I agree with all that you say, but focus on detail is not the way to understand art.

I've spent many years pondering art from the perspective of aesthetics, beauty, etc but got nowhere.
I couldn't see the Forrest by examining the trees.

It is only since developing a construct of consciousness that I have understood art to my satisfaction.
Art is a simple concept to me now. I can define it in a sentence.

The trick is : you can understand art only through a concept as broad as all that art can be - and that is only consciousness.

The resultant product of the mind is unified, but influenced by many things

I'm not sure what you are trying to convey?

I believe the subconscious operates on the conscious - it has an effect on the conscious mind. The result is an imperfect conscious state. Not separate but acting together as the one product.

My bad. When I say consciousness I meant also the subconscious - I believe subconsciousness is a function of biology,and psychopathology, which skews consciousness - not all people do.

One flawed personality ( consciousness) looking at another flawed personality ( consciousness )

why are they doing it?

Consiousness is a personal construct that we make ourselves - we are not certain of it -- it needs validation.

The best form of validation is for another consciousness to agree with it, better still for many, if it proliferates it becomes part of universal consciousness.

Thats how we make reality.


I am very slow at this sorry

The artist and the viewer are peers. They are equal.
It is one consciousness interpreting another consciousness

How can we grasp something that is out of reach? Once we grasp it it is in reach - we become conscious of it.

What consciousness is, is perhaps moot. I posted a long explanation of what I believe it to be.But whatever humanity can be is resolved in the mind - a mental construction is made, and from that it is obvious humanity is constrained to mental constructions. Whatever you decide humanity will be - will be a mental construction in your head - and that is all that it will ever be, and can possibly be.

So humanity is constrained by consciousness. How odd then that that is what art has always looked at - for all of cultures, and for all of time?

Punshhh I wasn't meaning to say you were. This form of communication is fraught with peril. there is so much misunderstanding. I enjoy your thoughtful and insightful commentary.

Yes Brett, I've made an edit above.

I believe:

anthropology explores human life. Human life's only constraint is consciousness, and art explores human consciousness and subconsciousness.

All art work is information. Information about what? - all number of things - beauty aesthetics, creativity, life, death, etc, etc, Allof these are subsets of consciousness. The only way to encapsulate what art is , and allow it the freedom to be what it chooses to be is to encapsulate it within consciousness.

In the end you look to art as information about human consciousness.

Interesting, people who are not immersed in the art world, or who have not followed the developments closely over the last 40 or 50 years, dictating what art is, or what isn't art, this is a laymans definition of art and is not comprehensive enough to be regarded as philosophy of art. Really without understanding the development of art culturally, these questions cannot be answered because art in culture is an evolution and what does, or doesn't constitute art changes with the culture. — Punshhh

Why so defeatist Punshhh.
I believe anybody can make great art. It is not necessary to have knowledge of, or be active in the art world. One can look inwards - explore the darkest depths of one's consciousness. Who would dare sink to ones soft middle and confront all the nitty gritty that might lurk there? Who has the courage for such exploration?

Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud come to mind, They did exhibit, but i doubt they were much concerned with anything external to them.

Art allows one to make their own rules, an artist has only one constraint - that is the knowledge that whatever they might produce will always be information about their consciousness and subconsciousness.

So who dares to reveal that to the world?

Thanks for the info re edit.

It’s just that we should probably acknowledge that the value we place on art is often fictional, like money or rare gems (that aren’t actually so rare).@praxis

Exactly its all about understanding, or one consciousness looking at another consciousness

The last line in previous post should read :

You have a new idea in this thread, but only a few can see it, and most just ignore it. And this is very much a part of 'what is art'

How do you edit posts?

There has been a lot of discussion about aesthetics and beauty in art. Concern with these concepts are still prevalent in the visual arts. Artists are a diverse lot with the freedom to be concerned with whatever they wish. I cant speak for everybody, but I think it would be fair to say that the penultimate focus of art today and over the past 30 years has been creativity. Creativity is used loosely amongst the general public.
In contemporary art it has a strict meaning.

It goes something like this: In all fields of human endeavor, there are leaders at the cutting edge of their field. They are the only ones with the opportunity to be creative. They do this by grasping beyond the edge of human achievement and clasping onto something, and then bringing the rest of the field with them.

Its two important steps

1: Finding something beyond current understanding - beyond current endeavor / achievement

2: Bringing the rest of the field with them

The second step is the Hard Problem of Creativity - it is necessary to convince others that you are right to bring the discovery into reality, to bring it into the collective consciousness.

Although they have made a discovery, the world is blind to it until they understand it.

What is the difference between an art work that is hidden, and and art work in plain sight that nobody understands? Nothing

People who are successful in this are the only creatives - they are the true leaders of the world.
They are the ones who expand our consciousness.

Relate this to Van Gogh, or Galileo , or Copernicus or whoever discovered the world was round.

Most artists achieve this to a very minimal degree by creating an art work that varies in form or content from previous art. you would be familiar with artists doing weird shit.

So few achieve a sizable shift in the understanding of art.- Duchamp is unparalleled in this.


You have a new idea in this thread, but only a few can see it, and most just ignore it. And this is very much a part of what is art.

