[gizmo]

Thank you. I was thinking about deleting the comment because it's so disjointed and a bit of a braindump, but now I'll leave it up.

I don't agree that art is just in the eye of the beholder, but this probably isn't the place to get into that whole argument. In short, some things must be art because they're truly timeless, other things cannot be art because they're strictly worse than something else. If you have X, and X' an uninspired derivative of X, then X' cannot be art. So I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of necessary attributes for art. I don't think you (plural you) do art justice by saying it's all subjective.

[Radix]

When you put it that way I agree with you. But I don't believe art is just in the eye of the beholder. I believe there is a web of definitions for art that all overlap. Great Art is art that mostly agreed by everyone that it is great art. People the world over converge to believe a certain symmetry and proportion makes the most beautiful face. In the same way I believe there is a shared inclination for what is Great Art [1]. But I don't know what it is, and challenge you to define it, because it's a little different for everyone, particularly subject to their perspective.

Let's consider person A and person B. Both A and B see and consider derivative art X' separately. A thinks: there's nothing original here. She's already seen art X. B thinks: wow, how interesting. B has not seen art X and so the uninspired derivation is still interesting.

Similarly, I think the Mona Lisa is a reasonably accurate painting of an unattractive woman. There is nothing beautiful or intrinsically interesting about it. It's due to POV. In fact, each of your examples in the OP is a different perspective. A different reason to consider something art. If you had a stricter definition I don't see how you could change perspective so easily.

I actually reduced all words defined on emotions to being subjective. I don't think this causes a problem. I don't see this as doing art injustice. Saying it is just subjective just gives us a spot to start from.

(Oi, now I don't know if I made sense.) [1] There was a PBS like program on the BBC one night that discussed some research about this.