But is it art? — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	OK, I've got to admit that you have befuddled me with that last post there, Drac. I think I understand what you're saying when you talk about your friend, but I really don't get this part: [quote]If you painted an image of a pot plant and it was extremely photorealistic, I?d not call it art either. I?d say you were an amazing painter and they you have a very refined skill, but not an artist. You?d have done nothing but copy, which is for no other reason than beauty. Cause quite frankly, a photography could have done the exact same thing with much less time and effort. Time, effort and skill don?t mark art. Art is all about the reason. At least, that?s how I see it.[/quote] Now, I want to clarify here to make sure I understand what you're talking about, because I'm not sure I do. You're saying that imitating (copying) a subject in another medium is not art? If I may rephrase one of your sentences: if a work is an imitation for aesthetic purposes only, it is not art. Am I correct on that? Also, your statement that the same thing could have been accomplished with photography confuses me as well--why should that make a difference? And would the photograph be art, while the painting is not, or would both not qualify as art? Would the painting of the pot plant be art if it was abstract or impressionist? "Art is all about the reason." OK, but you do not see the creation of something beautiful as a sufficient reason? Or (going back to the pot plant), what if the pot plant was painted in a photorealistic manner in order to make a social or political point? Would it be art then? Just going on what you've posted here, you believe art is defined by its purpose, and creation of an aesthetic image is not a valid purpose. That's how I would boil your argument down into one sentence. I don't know--that's really all I can say at the moment. I've got a lot of thoughts flying around my head at the moment, and I'm not doing a very good job of pulling them together. All I know is that something about your definition bothers me. As I said above, I'm not really sure that I believe in art for art's sake, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to fully discount it, either. This is a really difficult thing to talk about, because we are throwing around words like "beauty," "aesthetics," "intent" (not to mention "art"), all of which have a million different shades of meaning. Depending on how we define our terms, we could be saying the same thing and meaning something entirely different. In response to part of the definition Dufty posted, I will say that I do not believe art is only art after it is finished. As I said above, in the case of writing, a piece is only finished when the author stops working on it--and the point at which the author stops working on it is often defined arbitrarily. It may be because the author just got tired of working on it, or it may be because a deadline was reached. Perhaps our differences stem from the fact that I tend to view art in terms of the medium I am most familiar with: writing. It shouldn't make a difference, since the idea of art should transcend medium and genre, but I think it does make a difference when you try to discuss things in the concrete rather than the abstract. Anyway, my head hurts, so I'm going to end this post. Fire away if you've got anything to say in reply, and we'll take it from there. ___________________________ Suho: [url=http://www.liminality.org]www.liminality.org[/url] Loading...
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