You have to produce something that you say has value — Pop

Anybody can do it, any object will do. — Pop

This presents a problem for me. Anyone can do it, any object will do, but it must have value and that value is determined by the artist. The problem then is that anything is art if I say so, if I produced it. That doesn’t get us any closer to what art is. And what about literature? Is a book art, no matter how incomprehensible it is, because the writer said it was art? And what commitment does it require, what stage of development? Is the art produced at the beginning of an artist’s life the same as midway?

Interesting point though; realistic art is so much more approachable to people because they can interpret it through reason: technical skill, proportion, perspective, etc.

And this is part of the problem, art and reason. If we do it by reason what are the markers we use in our reasoning?

If I return to my analogy of the pool of water and the stone; the pool is the concept of art into which we throw the stone. The ripples are the art.

Edit: artists may very well be operating on instinct and then we’re going to interpret art by reason. Big headache.

The idea of art is the idea of art, and art itself is that which answers to the idea. — Bartricks

And what’s the idea of art, something we know by reason or instinct?

Secondly how do we know the artwork answers to it honestly, with integrity?
,

Yes it does. It's true by definition. — Bartricks

You might be getting at something I’m not picking up. But aren’t you just saying art is art?

Art is that which answers to the idea of art.

Define an artist.@Brett Somebody who calls themselves an artist. There are no qualifications necessary. — Pop

So everyone and everything is an artist. And everything we produce is art. Is that it?

The concept of a chair is an idea - an idea of a chair. An actual chair is 'that which answers to the concept of a chair'. — Bartricks

But art doesn’t always answer to the concept of art. That’s the problem. And it’s why we have suspicions about some art we regard as fraud, created by a fraud. How do we prove it’s a fraud?

Do you mean by the concept the idea that we know art exists?

What I am saying is that what it takes is a matter we investigate - a matter we use our reason to try and discern - — Bartricks

Isn’t that what we’re doing now, aren’t we your archeologist? If we’ve dug up The Venus of Willendorf how are we going to apply our reason, in what way?

And what is the concept?

The object becomes distinct when an artist deems it art - that is all, nothing else. — Pop

Define an artist.

But again: we don't need the definition in order to be able to recognise that there is art in the world. — Bartricks

We can try and formulate definitions, but it is a mistake of the first order to think that our definitions are what's in charge. — Bartricks

So then, man does not produce art, something else does. That’s an interesting perspective.

It cannot be a copy of anything that existed previously, and it cannot be a physical object that is just a combination of other physical objects without an idea behind it. — Congau

Interesting point. Original and consequently unrecognisable as art. What then happens?

Thus they will see it for what it is, and not for what this or that culture says it is — Bartricks

I go along with that as a way of approaching art, to a degree, and that it avoids the trap of cultural norms. But if it works and the archeologist resists speculation about what it is, based on cultural norms, what are they using to define it as art? If it’s reason then what is it about reason that’s being applied? How, for example, would the archeologist, forgoing cultural norms, decide if this was art or not?

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=2ahUKEwiK2eHkj5bnAhWryTgGHVRsDmUQFjACegQIEBAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsimple.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FVenus_of_Willendorf&usg=AOvVaw2RlAsFQjayQsoTmgksz64T

But they will be aware that they are members of a culture to which the dug-up item's manufacturer did not belong, and so this should - in the main - operate to prevent them from applying their cultural aesthetic norms to the product they've uncovered. — Bartricks

As I see this what you’re suggesting is that this approach cancels out a bias in what art is and is not, that the archeologist then approaches an artefact without cultural baggage as to what constitutes art. But wouldn’t it also mean the archeologist would have to jettison concepts about repetition, positive and negative space, rhythm, pattern, form, etc. Unless you feel those things are learned, and on that point I’m open at the moment.

This is part of the problem with those who say birds create art when all they’re seeing is the appearance of repetition, pattern, etc.

So a spider is conscious and has a mind, I agree, does a bacteria, or a tree as well? — Punshhh

I don’t think you can say any of these things are conscious of anything. Nor does it help in defining art. If being conscious was all that was required then everyone would be an artist, and some people may be bad artists but many aren’t any sort of artist. But if you’re suggesting every person is an artist then that’s a whole new thing.

:up:

X factor: what you set out to achieve minus what you actually achieve — Pop

Commonly known as “accidents”. But maybe not so accidental as the opening of the mind to the unexpected, a primitive action by any measure and something that makes all the difference. It means letting go of control, to a degree.

