In answer to the question, what is a painting, a preliminary meaning of "a painting" may be understood by looking at the following 8 objects. — RussellA

Good/Ditto.

Don't you think this may be considered a painting as well?

Japanese Shodō.

Don't you think this may be considered a painting as well? — javi2541997

Certainly. In the same way that Braque's "Le Figaro" includes text within its composition.

They are both paintings because they are both intended as paintings, and not intended as something like a street sign giving directions to drivers.

The same object can be an artwork and not an artwork at the same time.

For example, if the stop sign is intended as a street sign giving directions to drivers then it is not an artwork, but the moment someone says "that stop sign looks like an artwork" then it becomes an artwork.

As the saying goes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

That was a spellcheck error where it somehow put "not" instead of "more." You charitably read me as rational and deciphered my intent correctly. Very Davidsonian of you. — Hanover

Brilliant.

I'm really enjoying reading everyone's answers. I want to put forward one other possibility as I'm thinking it over because I haven't seen it said yet and I want to see what others think.

So this will be close to the idea that a painting is what we say it is, but with more details. I want to say that there are criteria of judgment which differentiate a painting from the wall it sits on, and that these criteria are something decided by our artworld. In some sense the expectation set by going into a museum that showcases great works defines what gets to be considered art and what does not get to be considered art.

But then that's not quite right, of course. It's just a familiar experience for anyone whose bothered to go to an art museum to draw from: there's a certain expectation of the pieces that is different from the temple it sits in. Usually the museum is considered a peice of architectural art, but how we judge a building and how we judge a painting are very different.

I'm inclined to follow along with -- "family resemblance" gets used a lot because it resolves a lot of the various counter-examples you'll inevitably capture with a strict set of criteria. I like the idea of there being a sort of paradigmatic set which we call "paintings", and from that set we can start to make some distinctions that will hold in a good enough way -- we can see why someone would say that -- while acknowledging there's likely a counter-example within the set to any proposed strict criteria.

Something like a formalism of judgment which acknowledges the difficulties in stating universal criteria for something that's probably better suited for a family resemblance.

The distinctions I'm thinking through and liking: everyone's theory on the difference between a drawing and a painting has been more illuminating that I suspected it would be: I thought the far comparisons would do better, but actually I'm enjoying these various distinctions between drawings, paintings, pictures, and art: wet/dry, High/low, warm-up/real-deal...

A photograph is a copy of what exists in the world, and therefore depicts what is necessarily true. — RussellA

My point was that prior to photographic technology paintings served a similar purpose (often political).

A photograph is a copy of what exists in the world, and therefore depicts what is necessarily true. — RussellA

At one point, that was accurate. But the technology rapidly advanced so that what is now presented in a photograph is as open to question as what a painter paints.

Yeah, that's true. And even before that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz is widely credited with demonstrating that photography is just as much an art as anything else rather than a perfect representation.

Nice! Very well explained! :up: :up:

I'm enjoying these various distinctions between drawings, paintings, pictures, and art: wet/dry, High/low, warm-up/real-deal... — Moliere

As the French say "vive la différence", or rather, as Derrida might have said, "vive le différance".

In what way is something that is a painting different to something that is not a painting?

According to Derrida, meaning is not inherent in a sign, but arises from its relationship with other signs, and where the meaning of a sign changes over time as new signs keep appearing and old signs disappear (Wikipedia - Différance)

For example, the word "house" derives its meaning from the way it differs from "shed", "mansion", "hotel", "building" etc.

For example, Derain's painting "Houses of Parliament" derives its meaning from the way it differs to the building the Houses of Parliament.

It is as much about language as it is about the language of art.

Symbols are only useful if they have an opposite. Good only means something if there is bad. Hot only means something if there is cold. Painting only means something if there are things that are not paintings, such as sculptures, photographs, music or happenings.

So what is a painting may be answered by saying that a painting is not a sculpture, not a photograph, not music and not a happening.

I have no training in art. I think there are three key elements when it comes to artwork, namely, idea, form, and media. The idea is the mental focus of the artist, which is expressed in the artwork. Form is the configuration of media that plays a role in conveying the idea between the artist and the audience. Media is material used for the artwork.

