Phaedrus receives a kiss: Defiling a work of art.

Art can be art whether it moves me or not.

Note, I never said it moved me, just that it needs to move someone. There are many art-forms out there that do nothing for me, but for me to judge them as not being art is, IMHO, selfish or nonconstructive.

Is a movie no longer a movie if no one goes to see it?

No, THAT is art! (lol!)

so, let's say I create a painting as an outlet for some stressful experience I've been though. I'm not intending for it to be art, I'm merely expressing my emotions through a visual medium. Does that mean it's not art, just because I didn't intend for it to be?

Well, I'm not saying this person specifically objects to its categorization as art. He or she just didn't intend for it to be. And by what you're saying, to be art it has to be intended to be art.

I think the emphasis should be less on intention and more on expression.

Of course, you have to draw the line somewhere (haha).

I kinda think anything done intentionally is art. It doesn't have to be done with the intention of being art, as long as it's done intentionally. Does that make sense?

Rephrased, it's anything done for its own sake.

You punched him in the face because you were mad at him - the punch wasn't done for its own sake. If, however, while punching you twisted in a particular way not because it would make your punch more effective but because you think it'd look cool - ie, simply because you wanted to do it - that particular aspect of your punch would be artistic.

Maybe.

I don't actually know anything.

I narrowly escaped a career as a medical illustrator. My heroes were Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica, George Stubbs Anatomy of the Horse, Da Vinci, and the like. Art as information. I learned to work with pen and ink very early, thought of art as a mastery first of technique, then of subject matter.

A wise old woman, an art teacher in high school befriended me. She taught me to work in watercolor and stained glass, and became my mentor for several years. I once asked her how to dissect away all the baloney from this "oh, it's art" rhetoric so ably discussed on this thread.

She replied, "It's rather like hitting a target. If you're hitting what you aim at, as an artist, it's good art. Of course, if you're only throwing at the broad side of a barn, then naturally you'll hit it. The trouble began when artists began signing their names to their pieces, and the artist dispensed with the artisan part of his nature."

The cathedrals were decorated by master stone masons, men (and for all we know, women) who never signed their names. We have masons who did leave their marks in the stones, but the building of a cathedral was a community endeavor, ongoing for hundreds of years, a nameless process. Art patrons would demand sculptures of their mistresses, Biblical scenes and the like: it isn't until art was divorced from the artist that we see these various Art Movements. The artist stands beside his Bogus Art and loudly proclaims it good: the viewer, not the artist, shall be the judge of the matter. Be careful, o ye artists, that in your painting of barns you do not become the barn painter.

I don't actually know anything.

That's what I keep telling people but they all still think you're god.

Brian Ford...I actually don't quite agree with your definition: Art can be art whether it moves me or not. Art is based on intent. If something is intended to be art and it doesn't move me, it just becomes art that I don't particularly care for.

To me the definition of movement goes to performance art which has impression and value rooted in memory. For material art, it requires material and effort to create value, less than that is nothin' but buzz.

For material art, it requires material and effort to create value, less than that is nothin' but buzz.

How much effort, though?

It took literal, though minimal, effort for the artist in this case to procure the blank canvas.

That's the point, it isn't hand made canvas or some reclaimed thing, it's visa, everywhere you want to be, anyone. The act of creating material art, is to invest some piece of the soul upon the material/s, to yield a unique creation. He performed the act of a decorator and inspired a dialogue fit for a motivational speaker.

So, your saying that if you don't understand something, it ceases to be art?

No. I think art is in the eye of the beholder. Some people are able to look at a painting and see something more than what's there. I have a hard time doing that. I took a class once and on the first day the professor told us to look at the mural on the wall and write down what we saw. All I wrote was what was actually pictured. My mind simply doesn't work like that, although, the older I get the more I seem to be able to look beyond what's in front of me.

Also, if I had presented a blank canvas it would have been because I suck at art and was too lazy to try and produce anything worthwhile. I am assuming Twombly is an accomplished artist and was trying to say something with the blank canvas.

