But it's the audience that judges art, not the artist. — Pattern-chaser

Yes it’s true that the audience passes judgement on a piece of art. And they may judge it as entertaining in many different ways, but that’s only a response and it’s their subjective response. They may pass judgement in all ignorance of what they’re looking at. Is that proof that art is entertainment?

And if the audience judges art, not the artist, does that mean the audience determine what art is and that being entertaining is all that’s required?

It’s a bit like the tree falling in the forest: is it art if no one else sees it?

Here's an analogy, martial art is art when the moves are done correctly, if all moves miss, it's not art. — Schzophr

That could be regarded as taking martial arts to the level of art. But the idea of art, it’s definition, comes before, its dipping into art to help describe the attainment.

The primary difference (I believe) between the first and second painting is that the first is primarily about the subject and the second is about the artist (self portrait aside). In the first painting the artist is absent, in the second the artist has put himself between the subject and the viewer. The second painting is about Van Gogh

How so?

Am I imagining it or are we starting to see a bit of agreement happening?

Art is for impressing on you a (human) experience through an agent. An agent is a piece of art in its raw, or direct, state - a story you read about or see on a screen or stage, notes you hear, a scene you see on a painting... — Henri

I’ll go along with that.

Of course Zhoubotong will argue that ‘Transformers’ does exactly that. Or have you cunningly included ‘raw’.

I think it might be your conception of "entertainment", as a commercial/business/profit/money/American thing, that's making art not resemble entertainment in your eyes. Art is often entertaining, often disturbing too.... — Pattern-chaser

Art may often be entertaining but that doesn’t mean its intent was to be entertaining. The artist is producing the work first for themselves. The intent is not to entertain people. If someone then comes along and looks on the work as entertaining then that’s nothing to do with the artist.

I think you’re being a bit slippery there by saying art can be disturbing, which can be true, and using that to legitimise the word ‘entertaining’ that comes before it.

What your saying is that I’m being merely subjective in separating entertainment from art. But there is a difference, at least from the point of view of the artist. Was Van Gogh seeking to entertain, was Gauguin seeking to entertain by moving to the Pacific, was Cezanne seeking to entertain by returning again and again to Montaigne Sainte-Victoria to paint?

Anything described, as opposed to being directly shown, must be imagined, — Janus

I think this must be true, otherwise we’re not talking about imagination.

Is this all there is to the meaning of imagination?

“the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality” Merriam Webster

And I tend not to use my imagination in any active way to wonder how i would feel when watching a film. — Coben

It’s possible you may not be conscious of that. Film does elicit, but maybe not the films you like to watch.

Edit: I take that back having thought about it some more.

I think this could partly be why people look down on action films, they ask so little of you.

But that's not what art is for. — Henri

What would you say art is for, then? (You may have already said so but I can’t find it).

If the artistic endeavor does anything noteworthy it breaks the shackles of procrastination; albeit fleetingly. — I like sushi

For who, artist or audience?

As I tend to view art as entertainment — ZhouBoTong

Well then you’re talking about entertainment. That’s different from art. ‘Transformers’ is entertainment. So is Shakespeare, or was. Now it’s an idea, of what art is. Once you begin viewing everything through the prism of entertainment then you have a few basic parameters to judge it by: dollars and asses.

So your attitude to art is very warped by your entertainment expectations. Other than that you have education: art as an instrument of instruction. So for you art is just utilitarian.

I'm confused as to why a non-resident has standing to object to the entry requirements of a foreign sovereign.
— Hanover

The problem with the sovereign nation argument is that the USA itself rebelled against a sovereign nation. The USA states that it was justified to do so, because the British had violated the natural rights of its citizens here. As such, by not extending natural rights to those who visit the country undermines its government's authority to rule, as well as its moral authority to judge the actions of other nations. — ernestm

This doesn’t seem to answer Hanover’s post for me. Can you send explain a bit more?

I don't think we can extend that to a blanket cover of all man-made things, can we? — Pattern-chaser

I’m not sure. It seems to me that if you do something twice then it’s no longer random, you’re applying a set of ‘rules’, or chain of events’, to make it happen again and you have to do that every time to get the same result. My mind is a bit sluggish at the moment but I can’t think of anything we do that isn’t done this way.

You could extract insight from anything, essentially. From reading a news article, having a blister on your hand, observing a toddler. And from art too, of course. But that's not what art is for. — Henri

Well it’s possible that that’s exactly what art is for and anything else is not art.

If a painting is working within the idea of realism, where the painting reproduces the observed accurately, a landscape for instance, then what is the artist really doing? Is that painting really their experience of that landscape, just this artificial reproduction of what was before them? A photo can do that. The post-impressionists and cubists tried to show us that that’s not how we see.

