What is and isn't art

[Justin16]

Well, what do you think defines art and what do you think doesn't define art?

What is high art and what is low art?

[dyslexiaa]

Well, what do you think defines art and what do you think doesn't define art?

Everything has artistic value. What defines pieces of art is how it's arranged, the meaning of the art, and how much talent the artist has. With this in mind, you can differentiate between a Picasso and something a 4th graders makes. They're both art, but it'd be clear that the Picasso would be more eye-catching.

[Sapphire]

According to some artists, anything they create is art and anything created by someone who isn't a professional artist isn't art.

I was in fits of laughter when I heard him say that! Lol

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

The definition of art that I learned in my cultural anthropology class is a pretty good one, I think. "Artifacts of human creation, created through the exercise of exceptional physical, conceptual, or imaginative skill; produced in a public medium and intended to affect the senses, sharing stylistic convention with similar works."

Basically, a flowery way of saying that if I get a bad grade on a test and crumple the paper up in anger, it's not art. If, however, I crumple up a paper made to look like a bad test grade, make it really visible in the trash can and make my desk look all messy (not with schoolwork, but with a widescreen computer monitor and a zillion PC games and comic books and DVDs), then take a picture of it... I've turned that bad test grade into a statement about how teenagers would rather play games than take their education seriously. Art, then, is intentional. You don't go into it thinking, "I shall make art," but you do intend to create something. Often it expresses something about you, whether it be emotional, or a glimpse into the way you see things, it always says something. "Exceptional" skill is relative, but anything you intentionally make is created through the use of some skill or another, right? Drawing a picture is a skill, whether or not you've had training, and whether or not people think your pictures are any good.

Which brings me to the last point: There is no "good" or "bad" art. It's all a matter of personal opinion. In class, we saw a picture of an ancient statue. more of a talisman, it was pretty small. It was a naked woman, very obese. Little detail, no nipples or anything, and no detail in the crotch area, that wasn't the point. She also had no face, her head was turned down and the face area was just smoothed over. Most of the class was thinking of reasons why it was like this, because so far no one really knows. Were fat people idolized because food was scarce? Did the culture have a goddess who appeared as a large woman? What about her face, did the lack of identity mean that women were subordinate to men, or that she perhaps represented something more general? It wasn't likely modeled off a real woman, so what did she represent? Why was she significant enough to carve into a sculpture? One student spoke up. He said that it wasn't art, because it was ugly. He thought it was disgusting, that since obesity is a serious medical condition and he does not find it aesthetically pleasing, the sculpture was terrible. You do not have to like something for it to be art. And you do not have to like it for that art to be "good" in the eyes of a critic, in the eyes of the artist. "Good" could apply to aesthetics, or technique, but it's just opinion.