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What good is art without intention?


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The word "art" is used for different purposes. For example, it is used to distinguish between the product of the commercial word and the work of independent individuals: i.e., The Beats, Hippies, Iconoclasts... It is used as a trophy: "Now THIS is ART!" Keep naming the ways.....That is why this thread seems to wander.
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I am an artist, I am not "artsy". This is one of the strangest things I have noticed on photo.net, this desperate need by so many to distance themselves from the word "artist". many of us here are artists, some are not...but why is it such a dirty word to some?
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Pro primo: As to intention, there's a saying, like "nature is the greatest artist". Is it true, or just another crappy saying?

<br>

[Of course, if you are deterministic enough, you'll say, everything in nature has its purpose and was "made" with intention.]

<p>

Pro secundo: Regarding photography: G.W.B. (B stands for Baselmans, not Bush!) once said " I'm *not* an artist. I know quite everything about the technical part of photography and I try to shoot technically perfect photos whenever I use my camera. I can enjoy my slides; my family, my friends can enjoy my slides. If I would produce art, other people could enjoy my photos as well."

<br>

Maybe this is it, maybe "art" is when you impersonalize things you produce, and you can make "other people" admire your work.

<br>

[Of course, there's at least one thing anybody can produce in his/her life, that will be appreciated by the "others". So - is everybody an artist at some moment?]

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1. The "intent" of all art is to draw attention to the artist. That's what makes it art. I know of no anonymous art martyrs.<P>2. With respect to number one, there is plenty of anonymous illustration that is beautiful. Of course, if you think it is beautiful, that makes you one of the mindless masses. If you correctly identify it as anonymous illustration, that makes you an artist, probably a cynical and bitter one.<P>3.Philosophically, I firmly believe that those who either create beauty, or enjoy looking at it, or both, are looking for God. Even if they claim to be atheistic. <P>Those that toil endlessly to depict ugliness and despair, and despise beauty, are angry with God. There are few (if any) self-despairing artists who are atheists. Atheism is a product of complacency. <P>4. (If I may add a number four.) Like it or not, most of us here lie somewhere in between, filling the bottom of an inverted bell curve. Our art is the product of opportunity and convenience, or even if much effort and duress is involved, the result is nevertheless much more mundane than the artist himself believes.<P>Emre, I think what you are trying to come to grips with is Obsession vs. Opportunity. "Great" art is not supposed to happen without some measure of "urge". Important art that just happens is serendipity, for instance, images of a collapsing WTC tower. Galen Rowell could have climbed all the way to the moon and never gotten a magazine cover shot of a disintegrating space shuttle. We may have the "urge" to create (or "capture"; we can argue that if you like) such images, but few of us will. I'm not digressing into photojournalism, I'm just thinking like a photographer, and these are examples that come to mind. An example of what I think is great art AND talent (preparation and skill to take advantage of serendipity) AND beauty, is Dan Bayer's image of the comet and the windmill. Some may call it eye candy, but I happen to have a visual sweet tooth. If anyone had conceived such an image beforehand, to be created in the darkroom, in the computer, or on canvas, the structure would have probably been something altogether different, and probably quite hackneyed.
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<i>what in the hell is this supposed to mean?!</i>

<p>

It means that I am not interested in the act of photography per se, but the result. Sometimes the occasion calls for a photograph; in others, a film, an essay, or simply some music etc. Therefore the desired result precedes (rather, decides) the method, or instrument. My choosing to call myself an artist is a reflection of my priorities (order of activity). As you can see, I am explicitly stating my position regarding my question. Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, <i>"Photography is nothing, it's life that interests me"</i>.

<p>

Yesterday I discussed the matter with a friend of mine who happens to be a jazz musician. The epitomy of Mr. Blair's definition of an artist, he noted that there are probably few precedents of great artists that did not have direction, whether or not they were conscious of this fact. I do not think it is impossible otherwise, but it is less likely. For reference, the apt quote about randomly replicating the works of Shakespeare belongs to the physicist Lord Kelvin. He was referring to the probability of improbable thermodynamic events. Neither my friend nor I could decide what to make of autists; perhaps they are the exception?

<p>

It seems that the ambiguity inherent to most subjects of debate (art, in our case) leads to difficulty in making the debate reach a consensus. Nevertheless I believe such debate is useful because it enables us to consciously choose our position, if only temporarily, by observing that of those around us.

