So a play with a political message isn't art? Historical fiction isn't art?
If the play or fiction is devoid of aesthetic intent, it is not art. Correct. But point to any well-made political play or piece of hitorical fiction that is completely devoid of aesthetic intent. I am positive that you cannot.
I think a lot of political art is structured to offer the greatest political impact, instead of being as beautiful as possible. Some religious art, for example depictions of the Passion, is probably the same way (substituting religious for political intent).
Most non-human art isn't intelligible to me, so I don't call it art. I don't know what intention if any is behind, for example, the sheen that forms on an oil slick, and I can't communicate with its maker. Although natural beauty can sharpen my experience of my senses, I don't think that is its purpose, so I don't call it art. To me, there's a difference between something whose appearance can be admired, and art. You don't draw that distinction, I guess.
I like being disappointed sometimes, it can be a useful experience, and I don't think it's either practical or useful to totally avoid that feeling. Sometimes I am disappointed when my expectations are met, and sometimes when they aren't. I also think there's some merit to refusing to accept things as they are in some cases.
why don't you acknowledge the examples i gave? non-human art like the appearance of peacocks has a known intention of attracting mates. you can observe a peacock spreading their tail feathers to "show them off" to nearby mates.
can you explain an example of how being disappointed is useful?
why is there merit in refusing to accept the way things look?
why don't you acknowledge the examples i gave? non-human art like the appearance of peacocks has a known intention of attracting mates. you can observe a peacock spreading their tail feathers to "show them off" to nearby mates.
Probably because no widely accepted definition of art includes "beautiful things without a creator." The only person who could coherently call peacock feathers art is someone talking about God as an artist, perhaps. And then it becomes a very different conversation.
And why don't such definitions exist? Because once you widen the meaning of a word too much, it loses its usefulness as a distinction and becomes incoherent.
Natural beauty is not art. This isn't my "personal definition" of art, by the way. It's THE definition.
Most non-human art isn't intelligible to me, so I don't call it art. I don't know what intention if any is behind, for example, the sheen that forms on an oil slick, and I can't communicate with its maker. Although natural beauty can sharpen my experience of my senses, I don't think that is its purpose, so I don't call it art. To me, there's a difference between something whose appearance can be admired, and art. You don't draw that distinction, I guess.
I like being disappointed sometimes, it can be a useful experience, and I don't think it's either practical or useful to totally avoid that feeling. Sometimes I am disappointed when my expectations are met, and sometimes when they aren't. I also think there's some merit to refusing to accept things as they are in some cases.
why don't you acknowledge the examples i gave? non-human art like the appearance of peacocks has a known intention of attracting mates. you can observe a peacock spreading their tail feathers to "show them off" to nearby mates.
can you explain an example of how being disappointed is useful?
why is there merit in refusing to accept the way things look?
I'm not attracted to peacocks, and I can't discriminate an attractive peacock from an unattractive one. Since that's the case, peacock-art is invisible to me, I literally cannot see it. If your definition of art doesn't include intention or craft, then that gets around this limitation, and I'd love to hear it if that's the case.
It's hard to explain, but first I would say, can one avoid disappointment? Not always. Therefore, it's good to make the best of disappointment and get as much use out of it as one can. If nothing else, disappointment is a unique experience that doesn't feel like any other, and for that reason alone it is nice to experience it sometimes.
If things can be made to look better without harming them, then I think it's good to improve them. In that case, refusing to accept the way things look can be beneficial.
Edit: Can you tell me how you consider something like a peacock feather to be art? What is art about it to you? As I said, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Most non-human art isn't intelligible to me, so I don't call it art. I don't know what intention if any is behind, for example, the sheen that forms on an oil slick, and I can't communicate with its maker. Although natural beauty can sharpen my experience of my senses, I don't think that is its purpose, so I don't call it art. To me, there's a difference between something whose appearance can be admired, and art. You don't draw that distinction, I guess.
I like being disappointed sometimes, it can be a useful experience, and I don't think it's either practical or useful to totally avoid that feeling. Sometimes I am disappointed when my expectations are met, and sometimes when they aren't. I also think there's some merit to refusing to accept things as they are in some cases.
why don't you acknowledge the examples i gave? non-human art like the appearance of peacocks has a known intention of attracting mates. you can observe a peacock spreading their tail feathers to "show them off" to nearby mates.
can you explain an example of how being disappointed is useful?
why is there merit in refusing to accept the way things look?
I'm not attracted to peacocks, and I can't discriminate an attractive peacock from an unattractive one. Since that's the case, peacock-art is invisible to me, I literally cannot see it. If your definition of art doesn't include intention or craft, then that gets around this limitation, and I'd love to hear it if that's the case.
It's hard to explain, but first I would say, can one avoid disappointment? Not always. Therefore, it's good to make the best of disappointment and get as much use out of it as one can. If nothing else, disappointment is a unique experience that doesn't feel like any other, and for that reason alone it is nice to experience it sometimes.
