» Fri May 04, 2012 10:26 pm I was curious about your thoughts since I plan to write a post for my personal blog later and there's some interesting discussion coming out of this.
From the Facebook discussion:
"If this is the best British artists could produce then British art is lost. It is cold, mechanical, conceptual [censored]. PS the attempts at contextualisation are particularly pathetic and symptomatic of a lack of conviction" - Kim Howells, Culture Minister, 2002
- If you're doing something artistic, I want to see evidence of skill. That doesn't necessarily mean e.g. a guitarist who can wheedle, but it should be something that I couldn't easily do myself.
- It is not really fair to assess the value of (conceptual art) with the criteria of (decorative art)
- Then conceptual art is like punk: 1% talent, 99% people who just don't know what the (bleep) they are doing. If you have to ask "is it art?" then it's probably not, just as if you have to ask if it's music, then it probably isn't. Like that 3-minutes-of-silence piece. Total (bleep).
- Why ISN'T it art?
- Because the ancient Latin word for art relates to "skill". Because Britannica Online defines art as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others." A pickled shark does not fit that definition. I guess I'd define art as "the application of skill to evoke or manipulate mood or emotion". Does that then make a Hallmark greeting card "art"? In a crude and basic sense, I would say it fits that criteria - at least as much as a naff postcard from a gallery would.
- How about 'Art is something made by an artist'?
- No, because an artist might work as a graphic designer and not all graphics are art. A stop sign is not art; a logo is. All video games have graphics of some description, but not all are art - it's the "wrapping" that surrounds the core gameplay mechanic, and whether that uses narrative fiction and visual design to manipulate emotion. It's pretty obvious that you would call Mass Effect or Bioshock "art" inasmuch as television drama is art, but that line gets very blurry when you get to Puzzle Quest or Sushi Cat and I'd say that Bejeweled and Pong are absolutely NOT art.
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Thoughts?