So, your saying that if you don't understand something, it ceases to be art?

That's how I see things too. It will always be a painting, that is not in question. Whether it is truly art or not depends on how it strikes you. I divide things into art/non-art instead of good art/bad art because I think the term bad art is an oxymoron. I've done a few paintings. They sucked. They were not art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

Visual art is defined as the arrangement of colors, forms, or other elements "in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium".[1] The nature of art has been described by Richard Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture".[2]

A painting can be an arrangement of colors and forms, but if it doesn't affect the sense of beauty it is missing the essential characteristic of art.

Not to mention that "beauty" is wholly subjective, and thus meaningless as a metric of judgment.

Did you guys read the next sentence?

The nature of art has been described by Richard Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture".

Or if you read a little further:

Beyond this description, there is no general agreed-upon definition of art, since defining the boundaries of "art" is subjective.

You can define it how you want, others will disagree. If it doesn't affect the sense of beauty (NOT the same thing as being beautiful), it's not art to me. Yes Jack, beauty, like art, is subjective and there is no standard metric of judgment. You can't give one painting a 9.8 on the art scale, and another 7.4 on the art scale.

a frame on the concept of nothing

That sounds like the name of an indie band or something.

That too.

Eric@#4-

...but I don't think (note think, I'm not set in this) that I'd give an artist credit for essentially nothing

.

The "nothing" of the painting is something because of what surrounds it.

It's a negative space in whatever environment it's placed in. Perhaps the meaning of the piece then is to get us to look at the world around us. A contrast. A counterpoint.

Here's the thing, for me...I like art. When I travel, I actually *enjoy* hitting up the museums. The more the merrier. I even understand "statement" pieces, to a degree. But there comes a point, for me, where I just have to call bull@!$%# (or laziness, or copout, or whatever.) A blank canvas? A strong emotional reaction to a blank canvas? Such agonizing pretension just turns me off...

But there comes a point, for me, where I just have to call bull@!$%# (or laziness, or copout, or whatever.)

Same here.

However, my point stops short of most "statement pieces" even. Does that mean I can call you a loon, or a copout, if a statement piece you "get" isn't one that I "get"?

I get the same thing out of almost every single poem that has ever been written.

Dear God, I can't stand e.e. cummings.

That's just pretense up the wazoo.

A lot of people who don't like statement pieces also don't know the history, and dislike it out of context.

And I guess that's where I tend to separate statement pieces from art. I think art should stand on its own, good or bad.

Oh good Lord. Cy Twombly is the king of the Bogus Art Movement. Picasso was a genius, because he kept his inner child intact, Picasso could actually paint and draw with the spontaneous genius of the Japanese calligraphers. Twombly and his poseur companions made an art form of their gnomic pronouncements upon the obvious. I am especially amused by Rauschenberg's little koan: "An empty canvas is full only if you want it to be full."

There's a stage in the life of every adolescent where it's All About Rebellion. We expect it in our children, it's part of becoming an individual. Yet somewhere along the line, art needs to be more than a blank canvas. Yes, an empty canvas can be full, in a masturbatory recursion upon the theme that anything hanging on the wall of a gallery is art.

Bogus is as bogus does. Now, here's where your argument falls all to bits: paint a canvas you can get down at the artist's supply store with titanium white.

Now try to sell it. Put it up on your website. I'll ring up Interpol and say "Brian Ford's forging Cy Twombly"

Now, have you actually forged a Twombly, or not?

Let's take it one step further, let's say you attempted to sell it as Cy Twombly's Phaedrus. Could you defend yourself on the basis that your label is itself a work of art?

The magistrates would take a dim view of your argument. You see, Bogus Art is not really art at all, it's just a silly attempt to pass off a bucket of bullpiss as artistic lemonade.