<p>

I did not idly propose this subject for discussion; I am now undertaking projects that require considerable time to complete, therefore I must justify them to myself beforehand (see my third post). One does not need to ponder these philosophical questions when taking a photograph, because the act is over in a relatively short amount of time (even if you make your own prints).

<p>

<b>This is a broad topic, so in the interest of making progress, please address my questions before digressing.</b> I am grateful for the references some of you have offered.

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1. If you want...or it could be from an obscure impulse that doesn't become clear until years later, if at all. A free spirit doesn't always have to make sense, even to itself; when the great innovators were breaking new ground, they were often subjected to howls of protest from those who thought they were the arbiters of taste.

 

2. I'd be fascinated. The programming necessary to create a computer - generated landscape indistinguishable from a photograph would be something *else*, and would almost certainly have fruitful applications elsewhere.

 

3a. The Abstract Expressionists of the earlier 20th C were working largely by intuition (I think) and produced some very powerful work.

 

3b. Only if it's any good; (interesting, moving, exciting, scary...)

 

3c. Intent means different things to, say, a Toltec sorcerer, a backpacker, and a New York lawyer. Your use of 'intent' seems to be synonymous with 'message', or even 'slogan', and thus to have more to do with advertising or propaganda than the big A.

 

I'm not saying no-one should have a clear mission statement (if that's what they want). I just think that the a-r-t itself comes from somewhere non-verbal, and the philosophising is necessarily post facto.

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Art is always made for a purpose. It might be to express an idea or a feeling, to make money, to entertain, for therapy, for the pleasure of working with the medium. The list goes on. <br>

You can re-phrase 1 as "Who decides what is a valid purpose for making art". If the artist decides then anything is art where someone says "I am an artist and this thing I made is art", because if the artist thinks it is art they can't believe that it would be art if only they'd made it for a different reason. But does the reason matter ? <br>

I've photographed some nudes recently. Reasons for doing this might include <br>

*I am a visual artist and the body is what I choose to depict in my work<br>

*I want to spend time in the company of naked women and photography is a socially acceptable way of doing it. <br>

*I am having a mid-life crisis which includes trying to understand the nature of beauty<br>

*I'm interested in all aspects of photography, and just wanted to photograph something I haven't done before to see if I could do it.<br>

*I want to make a political statement about the relationship between the sexes <p>

If I'm openly a dirty old man (or overgrown school boy) who does it to be around "Sexy naked babes" and doesn�t claim to do art, then if I produce something beautiful by accident does that stop it being art ? If I claim to be an artist but end up producing what someone here termed pictures of "Bimbos flashing the camera" is that still art?

Take the case that I don't claim it's art. If the artist can say what is art then if they say what isn't, so if I say "Shucks what I do ain't art" then that's it case closed. <p>

But what if you don't know what I said about it or why I did it � it's in limbo. Which would mean that since we don't know what Mozart was thinking, we don't know if his music is art; and that doesn't make any sense. <p>

 

Let me ask you another question. I give you a work in a box � we're going down a sort of Schrödinger's art path here � now it can be in one of two states art or not art. If art is in the eye of the beholder it really isn't in either of those states until you look at it. Does that make sense ?<p>

 

Now for question 2, must art be made with the intent to be art. But like I said before, if you don't know the intent you don't know if it is art. I like the "Turing test" in the artificial intelligence world, it says if after communicating with something for a while you don't know if is a person or a machine, you might as well consider it to be intelligent. Similarly with art, if you say these technique/intentions/processes produce art, and these ones don't then if you can't tell whether what's behind something is valid for art then it you can assume that it is. <p>

 

And for 3. I've got flowers in my room and a picture of flowers. The picture is art (the artist and viewer agree on this because they are both me) , but the flowers are not art � odd thought, a flower on its own isn't art but an arrangement is. � why would I bother to contemplate only on of them ? I look at my fireplace from time to time � I doubt very much if the guy who built it for me called it art � it has no artistic intent. There's plenty of bad TV on which has artistic intent but I turn the TV off and enjoy the fireplace.

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My two cents.

 

1. All great arts were be made with passion, not purpose. They can be made with purpose, but the purpose itself didn't make the art, artwork became art only when the audience feel the passion. The passion could be different from what the artist had put it, but it is the audience's own feeling makes the art alive. Without audience, there is no art.

 

2. If you mistook a computer generated landscape for a real photograph, it is you who generated a piece of artwork, not the computer.

 

3. Artworks are created from intuition, but intuition is only a seed, great art need lot of skill, experience and concentration from the artist. A random creation is a random creation, it could be art, or not.

