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>Photorealistic paintings are impressive because they aren't photographs. I think this is the fundamental difference of opinion between people who think you ca

>Photorealistic paintings are impressive because they aren't photographs. I think this is the fundamental difference of opinion between people who think you can "cheat" in art, and people who don't. I would argue that judging the quality of art based on the difficulty of producing it betrays a shallow appreciation of art. A person who says that is basically saying "I have no basis on which to judge this other than whether or not I could have produced it myself." This is why you'll see a lot of overlap between people who sneer at "cheating" and people who dismiss things like modern art and found art as "not art". In other words, the two groups are essentially using different definitions for the word "art".

vacri 13y ago
The definition of 'art' is always fun, because there's a corner case for everything. To date, the most robust definition I've seen in those debates are "does someone call it art? Then it's art". Not necessarily good or insightful art, but art nevertheless. And if you use that definition, you can't 'cheat' at art.
- JoshTriplett 13y ago
  > To date, the most robust definition I've seen in those debates are "does someone call it art? Then it's art". Agreed. I've seen debates over whether various forms of "abstract" paintings are art, but that's not a particularly interesting debate. Of course they're art; the simpler and more useful question is whether they're good art.
- mc32 13y ago
  >"does someone call it art? Then it's art" I think that's the easy answer... but if you went to the curator of the art institute of Chicago, of the MoMA, or any other art institute of renown, they would have more strict interpretations of what's art, I would think. That is there is "Art" and there is "art".
  - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
    having worked with some curators at similarly large (though not necessarily quite as well known) galleries, I'm pretty sure they use the >"does someone call it art? Then it's art" definition and have a poor opinion of anyone that attempts to be any stricter than that. This comes from a painful history of curators dismissing lots of "modern" art in the 1960's, and thus missing out on lots of extremely lucrative investment opportunities.
    - mc32 13y ago
      Perhaps... But you're talking more about what becomes avant guarde and that's established by trendsetters. Sometimes that's people with money (maybe most of the time) --and curators race to tap that new trend. Sometimes there is little objective reason why something is "in" in art vs. something else. Remember the demand from Japanese patrons who had money before their bubble burst? And the artists raced to fill that demand and then the art dealers had no use for that art. So, some mediocre art can become important and the next day be forgotten. Curators, artists, galleries all are tuned into their patrons and their money. That's what sets trends and defines what's art. There are few cases where that's not true --like the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape exhibit. But that's the exception, I think.
      - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
        perhaps, but none of that really contradicts what I said. Just that there's little use for any kind of objective classification system for "art" and "not art" to a curator. Just a fuzzy wuzzy wibbly wobbly sense of what is culturally significant, valued, and/or a "good investment". None of which has much to do with what you might think of as reasoning about "is" and "is not". The question is never asked. There's no point to it. No value in the asking. That's an "art critic's" job. not a Curator's job. And even in Art Criticism, since the dawn of "Post Modernism" there's been an implicit almost non verbal agreement to never ever question the "Art"-ness of something. It's never about whether it is or is not. Only what an artist is attempting to say, or what you are able to grasp from a work. To question the is-ness is boring and pedestrian, and marks you immediately as someone who is not really clued in. Questioning whether something is art or "Art" with a capital A is kind of equivalent to an ad hominem. It has nothing to do with anything. It's name calling. It's not taking the argument or the artwork for what it is.
- sirsar 13y ago
  In this area I find the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky particularly insightful. Definitions are what he calls "disguised queries." When someone says "atheism is a religion" or "that's not art," they're trying to use the definition to make another statement - that atheists rely on faith, or that the work is not worthy of praise, display, etc. The problem is that set membership isn't always binary, and not all members of a set share all the same characteristics. Just because something isn't difficult technically, doesn't mean it's not art. More importantly, if you're using "not art" to mean "not difficult technically," then saying "this isn't difficult technically, so it's not art" isn't a worthwhile statement. It's the disguised implications of the word "art" which make such statements so contentious. To paraphrase Eliezer, the argument about what is and isn't art is really a dispute over whether to infer art-related qualities of the work, like fitness for a museum. A dictionary is of no use here. http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/
- Crito 13y ago
  > "To date, the most robust definition I've seen in those debates are "does someone call it art? Then it's art". Not necessarily good or insightful art, but art nevertheless." I am not satisfied with this definition. Suppose we have 4 bricklayers constructing a wall. The four have worked together for a long time, and are very professional; they are capable of creating a uniform wall despite the wall being the product of their combined effort. One of the four bricklayers claims that brickwork is art, having been artfully laid by a skilled craftsman. The other three bricklayers make no such claims about their work. Is the wall art? Are only portions of the wall art? Can we distinguish the disjoint segments of the wall that are art and those that are not? If the artful bricklayer claims that the work of his colleagues is art, does it become art? What if they insist that it is not?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    Something is or is not art to the extent that people experience it as art, independently of what else it might be or the intention or skill of the creator.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Is the wall art? Are only portions of the wall art? Can we distinguish the disjoint segments of the wall that are art and those that are not? If the artful bricklayer claims that the work of his colleagues is art, does it become art? What if they insist that it is not? You've stated the problem (that our definitions of art are too vague), but to take this to the next level, we would have to define art, and get everyone to agree. That's a bigger problem than the one we face now. > I am not satisfied with this definition. To move beyond rhetoric, you would have to propose a definition that everyone would agree on. In the meantime, art is in the eye of the beholder.

vacri 13y ago

The definition of 'art' is always fun, because there's a corner case for everything. To date, the most robust definition I've seen in those debates are "does someone call it art? Then it's art". Not necessarily good or insightful art, but art nevertheless. And if you use that definition, you can't 'cheat' at art.