Why sure it's conceptual art. All art is conceptual.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance: that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

In Bogus Art, the real Pieces of Work are sipping chardonnay, wandering about in the gallery, admiring the Emperor's New Clothes. Yes, the mirror is held up to nature, like seeks like, and the bogus people search out the bogus art to adorn their bogus lives. Why, that kiss improved the painting so much, the price should have been doubled. Many another work of art has been kissed in its time, they build a special fence in Orthodox church called the ikonostasion, to divide the altar space from the parisioners, and where the ikons may be kissed accordingly.

I was impressed by 4'33" until I saw him sue someone for copying the concept. Ha! Maybe he should sue me for this ............................ It's only an excerpt but.

Confusing title, for me. :-p

I think "skill" is what some people use to differentiate good art from bad art, or non-art. While I can admire technique and skill, I also admire the courage of the first time artist--the tentative strokes, the outrageous imagination that comes from not-knowing.

I always thought that public sculpture was meant to be touched and experience tactilely, my college art history major girlfriend was horrified at the idea. I never thought paintings were meant to be marked, though some of them with use of really thick, textural paint I wanted to touch as well.

Can you copyright a blank canvas or a blank piece of paper? I don't think that meets the minimum definition of copyrightable material.

Brian White

My comment was a joke with an oblique reference to this piece by the author
.

I mean this piece

voted that it is Art, and the discussion of this article proves it. The Artist has accomplished his goal.

Except we are not discussing this because of the artist but because of someone elses action. She may be the true artist here.

My, my don't you have high opinion of yourself. I read comment, I comprehend your comment, and I disagree with your comment. Deal.

Allow me to elaborate my comment. The entire thrust of your point is that Phaedrus is a work of art because as blank canvas it has inspired intellectual discussion. Except it didn't. Brian didn't post this because the artist put up a blank canvas. Instead this is posted cause someone kissed the blank canvas. Now to be honest there are few different ways I would attack that particular notion as a reason for dismissing it as art. Instead of choosing refute the point from an intellectual perspective, you chose to be insultive. This is called being a jerk.

This is called being a jerk.

That's putting it mildly.

I am not one to consider those who are smarter then me, or better at something then I, and, who may know more then I do about something, A Jerk. When they tell me something and chastise me, if I say or do something stupid. I tend to seek out teir company, and look up to those people, because that is how we get smarter, better, from those who are willing to teach us, or by trial and error. I did not enter a disparaging comment to someone, Except we are not discussing this because of the artist but because of someone elses action. That tells them, they don't know what they are talking about. simply because I didn't understand it, or perhaps because it was over my head.

Art is like that too, sometimes. We may not understand it, but it's still art. And should be respected as such. this women is guilty of vandalism. I am an artist, have been my whole life, and make a living at it, sometimes. But that's not why I do it. I do it because that's who I am and I have to. If you like what I create, great, but if you don't. Don't destroy it. Any idiot/animal can destroy something.

I would argue that the "kiss" is a direct extension of the sort of discussion the artist intended to invoke, though an extreme extension. So, without the canvas presented in a gallery setting, the kiss would have never occurred.

A valid point. However, I think just because something inspires thought, discussion, or emotion doesn't make it art. I suppose that is why I have a problem with calling a blank canvas art. When it comes down to it he picked up a canvas and said it. Some people agreed with him and so it is. That doesn't work for me. If that is art the canvas maker should sue him for selling his idea without his permission.

To me there has to be more than just being able to inspire thoughts and feeling about something to call it Art. Doing that is just being creative, and makes everything Art. Art is something more. Art is capturing an image or concept using a talent or skill applied to a medium. It is that application of that talent or skill that in my opinion makes something art. There is something more to Art though. In part I think art needs have aesthetic quality to it. Something beyond just being able to stimulate the senses but also be appealing. I hate to go on here but to be honest there is more to Art than even applying skill and aesthetics. Unforntunately I can't define it. Let me put it like this - when I look at the table I'm putting my feet on, I don't see a work of Art. I see something artistic in that there is skill in its design and that it is aethetically pleasing but it isn't what I would call Art. My problem is I'm not sure what it is that it is missing. Perhaps because it does not evoke an emotion or thought beyond being a nice looking table. I'm not sure. I suppose what it comes down while it work of art in the sense craftsmanship and skill it is not a work of Art in the sense of formality or function? Ultimately it is this undefinable (to me) quality with the application talent/skill and aesthetics that makes something Art.

