What is art? (27)

Yes just go with what you like is good.

But it does not make it art, to be classed as art it needs to be more than just an image or object that you like. It has to extend a concept or an emotion etc

e.g. Yves Klein just painted his canvas a lovely shade of blue but the work behind it was what mde it art.

< Frank Zappa >

Tally Ho!...

Sorry, pressed wrong button-responding to Childe Harold!

Edited 14 Nov 09, 12:08 AM by FrayBentos

I can't agree that art has to be inherently useless. I'm sure that when the first cave paintings were done it was believed that they had a purpose otherwise why would anyone spend time on it when hunting was a pressing need?

Then there is the decoration of churches and cathedrals which all had a purpose but who would claim that they are not art?

Before photography many artists were employed painting illustrations in books etc. and a lot of their work could be considered as art and more than just illustration.

The art of the twentieth century may well justify its existence in different ways but it doesn't constitute the whole of art by any means.

"Red hair and black leather is my favourite colour scheme" - Richard Thompson

Art in one sense cannot be useless as quite a few folk make a very nice living from it.

In another sense the question of what art is, is the very question of much art and many artists.

From a modern historical point of view art has been largely political (small p), but also set within various traditions that have grown up. It has examined the underlying assumptions that make up the life of the time. Minimalism, for example Carl Andre's famous firebricks Equivalent VII, examined a number of assumptions about how sculpture activates the space around it; yet also called into question a world made up of increasingly mass-produced homogeneous units.

Within glamour photography, the art debate rather than the amusement debate would range say around power relationships unintentionally expressed within commercial photography, how this depicts women as against how the dominant culture describes their condition. Much 1970's feminist discourse as well as people like Victor Burgin investigated this topic. One might also want to look at the works of London's late Jo Spence. And perhaps the early work (although she died very very young)of Francesca Woodman.

All art has a purpose, as opposed to a use-value. Often that purpose lies in making us understand how we are guided by culture to view the world rather than seeing other things. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a man in a rubber-suit...is just a man in a rubber-suit.

My 2p worth...

Homeric

Written more for students and teachers, rather than for the general reader, but a good survey of her take on representation s of sexuality.

In the same series there is also "Angy Warhol, Blow Job" by Peter Gidal.

Homeric

MarcusStrapp wrote: This Ain't Art is the product of creative endeavour that distils experience into essence Art is the essence that can take the viewer into another world, perhaps a world he knows, or has known or perhaps has never known. Like the maiden waking from a dream of pregnancy "knowing" "something" of what it is to be pregnant. Like the young man that wakes from a dream of war, "knowing" "something" of the horror of the front line. To appreciate Art there has to be a collaboration between Artist and viewer. As such, they must share a "language" or one must invest in learning the language of the other. Without this, there is no resonance. Art communicates. Art informs. Great Art is succinct and efficient in that distillation. When you experience great Art, when that collaboration works well, it hits you with the immediacy and intensity of an intravenous hit. MissFelicity wrote: "What is art?"

This is a fantastic definition of Art. probably the best I've read.

Thank you Markus