This Is Art (it really is)

[Sunstone]

A challenge in defining art is to be careful not to confuse the descriptive with the prescriptive.

 

[ChristineM]

Most Americans have no idea what art is. And this becomes apparent whenever there is any sort of discussion on this site about art. It's sometimes a bit frustrating for me, as I am an artist. A real one. Not some hobbyist pretending his hobby is "art". So I thought I'd show people some real art. Powerful art; that hopefully makes the difference apparent to them.

What a load of elitist twaddle.

Yes i am a real artist too. A successful one who made a good living at my craft for over 25 years and made enough cash to retire from the business of art 20 years early.

But hey, i am not american so perhaps America limits your outlook

Their intent to be art, before and beyond anything else. They don't exist to teach, to entertain, to be beautiful, to be feats of craftsmanship, or to be physically functional, (though they can employ any of those characteristics, or not). They exist to express the artist's unique experience of being in a way that allows the rest of us to experience it with him/her, through the art.

Yes, essentially the outlook of most artists. I am surprised you only see that in the artists you like

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

What a load of elitist twaddle.

Yes i am a real artist too. A successful one who made a good living at my craft for over 25 years and made enough cash to retire from the business of art 20 years early.

But hey, i am not american so perhaps America limits your outlook



Yes, essentially the outlook of most artists. I am surprised you only see that in the artists you like

Perfect.

 

[ChristineM]

I think you're taking it as simplistic, but, it's actually not. It's talking about the artistic community. What defines art? Who defines art? it's not one person or one thing. And that's my objection. You're acting like you represent the entire artisitc world. Do you? Is your opinion about what is and isn't art the consensus?

Here's what I think, maybe my Art Teacher said something stupid. Fine.

I think that art is defined just as much by the process as the product. Do you agree with that? At least in a small degree?

He most certainly does not represent me?

 

[Howard Is]

I think an artist is a person who has a compulsion and a vision.

They are quite different from the hired guns with some kind of ’artistic‘ skill set.

There are no objective criteria for an artist’s success. There is no mark of success either.
There are artists who are generally appreciated and rewarded, and those who aren’t.
A skilled graphic artist may make a million dollars painting pictures, and really be just an entertainer, a decorator, and a salesman.

Van Gogh was a total failure, financially and socially, in his lifetime. Yet very few now would say he was no artist, particularly those who believe they have aesthetic sensitivity.

On the other hand we have Ken Done.

( There... its f**ken done).

I’m free to praise or dismiss any art. We all are. It’s good provocation for communication either way.

 

[Revoltingest]

What a load of elitist twaddle.

Yes i am a real artist too. A successful one who made a good living at my craft for over 25 years and made enough cash to retire from the business of art 20 years early.

But hey, i am not american so perhaps America limits your outlook



Yes, essentially the outlook of most artists. I am surprised you only see that in the artists you like

Art snobs & wine snobs....hard to take, eh.

 

[Thief]

Sometimes it does offend.

I often think of gansta rap music, which I find quite offensive. Yet even in it's ugliness (admonitions of violence, stealing, and the gross sexualization of women, etc.) it is a legitimate expression of being for those who have grown up in the environment that generated that music. It should be offensive. As offensive as the environment that forces human beings to become that violent and callous. And we should have it all shoved in our faces, the way those angry, shouting male voices spits those angry words at us like a machine gun spitting bullets. It's art that intends to offend us. And that needs to offend us.

yeah.....but

martial art really is an art
and the movies are entertaining

gangsta art seems to be an invitation

 

[Howard Is]

On the other hand we have Ken Done.

I lived in a block often visited by a celebrated aboriginal painter. His artistic associate was one of my neighbours. She actually designed and laid out his work in pencil, for him to colour.
She bought books of Roman, Arabic, Celtic etc designs to use as inspiration. He rendered her designs in traditional dot painting form.

It was manufacture of product. Until it hit the gallery, and then it was art.

That is what I meant by entertainer (in the gallery) decorator ( for expensive homes) and salesman. It was purely business.

On the other hand, I have known people I consider real artists. They are on a very personal mission to externalise their vision.

That is the difference.

 

[ChristineM]

Art snobs & wine snobs....hard to take, eh.

Cooking wine is ok.

 

[PureX]

Apologies for the late reply. I was tired and needed a good night's sleep for a long day of isolation procrastination.



This doesn't really sit well with me as it leads to a few awkward questions.

If somebody needs to be told whether or not their creation is art, who decides that? Can anybody declare something to be art/not art or is it the duty of a few "in the know" types? Does it matter what the ratio of art/not art opinions is?