The painting that looks exactly like the landscape the painter stood in front of is not what he was really seeing, that’s not how we look at things, with that passive frozen attitude. Our own sensibility and understanding are always at work as we look, so that reproduction that the artist has made, the landscape, ‘so real’, as people say, is in effect just a painted surface, it’s just something beautiful to look at.

Cubist paintings include all, or many sides, of an object, because we may not see it but we know there is another side to the bottle, or box, or guitar, and we know that we are in the same space, and we know that the object also stirs up memories and emotions at the time of painting. So the painting is the experience of the artist just as it is for us observing something.

That’s how we really see, it’s not just the appearance of things before our eyes. So art does offer intellectual insights.

Some books do this, though they may have other agendas: about memory, or how we I think and act. Some posts here have said film can’t do this as well as books can do, but I wonder if films do do it just as well, in fact so effectively that we hardly even notice it happening.

If it has a price, it's not free. :joke: — unenlightened

Yes, you’re right. I woke up this morning and realised my error.

Edit: what I’ve since realised is that the restriction of travel as a price to pay is no different than going to prison, it’s an attempt to shut down speech. The opportunity to speak your mind is always there whether it’s on social media or on the street, there’s nothing to stop you except the price knocking on your door.

But once it comes to education, we let the elites decide for us; — ZhouBoTong

I’m not sure this is exactly true. We’re all coming from different parts of the world here so our experiences might differ. But my experience is that the elites are not imposing their views. Though a Principal might draw the line at certain works being used in class.

Where are you seeing this, and what work are you seeing?

Art is not about extracting (intellectual) insights. — Henri

This was taken from your response to another post and I’m not sure if you are raising what they said to question it or because you believe it to be true.

Art could be said to be raising intellectual insights about art, could it not?

Edit: actually I would go further and say some visual art offers insights about how we see things.

I may not have been clear enough in my post.

I’m not saying that it isn’t acting against free speech, I was just being technical I guess. What I meant was those people can still say what they like on social media but they will pay the price with restrictions on entry to the USA, so it’s freedom of movement that’s the price.

The price is not being allowed to enter the US. Some may not consider that any price at all.

I do understand your feelings about the absurdity, but the replies to your posts point out that it’s not so absurd after all, and they’re very lucid in making their point. So then it appears you just want to be offended by the absurdity of it all.

What do you suppose I was trying to say in relation to this thread? — Frank Apisa

Well you said you liked Van Gogh, but I couldn’t make any connection after that.

It offends me that you think he’s offended! — I like sushi

Or does it mean that society has decided to pick out certain words (sound, actually) and insist that “proper” people not use those words in public?

I think the latter…and I think the notion stinks like an unwashed asshole. — Frank Apisa

It’s not that I think it, he said it.

I want no such fucking thing...and have never suggested any such fucking thing. — Frank Apisa

Well then, just let things go, stop being so offended.

I have not even mentioned censorship. — Frank Apisa

You want to ban the idea of offensive words existing, as being offensive.

In reply to Zhoubotong: art is the opinion of elitists if elitism is people having a preference for particular art or a particular artist, that is, having a subjective point of view of what is good and bad art and even not art at all.

Those who view Shakespeare as a great writer of plays displaying ideas of morality, human nature, conflict or right and wrong, are behaving exactly the same as those who believe Michael is a great director portraying the same ideas, or Saul Bellow or Bergman or Joyce or Tennessee Williams.
Even if we believe the Shakespearean supporters are doing it out of some idea of belonging, glamour, class or sense of superiority, that is their reason, that is the basis for their preference; somehow for some reason they get something from it. It may be unfair that millions are poured into Shakespeare and very little goes to some smaller play that lasts a few months then disappears, but that’s the breaks that goes with artists and their audience.

Maybe Shakespeare is propped up artificially, but no more than a piece of performance art put on at a gallery that can’t actually be sold and taken home, that only appears because the gallery paid the performer to do it and sold some other work as a result from the publicity or the cache the work generates for the gallery.

So all work exists and survives according to its audience. So yes, art is the opinion of elitist groups.

How and why it should find its way into education is another matter? Outside of school people can act on their preference by choosing or ignoring a book or film. Inside of school the work is pressed on them by those who chose the curriculum. Actually, that’s not necessarily the case, the teacher is allowed to chose an artist or writer that he/she can use to work within the demands of the curriculum.

Just some commentary I think belongs in this thread. — Frank Apisa

What are you trying to say in relation to this thread?

Art is an agreement between the artist and his/her audience. — Brett

I want to persevere with this point in relation to elitism and what exactly elitism is.

