Where ever you draw it. Is it art? Marcel Duchamp installed a urinal on a Paris gallery wall in 1919 and called it "Fountain". He nominated it as art. It wasn't the object's beauty that motivated him but the absurdity of the place "Art" has in relation to life. And he had a wicked sense of humor.
Art is not by definition good. So who decides? Who else? Does anything go? is there an authority? Art in a democracy. Its our optimistic value of individual freedom and belief in innovation.
Artist have been wrestling with breaking or blurring the boundary between art and life since Duchamp.- So you have old Wolfgang over there hanging and mutilating...I'm personally not interested in sharing his experience. But I'll defend his right to. I am turned off by shock tactics-adolescent humor. Its American Pie II.
Yet I appreciate the photos of Andres Serrano- He created the highly controversial Piss Christ. The image is haunting and raises some serious considerations of religious experience and organized religion.
So of course we get into public funding, NEA. Poor NEA. I personally think freedom and artistic expression is essential and am willing to financially support it. Even if I don't agree with or like the artists funded.
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So in this case, the actual art is the room COMBINED with the furor and publicity surrounding it, which is all by the design of the Turner folks AND the gallery? In which case the Cellar has now become an unwitting participant in the whole thing?
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Well, yes. and all our individual histories- our unique understandings of awards, lightbulbs, white museum walls, elitism, darkness, young Scottish men, hip jackets,...But I'd have to say that the cellar is pretty witting- always ready to get a discussion going. just when will this thread careen?
Here's my performance art joke: Q. How many performance artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A. I don't know. I left.