What is Art?

Use this forum to have philosophical discussions about aesthetics and art. What is art? What is beauty? What makes art good? You can also use this forum to discuss philosophy in the arts, namely to discuss the philosophical points in any particular movie, TV show, book or story.
Jklint
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Jklint »

Sculptor1 wrote: May 7th, 2020, 4:30 am
Jklint wrote: April 16th, 2020, 8:29 pm

Kind of ironic isn't it. Universally considered as one the greatest composers of all time yet no one really wants to listen to that choral droning for long. So what do you think of Handel, the other giant of the baroque though not quite considered his equal?
I adore his Saraband.
But once you have Beethoven you have most of what you need.
Beethoven has always been top of line with me since my pre-teens though I rarely now listen to his symphonies or concertos, in short, his orchestral works. You couldn't play a single movement of any of them without my knowing immediately what it is and usually also the key and opus no. Instead I listen mostly to his instrumental and chamber works which constitute by far his largest output which is also his most personal and profound.

The composer I could never distance myself from is Wagner. His works at best are of a nature almost metaphysical in sound. Listening to it I sometimes wonder how a human brain could manage it and how it blends with the story by means of the Leitmotiv. Evidently I'm not the only one who has those reactions.
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Sculptor1
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sculptor1 »

LuckyR wrote: May 7th, 2020, 4:52 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: May 7th, 2020, 4:33 am Motherhood.

Cold Cast Bronze Resin

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/65/db ... e93187.jpg

What makes this art?
What's the difference between this post and a 1955 parent asking their teenager what makes Chuck Berry's Maybellene music?
You are avoiding the question.
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LuckyR
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Re: What is Art?

Post by LuckyR »

Sculptor1 wrote: May 8th, 2020, 6:31 am
LuckyR wrote: May 7th, 2020, 4:52 pm

What's the difference between this post and a 1955 parent asking their teenager what makes Chuck Berry's Maybellene music?
You are avoiding the question.
You are not wrong, though equally guilty.
"As usual... it depends."
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Sculptor1
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sculptor1 »

LuckyR wrote: May 8th, 2020, 7:33 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: May 8th, 2020, 6:31 am

You are avoiding the question.
You are not wrong, though equally guilty.
Rubbish.
The question of the thread is what is art.
I offer an image of an object as simply ask what makes that art.
This is called forming a question; asking a question. This is not avoidance.
Answer it or not,
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Sculptor1
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Count Lucanor wrote: April 16th, 2020, 6:20 pm
Jklint wrote: April 16th, 2020, 4:26 pm

I wonder what happened to it after he ate it! Why is it that all supreme masterpieces of the culinary arts never last long compared to the second rate stuff like the B minor mass and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. I'm convinced that Beethoven would have enjoyed life more had he become a master chef instead of a composer. No doubt the pretzel would have been discovered much earlier.
Yes, the poor lost souls of Bach and Beethoven missed their chances for true greatness. Just imagine the amount of musical ideas contained in a single work by any of them, the different melodic passages, their accompanying harmony, the modal changes, the instrumentation, I mean, literally dozens and dozens of musical ideas and variables that had to be put together to form a unity, all of that compared to the extreme complexity and variety of a spinach soufflé or a lemon pudding, with perhaps hundreds of cooking variables that only a true genius could manage.

But hey, let's not get carried away and become snobs here, even the hot dog car at the street corner delivers pure artistry. Pretending that high-end cooking is better would be pure vanity.
You are a pure philistine. Narrow minded and hopelessly snobbish. Probably utterly incapable of making anything anyone could ever call art; the true critic.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Sculptor1 wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:19 am
Count Lucanor wrote: April 16th, 2020, 6:20 pm

Yes, the poor lost souls of Bach and Beethoven missed their chances for true greatness. Just imagine the amount of musical ideas contained in a single work by any of them, the different melodic passages, their accompanying harmony, the modal changes, the instrumentation, I mean, literally dozens and dozens of musical ideas and variables that had to be put together to form a unity, all of that compared to the extreme complexity and variety of a spinach soufflé or a lemon pudding, with perhaps hundreds of cooking variables that only a true genius could manage.

But hey, let's not get carried away and become snobs here, even the hot dog car at the street corner delivers pure artistry. Pretending that high-end cooking is better would be pure vanity.
You are a pure philistine. Narrow minded and hopelessly snobbish. Probably utterly incapable of making anything anyone could ever call art; the true critic.
And it took you 24 days to assimilate the post and reach that conclusion? You are slow... :o :!:

I'm very glad the judgement comes from you, not from anyone whose opinion really counted.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Sculptor1
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Count Lucanor wrote: May 10th, 2020, 3:45 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:19 am
You are a pure philistine. Narrow minded and hopelessly snobbish. Probably utterly incapable of making anything anyone could ever call art; the true critic.
And it took you 24 days to assimilate the post and reach that conclusion? You are slow... :o :!:

I'm very glad the judgement comes from you, not from anyone whose opinion really counted.
Sorry I forgot all about you.
You just don't mean that much to me, being so insignificant, and ignorant of art.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Sculptor1 wrote: May 10th, 2020, 5:59 pm ... and ignorant of art.
I know you mean soufflés and lemon meringue, but that's alright.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Sy Borg
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sy Borg »

Art is the appetite we sate once the essentials of ape life are secured - shelter, food and preproduction. Art is a celebration of the fact that we have done our work and have the free time and safety to do ostensibly useless things purely for feelings they give self and others.

