What Is Art
 

Cinemafia was interviewing Coop, an LA artist, and asked this question...

What the fuck is that about? If you're not "pushing boundaries" and/or making people "uncomfortable", it's only craft and not art? I'm having a hard to buying that concept. Granted there are different levels of capability (and that's super subjective), but to discredit someone being an artist because they aren't "pushing boundaries"/"making people uncomfortable", is bullshit.

I've come to the conclusion that if there's public money being spent on it, it's crap thrown together by someone the council owes a favor to. This makes many people uncomfortable, and they are inclined to call it art for want of a better word that won't upset big brother.

art v. craft is an old and contentious debate, and one that I'm pretty interested in. I think "pushing boundaries" is a worthless criterion for the distinction though.

Art is self-expression without compromise. The less the compromise, the greater the art: Michaelangelo didn't quit when he'd only mostly chipped and polished away all the bits that didn't look like David. Auguste Rodin got away with his rough mode of sculpture through his powerful sense of motion and action in his figures.

Art goes beyond the merely necessary, and into the beautiful.

A good deal of "modern art" isn't very artistic at all. Too often it's because some dope forgot art should be beautiful. And impressive doesn't hurt either. If it doesn't evoke some emotional response, it isn't going to amount to much, nohow. At the least, one should ask oneself, "Was I happy I looked?"

The alleged artist that claims that is not necessary to art is full of something that isn't art. But may rhyme with it.

I think that with enough skill, craft becomes art. But I just pulled that out of my ass...

Still you may have something there, Jinx. Too, craft is what happens when "art" lands on "object."

To be fair, the guy asking the question, writes a photography blog. I don't know if he claims to be an artist, but seems to think he knows about art.

Personally, I think of 'craft' as the process of making objects. Art is a form of expression, rather than of manufacture. The two can meet and overlap though.

Sure, monster's ceramics would probably fall in the craft category until after the first firing, then art when she gets into coloring them, for example.

Yes. I'd go with that.

I think purpose is important as well. Quilts are another interesting grey area in that sense. A quilt is an object with a material purpose. But the making of them has been elevated through history, tradition, then the reinvention of that tradition, to the point where the purpose of the quilt is no longer practical, but in many cases entirely expressive and designed to provoke an emotional or contemplative response.

So no picture in black and white is art?

At the price they want for some of those quilts, I wouldn't want to be getting any bodily fluids, or animals, on them. :lol:

Don't understand what you mean, Monnie.



[eta] Oh hang on, yes I do. I don;t think the important thing there was the fact that you were colouring the pots, so much as making them into individual expressions. A 'pot' is a fairly generic and practical thing. But if the pot is effectively another canvass, it becomes an example of artistic expression.

I think she's referring to my saying she colored the ceramics.

edit - Yeah, you got it.

If an art museum will exhibit it, it's art. Even if it's not.

Nick Schade built a beautiful wooden kayak that's on display at the New York Museum of Modern Art. It's a very pretty boat, in my opinion, but not art.

Same with a Sam Maloof chair in the Renwick.