The object created determines it. If I build a chair that has no other apparent purpose but to be sat on, and I call it a work of art because I feel I was expressing my personal desire for something to sit on while building it, the object is still just a chair. And I am still a furniture-maker. Even if it's an elegant, beautiful, excellently crafted chair. And the reason is that as a man-made object, it has not transcended it's functionality. Art can be functional, but it's function is not it's primary purpose. And that ulterior purpose as an act of shared expression has to be apparent within it, for it to transcend it's function.

I'll grant that conscious awareness of one's goals is more likely to produce success. Again though, who decides that the piece was a success?

Who decides if some new medical procedure is a success? It works as intended.

For the sake of argument, let's say that there are 1000 people in the world who know what art is. Would they all have to come to the same conclusion on something being art for it to qualify? That seems unlikely to happen.

Of course not. But most of them will agree that it's art even if they don't all personally "like it", or even think it's a "good" example of art.

If it's acceptable to just have a majority, how many should that be? If 501 of those people say it's art, is that enough or do you need closer to 750?

Why would this matter? The labels come after the experience of it. It's the shared experience that defines itself as 'art'. It's like asking if an artist works alone in a closet, and never shows his artworks to anyone else, are they still artworks? The answer is who cares? Nobody, because nobody has seen them. Works of art are vehicles for the sharing of one person's existential experience, with others. If the object succeeds in opening that doorway between the artist's experience of being, and the viewer's (audience), then it's an object of art. How well it does that, or for how many, is a question for the critics and historians.

Also, it's possible that all the people in the dissenting minority are mistaken in their conclusions. Mathematicians can get the odd equation wrong so there's no reason an artist can't occasionally make a mistake in declaring something art/not art. However, the closer the 1000 people mentioned above get to a 50/50 split on the subject, the less likely it is everybody on the minority side made a mistake. This would imply that the distinction is a matter of opinion rather than fact.

Not a matter of opinion, but of perception. Art is a shared experience. It's a very unique and special category of human endeavor.

If art is a matter of opinion, your stance that most people have no clue what art is doesn't hold water. It really is up to them to decide for themselves. The best you can accuse them of is having an uninformed opinion.

You're trying way too hard to avoid the obvious. People who engage in and with the human endeavor called "art", both as makers and as partakers, know more about it than people who do not. Like it or not this is a simple and logical fact. Those who do not engage in it may think they understand it better than those who do engage in it, but that's just ignorance and ego overriding their reason. Yet that kind of ignorance and ego seems to be exceptionally persistent in a culture that worships money above nearly all else. Because money is a quantifiable "value", whereas art is not. And in our culture, we are obsessed with quantifying value, because that's what's required to turn something (everything) into a salable product. Into money. So there is a persistent resentment against the whole art endeavor in this culture because it resists this kind of economic quantification. We can sell entertainment. We can sell functionality. We can sell sentimentality, we can sell novelty, we can sell titillation. Because we can quantify the value (desire) of these. But real art falls into a whole different category of human endeavor that resists this kind of commodification. And this confuses a lot of people in our very money-obsessed culture. And causes a lot of resentment. Because people tend to resent whatever they can't understand, or control (in this case through quantification).

I can always appreciate ripping off the shallow, snobbish upper classes. However, this seems to indicate that by your own definition, those sculptures are not art. If they're created to provide commentary on the absurdity of wealth and greed, they don't exist to be art before and beyond everything else.

The work goes far beyond just the commentary. The artworks become a physical ultra-manifestation of the pinnacle of our cultural rot. They are magnificent in their total resignation to a culture built on our collective lust for money and fame. And there in the middle of it all is the artist. An artist in a culture (and an art world/market) that is absolutely blinded by it's lust for money and fame. So he is doing what a smart, aware, artist would do in that situation. He's capturing it, and himself within it, as he is experiencing it, and sharing it with all of us, through his artworks. He's showing us, through his own experiences as a "famous artist" what we as a culture have become. He is not especially popular as an artist. He is quite controversial because, like Warhol, he sort of becomes an enemy of art, to make art culturally relevant, again.

There's also a circular quality to the definition you provided. If the definition of art is primarily rooted in the intent to create art, this doesn't tell us what art actually is.

A work of art is just a doorway between one human's experience of being, and other humans. Artists don't just make things. They make things to open that existential/experiential doorway between themselves and others.

If instead art is defined as a means of expressing one's unique experiences for others to share, any random teenager's online blog (or even their facebook profile) would qualify.

