happen when people try to define heavily overlapped arenas; it often involves the unwarranted exclusion of legitimate players in a field, eg. claims that splatter art can never be art, that discordant music is not music, etc.