 

"Can one become a great artist--hope to create art of lasting interesting--without direction? Does it make sense to devote your time and energy on an artwork if the only outcome is that you may have fun creating it? What if that artwork takes a significant share of your lifetime? If one were immortal, it would not matter, but since this is not the case..."

 

Art is an investment for collectors, but never for artists. An artist lives his life when he is working.

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I've read somewhere saying that the word "art" is taken from the word "artificial", another word meaning "man-made", or "creativity". If this means "yielding" something from nothing then we are facing with a very large scale of measurement, from negative feelings such as "horror, grotesque, dirty, trash" .. to positive feelings such as "tranquility, beautiful, exaltation" etc.. However, many of these feelings are based on shorterm memory (environmental knowledge) and many are based on longterm memory (inheritance), ie. objects and images making sense in one culture might not communicate anything to another(ie. throwing bad eggs on somebody might consider an act of demoralizing in some countries but doesn't make any sense in others, similarly images of naked bodies might consider artistic in the West and disgraceful in the East). Where do we stand ?

 

To me, at the very basic level, photography is an effective means of recording life and communicating it to others. Whether people get any feeling out of images or not is difficult to say. If there are feelings generated then the image can be called a piece of artwork, if not, it isn't.

 

On the scale of feelings, however, there are positive and negative sides. People tend to lookout for positive feelings such as "tranquility, beautiful, exaltation" etc.. so you can see now that the whole half of the scale is often obmitted. Children often like sweet and soft boiled eggs while adult can take a much larger range of taste.

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After reading the responses here, I think a few of things need to be added- in postmodern art theory, which is the dominant theory since the 1960's, art exists unto itself. That is "art" is the arbiter of what is or is not "art." If a work is accepted as "art" then it is. This becomes a circular argument in logic, of course.

 

But more than that, under the current oprators of postmodernism- denial of referent, denial of context and deconsteruction- the idea of internal intent or meaning in a work is eliminated and the ideas of intent, and by extension interpretation, are put solely on the shoulders of the viewer.

 

The second point this brings up is that "art" is involved with the creation of aesthetic objects- which is why the flowers themselves are not "art," but the painting of the flower arrangement is.

 

The third point under these operators is that art is to be enjoyed for itself- intent or interpretation should be totally unnecessary to the enjoyment of the work- it is the color, line, shape and texture used in the design of the art space that is truly important in the appreciation- i.e. reducing the effort to essentially exercises in design.

 

...and therein lie the problems, especially for photography.

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The critic Roland Barthes once famously said that 'Art contains no noise'. He was using the word 'noise' in a sense borrowed from communication theory, where it is contrasted with the term 'signal'. The classic example would be tuning in to a radio station, where the music is the signal and all the crackle and hiss of interference is the 'noise'. In everyday life, we often have to sort out 'signal' from 'noise' in an analogous way, to filter out all the 'information' around us that is irrelevant or distracting in order to concentrate on something we regard as important. What Barthes is saying is that we shouldn't have to do this when looking at a work of art. It is the artist's job to exclude everything that might distract from his or her message. In other words, unlike everyday reality, art should contain nothing that is not meaningful. So: a work of art not only contains traces of the artist's actions that went into making it, but all of these actions were purposeful - all of them were directed towards the same end. All of them reinforce each other.

 

This is clearly not the case with photographs. They contain a lot of noise. In the nineteenth century, the painter Eugene Delacroix said, 'The artist is always concerned with a total view of the world. However, when the photographer 'takes a picture' � the edge of his picture is just as interesting as the middle, one can only guess at the existence of a whole, and the view as presented seems chosen by chance. The incidental details become just as important as the main theme - they often strike the eye first and confuse the whole'. To put it another way, it is impossible to distinguish precisely between what the photographer intended to photograph and what the photographer could not avoid photographing.

 

The famous insistence of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston on 'previsualizing' their images was an attempt to fight against or deny this aspect of photography, and many studio photographers do indeed produce images that can be said to more or less eliminate noise. But there is another possible response to the problem, one adopted by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, and many other street photographers, and that is to treat photography as a gambling game. The photographer's intention then becomes to find an equilibrium between chance and intention, or to 'put oneself in a state of grace with chance' as the Surrealist Andre Breton put it.

