What's your Definition of Art?

it´s fairly stupid to keep this going... but well, i´m on a painting break

I paint, too
we should form a club but perhaps youd want an "inclusive" exclusive painting motorcycle strange art worldly teacher dumb joke book reader club




if you ever read walter benjamin you would understand me, and if you ever visited prado museum (or any other one) you would understand me, at least better, if you keep seeing things on you computer you will lose the best of the world

"if you ever read walter benjamin" IS EXACTLY the reason for why I never will.
Maybe if you explained yourself I could understand what you were getting at
I shouldn't need to borrow your books to crack your codes


What is the best of the world?


art and aesthetic experiences aren´t quite a computer screen experience


Why not? Anything can inspire
The only reason to go to the museum is to see the work that inspires itself
youre already inspired before you go



the stereotipe is that the art lover must be:a guy "with a pipe and goblet scruffy hair torn shirt barefoot"

that wasn't a stereotype
That is truth LOL
Stereotype of the faker perhaps
Not the art lover

you should be open minded and instructed just that

have you ever read a gombrish or jansen? have you ever set foot in a museum or an art gallery, and looked and questioned, and investigated why these creations are made?


I think I ate a Gombrish once. :shrug:

...Now youre an investigator, too?


tell me the truth
Have you EVER called yourself a renaissance man? in public or private




and looking at art (not a lousy repro) has everything to do with this thread...


no
it doesn't.

You might not like a lot of 'modern' art, but after reading the chapter on cubism- you will appreciate cubism


what a load
appreciate the art even if you dont like it at all or appreciate the fact someone could muddle your mind so completely you have to accept you may not know anything about which you had previously thought explored and emptied

tlitody said:

I tell you what, lets do this another way.

How about you come up with a 100% complete defintive list of every question that needs answering about art that will satisfy your requirements for making a defintion of art. Then you turn that list of questions into your own defintion or requirements for art and voila you have what you are looking for without wasting anyone elses time by doing this piecemeal. What could be simpler.

You better show us the list of questions just in case someone wants to tell you that you left some out, but since you know best I'm sure you won't but we'll check anyway so be sure it is a 100% complete and definitve list.

p.s. you better be sure you ask the right questions. After all it's the ability to ask the right questions which is the clever bit and not the ability to work out the answer which is usually a purely procedural exercise.

Click to expand...

im not here to make up a definition for art
im here asking whether others definitions are "true" or "valid" or "whatever"
the only requirement i guess i have is that if one thing is art for whatever reason
anything else that meets it also has to be art

sun of sand said:

im not here to make up a definition for art
im here asking whether others definitions are "true" or "valid" or "whatever"

Click to expand...

And do you think you're doing that well?

sun of sand said:

im not here to make up a definition for art
im here asking whether others definitions are "true" or "valid" or "whatever"
the only requirement i guess i have is that if one thing is art for whatever reason
anything else that meets it also has to be art

Click to expand...

So how are you are going to decide if othes definitions are true or valid if you don't already have your own criteria for deciding. What you are doing is asking for others defintions and then telling them they are wrong which means their definitions don't conform to yours. In short a time wasting exercise.

sun of sand said:

You might not like a lot of 'modern' art, but after reading the chapter on cubism- you will appreciate cubism


what a load
appreciate the art even if you dont like it at all or appreciate the fact someone could muddle your mind so completely you have to accept you may not know anything about which you had previously thought explored and emptied

Click to expand...

I don't appreciate being attacked for suggesting reading material. I strongly feel that education is important. There is a lot of material out there on art which can be very intimidating. I suggested works of literature that are recognized as important and helped me personally form my opinion on art.

Many of the links I posted are to free archives of the text. Most of the articles in the books that I reference could be found in other publications. Many of these essays are short, easy to read with your coffee and very interesting.

I am surprised that you feel that posting links to free resources (and some non-free) to educate yourself would consist a 'inclusive' club.

Spouting uninformed opinions on art theory/ meaning of art is as helpful as a ballet instructor giving recommendations on developer chemistry. Nothing against ballet of course

Again, I reference many of the linked to materials in my essay. It is 10 pages which I felt was inappropriate for a forum post.

If you ask me what kind of thing artworks are, I would be tempted to say that they are all a form of performance. An artwork is not an object, it's not a visual field, it's not material thing you gaze at: it's an artist's performance into an artistic medium.

What the heck? Well, think of it this way: given two indistinguishable physical objects, one being a perfect accident of nature, and the other being Michaelangelo's Moses, would you interpret and appreciate both the same way? Not really, insofar as one object demonstrates someone's actions, someone's WORK. Not just a beautiful surface or object, but the "genius" of someone, talent, meaningfulness, intentionality.

The above does not constitute in itself a definition of art, since it's an ontology (and I gleaned it from a book called Art as Performance by McGill philosophy teacher David Davies. It's quite a read.). One could say for example that my ontology also applies to cooking: we're not just appreciating the taste, the flavours of the food, but also the work in the medium of food, the talent, the genius, etc of the cook.

So a proper definition of art would require necessary and sufficient conditions. The above ontology would be a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. And to be frank, I don't think I have a sufficient condition(s). So I would be tempted to inch towards what is called "cluster definitions" of art. In other words, to be a work of art, you do not have to possess properties A, B, C, and D, but you could get by with A, B and D or B, C, and D. You call that jointly sufficient conditions.

I would probably argue that property B corresponds to "being a performance in an artistic medium" as explained above, so I would not consider a definition of art bereft of property B, but if an artwork gave me B + 2 other properties from A,B,C,D, I am satisfied.

At least, that's where I am so far.

hello

and honestly good bye, knowledge is too precious and so is patience. Mr. sun your pseudo pataphysics attitude moved me.

Art is anything I say it is.

With best regards.

Steve