JoshTriplett 13y ago
> To date, the most robust definition I've seen in those debates are "does someone call it art? Then it's art". Agreed. I've seen debates over whether various forms of "abstract" paintings are art, but that's not a particularly interesting debate. Of course they're art; the simpler and more useful question is whether they're good art.
mc32 13y ago
>"does someone call it art? Then it's art" I think that's the easy answer... but if you went to the curator of the art institute of Chicago, of the MoMA, or any other art institute of renown, they would have more strict interpretations of what's art, I would think. That is there is "Art" and there is "art".
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  having worked with some curators at similarly large (though not necessarily quite as well known) galleries, I'm pretty sure they use the >"does someone call it art? Then it's art" definition and have a poor opinion of anyone that attempts to be any stricter than that. This comes from a painful history of curators dismissing lots of "modern" art in the 1960's, and thus missing out on lots of extremely lucrative investment opportunities.
  - mc32 13y ago
    Perhaps... But you're talking more about what becomes avant guarde and that's established by trendsetters. Sometimes that's people with money (maybe most of the time) --and curators race to tap that new trend. Sometimes there is little objective reason why something is "in" in art vs. something else. Remember the demand from Japanese patrons who had money before their bubble burst? And the artists raced to fill that demand and then the art dealers had no use for that art. So, some mediocre art can become important and the next day be forgotten. Curators, artists, galleries all are tuned into their patrons and their money. That's what sets trends and defines what's art. There are few cases where that's not true --like the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape exhibit. But that's the exception, I think.
    - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
      perhaps, but none of that really contradicts what I said. Just that there's little use for any kind of objective classification system for "art" and "not art" to a curator. Just a fuzzy wuzzy wibbly wobbly sense of what is culturally significant, valued, and/or a "good investment". None of which has much to do with what you might think of as reasoning about "is" and "is not". The question is never asked. There's no point to it. No value in the asking. That's an "art critic's" job. not a Curator's job. And even in Art Criticism, since the dawn of "Post Modernism" there's been an implicit almost non verbal agreement to never ever question the "Art"-ness of something. It's never about whether it is or is not. Only what an artist is attempting to say, or what you are able to grasp from a work. To question the is-ness is boring and pedestrian, and marks you immediately as someone who is not really clued in. Questioning whether something is art or "Art" with a capital A is kind of equivalent to an ad hominem. It has nothing to do with anything. It's name calling. It's not taking the argument or the artwork for what it is.
sirsar 13y ago
In this area I find the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky particularly insightful. Definitions are what he calls "disguised queries." When someone says "atheism is a religion" or "that's not art," they're trying to use the definition to make another statement - that atheists rely on faith, or that the work is not worthy of praise, display, etc. The problem is that set membership isn't always binary, and not all members of a set share all the same characteristics. Just because something isn't difficult technically, doesn't mean it's not art. More importantly, if you're using "not art" to mean "not difficult technically," then saying "this isn't difficult technically, so it's not art" isn't a worthwhile statement. It's the disguised implications of the word "art" which make such statements so contentious. To paraphrase Eliezer, the argument about what is and isn't art is really a dispute over whether to infer art-related qualities of the work, like fitness for a museum. A dictionary is of no use here. http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/
Crito 13y ago
> "To date, the most robust definition I've seen in those debates are "does someone call it art? Then it's art". Not necessarily good or insightful art, but art nevertheless." I am not satisfied with this definition. Suppose we have 4 bricklayers constructing a wall. The four have worked together for a long time, and are very professional; they are capable of creating a uniform wall despite the wall being the product of their combined effort. One of the four bricklayers claims that brickwork is art, having been artfully laid by a skilled craftsman. The other three bricklayers make no such claims about their work. Is the wall art? Are only portions of the wall art? Can we distinguish the disjoint segments of the wall that are art and those that are not? If the artful bricklayer claims that the work of his colleagues is art, does it become art? What if they insist that it is not?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Something is or is not art to the extent that people experience it as art, independently of what else it might be or the intention or skill of the creator.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Is the wall art? Are only portions of the wall art? Can we distinguish the disjoint segments of the wall that are art and those that are not? If the artful bricklayer claims that the work of his colleagues is art, does it become art? What if they insist that it is not? You've stated the problem (that our definitions of art are too vague), but to take this to the next level, we would have to define art, and get everyone to agree. That's a bigger problem than the one we face now. > I am not satisfied with this definition. To move beyond rhetoric, you would have to propose a definition that everyone would agree on. In the meantime, art is in the eye of the beholder.