 

To decide whether a photograph is successful (is 'art', if you like) therefore becomes an attempt to define the difference between winning and losing (a difference that is arbitrary and absolute - like the decision to trip the shutter). It also means thinking about why this difference should matter. Every such image makes a claim upon the viewer's attention, but it is up to the photographer to provide a stake sufficiently important to back that claim. The machine itself registers every scene with equal indifference, just as the roulette wheel does not care where the ball lands. This is where I get all existential on you, and I imagine the tolerance for that is very low among photo.net subscribers (though possibly higher than their tolerance for post-modern theory).

 

It is true, however, that the uncontrollable, or chance, element in photography consists partly in not being able to define what constitutes a winning move in advance of playing. Photography is unique among gambling games because of this: that you make up (some of) the rules as you go along (and sometimes in retrospect). In other words, intention is more decisive in the editing than it is in taking the photo.

By the way, Emre, I like your photos very much.

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Emre,

 

Nice questions. I'll try to go direct to your points, as requested.

 

1. I think art has been always done like that. As said above, there's

always an intention in the creation of something, regardless of how

much personal or ephemeral this intention might be.

 

2. A computer generated graphics can be a 'work-of-art', IMO. Whether

one appreciates is another story. In the same way, we are given brushes & canvas, films & cameras, clay & water, we can also be given

an algorithm and a CPU. What one does with the tools and the corresponding intentions behind it is what makes it art or not.

 

3. I believe intuition is part of every *creative* work. If ramdomness is used, the user had an intention to do so. People take

the time to appreaciate whatever has a meaning or deliver a message to them. Early Modern Art *tends* to concentrate on perfection, beauty and harmony with low political and social content. Cubism breaks down some concepts. Dadaism's 'Art for the sake of Art' completely destroys the pre-conception that Art has to be beauty and harmonic.

Their intention relys on the absence of a purpose (concept) in Art creation (but that's a purpose and with intention). It's actually the introduction of phylosophical meaning to Art, that goes beyond the object itself. The 'Art with meaning' reachs its peak with the Abstractionism and Constructivism, where the knowledge of a defined content is likely necessary for comtemplation and understading.

 

There's an intent behind everything. A message doens't need to be concrete, but has to emcompass and to have a far-reaching. Otherwise, it's simply not Art for not being considered as such.

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Sorry for the long post, Emre... I do think that all this are highly interesting metaphysics, but it is just that - metaphysics. I also feel that there is something deeper than meta-physics in general, and one gets there, perhaps, by going beyond his questions. I also believe that it's exactly what most post-moderns attempted to do, and that their efforts have often been gravely misunderstood.

<p>

So let me first thank you for the breeze of fresh air, and let's get to the crunch... I have spent almost an our reading this entire thread and wasn't bored for a second. I would even say that I found here more smart answers to a difficult (and imo interesting) question, than I ever read anywhere else on photo.net.

<p>

Let me go slowly into trying to phrase my *answers* to your questions, though you might find there more new questions than real answers...

<p>

"1. Do you think art should be made with a purpose; to edify, document, entertain, etc."

<p>

I think I'd go for the following answer, which I read above: "I think all art has a purpose, whether its conscious or not. (...) The mere act of intermediating nature (or whatever your subject of choice is) gives it a purpose, whether its purely an excercise in using the tools, or to document, or to edify, or whatever." - Tom K.

<p>

Or this: "I believe any human creation (the arts included) has purpose behind it even if the artist can't express his/her purpose in words. Was it Freud who said "every behavior is motivated"?" - Robert Ash

<p>

Or that: "It (i.e Art) could be from an obscure impulse that doesn't become clear until years later, if at all. A free spirit doesn't always have to make sense, even to itself" - David Mount

<p>

Imo, all this is true, and fairly obvious. Then, let me go a little further with Matt K...

<p>

"No object becomes recognised as art unless someone presents it as art. If someone finds a piece of trash and they call it art, it is they who transform it from trash to art." - Matt K.

<p>

"Art doesn't need to be made for a specific purpose to be considered art. Art is quite often divorced from the intentions and efforts of its creator. Someone creates something along a certain line of thought and presents it to an audience who has no connection to this line of though." - Matt K

<p>

"A random creation can be considered art but it is the person who selects the item as art that converts the item from a typical object into art." - Matt K.

