What is art? A discussion

[Entropy]

there's no requirement for art to be beautiful. The things you mention become art when man is inspired by it to do something creative, that something is the art. Art only requires an expression by the artist, the viewer isn't always important.

Of course beauty is not a requirement. But again beauty and skill are subjective. According to your 'plan' definition, if there were powers at large, such things would be god's art or nature's art or what have you, if one were to believe in such intelligent design.

And I don't believe it necessarily accurate to say that a monkey has no skill or ability to plan. Is there creative expression? I don't think anyone can determine such things definitively.

We can certainly agree to disagree on this point, but I still think randomness, having no plan, chance can and has produced great pieces and moments of art.

How much skill determines the value of the art.

By this logic a professional classical orchestra, or Esteban if you want to keep a guitar only comparison, has more value than a Daniel Johnston type musician who sings off key and clumsily plays his instrument. Have the two play the exact same song, one flawlessly and the other awkwardly and it's still a matter of taste which has more "value". I just don't believe you can quantify and categorize something as fluid and subjective as art that way for all people through all times and attempting to do so is a fool's errand. If you're talking monetary value, that again is fluid and subjective, as witnessed by the varying opinions here on this board about certain figures.

 

[devilof76]

I have to give Screaming Metal props for the position he's maintaining. Everything is not art.

But I don't think skill is necessary for determining whether a creation is art or not. It just determines the quality of the work.

Human beings have a different type of consciousness than animals. We use conceptual abstractions to comprehend nature. We start with the same perceptual data that most animals have available to them, and we derive generalizations from it. The concept 'tree' represents every type and eveyr instance of a tree that exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist. This way, our awareness expands beyond the immediate place and time, giving us the ability to act in the full context of nature, and not just the here and now, unrelated to anything else.

Creating art is an exclusively human action. We perceive reality, conceptualize it, and in creating art, we recreate what we have perceived according to our abstract understanding. Look at any comic book character. Do they have the characteristics they have for no reason at all? Why is a black Batman more effective than a blue one? Why isn't the Hulk a puny, pale skinned nerd? Would Wonder Woman make any sense if she looked like Sarah Jessica Parker? What if Wolverine was friendly?

They each embody abstract qualities, and those qualities are presented in perceptual form. To show people what their qualities were without a picture, you'd need to write a treatise. One image of a comic book hero or villain conveys the entire treatise.

To answer whether or not humans need it, yes they do. It has survival value in that it presents an immediate experience of a person's sense of the world and of life that is not immediately available to them by just looking and listening to the world. It gives reality to truths or falsehoods that may only be apparent after hours of painstaking thought (if ever).

'Art' that depicts internal states such as emotions attempts to bypass perception. The problem is that an emotion doesn't look or sound or feel like anything. It's a response to things that can be felt, heard, or seen. Without the external stimulus, there would be no emotion, which is why perceptible mediums are used by artists to cause emotional reactions. It's also why 'art' that does not address the conceptual level of consciousness isn't art. Emotions are not a perceptual experience for humans. They're conceptual, just like everything else.

According to your 'plan' definition, if there were powers at large, such things would be god's art or nature's art or what have you, if one were to believe in such intelligent design.

That's a big 'if'.