What is art to you?

[Shermanator]

I've been to a couple of museums today, and visiting a couple more and it got me thinking. A lot of the paintings in them, I don't consider to be art, so what do you consider to be art?

Personally, landscapes, animals and buildings can all be art. As can cars, planes and trains. However humans can't. A person (or painting of a person) cannot be art. They can be beautiful, but not art. I'm not sure why I think this, can only imagine it is is because there is no such thing as a perfect person.

Controversial topic, I know!

[judas]

Art is wholly subjective - it's whatever you, or the artist, say it is. You may not agree, but I think you'll disappear down a bottomless rabbit hole trying to find a definition that everyone agrees with.

[Roofless Toothless]

As the old saying goes, if you gotta ask the question you ain’t never gonna understand the answer.

[StevieBee]

Art is simply the articulation of imagination.

What counts as art is what causes the heated debate.

[Nurburgsingh]

Something that involves talent and effort to create which makes people feel something when they look at it.

which means very little in the Tate modern passes my litmus test.

If you've put more effort into the BS that's on the plaque next to the creation then its not art.

[Silvanus]

You don't have to like it for it to be art.

[Mont Blanc]

judas said:

Art is wholly subjective - it's whatever you, or the artist, say it is. You may not agree, but I think you'll disappear down a bottomless rabbit hole trying to find a definition that everyone agrees with.

Yep.

Art is entirely subjective, and something that you find to be art might not be for someone else, and vice versa. I went to the Tate Modern a few years ago, and I left quite confused, as there was barely anything in there I liked or understood.

My favourite forms of art, are:

Graffiti
Realism (a genre of painting/drawing)
Photography
Sculpture

[StevieBee]

Shermanator said:

Personally, landscapes, animals and buildings can all be art. As can cars, planes and trains. However humans can't. A person (or painting of a person) cannot be art. They can be beautiful, but not art. I'm not sure why I think this, can only imagine it is is because there is no such thing as a perfect person.!

If you look back at some of the masters of landscape and portraiture, you will find plenty of astoundingly gifted painters. Canaletto, for example. It is impossible to fault their technical ability.



However, if they were alive today, they'd be photographers, not painters (though photography is also an art form).

I think at a purely technical level, you are right. They are not art or even artistic. They are simply paintings of a scene or a person. There is no interpretation of the artist's imagination other than the basic composition. They have simply taken a photo with a brush and paint.

Wheres this, is art:

|https://forums-images.pistonheads.com/21381/202407104757891[/url]

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.

That scene didn't exist in anything other than the mind of Hopper. Inspired by a similar looking café but beyond that, it's just an idea. It's a painting that asks questions and allows you to make up the answers. Who's the couple? Should they be together? Are they together? Who's the bloke on his own?

This too:



Don't know who painted this but there is something else going on here beyond the obvious. The artist is inviting us to interpret his imagination.

Edited by StevieBee on Wednesday 10th July 13:23

[Mont Blanc]

StevieBee said:

|https://forums-images.pistonheads.com/21381/202407104757891[/url]

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.

That scene didn't exist in anything other than the mind of Hopper. Inspired by a similar looking café but beyond that, it's just an idea. It's a painting that asks questions and allows you to make up the answers. Who's the couple? Should they be together? Are they together? Who's the bloke on his own?

As per my post above, I love realism and Nighthawks is one of my favourite paintings.

[conkerman]

Anything that makes the world a richer place but has no specific function.

[Whoozit]

A definition I came up with in a photography discussion was

Good art tells the artist's meaning

Great art allows each viewer to create their own meaning

[Nezquick]

Interesting question.

Art, to me, is something (whether that be a painting, sculpture, whatever) which stops me in my tracks and draws me in. I can't explain why such "art" makes me feel the way it does, but when I find something I like, I try and buy it if I can.

[Hoofy]

Interesting topic.

The problem is that we start off in school learning that art involves a paint brush and paint or a fancy pencil. And it involves making something that looks pretty and has technique.

Then someone is paid a lot to dump heap of a bed in the middle of a gallery and we're like WTF!?

So for about 45 years, I thought, I like landscapes. That's art to me.

Then I started exploring abstract art to try to understand that which I thought was a load of bks.

And I had a go myself.

And over time, I realised that proper art has to portray a message or express an emotion. Otherwise, it's just a pretty picture/statue/thing. And that is fine. You like what you like but it's not "proper" art if it is something that ChatGPT's friends could create with the right equipment.

