What is art? Baby don't sculpt me, don't paint me, no more.......

[WritersPanic]

An excellent question posed in a different thread that seems instead to deserve its own.

What is art?

Oxford sezzzz: 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.

Wiki Sezzz: Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts, expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.

Smashing Magazine sezz: Art is generally understood as any activity or product done by people with a communicative or aesthetic purpose—something that expresses an idea, an emotion or, more generally, a world view. It is a component of culture, reflecting economic and social substrates in its design. It transmits ideas and values inherent in every culture across space and time. Its role changes through time, acquiring more of an aesthetic component here and a socio-educational function there.

Plato sez: Artworks are ontologically dependent on, imitations of, and therefore inferior to, ordinary physical objects. Physical objects in turn are ontologically dependent on, and imitations of, and hence inferior to, what is most real, the non-physical unchanging Forms. Grasped perceptually, artworks present only an appearance of an appearance of the Forms, which are grasped by reason alone. Consequently, artistic experience cannot yield knowledge. Nor do the makers of artworks work from knowledge. Because artworks engage an unstable, lower part of the soul, art should be subservient to moral realities, which, along with truth, are more metaphysically fundamental and, properly understood, more humanly important than, beauty. The arts are not, for Plato, the primary sphere in which beauty operates. The Platonic conception of beauty is extremely wide and metaphysical: there is a Form of Beauty, which can only be known non-perceptually, but it is more closely related to the erotic than to the arts.

[tumbling.dice]

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[WritersPanic]

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It's almost a Coneheads script.

[Rebeltramp]

An excellent question posed in a different thread that seems instead to deserve its own.

What is art?

Oxford sezzzz: 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.

Wiki Sezzz: Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts, expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.

Smashing Magazine sezz: Art is generally understood as any activity or product done by people with a communicative or aesthetic purpose—something that expresses an idea, an emotion or, more generally, a world view. It is a component of culture, reflecting economic and social substrates in its design. It transmits ideas and values inherent in every culture across space and time. Its role changes through time, acquiring more of an aesthetic component here and a socio-educational function there.

Plato sez: Artworks are ontologically dependent on, imitations of, and therefore inferior to, ordinary physical objects. Physical objects in turn are ontologically dependent on, and imitations of, and hence inferior to, what is most real, the non-physical unchanging Forms. Grasped perceptually, artworks present only an appearance of an appearance of the Forms, which are grasped by reason alone. Consequently, artistic experience cannot yield knowledge. Nor do the makers of artworks work from knowledge. Because artworks engage an unstable, lower part of the soul, art should be subservient to moral realities, which, along with truth, are more metaphysically fundamental and, properly understood, more humanly important than, beauty. The arts are not, for Plato, the primary sphere in which beauty operates. The Platonic conception of beauty is extremely wide and metaphysical: there is a Form of Beauty, which can only be known non-perceptually, but it is more closely related to the erotic than to the arts.

Wonderful.
Very controversial ideas.
I agree with all of it but with Oxford the least.
What Plato says is so important to me. "Artworks are ontologically dependent on, imitations of, and therefore inferior to, ordinary physical objects." Basically, you cannot make something as beautiful and as perfect as life/nature has already done. Don't even try because.. what is the point? It already exists in a much more beautiful, much more perfect form than you could even dream about.
Art to me is purely an attempt to communicate my inner most essence and way I see the world to everyone who comes across it. Just to try to share my mind, my own existence. Something no one will ever get otherwise.
We are alone.
However many moments of connection and people and feelings.
We are alone and always have been.
That is why I like language and why I seek out ways to show YOU what it is to be ME.
Names are irrelevant. So I call it Art. Whatever is worth saving for the greater good of the sum, is ART.

[themnax]

for me its about illustrating concepts, though art criticism tends to trivialize and marginalize that perspective.
art critics seem to want everything to be all emo.
my feeling is life is enough with that already.

to me its more about giving each other ideas,
even about things we might not otherwise have thought of,
but that doesn't mean it has to just only be about how we feel about anything or how what makes us feel.

so art is any form of creative expression, even if it isn't masterpiece, even if it doesn't neatly fit in someone else's idea of a genre.
of course that doesn't mean anyone's aesthetic has to be indiscriminate.
but we are all diverse, in the broader meaning of that term,
so there's different things different people like,
but it doesn't have to be liked, or approved by critics,
and it isn't a spectator sport for professionals,
no one becomes good at anything by not doing it,
and doing it because its something you enjoy doing,
feel doing so is its own reward.

it can be done by people who don't feel that way too of course.
but that's for someone else to beat their head agianst if that's how they want to look at life.

for me, i create something that looks like the kind of world i want to live in,
or i see something someone else has, see, or hear or read,
well that's what interests me, whatever its called or isn't.

[Sooz]

Art is a way of expressing yourself without having to speak!
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[WritersPanic]

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[Beach Ball Bitch]

Art colleges are now steering away from life drawing and formulas for drawing people. A photographic looking painting is not art. Everything is art. You are art. If you draw a crooked line this is art. If you are having sex, this too is art. There is no definition of art. Everyone is an artist. Everyone is art. Everything creates an emotion, no matter how much that impacts each individual. Everyone is an artist, there are no artists.

glue a used tampon to a canvas and this is art. I don’t agree. Yet I am not an artist. I never call myself that.

there has been movement for times when art is rejected and artists are no longer considered good art. What defines it?

“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”

-Oscar Wilde


“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.”

-Pablo Picasso

[WritersPanic]

I'm fairly good at sculpting and carving, especially hardwoods and composites. When I was in boot camp our company 050 was in a fierce flag competition with a company 2 barracks over, 052. They'd fuck with our laundry so we looked like idiots. We'd retaliate by covering their floor with cooking oil. Shit like that.

One day I was sidelined by vaccinations (they shot us up every other week) and woke up in the barracks alone. I was still woozy, but I realized that everyone was at PT, including our rivals. So I sauntered up to their barracks and nobody was there. I couldn't think of anything to do to fuck them up until I nearly tripped over a broom. A broom that shouldn't have been there. Some sailor left his gear adrift and should be punished for it.

So I carved the end of the broom handle, a large industrial sized dowel, into a dick. It only took 10 or 15 minutes and looked pretty good considering I didn't have sand paper, just a knife with a file. I then realized there were other brooms and swabs (mops) as well. I left them with half a dozen wooden dildos and drew a huge dick on the black board in the CCs office.

I bet they did a million pushups over that shit. This was the late 70s. There was no "don't ask/don't tell". There was only "don't be queer/don't get caught".

I hated the Navy until I got to Hawaii.

[Beach Ball Bitch]

I can paint and draw. Have done a little wood carving, Different mediums and have played with clay too. Sand as well. I guess there is this monetary value involved with art. Much of it is being able to market yourself as well, in order for people to buy it. They must like it and be willing to carry you. There is art that is easy sells and art that is not. It has to be something that strikes them... but as dealers go, it is subjective and often has to give some message politically today or shocking edgy today. Saying I am an artist I think of as pretentious. I would have loved to see your dildo carvings. Do you have any pieces at home that you have carved? Would love to see some.