I don't buy this idea that paintings, and art in general, can be equated with narrative. Narrative rather seems like one form painting, and art, can take.

Representational painting may aim at specific narrative. More often, it is the viewer filling in narrative gaps themselves. A painting may not aim at narrative at all, it may capture the feel of a place, a time, or a mood. It may symbolize something other than what is literally depicted. With more abstract paintings, like the example you gave the idea of narrative seems pretty hopeless.

What if, art is just a human created object that is meant to be enjoyed and/or pondered, rather than merely used? So, games would be art, and this seems pretty natural to me: games, like other art, start not from a creative void, but from existing genres, which the creator then varies to their liking. Food, to the extent it is meant to do more than nourish, is art. I'm even willing to admit sex toys as art. If so, paintings are just one of many culturally defined genres or categories of art.

Duchamp showed that what is art ultimately rests on cultural context. If you take a prosaic item and place it into an art-context, it becomes art. This is not just some abstract theory, everyone directly experiences it. The urinal transforms from a thing you piss into, into something about which you ask questions like, "but what did he mean?", or say things like "that's brilliant!" or "that's ridiculous!"

I don't think that's true. — Janus

This is not true either — Janus

Fair points, honestly that post was half-baked.

A painting is a picture whose predominant medium is paint. A drawing is a picture whose predominant medium is pencil, charcoal, pastel, chalk etc.. There is no hard and fast distinction...it's basically a somewhat loose distinction between wet and dry mediums. — Janus

I think your notion of "picture" needs clarifying here -- you've stated that a picture need not be representational, and others have mostly taken you to task on "picture" because it seems to indicate a kind of representation? I think?

Either way if this is how you'll differentiate paintings from drawings -- dry and wet pictures -- it's fair to ask "So how do we identify a picture?"

That was a spellcheck error where it somehow put "not" instead of "more." — Hanover

Yep. I had given that a high probability.

Same referent though. — Hanover

Not if reference is inscrutable...

Ya'know, since it's a pixelated image....

Not that referent, but this one!

I think I lean towards 2, though accepting there's something to 1 in differentiating, say, between drawing and painting.

I think I agree, though I'm inclined towards the idiom of formalism for judgment rather than looking at how we use language in those circumstances.

Not that that's an easy distinction to distinguish.

there's something to 1 in differentiating, say, between drawing and painting. — Moliere

Yes, because here we have a question about the actual composition of the object, which Danto showed was not the question concerning art tout court. I should have noted that in my post, thanks.

What are those stories? What are those circumstances? How do they vary from era to era, culture to culture? — J

I'd settle for question 1 and 2. Even within one culture (perhaps artworld?) it's hard to specify the stories and circumstances of art.

So have we moved from aesthetics to Art History?

And why is there not an expression for visual arts equivalent to "musicology"? — Banno

I'd like to think that we haven't moved from aesthetics to art history, tho art history provides good examples to think through.

Doesn’t it matter why we are asking? What purpose will the answer serve? — Fire Ologist

Sure!

My purpose here is to introduce philosophical thinking about aesthetics, given the amount of push-back I got in suggesting that aesthetics and philosophy are related.

But the only way to do that is to turn towards the "pure" aesthetics -- so you can see there's more to my personal interest in the matter, but perhaps you'll see what I'm talking about. But that can't be done when matters of money and such are at stake -- like the paintings in a museum -- but rather when we don't have anything to lose by our expression.

How do we judge then?

It certainly matter why we're asking -- and perhaps aesthetic judgment can be differentiated from practical judgment on the basis that we're not asking for practical reasons of action, but only for reasons of admiration, attraction, beauty, interest, etc.

Yes, because here we have a question about the actual composition of the object, which Danto showed was not the question concerning art tout court. I should have noted that in my post, thanks. — J

O no worries. I'm glad to have you thinking along given your familiarity with Danto and how it seems intuitive to me.

I'd like to think that we haven't moved from aesthetics to art history — Moliere

This is a great question, IMO. I'll go out on a limb and say that nothing very interesting can be said about aesthetics without locating what you're saying in some kind of art-making tradition. This means either assuming, or outright providing, some art history. I agree it's not a "move from," but a way of giving aesthetic discussion something to talk about. The two discourses require each other, in order to make sense.

