Art.......

What constitutes art has been debated to death and then some. So let's do it

some more!

 

My opinion is this. "Art," whether paint, sculpture, photography, etc., does

not have to be beautiful or even pleasing. The MAJOR requirement for me (and

I'm speaking from a naive, uninformed, idiosyncratic perspective) must evoke

emotion.

 

Further, I think that because art does evoke emotion it's adaptive (helps us in

our struggle for survival). More about that later perhaps.

 

What do you think? How is emotion involved in "art?" How is "beauty" involved?

What other components must be there?

I think you're making it too personal. If it evokes emotion in several people, but not in millions more then it's still art. IMHO

Art is art if it accomplishes what the artist wants it to accomplish. If it accomplishes something else, then that's an accident, luck, etc.

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It's a form of communication. If that communication is intended to evoke an emotion, and it succeeds, then the communication (and hence the artform used therein) hit the mark. Perhaps an image in meant to help <i>suppress</i> an emotion. Or convey a concept in a way that is expressly devoid of emotional baggage that might cloud the message. Doesn't matter. The artist has a purpose, and succeeds or fails with a given audience. If the artist is working without a purpose, then we're talking about a different (and wider) area of philosophy (and possibly psychology).

Art is art is art. Everything can be art, depending on context. When you experience something as art or create something as art, then it is art. Art doesn't have to be beautiful, and it also doesn't have to evoke emotion. Emotional response, beauty, communication and whatever other aspects of art you appreciate are subjective.<p>

As for being adaptive, you are browsing a bit onto <i>why</i> we make art, which actually makes a more interesting discussion, since what art is is actually very obvious - or at least it should be.

Art is all emotion, technique is the form or presentation. Art is about talent and technique

is about discipline. We have all seen the work of artists who have little talent, and talented

ones with little or raw technique.

 

Beauty is subjective. Photographers (especially) LOVE their subjects. To find out about the

artist/photographer -- look at what he loves: it's in his photos. Is it beautiful? Yes, to him.

He sees the beauty in his subject even when others see something else.

 

Happy New YEar Rachel and Charles ... but why are we on the internet when we have a day

off and there is light? Let's get out of here!

Matt, I am a psychologist... and communication is a good point. But what are we trying to communicate and for what purpose?

 

Hakon, that's a topic I'll raise in the future! And I'm not sure that art is obvious. If it is, why would there be such debate? Was all of Mapplethorpe's work "art?" That's a debate that can rage for days.

 

Leo...I was just on my way out to shoot.

 

More later!

<i>But what are we trying to communicate and for what purpose?</i>

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Doesn't matter. That's like asking what the English language is designed to communicate. A means of communicating is just that... a method. The purpose to which it's applied is completely separate from that. Shakespeare put the English language to work equally well in expressing his despair at human folly and deceit and his delight at humanity's capacity for nobility, humor, and love. His writing - which might have been paintings, sculpture, or photography - served to communicate whatever concept he was looking to get across. His mastery of his chosen artform - as a set of skills - helped him to communicate the cleverness, insights, and notions he sought to communicate. The artform itself would have been useless without something to communicate, and even the most insightful topic would be poorly served if the only way to communicate it would have been through badly executed art.

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My own feeble attempts at art have shown me that I need to ask myself, more often, what I'm trying to show people, and why. It could be simple delight in a form or play of light, or it could be a the sense that the record of an event or effort will live longer or command a moment more's thought if it's presented with a bit of drama. Certainly many photographers make images strictly as an exercise in mastering the tools and techniques. It's OK if there's little communication going on there, and those episodes could be said to slip from <i>art</i> into <i>craft</i>.

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But, you're the psychologist. You already know that we talk about art so that we can justify buying that cool new lens. I just <i>know</i> that my message will have a more solid foundation on a Gitzo tripod!

All of Mapplethorpe's work is art. And so is every snapshot ever taken with a camera. The point I was trying to make is that anything is. As long as something is placed in a context where it is experienced as art, it is art - and communication is of course the keyword. Art is objective. What constitutes good art is subjective.<p>

When you experience something as art, it becomes a form of communication where the actual way of communicating is what's in focus, sometimes even more so than the message itself. Poetry is probably the easiest form of art to explain in those terms, although the same thing goes for all kinds of art.<p>

In poetry, words are placed together in a way that is different from normal use of language - whether it be in the choice of words, the use of meter, rhyme, verse and other poetic devices - and this adds focus to the expression itself, making the limitations of expression inherent in normal language obvious and therefore making it possible to transcend those limitations.<p>

If you take a normal use of language and place it in the context of a poetry collection, or hand it out to students saying "this is a poem for you to analyse," that too becomes a poem since it is now experienced as art. Any random snapshot from a family album placed in a gallery will make people look at that too as art.<p>

Still, as with all other art, whether it is good or bad remains subjective.<p>

Art reaches beyond itself.

 

Like a symbol (and with the use of them), it is not what it is.

Art is in the words CREATE and NATURE, the viewer just has to do the arranging......

There is no scientific definition of what is art. No democratic decision neither. But on the

other hand to insist that art is everything that the individual consider as art on a totally

subjective basis leaves us with no definition at all. Everything is then art. That might be

useful for some purposes but not for understand what is art and what is something else.

 

I think that a more useful approach would be to accept that we have in all countries an

establishment that play the role of defining what can be put for sale on the art market and

what ends up in art museums (in America: The Rockefeller and Guggemheim foundations,

Moma, NEA and some Government departments) and that they have played an enormous

role of defining especially "contemporary art", whether we like it or not. Furthermore,

auction house like Christie and Sotheby have an influence that should not be

underestimate and which is translated into overviews of what today is considered as art,

as in the German Kunstkompass. All this includes photography as form of art.