Blah 1880

The Genius of van Gogh is best appreciated by the way he raised the paint in his brush strokes.
try putting one piece of paper over another, and focus on the edge. you cant focus on both pieces at the same time. The result is a blur.

van Gogh was dialing knobs in peoples heads in 1860

Few people can raise a finger to the empathy van Gogh's paintings generate

That is something attributed to him. He did not want to live that life, but was forced to by his convictions. He knew he was right in a world that thought he was wrong.

He is one of the true Geniuses of painting

Brett you should love van Gogh

Think of punk music
apply it to the times
change the class to merchant middle

and you have van Gogh

Why did Van Gogh paint as he did? Because he did not agree with the aesthetics of the time.

His paintings were popularly perceived as ugly

Form follows function is a popular concept in art

There is also a consequence to what art you make and buy . It either maintains the status quo, or challenges it.

The same applies to what you hold as your definition of art if any:)

I would agree with you Brett.

i was watching a YouTube video of the outsider art fair last night, Its something Ive been following a number of years now, and I couldn't help thinking how much their work has improved.

A few years back it was quite clunky and awkward, but so many people have learnt and brushed up - and it occurred to me of course they would, like art students they would learn what is required to improve their work . A lot of the work was very impressive, and I was mentally comparing it to contemporary art and thinking how better it was. How it had character and a sense of the culture it came from.

I imagine much of this work originated without meaning to be art, or to be displayed as such, much less sold.

I have a feeling outsider art has the potential to challenge the art market in a similar way that aboriginal art has in Australia.

Most of the artist that we have in the mainstream are all about buisness and not about art.Bad art is worse than nothing. When you have nothing infront of you. You probably feel normal but when you see some terrible stuff, you feel terrible and abhor it. That's why l have a tendency to not even regard terrible art as art and one of the biggest BS told is that art depends on taste of the perceiver but l think every art has some standard and time will always preserve great art if people develop the right perspective to see it in line of the artistic tradition. This view also answers the question of artist being neglected during their lifetime and only achieving the status of a great artist after passing away. I hold that great art will always rise to the top as long as the artist tries to present it to the society. — Wittgenstein

I'll second that

@jgill you might be interested, I cant remember her name, but a photo lab assistant accidentally exposed some large 6x4 photo paper, people were so pleased with the result that it turned into a career.

Brett and i were discussing the relevance to art and culture and we agreed that art has some influence, and no doubt that it dose. It was quite influential 30 years ago, but its influence today is surely diminished. Not that its influence is irrelevant, but surely less so.
My children have grown up with a screen in their face, so surely social media is the dominant influence on culture today. This leads me to believe that if art wants to continue to be relevant to culture it must move to the digital platform, and in many ways it has

I originally deemed this thread a work of art in jest, but have since been seriously thinking about its viability as a serious art form.

If art is an expression of human consciousness, then what better demonstration of that then this thread in a philosophy forum.

It has all the elements we deeply value in a work of art :

It explores the idea of what is art
It provides a definition
It demonstrates the difficulty of acceptance of the definition
It is a great resource for a casual inquirer wishing to acquaint themselves with what art is.

It also has human drama.
through posts a sense of the other person emerges.
Their consciousness is slowly revealed.
Like characters in a play they interact , clash, dominate, submit, but over time they learn to respect and care for each other

It shows humanity as a thinking feeling creature. Consciousness at its best.

I would challenge anybody to suggest an art work that would stand up to all that this thread contains.

Ha Ha, Its art to him but not to us, since we will never see it

Did you see Birdman. The scene where he shoots himself for art

An art work has to gain the audiences attention, then say something to them. Very hard to do

It would work. Stelark used to suspend himself from ceilings by hooks through his skin

art is an expression of human consciousness, and art work is information about the artists consciousness and subconsciousness

The above is the definition - this covers everything you can possibly say.

And what you end up saying is art will reveal a lot about you.

A precondition is that its presented as art. Think performance

In the end that's all that's required. You produce something , put it out there and it gets loved or hated.

All the rest is immaterial.

We know what art is: art is an expression of human consciousness, and art work is information about the artists consciousness and subconsciousness

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

Not Quite.. You have to produce something that you say has value ( that will reveal your consciousness to the world ) to love or laugh at. Anybody can do it, any object will do.

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

Until a few days ago there was no definition of art.

Duchamp taught us that art can be anything the artist wishes it to be. He illustrated this by presenting a urinal as art.

Nothing else is required of an art object except that an artist deems it to be art.

This has been the state of art for the last hundred years . It is why Pollock could drip paint, and Warhol could stencil prints,and Hurst could cut up cows, and Abramovic could perform, etc, etc it is why I can call a thread in a forum art.

This argument of what is art and what is not is over - its ancient history.

There is no distinction between an arbitrary object and a work of art.

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

So call yourself an artist and deem that something is art - like magic it is!
Then you get on with what matters - what is good art. and why ?


To put it in the terms discussed - what if the archaeologist dug up Duchamp's urinal ?

@Punshhh I found the search function thanks. I have watched bacteria move seemingly meaningfully across a petri dish. They can convey antibiotic resistance amongst each other