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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 5:22 AM
What is art?
What defines something as art? Because you don't have to like art.....
Just a bit curious.😕
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Née whiterider
retired moderator
#2 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 11:25 AM
I'm gonna move this to the discussion forum, because whatever art is, this thread isn't it.

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Banned
#3 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 12:08 PM
Art is what you see that catches your eye in computerized or painted/drawn form.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#4 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 2:29 PM
People have benn trying to pin down a definition of art for, quite literally, centuries. No-one's succeeded.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
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Field Researcher
#5 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 7:32 PM
Where art thou? here nor there....
Inventor
#6 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 8:16 PM
Quote: Originally posted by maxon
People have benn trying to pin down a definition of art for, quite literally, centuries. No-one's succeeded.



that's because it comes in many forms and it's all around us.

'You're a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll' Mrs Higgins, My fair Lady
Theorist
#7 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 9:26 PM
It's an abstract, like money, that represents what people want it to represent, is invested with the value that people want to invest in it, etc. It's one of those useful ways the human race is utterly bonkers, as opposed to the billions of ways individual humans are bonkers.

Yay monkeys.
Banned
#8 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 9:36 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Mistermook
Yay monkeys.

Art is monkey.
Mad Poster
#9 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 9:55 PM
Merriam-Webster says Art is something created through artistic effort, so... wait, that's no help at all!

Welcome to the Dark Side...
We lied about having cookies.
#10 Old 1st Mar 2015 at 10:40 PM
Well if you Google "define art" this is what comes up.
1.
the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
2.
the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.
Theorist
#11 Old 2nd Mar 2015 at 12:50 AM
And that's all nonsense because it ignores "found art" and starts to infringe upon when people declare something as having artistic aesthetics that has nothing to do with artistic effort.

It is what is and what it does.
#12 Old 2nd Mar 2015 at 2:01 AM
Art:

Not art: whatever the fuck this is

I don't know, it's like saying what's music and what isn't. Though that's a bit more obvious: yes, rap is music, but static isn't. I guess it depends on personal taste when it comes to art. You can't just splatter something together, like this isn't a poem:

kalsdjf;lkasjdf;lkajsdlgkjaklsd
fhasuefieifei
eieitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
asdkfkasdfsafdlllllllllllllllmm.
THE END
Mad Poster
#13 Old 2nd Mar 2015 at 4:32 AM
More E Munch -

Uninvited Guests



So expressive of an inner truth..
#14 Old 2nd Mar 2015 at 11:46 PM
Art is what you make it to be. A simple sketch can be considered art in a way.

Life is paradoxically coincidental to the ironical tyranny applicable to the unparalleled definition of reverse entropy.

"A thunderstorm breaks the wall of darkness." - Lyrics to Storm

"Meh." - me
Theorist
#15 Old 3rd Mar 2015 at 12:26 AM
But it's also not what is made, people "find art" all the time, because art has at least as much to do with the viewer as it does anything remotely to do with creation. Again, let's go back to money because it's the other part of my weird degree studies and something we imagine as much more quantifiable, but actually isn't. Money isn't "just" bills and coins in your pocket. It's abstract numbers in your electronic bank accounts, it's imagined money presumed from future investments, values artificially and arbitrarily decided upon by consensus and by fiat. It's goods. It's power. It's lack of power too.

Money is an abstract construct, just like art. It's something intangible we add to other things to allow assignation of value to those things. What everyone's pretty pictures of sunsets have to do with their "creative investment" is irrelevant. The important thing isn't the investment or effort, it's that abstract investment of value. Trying to nail it down is like trying to nail down all sorts of other arbitrary assignments of value in our lives - what's a friend? People declare what constitutes a friend and we've certainly got more of a vocabulary related to relative values of social relationships, but in the end there's not ultimate consensus. There's no empirical metric for why you like one person more than another that isn't as deeply personal as say, why you like cat pictures but dog pictures don't do anything for you. There's no explicit thing that says "a dollar is worth a nail," for much the same reasons as we can't really succeed at saying "Well, Monet is the best art. All other art is inferior."

We attempt these relative valuations with money, with our relationships, with art, and they're always unsuccessful. Our brains just don't work that way, even if one person's brain did it would be different from another's. How much is that nail worth when you want a glass of water? When you need a nail, or when you've got too many? Is the person you're sleeping with a more valuable friend than the one you've known forever, the one who satisfies some deep emotional need maybe? Or are you horny enough that it's "of course they are." What's the artistic merit of urban decay, of a flower? Birdsong vs. Mozart? We can try, but it's all bullshit. We don't work that way. Human beings are perfectly comfortable with amazingly fuzzy value systems and relative, flexible assignations of worth. We're terrible at making metrics for things like this. We're terrible at even explaining it, because it's so intrinsically wrought into the way our brains work. When people's brains don't work this way, we even declare them ill - no one's supposed to consistently value poorly. It's a symptom of depression. No one's supposed to consistently remove value from relationships - it could be a sign of serious brain imbalances.

You might as well ask what's the meaning of life. We're unequipped to answer. We create our answers as we go along and change them as we go along. It's not a single answer, it's merely the answer any of us are invested in at any given moment.
I aim to misbehave
retired moderator
#16 Old 3rd Mar 2015 at 12:42 PM
Art isn't knowing how to copy reality, but bring something of yours. Each person sees the world differently, and the most beautiful thing about art is that it shows that. When you look at a painting by El Greco or Van Gogh you know they are theirs, because they are reflecting their way of seeing the world. The beauty of art is that it is a reflection of the artist, not of the subject they are representing.

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