I'm interested. Can you say more?

Art is the persistence of memory -- Salvador Dalí.

The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order.

Isn't painting the way we express our dreams and hallucinations, while drawing is a simple technique? — javi2541997

So this gets into something that I'm thinking about -- the semantic layer of art.

If the soft watches are a symbol, then there's something to interpret beyond "soft watches on canvas by painter dali": a deeper meaning to the art-object.

Your reflection is wonderful, as always. No further comments.

I do.

I might put doubt on a printed paper using Times New Roman saying "This is Art", but painting letters is part of art at this point.

I'm a huge Hopper fan. — Hanover

Same

I've had the privilege of seeing his paintings in MOMA and the Chicago Art Institute.

Derrida is an interesting philosopher to bring into the mix.

One part I'd caution here though is that Derrida is not an aesthetic philosopher. There's the system of signs, yes, and art can be seen as a system of signs that define one another -- as has been present in this conversation.

Also his notion of "absence" fits very easily into discussions on art -- it's not what was said as much as what was not said, at times. The unspoken, the not-present, is meaningful.

But I do think he's focusing in on the problems of knowledge and inference given these particular thoughts on language rather than explicitly addressing aesthetic questions.

His would be a philosophy that I think I could argue as interesting if I could come up with an aesthetics of philosophy. ("interesting" in the manner that others who like philosophy ought to take him seriously)

But for now I'm trying to develop the ideas of aesthetic thinking, with respect to philosophy at least, at all.

Yes, I agree.

This goes to something @unenlightened said some years ago, and it stuck with me (though of course, being philosophicalish, I resist it): Philosophy is parasitic.

Or, perhaps, symbiotic, to put it more kindly.

Not always, of course, but I agree that philosophy of art and history of art require and feed on one another in a good way. Same with science, for that matter.

I have no training in art. I think there are three key elements when it comes to artwork, namely, idea, form, and media. The idea is the mental focus of the artist, which is expressed in the artwork. Form is the configuration of media that plays a role in conveying the idea between the artist and the audience. Media is material used for the artwork. — MoK

So, given this tripartite distinction, what makes a painting a painting?

It's a good set of distinctions, IMO -- but I want to see them in operation.

A painting is a picture
— Janus
Why?

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square (1915) explicitly does not represent anything.

Also, note that "picture" does not occur in the OP.

A painting captures a moment in a narrative.
— BC
I like that.

Not all paintings, then, are pictures. — Banno

PICTURE | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › english › picture
picture
uk/ˈpɪk.tʃər/ us/ˈpɪk.tʃɚ/
noun
a drawing, painting, photograph, etc.
an image seen on a television or cinema screen
a film
the cinema
...
verb [ T ]
to imagine something
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You are working with a restrictive interpretation of the word 'picture'. Malevich's work depicts a black square. It is a depiction of an abstract object rather than a physical object.

From Wikipedia:
In his manifesto for the Suprematist movement, Malevich stated that the paintings were intended as "a desperate struggle to free art from the ballast of the objective world" by focusing solely on form.[4]

Not all paintings capture a moment in a narrative either. Paintings may do that as may drawings.

In any case the OP specifically asked what criteria make something count as a painting, asking what is the difference between a painting and a drawing.

I don't think that's true.
— Janus
This is not true either
— Janus

Fair points, honestly that post was half-baked. — hypericin

:up:

I think your notion of "picture" needs clarifying here -- you've stated that a picture need not be representational, and others have mostly taken you to task on "picture" because it seems to indicate a kind of representation? I think?

Either way if this is how you'll differentiate paintings from drawings -- dry and wet pictures -- it's fair to ask "So how do we identify a picture?" — Moliere

I hope what I've written above answers the question. I realize there is a conventional distinction between representational and abstract paintings and drawings, but as I said earlier I think abstract paintings and drawings are representational in a difference sense in that they represent abstract objects or images.

@javi2541997 failed to answer my question as to why he didn't think the Dali picture he used as an example is representaional. Perhaps Moliere, your notion of "picture" needs clarifying in order to identify just where it conflicts with the picture of the meaning of 'picture' I have been presenting.