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What is art?
ViolentDove:
Art is anything you say it is and/or present as such. Also, if anyone has a photo of the performance artists that pissed in Duchamp's urinal, I'd be much obliged.
ALoveSupreme:
KharBevNor:
As far as I'm concerned, art is any designed artifact. A garden is art. A house is art. McDonalds cartons are art. Margin doodles are art. Really, this has been the philosophical consensus, if you stop and think things through carefully, for about 80 years. Ever since things like fountain started appearing recently. That is, after all, the point of fountain: that the dividing line between 'art' and 'not art' is entirely arbitrary, and thus meaningless. The point isn't the urinal, but the signature.
Once you accept this point, that all human creativity can be considered as art, then everything actually becomes a lot simpler, because then you can have some actually interesting discussions, because the issue then becomes not 'what is art', but 'how do we define quality in art'. Quality of thought, of execution? How do we present art? and so on. It also makes things a lot more objective. We no longer see a need to venerate poor art simply for being radical, unless there is a further dimension of thought behind that radicality. An argument we've had here before revolves around the fact that I think that this is utter drivel:
Whereas this is one of the cleverest and most intriguing works of art of all time:
Barmymoo:
That's an excellent point about human creativity but I'm afraid I don't see how a glass on a shelf is more art than three rectangles of colour. Personally I feel more emotionally moved by the colour. Not that you're wrong, just that my concept of art is different.
schimmy:
I don't think he was saying either piece is any 'more' or 'less' art than the other, he was just saying he preferred the second piece.
I prefer the second piece as well, as it happens. I've seen quite a few paintings like the first one, but I have never seen any art like the second, and that makes it exciting to me.
And that, to me, is what art should aim to be; exciting and innovative. Beyond that, nothing matters, everything is art.
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