COULD qualify, sure. But almost none of them do, or ever will. Because they don't open that doorway into the artists experience of being.

They are after all intended to convey that person's unique experiences for others to share, which would mean they achieve both components of your definition.

But that intent almost never actually manifests in the result. If it did, I'd accept calling it a work of art.

Finally, Jeff Koons loses a fair few points with me for not actually creating those pieces himself. This is of course personal opinion but it strikes me as cheating

I understand, but that's a romantic bias. Artists have employed the aid of other craftsmen, forever.

 

[Revoltingest]

Cooking wine is ok.

Too spendy for me.
I'm a 2 Buck Chuck kind'a guy.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

An Artist might be the most accepted practitioner in the world of fine art.
That does not mean Anyone, including me, has to like their work.
nor wish to display it in their personal space.

However they may well appreciate it for what it is, and accept whatever value is put on it.
Especially if they can benefit from it.

 

[PureX]

What a load of elitist twaddle.

Yes i am a real artist too. A successful one who made a good living at my craft for over 25 years and made enough cash to retire from the business of art 20 years early.

But hey, i am not american so perhaps America limits your outlook



Yes, essentially the outlook of most artists. I am surprised you only see that in the artists you like

Thou dost protest, pointlessly. No one here is suggesting that you are not an artist.

 

[ChristineM]

"Chicago Hit By The Bomb"

Quite childlike

"Shipwreck

Interesting, nice composition.

"The Wait"

Excellent work but does little for me

giant stainless steel balloon animals

Are you joking? Even trump could blow up a balloon

"Walking Man"

I prefer LS Lowry's stick figures (although i don't remember i was in his presence several times before he died)

"The Artist's Mother"

Really very good

"Carmen"

Not my thing.


Yes its all art, but our opinions different (actually i take that back for the balloons,). Here are some more you may like

This last one is specially for @Rival

 

[ChristineM]

Thou dost protest, pointlessly. No one here is suggesting that you are not an artist.

Have i said otherwise?

No, but its nice of you to recognise it, thanks

 

[PureX]

I lived in a block often visited by a celebrated aboriginal painter. His artistic associate was one of my neighbours. She actually designed and laid out his work in pencil, for him to colour.
She bought books of Roman, Arabic, Celtic etc designs to use as inspiration. He rendered her designs in traditional dot painting form.

It was manufacture of product. Until it hit the gallery, and then it was art.

That is what I meant by entertainer (in the gallery) decorator ( for expensive homes) and salesman. It was purely business.

On the other hand, I have known people I consider real artists. They are on a very personal mission to externalise their vision.

That is the difference.

Most art galleries have nothing to do with art. They are showrooms for interior decorators to buy stuff. Which is partly why there are so many lies and so much misinformation, and even resentment toward real art and artists.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Art comes in many forms and many shapes. We will as in many different aspect of life have different opinion of what Art really is.
To me, the following painting is real ART. But you may think it is not art at all. That is totally ok because we see things differently, a different aspect of the artworks will give us what we feel good about, and some art will be provoking us to get a reaction, because that is what the artist was looking for, expression of feelings when we look at their artwork.

Art is feeling of a moment in time (to me)

Painting made by Rembrandt

 

[PureX]

Art comes in many forms and many shapes. We will as in many different aspect of life have different opinion of what Art really is.
To me, the following painting is real ART. But you may think it is not art at all. That is totally ok because we see things differently, a different aspect of the artworks will give us what we feel good about, and some art will be provoking us to get a reaction, because that is what the artist was looking for, expression of feelings when we look at their artwork.

Art is feeling of a moment in time (to me)

A moment in time as uniquely experienced (and then shared with us through some physical medium) by the artist. Why is this such a difficult concept for people to accept?

 

[Spirit of Light]

A moment in time as uniquely experienced (and then shared with us through some physical medium) by the artist. Why is this such a difficult concept for people to accept?

Because often people do not know how much work lay behind what they experience as art, in the art galleries. Art is a process from thought through the medium chosen to have shown an expression.
Art is as the word says, an expression of an artistic ability to give happiness and joy to the people. And for the artist to use imagination and thought to create something unique

 

[Howard Is]

Most art galleries have nothing to do with art. They are showrooms for interior decorators to buy stuff. Which is partly why there are so many lies and so much misinformation, and even resentment toward real art and artists.

Yes. That was what I learned, from various sources. I have known and lived with a lot of painters, and heard their laments.

I have written, erased, and rewritten this post a few times now.
I’ll come back to it tomorrow. The subject is gnarly.