Funny, last weekend I was at an opening where there were sculptures made by bees. Jack Shainman Galleries, The School, Kinderhook NY. They were the best thing in the show.Jklint wrote:I won't tire you for long except to say I agree IF you define art as ANYTHING created whether by human or other agencies regardless of whether it was ever meant to be art. That would include, for example, a spider's web whose tapestry I'm very much in awe of but means nothing to the spider in terms of beauty or design its sole purpose being a functional one. Then there are the truly magnificent Sistine structures of nature, the corral reefs built by organizations of tiny creatures who have no concept of how wonderfully abstract their creations are.
I'd love to talk about art, it's the passion of my life. But the "what is art" conversation leaves me cold. Art is that stuff you hang on walls, put on pedestals, everyone knows what art is. Good art, bad art, indifferent art, I'd love to talk about art but it would be off topic here.
When I tell my friends about Garnett Puett's wax sculptures created by bees, no one has said "you call that art?" See how tiresome that would be?
-- Updated May 29th, 2016, 7:38 am to add the following --
In most definitions, "art" is not a value judgment -- it's a simple category of objects. That allows you to avoid the tiresome "what is art" conversation!Jklint wrote:By your and Greta's assertion anything and everything created by humans or close cousin is art and yet only humans invariably qualify everything according to their perception of value and in that respect it's the future that's in charge of that catalog much more so than any contemporary view.