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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

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 12y 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 12y 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.

mc32 12y 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 12y 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.