<p>

I agree with all these posts, but what I personally find interesting to understand is WHY any public identifying an object as "art" *automatically* makes it art... I think it's precisely because this public would then have somehow LEND an intention to the artwork. <p>

Basically, what I'm saying is that the artist always puts SOME SORT of intention into his artwork - cousciously or not -, and that the public later INTERPRETES the work - cousciously or not, and in any way it wishes or feels compelled to. The public might read in an art piece something absolutely opposed to the conscient message the artist put into his work, and then there seems to be a "COMMUNICATION FAILURE", but this failure can still turn to be a success. There is the music played and the music we hear, and it might not be the same one, but who cares if the music as it is heard is lovely to this man's ears...?

<p>

Both writers Thomas Mann and Saint-Exupery phrased this same idea almost with the same words (though one in German and the 2nd in French): "Art is not a power, it's a consolation", they said... I think that is true in at least 2 ways...

<p>

1) Art has very little power to change the world, but it can still try and serve as aconsolation in that sense, eventhough it might probably fail.

<p>

2) Art is not a power, because all it is, is a message in a bottle thrown to the sea... The fun of it is that this message is actually often written with an invisible ink - by that, I mean that it is often APPARENTLY MEANINGLESS... Yet, it seems that this bottle always ends on some shore... Then comes a person who reads the visible message and feels a better person for reading it. "Art doesn't reproduce what's visible, said Paul Klee - it makes new things visible", and that is why we feel an increase of our knowledge or wisdom when this art piece "works for us"... Now, what's truly fantastic to me, is that a message written with an invisible ink, or just to written at all if you like, can still be read... Art is therefore not reallya power to communicate - though it is mostly that -, but it can also be a communication ex nihilo - if that makes any sense... Basically, the bottle can be sent with no message in it, but its emptiness can still mean something - and even something very deep and fundamental - to the person who finds the bottle...

<p>

Conclusion: art always proceeds from some sort of intention, but it creates all around itself much more than it was created FOR. The artist's purpose or intention and his possible "messages" are in fact just a few water drops in the sea of possible ways to acknowledge these messages... And to me, this is a very precious thing to understand as an artist. Why ? Because I find it very humbling, and it is also a very "comfortable and relaxing thought"... End of the day, if I have taken a picture that I like, I can be happy, no matter what I put in it and how, because anyway, viewers are unlikely to find in this dustbin what I have thrown in it. :-) And yet, they may like it too !! Ain't that glorious ?! :-)

<p>

I believe that the old way to understand what's a "communication" (De Saussure) is just dead, because it was dead wrong... We do not send a meaning to anyone when we talk, though we might indeed be trying to. What we really do is talking to the air - and to ourselves - and hoping to be heard. But in the end, we do not decide who will hear what, because that depends on the amount of noise out there as much as the amount of intimate noise in the mind of the viewer. Which is why I think that Samuel Beckett has understood communication almost better than the Palo Alto group. Read an absolutely amazing play he wrote titled in French "Comedie" - "Comedy"...?

<p>

"2. How would you feel if you could not distinguish an artwork with intent from one without; e.g. you mistook a computer generated landscape for a real photograph?"

<p>

Based on the above, I would feel any different than I would any other day in my life. Once one understands that communication is essentially a message being sent and a message received (together with some noise), and that both messages are not at all necessarily the same one, why worry about anything...? Misunderstanding an artwork is in fact as common as is the action of breathing in...:-)

<p>

So, artists should do what they want and I shall see what to make of it... Case closed. No metaphysics needed.

<p>

"How do you create such artworks; purely by intuition? Does it not follow that a random creation can be an artwork?"

<p>

How about this, Emre...: given the above, all art is random, perhaps not at its creation, but once sent out, it becomes random...? You may put in what ever you like - your intuition, your conscious thoughts, your dreams -, it will still be received randomly by minds that just don't work like yours and by hearts that don't feel like yours. Art "is not a power", and as long as you don't believe this, you are going to suffer in arts... and unless this suffering makes you grow as an artist - I think it works that way for quite a few artists -, all you are going to earn yourself with such toughts... is Pain...

<p>

A few other points...

<p>

a) You wrote: "Would you invest time to comtemplate this artwork, when you could be investing your time on something with an intent?"

<p>

This question fails to reach me if you haven't defined very precisely what's an intent, and it evaporates anyway if I consider - and I do ! - that the subconscious mind has intents too, just not conscious ones...:-))

<p>

"As I am typing this, I realize that I consider the goal before I choose my tools." - Emre S.

