jfrost wrote:J T wrote:GSZX1337 wrote:I always thought that when people say: "This isn't art!" They really mean: "I don't like this.".
It's not quite the same, though it's related. For example, I wouldn't say that Final Fight is art, but I love Final Fight.
Why not?
I get that Final Fight is (mostly) mindless, but can't mindlessness be part of art? Do you have a definition of art?
Not trying to debate it, just to know if you attach a specific meaning to the word.
I do have a definition for the word, though I wouldn't say that it's all that specific. I think that there are several characteristics that comprise art.
- Art has aesthetic appeal. There is something about the look or sound of it that draws attention.
- Art is expressive and evocative. The artist expresses something about their feelings and perceptions of the world and this evokes similar feelings in the audience.
- Art is stylistically representational. Art represents concepts or images from the real world, but they are somewhat altered through unique visual style, metaphor, or symbolism.
- Art is original at the time of its creation. Though influences are acceptable, mimickry is not. The art has to be unique in some way from similar artististic artifacts before it.
- Art is challenging. This could be in the form of intricate visual design. It could be complicated music. It could be conceptually difficult to understand, or an affront to commonly held notions, but if you aren't led to ponder about it and there is no mystery to it, then it' not art.
-Art speaks truth. As an audience, we have to sense something pure and honest in the vision of the artist, whether they deal in dark or uplifting subject matter, in order to recognize it as art.
I don't think any of these things alone constitute art, nor do I think all are required. Deciding on what consitutes "just the right amount" of these requirements is partly why deciding "what is art" is such a subjective thing. Each of the criteria are also subjective. For example, whether something is original really depends on what is commonly known to have been done already in a given historical time and place. For something to be challenging to our cultural mores, we have to share or at least be keenly aware of those social mores. Even truth may only be a personal truth and not a universal truth. Art is therefore defined in part by the cultural context in which it is created. All of this leads me to simply think that...
-Art is absurd. And I'm quite happy with it being that way. It's about fanciness, which is the most nonsensical thing in the world, yet something humans value highly. I'm reminded of the brilliantly humorous and subversive essay by John Kane "Towards an Understanding of Human Fanciness"
John Kane, 1955 wrote:Of all the human drives which lie beyond the animal realm of preservation and propagation, perhaps the least understood or most overlooked is the infinite capacity for fanciness. The word fancy, originally a contraction of fantasy, has through time become so versatile as to be almost useless, which makes it all the more useful for our purpose. It is altogether fitting that fancy functions as a noun, verb or adjective and has meanings ranging from inclination and ornamental excellence to caprice and empty inflation of worth. In all its current uses there is a slight weakness, a mode of the emphatic that stops short of even being decisively sarcastic. In short, the word fancy is a fancy word. Let us turn to its creator. Any attempt to characterize with a single term such a long and multifarious experiment as the human race must necessarily fail unless that term is itself mired in endless diversity and elusive tone. Such a term is fancy.
From pre-history it can be seen that what raises man above the animals (if indeed this can be claimed at all) is a special capacity that has long and mistakenly been identified as reason, but which we now venture to call fanciness. It is now generally accepted that reason cannot bear the weight that Western tradition has assigned to it as the definitive characteristic of the irrational animal. Reason implies necessity: a faculty for responding to given situations; a tool for synthetic problem solving and continued learning. This is , of course, not wrong, only partial. What reason overlooks is the insatiable drive towards problem-creating, making simple situations insolubly difficult, elaborating every aspect of life beyond function, beyond beauty, beyond usefulness, and finally beyond sustainability. This unreasonable, mindless complexity is the true hallmark of our species. It is our glory and undoing. Neither glittering towers nor mass graves are the work of a "rational animal". Culture and its annihilation are unnecessary, only the rewards of constant and unmotivated growth-for-its-own-sake.
The illogic of fanciness would have man cut off his feet to wear them on his head, followed by the legs, torso, etc., until the head rests on the ground and the last fancy move would be to return the head to its original place atop the neck, where it could then devote itself to something more useful- an essay perhaps, or digging a hole in which to bury old hats. Here we arrive, naturally, at an abyss. If our fancy animal wanders far enough to the right or to the left, it will find in either direction the yawning chasm of the abyss (so the world is round after all). To the right is the path of self-extension, of leaving one's mark, of empire; to the left is the path of self-annihilation, of losing oneself in the world, of love. These are the twin extasies of fanciness, which are inseparable: to shine with an unbearable brightness, and in that brightness to disappear.
I can't tell you how many artists I've met who are doing nothing but "rebelling against social standards" with everything they do.