Getting back to Phaedrus that is probably what keeps it from being a work of Art to me. I can sorta see an aesthetic quality to it. I can even give a message, emotion or thoughts about it. It lacks an application of skill/talent though (well except the canvas makers I suppose). In fact about the only reason I think it is considered Art (or even art) and is apparently worth $2 million is because Cy Twombly took a canvas called it Phaedrus and said it was. What do you think would happen if I went out bought a canvas called it George, spoke about it representing everything and nothing, and tried to sell it to an art museum? I'd be out the cost of a piece of canvas. Same point you made about the woman kissing the canvas. If she kissed a blank canvas she bought at an art store and tried to sell it - she'd get butkis and we wouldn't be discussing her.

Ultimately, Art is a subjective thing. To me though Art has to be some more than a five year old can do with finger paint set or a blank canvas.

This is one of those times I wish I was better person than who I am. I'm not so I'll apologize to Brian. I'll understand if you choose to delete this or the community chooses to collapse this comment. I'll ask no one else as respond except in the form of votes or reports.

I am not one to consider those who are smarter then me, or better at something then I, and, who may know more then I do about something, A Jerk.

Neither do I. When that person seeks to condescend, belittle, and insult me then I call them as I see them.

When they tell me something and chastise me, if I say or do something stupid. I tend to seek out teir company, and look up to those people, because that is how we get smarter, better, from those who are willing to teach us, or by trial and rror

Personally, I try to seek out people who will correct me without chastising me. I expect that someone trying to correct me to do it by giving correct information and not insulting me. Call it a style choice over your method of insult without any information relative to the topic.

I did not enter a disparaging comment to someone, Except we are not discussing this because of the artist but because of someone elses action. That tells them, they don't know what they are talking about. simply because I didn't understand it, or perhaps because it was over my head.

Touchy aren't you. The comment is simply what it is on its face. My initial comment merely refutes your point that Phaedrus is justified as a work of Art because of this discussion instead of this discussion is because of this womans action. It is no reflection on what you know or don't know. In fact I rather presumed you have some idea you know what your talking about and probably would be able to make a reasonable argument against it if your were so inclined. You didn't like the comment - fair enough - try debating it on reason instead of insults.

Art is like that too, sometimes. We may not understand it, but it's still art. And should be respected as such. this women is guilty of vandalism. I am an artist, have been my whole life, and make a living at it, sometimes. But that's not why I do it. I do it because that's who I am and I have to. If you like what I create, great, but if you don't. Don't destroy it. Any idiot/animal can destroy something.

That is a least a point we can agree on even one not in discussion or contention. The woman was wrong to kiss it. I'd call it unintended vanalism since it appears her intent wasn't to ruin even if that is the thoughtless effect. While it is debatable whether Phaedrus is Art or not it is still property and not hers to ruin.

This I know is the modern day acknowledgement of art, of which to me means that any idiot can create some utter rubbish and then display it as art. The word artist has lost its meaning it use to have talented and quality aspect to it, know today a piece of bull@!$%# in the middle of a room is called art.

I am an impressionist but also I can prove that I do have art talent by painting fine portraits and seascapes. Most of the so called artist today have no true talent other than explaining poetically the piece of rubbish they are calling art.

I am sorry but I can not deem a blank canvas as being art but feel it is a lack of artistic talent.

I am an impressionist but also I can prove that I do have art talent by painting fine portraits and seascapes. Most of the so called artist today have no true talent other than explaining poetically the piece of rubbish they are calling art.

What if a person tries to paint a seascape, but does it badly?

Is that still art?

Where's the dividing line that defines "talented enough for art"?