<p>

Yes, I often feel that way too, but in fact, do I really know which me chooses what to create this or that...? I mean, consciously, I might decide that I want to use a 3200 ASA B&W film for a dramatic usage of grain, because it fits the content I have IN MIND to represent... but if I step back, I might realize that I'm not shooting dramatic images for a clear and specific REASON. So, in such a case, do you actually call it a work WITH an intention, or is that WITHOUT intention...? We often have no idea WHY we really choose this subject or that one in the first place. I know that people buy my picture for my usage of contrasted lighting, but I have no idea why I shoot that way... I can explain why this and why that in this or that particular image I produced, but I can't possibly explain my way to look at things and to light them...

<p>

"I may not end up where I initially decided, nevertheless I do not walk randomly."

<p>

Well, same here Emre... but tell me, if we don't end up where we initially decided, does it really matter at all whether we get there

randomly or via X number of amendments to amendments to plan A...? :-) And besides that, we never know where exactly our plan A came from. We wanted this, so we did that - fine -, but why did we want this in the first place...? Why didn't we want to shoot a sunflower instead of this or that...? We think we know why, but in fact we don't.

<p>

"Can one become a great artist--hope to create art of lasting interesting--without direction?" - Emre S.

<p>

Yeah, sure we can... We can even win with a single lotto ticket... But then, do we actually play to win or do we really play to play...? :-)

<p>

"Does it make sense to devote your time and energy on an artwork if the only outcome is that you may have fun creating it? What if that artwork takes a significant share of your lifetime? If one were immortal, it would not matter, but since this is not the case..."

<p>

Well, I still try to put myself into what I do, and to give it as much thought as I can, and the aim is part of my fun, but I have no illusions left that this aim is just part of the fun and that the fun is the real thing that justifies the aim and may lead to more than what I could have hoped for - and may not, too...:-)

<p>

Besides that, I can't do any better than S. LIU for this fantastic reply (worth framing imo):

<p>

"Art is an investment for collectors, but never for artists. An artist lives his life when he is working." - S. LIU.

<p>

And here is another nice one I will conclude with:

<p>

"If there are no life to feel the heat of our Sun, is the Sun still "hot"?" - Timber B.

<p>

Metaphysics won't change this simple reality of Art... You may make a sun, and I may miss its heat, and see only how bright it is, and I may call it a moon and talk elogiously about its craters, but even then, you shouldn't call me a fool... just a happy viewer...:-)

<p>

Besides that, as Scott Blair said so well: "Our art is the product of opportunity and convenience, or even if much effort and duress is involved, the result is nevertheless much more mundane than the artist himself believes." This is soooo true that we either learn to admit it and get an extra amount of humility from this sad reality, or are bound to fail for long in understanding who we are and what we do, as artists...

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I think that art has to reflect the vision of the artist. I do NOT think it has to "communicate" something - what does Abstract Expressionism communicate?<P>

 

But I <B>do</B> think that the art has to exist in the artist's mind FIRST, before it exists in his medium (paint, pixels, clay, whatever). So I agree that it has to be intentional, i.e., the pixels, the colors, the design, the brushstrokes, etc should all be there because the artist intended that they be there. I say this as a painter as well as a photographer.<P>

 

So just because a particular arrangement in the universe - a sunset, debris after a hurricane, a pile of trash after a party, HAPPENS to be pretty or moving doesn't make it "art".

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<I>Art can't be 'found'. Beauty can be 'found' but that doesn't make it art. The artist can take the grotesque and make it 'art' and it is in the act of creation that difference between the 'art' and 'discovery'. If there is no creation then there is no art.</I><P>

 

I agree. The idea that "art can be found" means that ANYTHING or EVERYTHING can be art, which means that the term itself is meaningless so there's no point in having it in our vocabulary.

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<I>The "intent" of all art is to draw attention to the artist. That's what makes it art. I know of no anonymous art martyrs.</I><P>

 

This is complete ca-ca. Speaking as an artist, I have artwork all over the web. I have one image I created in Photoshop that enough people like that now almost 700 people are using it on their websites. But no one knows I created it and I'm fine with that.

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<I>After reading the responses here, I think a few of things need to be added- in postmodern art theory, which is the dominant theory since the 1960's, art exists unto itself. That is "art" is the arbiter of what is or is not "art." If a work is accepted as "art" then it is. This becomes a circular argument in logic, of course. </I><P>

 

But postmoderist theory doesn't just say that about "art"; it says that about EVERYTHING. Postmodernist theory says that ALL vocabulary is context- and speaker- dependent so NO words have intrinsic or objective meaning: "justice", "death", "pixel", "Eiffel Tower", etc. As you say, it rapidly becomes circular, if for no other reason than that they can only use words to express their concepts.

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