If things can be made to look better without harming them, then I think it's good to improve them. In that case, refusing to accept the way things look can be beneficial.
Edit: Can you tell me how you consider something like a peacock feather to be art? What is art about it to you? As I said, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
maybe you aren't attracted to male peacocks, but female peacocks are attracted to male peacocks partially because of their elaborate tail feathers. another example of beauty being subjective. if peacocks had a language, which they might have in a simple way, their definition of art would likely be able to include the beauty of male peacock feathers. did peacocks intentionally and intelligently design their feathers? maybe, or maybe they evolved to have them because peacocks without elaborate tail feathers attracted fewer mates while the ones with beautiful tail feathers attracted more mates. sometimes evolution happens by chance and sometimes it happens on purpose, and can you say for sure which is the reason?
another example is nude models. you can take a picture of a nude girl, frame it, and call it art and everybody would likely agree it is art. did the girl intentionally make herself look the way she does? of course she had some influence, but dna/genes are mainly in charge of the way people look.
it is also possible to not ever be disappointed. some ways are to not put expectations on how you think things should be, accept things as they are, and the lazy way is to not care how things are.
"If things can be made to look better without harming them, then I think it's good to improve them."
i don't know if you're an artist, but as an artist i think it's common for it to be difficult to decide when a painting is completed. if the intention is to make a painting photo-realistic it could take near forever to be satisfied. if the intention is to show brush strokes and maybe look impressionistic then it's still difficult to determine when the painting is complete, because an artist will likely always see where improvements can be made. another issue is if an artist is almost satisfied but keeps working on an art it may become "over worked" and look less like how they want it to. as a simple example of what i mean, if the stages of a painting are labeled A, B, C, etc. then at stage V an artist is almost satisfied but still wants to add more, they might work on the painting until it gets to stage Y when they would have been more satisfied at stage X.
i consider a male peacock's tail feathers as art, because their purpose is to look beautiful and attractive to female peacocks. they may or may not have been intelligently designed, but i don't think intelligent design is required for something to be called art.
why can a photographer take a picture of anything naturally made and call it art? if you looked at the actual place the photograph was from it would look much more beautiful than the photographic copy of the scene looked.
A peacocks feathers are not art. Yes they are beautiful, like a waterfall is beautiful, or the stars in the sky are beautiful. Beautiful, admirable, enchanting, hypnotizing, awe-inspiring, wonderful, exceptional examples of nature.
But they are not art.
Art needs criticism. Art needs to have debate. "Why did the artist choose this colour over that colour? This method over that method? What was their though process, what emotions are they trying to convey? What message are they trying to send?" You can't criticize something that has no creator. The peacock has no creative process to analyze. The night sky has no motive. They are beautiful, no question about that, but they are not art.
Photographers create art when they take a photo. Sure, a nude doesn't really say much other than "I think this woman is beautiful." And "See? I paid attention in university during that lecture on proper placement of lighting." But what about photographers who go into war zones? Capturing images of horror, death and disharmony? Nick Ut's photograph of the survivors of Trang Bang. Kevin Carters photo of the Sudanese child and the vulture. Being in the right place at the right time, for the right reasons, and having the knowledge and skills thereof. It's more than a simple carbon copy of an event. The photographer puts themselves into the work when they take the picture. Photography is art. In the examples I gave the subject was war and death. In your example the subject was attractive women.... But it's all art.
why don't you acknowledge the examples i gave? non-human art like the appearance of peacocks has a known intention of attracting mates. you can observe a peacock spreading their tail feathers to "show them off" to nearby mates.
can you explain an example of how being disappointed is useful?
why is there merit in refusing to accept the way things look?
I'm not attracted to peacocks, and I can't discriminate an attractive peacock from an unattractive one. Since that's the case, peacock-art is invisible to me, I literally cannot see it. If your definition of art doesn't include intention or craft, then that gets around this limitation, and I'd love to hear it if that's the case.
It's hard to explain, but first I would say, can one avoid disappointment? Not always. Therefore, it's good to make the best of disappointment and get as much use out of it as one can. If nothing else, disappointment is a unique experience that doesn't feel like any other, and for that reason alone it is nice to experience it sometimes.
If things can be made to look better without harming them, then I think it's good to improve them. In that case, refusing to accept the way things look can be beneficial.
Edit: Can you tell me how you consider something like a peacock feather to be art? What is art about it to you? As I said, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
maybe you aren't attracted to male peacocks, but female peacocks are attracted to male peacocks partially because of their elaborate tail feathers. [....] another example is nude models. you can take a picture of a nude girl, frame it, and call it art and everybody would likely agree it is art. did the girl intentionally make herself look the way she does? of course she had some influence, but dna/genes are mainly in charge of the way people look.