In the absence of art, one can still enjoy artistic experiences in observing the wonders of nature. Strictly speaking, the sky is not art but it can prompt similar subjective affects in observers to that of human-made art.
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Sculptor1
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Greta wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:49 pm Art is the appetite we sate once the essentials of ape life are secured - shelter, food and preproduction. Art is a celebration of the fact that we have done our work and have the free time and safety to do ostensibly useless things purely for feelings they give self and others.

In the absence of art, one can still enjoy artistic experiences in observing the wonders of nature. Strictly speaking, the sky is not art but it can prompt similar subjective affects in observers to that of human-made art.
And when food is more than a nutrient substance that we bolt down our gullets. artistry can be employed in culinary arts.
It can also be expressed in the style we drive our cars, dance, sing, even the way we insult others online, and all those extra efforts we put into many otherwise mundane human activities.

This is the way CuntLucanor enjoys his food.
https://americanorchard.files.wordpress ... -pail1.jpg

Whilst others enjoy this:
https://cdn.foodbeast.com/content/uploa ... erChef.jpg
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Sy Borg
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sy Borg »

Sure, artistry is everywhere and the line between arts and crafts is indistinct.
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Cats
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Cats »

There are plenty of examples of animals being taught to paint with interesting results. To answer what art is, I think it's important to eliminate the temptation to judge whether it's 'good' art or not. The impulse to create art might be specific to the process of communicating & translating abstract ideas beyond the borders of language, which I think is true for the earliest examples of human-made art. Contemporary artists are frequently the first to exploring latent ideas forming in the collective unconscious which is why they are associated with being trend-setters, and art historians can trace the origin of philosophic ideas alongside works of literature, music and visual arts.

'Good' art is recognized when the work expresses something profound, either through the intense discipline behind the craft or some transcendent truth it reveals. Masterful art can reveal the transcendent depth of human experience & potential, precocious art can connect adults to the world as represented by a child, etc. Like all forms of communication, it's a skill that can be mastered but that doesn't mean that naive art can't express some kind of significant aesthetic/symbolic truth.

It's difficult to narrow down because it's something deeply connected to the human experience. Art is likely a byproduct of our brains having evolved to design our own interpretations of reality & attribute meaning or purpose for everything we interact with.
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thrasymachus
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Re: What is Art?

Post by thrasymachus »

Cats wrote
There are plenty of examples of animals being taught to paint with interesting results. To answer what art is, I think it's important to eliminate the temptation to judge whether it's 'good' art or not. The impulse to create art might be specific to the process of communicating & translating abstract ideas beyond the borders of language, which I think is true for the earliest examples of human-made art. Contemporary artists are frequently the first to exploring latent ideas forming in the collective unconscious which is why they are associated with being trend-setters, and art historians can trace the origin of philosophic ideas alongside works of literature, music and visual arts.

'Good' art is recognized when the work expresses something profound, either through the intense discipline behind the craft or some transcendent truth it reveals. Masterful art can reveal the transcendent depth of human experience & potential, precocious art can connect adults to the world as represented by a child, etc. Like all forms of communication, it's a skill that can be mastered but that doesn't mean that naive art can't express some kind of significant aesthetic/symbolic truth.

It's difficult to narrow down because it's something deeply connected to the human experience. Art is likely a byproduct of our brains having evolved to design our own interpretations of reality & attribute meaning or purpose for everything we interact with.
There is a lot in this. What catches my eye is The impulse to create art might be specific to the process of communicating & translating abstract ideas beyond the borders of language Not so much the translating of abstract ideas, but the "showing" of what these ideas are actually all about, nd in doing so reveal the material basis for a lot that is tossed about carelessly in "abstract" conversation. Art, in others words, underscores what is always already there in life and living. Dewey thought along these lines. Art is IN experience already in the crafts and the ideas that are what experience is made of. The making of something is inherently aesthetic.

But then, this does beg the question: what is experience? Art is an objective mirror, not of the world, but of our own interior, its "forms" and affectivity. One can say art IS the self objectified, revealing to the witnessing self a model of her own nature, and the importance of this lies in self revelation. I observe the world in the usual way, and thoughts of what I am become mixed with this world and its endless elaborations and arbitrary entanglements. Art takes me to something within that is lost. And this can be deeply profound.

One does have to be careful. The distance between art and insanity can be no more than a knife's edge. Think Virginia Woolf or Van Gogh.
popeye1945
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Re: What is Art?

Post by popeye1945 »

Hi Scott, I believe art is a celebration of the physical world, the world as object. When an article of art, to be art, it must speak to the harmonies of order, flow, rhythm, balance, it must speak to the order which is our being. We should all know when we are viewing a monstrosity, it violets being/object, it is in degree anti-life. Beauty mellows the soul, or our sensibilities, the nearer it comes to the full harmony of being, expressing the radiance which is the birth of a new day, a new creature, a new sunrise it is art. Behold, enfold, beauty is a blush with the vitality of life, it beckons in splendrous radiance the break of day, as cycles return from rest and decay, it bursts into rapturous display, and to that which beholds it does enfold, a moment divine, beauty enshrined in thee.
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Sikha7846
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Re: What is Art?

Post by Sikha7846 »

Anything on earth that is created through humans' creative skills, imagination, and creative mind is a form of art.
From paintings to sculptures, writing skills, persuasion skills is an art.
Every human has bestowed the potential to instill art within them. Everyone is born with it, humans just need to find their interest and passion.
I'm a fashion designer by profession. For me art is, bringing up new outfit ideas that look nice on people.
Art doesn't have to be unique, modifying something and making it better in accordance with the wearer is also a form of art.
These amazing shirts patterns are the perfect example for them, these patterns & designs aren't a new discovery but It is modified uniquely to look best on every man. If you want one of yours, head over to Tistabeneto get one for you.
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