My feeling is that those artists at the top of the triangle are very instinctive creatures and quite primitive in their abilities: perceptions, response, connections with history, techniques, etc. Not always nice people either.

I think there’s something to this instinct issue, that artists are instinctive animals, maybe primitive in their relationship with their surroundings.

I wouldn't reduce this activity to instinct alone, although I agree that instinct plays a major role in the art. — Punshhh

So that suggests instinct plays a part in human art.

So art is instinct?

Here is the artist working on his next piece. — Punshhh

Why is the bird an artist?

an expression of human consciousness, and art work as information about the artists consciousness, and subconsciousness — Pop

Can you be sure that isn’t behind the design and construction of a car?

Explain where the art is and who created it.

The definition works for animals also — Pop

How do you even know what the sub consciousness of a bird is like? That’s a big call.

Edit: let alone an AI.

I'm not attempting to define art, but rather identify it. — Punshhh

That seems to require definition first to me.

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↪Brett [quote. So every person is an artist? — Punshhh

Yes, but some artists are better than others.[/quote]

Once again that doesn’t help in defining art.

Brett --- If they want to be. — Pop

So how does that help in defining art?

There are birds that create nests and decorate them. — Pop

But why is that art? And decorate them? How.

an expression of human consciousness, and art work as information about the artists consciousness, and subconsciousness — Pop

That would also include all of humanity. So every person is an artist?

an expression of human consciousness, and art work as information about the artists consciousness, and subconsciousness — Pop

Then obviously art is human and only humans produce art.

But I'm trying to restrict this to Human Art. — Pop

There is no other art.

For example, as Colosseum said, animals are artists, — Punshhh

Why are they artists?

art is supposed to transcend culture - transcend the time and place in which it was created, and speak to the ages. Therefore knowledge of the culture in which it was created should not be essential to recognising it as a work of art (if it was, then it would not be speaking to the ages, and thus would not be art). — Bartricks

I don’t know who said this, nor do I agree.

Art is a cultural artefact, but so is a car or mobile phone. So art is an artefact of a different nature.

There’s an obvious difference between a car and a Picasso. Cars are mass produced for a start, they’re also designed and built on a budget, they’re not the work on one individual and they’re also designed not to be iconoclastic but to calm and satisfy materialist desires of humans, not to mention that they’re entirely functional. Art as an artefact is none of these.

A modern painting or carving may create the most primitive of emotions and, removed from the earth by an archeologist, display the same response as a carving 1000 years old does. But that’s not likely anymore than a non-Christian can be affected by a silver crucifix, there has to be a cultural connection.

The cultural connection of art seems to run deeper and maybe more primitively than a car or phone. The most relevant artists occupy a very small place at the topic an isosceles triangle. Everything else is imitation or reconfiguration, and there’s a lot of it about. In trying to define art I don’t see any point in referring to that except to show what it isn’t. Can an artist channel a cultural period? Maybe, if they have what it takes: skill, perception, imagination, courage, audacity, an open connection to their unconscious mind.

It’s the process that counts for the artist. At the end a work of art may as well be a corpse, a stuffed reference to something that happened but has already gone. And the artwork is certainly not the experience of the artist. Art is an odd artefact because from the moment it’s made it’s over. Some art, like dance, comes and goes before your very eyes.

So there are two moments in the life of art; the making of it and the consumption of it. Outside of the artist all art is consumption, which in the end is consuming culture. That seems a bit shallow, but in the end it’s consumption of something, or maybe consumption’s not the right word, and nor does it contribute to a definition of art, because it would still have happened, even without an audience. So in some ways art’s a corpse.

First, one does not need to know anything about Van Gogh the man in order to be able to recognise his works as artworks (indeed, very great ones). — Bartricks

I think the work is only about the man. It’s only the man that makes his work important in terms of art. What I mean is that it’s his life and personality, the suffering artist, that’s behind the popularity of the work.

But isn’t generational also cultural?

Yes, art probably moves faster than anything. In a way they’re iconoclasts but they recreate in the process. Which is sort of a lose but nice definition.

It may not be noticeable.

Edit: being a perfect replication of who they are, which is what?

Yes, see my edit.

Whats interesting to me is that culture was nevertheless changed. — Pop

By art?