Do you draw a distinction between beauty and art? I think they're very different things, not always used to describe the same objects.
One way I could interpret your argument that would satisfy me is to say that looking is a form of art, since humans construct their own visual images in ways that can be examined, critiqued, and improved.
Example: Novice musicians taking classes where they dissect sonatas; the point is to improve their ear and the way their mind takes in music. I think musicians tend to understand that listening is interpretive in the same way that playing music is--John Cage was a famous proponent of that viewpoint, but I think any performer would recognize that music sounds extremely different depending on whether one is performing or listening.
If that's what you're arguing, then I wholeheartedly agree; however, I would still be reluctant to call peacock feathers art, because what's art there isn't the feathers themselves but the viewing of the feathers.
"
it is also possible to not ever be disappointed. some ways are to not put expectations on how you think things should be, accept things as they are, and the lazy way is to not care how things are.
Not for me! That's all I can say. I am unavoidably disappointed sometimes, and I have learned to like it that way.
"
"If things can be made to look better without harming them, then I think it's good to improve them."
i don't know if you're an artist, but as an artist i think it's common for it to be difficult to decide when a painting is completed.
I didn't say it was easy to tell whether one would cause harm :)
A peacocks feathers are not art. Yes they are beautiful, like a waterfall is beautiful, or the stars in the sky are beautiful. Beautiful, admirable, enchanting, hypnotizing, awe-inspiring, wonderful, exceptional examples of nature.
But they are not art.
Art needs criticism. Art needs to have debate. "Why did the artist choose this colour over that colour? This method over that method? What was their though process, what emotions are they trying to convey? What message are they trying to send?" You can't criticize something that has no creator. The peacock has no creative process to analyze. The night sky has no motive. They are beautiful, no question about that, but they are not art.
Photographers create art when they take a photo. Sure, a nude doesn't really say much other than "I think this woman is beautiful." And "See? I paid attention in university during that lecture on proper placement of lighting." But what about photographers who go into war zones? Capturing images of horror, death and disharmony? Nick Ut's photograph of the survivors of Trang Bang. Kevin Carters photo of the Sudanese child and the vulture. Being in the right place at the right time, for the right reasons, and having the knowledge and skills thereof. It's more than a simple carbon copy of an event. The photographer puts themselves into the work when they take the picture. Photography is art. In the examples I gave the subject was war and death. In your example the subject was attractive women.... But it's all art.
peacock feathers are art. if i put some peacock feathers in a frame and put them in an art gallery they would be seen as art. why can't you criticize the way peacock feathers look in nature?
art doesn't need criticism. maybe drawing inspiration from art helps, but criticism doesn't help the viewers perspective of their work. if an artist wants their work to be the way it is then nobody should say how it doesn't match the traditional standards. if art were not allowed to be unique then people would get bored of seeing the same styles being repeated.
the purpose of criticism is to help artists make their work better by acknowledging the faults and successes of their own and other artist's work so they can do it better next time. for a non-artist viewer there is no reason to criticize since they wont be making any art. non-artist viewers also don't really need to debate since they would only be making guesses. some artists write about their work so all of the examples of questions you gave might be answered by the artist, and the only true answers are from the artist so it does no good to guess.
if a computer were given artificial intelligence and it decided to capture a picture from a surveillance camera, then upload the picture to a website with a gallery of images titled "art" then would you say it's not actually art? if a monkey used a camera would their pictures not be art? a camera only can show the way things naturally are, so why shouldn't the original natural objects be considered art?
One way I could interpret your argument that would satisfy me is to say that looking is a form of art, since humans construct their own visual images in ways that can be examined, critiqued, and improved.
Example: Novice musicians taking classes where they dissect sonatas; the point is to improve their ear and the way their mind takes in music. I think musicians tend to understand that listening is interpretive in the same way that playing music is--John Cage was a famous proponent of that viewpoint, but I think any performer would recognize that music sounds extremely different depending on whether one is performing or listening.
If that's what you're arguing, then I wholeheartedly agree; however, I would still be reluctant to call peacock feathers art, because what's art there isn't the feathers themselves but the viewing of the feathers.
"
it is also possible to not ever be disappointed. some ways are to not put expectations on how you think things should be, accept things as they are, and the lazy way is to not care how things are.
Not for me! That's all I can say. I am unavoidably disappointed sometimes, and I have learned to like it that way.
"
"If things can be made to look better without harming them, then I think it's good to improve them."
i don't know if you're an artist, but as an artist i think it's common for it to be difficult to decide when a painting is completed.
I didn't say it was easy to tell whether one would cause harm :)
why can't you call anything visible art? you're saying the way you look at things and recreate the way things look with your eyes, etc. is art, but if there were no objects to see there would be no things to look at. the original objects being seen should get credit for being art as much as your ability to see them.
