What is ART?

I wanted to continue our passionate discussion about what is considered art and poetry and so forth.

First, I think that the text the "art" is in matters.  It is not fair or possible to compare a poem in a English book to a musicians song.  Each has its own meanings and purpose and who has the right to say one is and one is not art(poetry). 

I think that if you were given the lyrics of a song, it would seem more like a poem and art then anything else.  Listening to the music and the lyrics takes away a bit of the artful/poetry aspect.

Also, art is in the eye of the beholder.  A blank canvas is considered art, why not a song that is random.  A conscious spew of words could be a poem.

Comments

[Ben R.]

Well, I would generally agree. Art is indeed in the eye of the beholder. And yes some people belive that a blank canvas is art, or that 1 million dollar giant pure black monstrosity at the art institute. I can respect an artist who creates something original but the high praise should be given to those who are need great skill to pursue their art, such as certain musicians and sculptors or painters. The random putting together of words or images is not art. It takes no inventiveness or skill. If a object has either one of these attributes than to me it can be considered art.

[John K.]

I believe that art can be in any expression that moves somebody. Listening to music, as if you are listening to a poem, looking at a sculpture, or watching someone dance can change an individuals day from bad to good. As you were saying it lays in the hand of the beholder and I believe that for different people different forms of art motivate them more then others.

[Dan T.]

Almost all art is beautiful, clever, or both. Beautiful art distracts or moves a person. It is in the experiencing of the art that its value lies. Clever art needs to be interpreted, and then the value lies in what the art "says." Everything we've read this year is both beautiful and clever -- beautiful, because our experience reading it was pleasurable or enlightening (hopefully), and clever, because we have to go back and find themes and figure out what the author is trying to say.

A random bunch of words is unlikely to be clever or beautiful, so I don't think that's art (or at least not good art). An exception is if the author's point is that random words are art too, because then the author has instilled significance and meaning into a bunch of meaningless words, making the words clever and thus worthy of "art" status. I think this is why people pay millions for black canvases.

[Aaron B.]

I'm finding it hard to agree with some of your comment, Ben R. You said: "The random putting together of words or images is not art. It takes no inventiveness or skill."
However, I find Jackson Pollock's work to be awe-inspiring and beautiful, as do millions of others. His art is most definitely a "random putting together of images" yet it was completely inventive and I believe it took great skill to concentrate such intense energy onto canvas.
Pollock used any type of utensil at his service to express his aggression/excitement/whatever through paint and canvas, and while his paintings might not be of a beautiful sunset in perfect detail, I think it has just as much, if not more relevance and meaning than any of that "pretty" stuff.
I think art's meaning pertains almost entirely to the artist. I HATE when I hear that a musician is trying to write to "what his/her fans will like." Originality dies when people care about "the eye of the audience" and not what they want to express. Art is anything that...well, anything.
So, in the end, I agree with you, Ben L. Heck, your post is art to me.

[Samantha Michaels]

I think that this question of what exactly constitutes a piece of artwork is very interesting. I tend to agree more so with Dan T, that there are certain criteria for artwork--namely that it must be beautiful, clever or both. I think that there is a difference between any random form of expression and art. We kind of touched on this idea today in class, when we were discussing how exactly to evaluate if a poem is great or not.

Branching onto a slightly different aspect of the post, I have to disagree with something Aaron said about the relationship between music and poetry. He wrote that it is unfair and impossible to actually compare the two art-forms, and also that a song is more poetic if we read it (as opposed to listening to it). First of all, I don't understand how you can separate music from poetry...just because something has rhythm to it doesn't mean that it's not poetic. In fact, I believe that listening to the beat of a song makes it even more poetic (as rhythm is a poetic device) and it can add to the general tone and meaning of the piece.