Re: What is art? ...and a reply

[Michael-Patrick <M-P@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Neil Koven wrote:
> 
> >What is Art indeed?  A good question for a desert island.
> 
> How about a cultural desert island?????
> 
> Another one,
> >are all photographs art, even if they are well done are they always art?
> 
> No!  A photograph of my mother may be a nice picture of her, but it isn't
> necessarily art.  However...if it were a moody type shot, with her sitting
> contemplatively by a window and reading...or knitting...or ???, perhaps it
> would be.  Is it of a calibre and feeling that YOU, not knowing her, would
> hang on your wall because you could understand and feel and react to the
> image in total.  The actual person involved doesn't matter.
> 
> There's a photographer in town here who took a picture of his grandmother
> that is one of the most beautiful and tender and magnificent images I have
> ever seen.  And yes, I would hang this picture on my wall, even though I've
> never met the lady.
> 
> >
> >What makes a photograph art, what makes it not art?
> 
> I guess art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  I love Picasso;
> my father hated him.  Who's right?  To me, I am.  To him, he is.  It
> doesn't matter.  We all have our own definitions of "art".
> 
> >
> >Some would say that ART begins with the intent to communicate, or simply
> >with the intent to make art, but as we know that is not always so.
> 
> The intent to make "art" isn't always successful.  Would you hang someone
> else's 5-year-old's attempt at making art?  Probably not, but you probably
> would hang your own 5-year-old's attempt because the emotional attachment
> transcends the aesthetics of it.
> 
> Is "art" the attempt/realization of communication?  I guess that depends
> what is being communicated.
> 
> I truly believe that "art" is the communication of feeling and/or emotion.
> It works for literature, dance, music, oil paints, and photography.  But
> not all of the above mean that it is automatically "art".
> 
> And so it goes back to the perception of the individual...is Danielle
> Steele's writings art?  Is Murray Schaeffer's music art?  Is Andy Warhol's
> stuff art?
> 
> Or is the emperor not wearing clothes.
> 
>             ///\\\***///\\\***///\\\***///\\\***///\\\***///\\\
>         NEIL KOVEN, ARPS                     Eleventh Hour Images &
>         31 Moncton Road N.E.                 Neil Koven Photography
>         Calgary, Alberta, T2E 5P9            bus/res:(403) 276-6335
>         email: kovenn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx          fax:    (403) 276-2152
>              http://www.cadvision.com/Home_Pages/accounts/arps
>Is "art" the attempt/realization of communication?  I guess that depends
>what is being communicated.

Why does this matter?  If the visual arts are imployed and an idea is
communicated, whether it be ugly or mean or objectionable if the idea is
communicated it is successful.  Don't get hung up on beauty even if that
is your choice.

m-p

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Topic No. 28