 

Where does that leave us in the small world of Photonet? Art, as defined by the system

loosely described above, is probably present on Photonet, but such photos can maybe be

counted on one or two hands (today's POW would be one of them in my modest opinion).

What we have especially on Photonet is an impressive series of very, very good photos that

deserve our full attention, because it is a pleasure to look at them and because we all can

learn something from analyzing them in view of improve our own photos.

Anders-

 

I, like you, can't accept defining art as anything we consider art. Such a definition basically

renders an important term and concept meaningless.

 

But I think we are better

off dealing with intrinsic properties rather than extrinsic.

 

I'm afraid your definition could easily boil down to a similar one as "everything is art." The

one caveat in your definition would simply be that "everything is POTENTIALLY art."

 

Yours is a restatement

of George Dickie's institutional theory of art, that the art world establishes what is art. The

theory's drawback is that we may then be handing esthetics over to gallery owners and

curators and critics who are more businesspeople and who don't know the first thing

about art. Yours and Dickie's theory is in jeopardy of becoming, "art is what sells as art"

and that would be severely shortchanging the notion of art.

 

Relegating it to the government or government agencies is even more problematic. Just

look at the current U.S. government's obfuscation in defining what's torture. I'd hate to

leave those guys in charge of determining what's art for you and me.

Art transcend the ordinary, even if it depicts the ordinary. It is always subjective for the artist that creates it, but after published has its own life and impact on the viewer ( can be a museum and galleries curators and layman as well). The impact can be emotional, thought provoking, aesthetic, beauty , message etc. The significance is the level of comunication artist/viewer.Professionals as well as layman.

 

Anders, you are right that not the layman will decide what will be hanged in the museum , or exhibit in a gallery.

Fred I agree fully with you that there are pitfalls connected to both approaches.

 

You might know that there are very different historical contexts in for example the US and

France as concerns the art establishment. They both have such a thing, but one is largely

in the hands of private economic interest (US) the other controlled by national public

institutions (France). In both cases art is defined by their decisions of purchase on the

market.

 

I don't believe we have an alternative definition to art, but we might have more elaborated,

and even shared, understandings of what we consider as very, very good photos.

 

Fred and Pnina, I think we are mixing artistic expression that all of all ages can participate

in and share, and "art".

 

I have no other definition of art than that of the establishment, unless maybe:

"Expressions (in all forms), that break new avenues of understanding the world, potentially

changing our relationship to nature, society and life in general". This goes far beyond

what the art establishment, in whatever form, can determine. However, if we or someone

manage seriously to define art, we would immediately at the same time provoke artistic

expressions that see it as their ultimate aim to destroy such understanding of what is art.

It is a moving target. "Interactive postmodernism" is such a movement as far as

understand.

Anders

 

"I have no other definition of art than that of the establishment, unless maybe: "Expressions (in all forms), that break new avenues of understanding the world, potentially changing our relationship to nature, society and life in general". This goes far beyond what the art establishment, in whatever form, can determine. "

 

It looks a contradiction , as you are right, the art establishment decides what is art, and it is a market sale like any other items., but your second part says that new expression that breaks and change our life perception, and it is beyond what the establishment can determine, so who decides that it is a real new expression?

Pnina, you are right that such a definition still leaves us without a tool for pointing at a

photo and say "that's art". History will show ! For me only the art establishment can play

the role of defining what is "art" but they might be dead wrong and be corrected in the

future.

 

That does however not mean that we should not be continuingly critical to the functioning

of the art establishment and its decisions. Much manipulation happens that has no other

explanation than fast profits or national pride and political interest.

So...can it be art if it does not evoke emotion?

Rachel--

 

Can you give me an example of something that does not evoke emotion?

Oatmeal.

 

 

 

Seriously, I should say significant or profound or unusual emotion.

Rachel, I agree with Fred, we react emotionally, it can be negative or positive. I think that the only time it is not, is when we are indiferent.... ( even this is also a kind of emotional reaction....)

Ah, looks like I'm outnumbered. But not down for the count! But I'm going to see what others want to say first.

The logic of art as emotion goes like this:

 

 

Art is emotion

 

A puppy provokes emotion.

 

A photo of a puppy provokes emotion.

 

A photo of a puppy is art.

Not quite. That would be true if emotion were both necessary and sufficient. I say emotion is necessary, but not sufficient.

OK. Good. So we've got that cleared up. And, by the way, I happen to LOVE oatmeal.

 

It's not THAT emotion is evoked, it's about HOW emotion is expressed.

 

And I think, as I said above, symobols (as words are symbols in language which is a form

of communication) are important.

 

And, Anders, I agree that the problem with defining art is that it will always become a

moving target. That's why I said "art is what it is not."

 

I think "art is what it is not" is important in a couple of respects. Because "symbols" are

what they are not. In other words, what a symbol does is to transcend its everyday

meaning and take on a universal significance. And I think art does that.

 

The 1 out of 10,000 images of a puppy that rises to the level of art does so because it

becomes about something MORE than the puppy. That happens because the image of the

puppy becomes significant in a way that puppies are not.

 

The reason we can "love" to listen to sad music even though most of us wouldn't "love" to

be sad, is that the sadness of the music goes beyond itself as sadness. So does the

sadness in a subject's eyes in a work of art.

 

And "art is what it is not" is important in conveying that, to the extent Anders has

recognized, it defies a definition that will hold. As soon as we pin it down, it will be defied.

Rachel--

 

I meant elaborate on my asking you for an example of something that didn't evoke emotion. I

agree with you that emotion may be necessary and not sufficient, but it's necessity is trivial

since emotion is pretty much necessary in most if not all human endeavors. That's why, to

me, it's about HOW the emotion works in art and not THAT it does.