If art is subjective, and therefor it’s true that art is an agreement between artist and audience, and I don’t see how it can be anything else, then each audience is going to gave an opinion not just about the artist and art they form this agreement with but with work they judge as lesser or not art at all. Each agreement has its own particular preferences, it might be about colour, beauty, technique, imagination, symbolism and Cubism in the visual arts and other preferences in text work.

If this is true then how can anyone even call one of these preferences and its opinion ‘elitist’? It’s merely a preference, but by the audience it’s the real and only thing, naturally. So fans of Shakespeare regard him as a genius with text, timeless, etc., no less than fans of Michael Bay regard him as a genius, and they have their own relative ideas of what is inferior.

So in that sense every group of fans/supporters/audience are elitist.

Art is an agreement between the artist and his/her audience.

If art is subjective, if it’s just a preference and nothing can be said to be better or worse, then the daubs of an ape are just as much art as the Mona Lisa. If art is subjective then there is no arguing about this.

That also means that the mumbling of an old man in a gallery looking at Picasso’s Ma Jolie is as valid as a critics view of a painting or book , and vice versa. Each is entitled and each must be treated as having equal value.

If this is the case with art, then what is art? If it’s not necessarily about techniques, knowledge, ideas and concepts, or emotion, if none of these make it art then what are we left with to call it art? What can we say the artists are actually doing?

What could be the common ground to all these responses? Then apply that to music and dance. Then is it reasonable for a football player to be called an artist, and if so what is he doing for people to call him that?

It could be about expression, but expression of what, of beauty, grace? If so then what is the ape expressing?

In the end is it true that the observer makes it art just by acknowledging it? So the artist doesn’t really exist because anything can be art and anything be an artist.

It looks entirely likely that we have already buggered the world we live in so as to destroy our species anyway. — iolo

I see these sort of comments a lot these days. In the past people have survived the most abject poverty, harsh environmental conditions, lack of food, ignorant cultural practices and gone on to, not only survive, but change parts of the world for the better. Gandhi is someone who comes to mind.

The destruction of our species? Why this sort of self imposed cage? Why this total lack of faith in humanity? Why this belief?

Edit: before anyone jumps on me I do realise Gandhi himself did not come from abject poverty.

I think this conversation has finally gone off the rails.

Is this genius?
“Bay has responded to his critics, saying "I make movies for teenage boys. Oh, dear, what a crime."[77] Besides being accused of making films that pander to a low demographic, critics and audiences have been critical of elements of Bay's filmmaking style such as the overuse of Dutch angles, rapid cutting, and cliché camerawork.” Wikipedia.

Is Mozart a genius, Picasso, Miles Davis, Shakespeare?

A genius can only be recognised for producing work that rouses those of better judgement. — I like sushi

I like that and I like the word genius. And I’d like to believe that there is the work of genius, then there is the work of also rans.

So let’s ignore the also rans, let’s consider the geniuses.

Maybe this is the problem: art seems to be man made (unless you believe in a God), and all things man made have a foundation, a set of rules or agreement for it to function or be accepted. Except with art we can’t seem to find those rules.

Does this mean, then, that

1: art is a one of the great mysteries of man, or

2: it exists outside of us, which would mean there is an objective truth to it.

Indeed it would seem that a book wiil require more imagination to elicit an equivalent emotional response — Janus

I’ve just had a thought about this. Was it the demands on my imagination that gave me more insight into the TTRL book or the skill of the writer that elicited them?

So it begs the question: would ‘Transformers’ as a book or script be able to compete with another novel: ‘The Thin Red Line’ for instance? Probably not. As you say, like must be compared with like.

But your argument is that the novel is superior to film. Interestingly, I have seen the film ‘The Thin Red Line’ and thought it a great film. But I then later read the book and it gave me a lot more information about the characters than the film was able to do and I now see those characters in the film with a lot more depth. So I can’t help but feel that the novel can be superior to film. On the other hand Ingmar Bergman wrote his scripts specifically for film, because he felt the image was the most powerful way to tell the story.

contend it will be required that the film and book being compared are stipulated to be of roughly equal semantic or associative content. — Janus

I have tried to raise that point myself, but I still find it hard to break through the subjective argument posts.

when reading a novel you must use your imagination to visualize the characters, things, places and events described, whereas you do not need to use your imagination at all to see the characters, things, places and events shown in a film. — Janus

Though there are other factors at work in a film, like emotion for instance. And some films are very complex, much more so than ‘Transformer’. Which is the problem I have with ‘Transformers’. It does have a moral to it as Zhoubotong insists, just like ‘Macbeth’, but it’s extremely simplistic and doesn’t require much from the viewer. But then maybe it’s universal because of that simplicity and therefore reaches a greater audience that responds to those values, which is good, I guess.