I also realised that the joy of taking up art in your late 40s as opposed to taking up art in your late teens is that you can buy whatever mediums and surfaces you want, and not have to worry about being a broke arts student and not being able to buy a new canvas or a bottle of gel medium.

[RizzoTheRat]

Shermanator said:

A person (or painting of a person) cannot be art. They can be beautiful, but not art. I'm not sure why I think this, can only imagine it is is because there is no such thing as a perfect person.

I can see where you're coming from, but surely the art is in the skill of the artist not the model. Would you really consider the Mona Lisa or Girl With The Pearl Earing to not be art?

I'd still call them art, but not really to my taste. I'm more a landscape fan. I'd take Constable or Mesdag over Rembrant any time. I'm slowly coming round to more arty art though, having seen Monat collection a while back. Disappointed by Munch though having been to see the museum in Oslo a while back.

Escher remains my favorite art museum though.

[RC1807]

I have 2 graduate art students for daughters... we *don't* go there!


I can appreciate many artistic things: paintings, prints, sculptures ...
Some of the stuff at MUDAM in Luxembourg, last time I went, looked like some middle school kids had thrown stuff on the floor. Bonkers.

[CammyN]

Art is about communication.

whether this is an old sailing ship arriving to be broken up or a girl looking over her shoulder towards the artist or a mess of splattered paint on a canvas or a racehorse in an English country landscape or a Holbein drawing of a European princess to see if she sparks the interest of Henry VIII

It is communicating what the artists feels or sees. Some of the work you will like.

[Byker28i]

RC1807 said:

I have 2 graduate art students for daughters... we *don't* go there!


I can appreciate many artistic things: paintings, prints, sculptures ...
Some of the stuff at MUDAM in Luxembourg, last time I went, looked like some middle school kids had thrown stuff on the floor. Bonkers.

I did an art based degree in photography.

One of the things that changed my whole viewpoint was sitting chatting to Tracey Emin about her bed.
When it's explained as a portrait of that moment in her life, a reminder/snapshot of when she was at her lowest...

Nurburgsingh said:

Something that involves talent and effort to create which makes people feel something when they look at it.

Hoofy said:

...over time, I realised that proper art has to portray a message or express an emotion.

I think these sums it up well

Visiting galleries/exhibitions, having the art explained to you, sometimes by the artist really opens the eyes, adds the depth thats missing.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

Went to the Guggenheim in New York a few years ago, what a load of old emporers new clothes crap.

[Hoofy]

Byker28i said:

I think these sums it up well

Visiting galleries/exhibitions, having the art explained to you, sometimes by the artist really opens the eyes, adds the depth thats missing.

Yes! Rather than stare at a painting and feel something, I'd ask the artist what the meaning is.

It's especially useful if you're attending an exhibition about for example Henry Moore. The info on each piece will be useful, rather than me just thinking "like" "not like" (although as I said, nothing wrong with liking or disliking a piece but I wanted to understand).

[andy_s]

StevieBee said:

This too:



Don't know who painted this but there is something else going on here beyond the obvious. The artist is inviting us to interpret his imagination.

Chin H Shin apparently. 'Entering New York city in Blue Rain' [Thanks Google]

--

Frank Zappa said 'art is making something out of nothing and selling it', but you know Frank. I suppose for the 'realistic' or 'it's just painting what's there' sort of paintings could be referencing the craft of the product rather than the product itself, see some of the hyper-realistic paintings and it's jaw dropping skill - is it 'art'?

McLuhan said 'every word is a metaphor' and I suppose 'art' is a bit like that - or pornography, which we famously found difficult to define yet know when we see it.

But for me, as mentioned here predominantly, 'high' art is something that has captured an essence or conveyed a feeling or provoked an emotion, but this can also be the messy bed or the urinal in the gallery, which I sort of understand as art but don't really see the craft of the hands of the human that made it.

I think when you get that combination of human skill, underlying meaning and a subjective aesthetic you arrive at what I would personally think of as art.

I can highly recommend the youtube channel 'Great Art Explained', I became a bit less cynical about things like the Seagram Murals by Rothco and Water Lilies by Monet just having the context and the message explained. He does a great job with one of my favourites, 'Garden of Earthly Delights' too.

Here's Hopper's Nighthawks as it's been mentioned here already:



I would say there's art in film too, Kubrick fits my loose definition, and music too, or some of it.