| What you don't get is that art is a social hack. A long long time ago art, craft, science and even what then passed for engineering and manufacturing, were all pretty much the same thing. Over time we started to separate things, first science split off, but eventually we even split craft from art. And what's left in art is not some sensible definition like what can educate the illiterate, enlighten the literate, and entertain the enlightened. It's not even some fuzzy definition like what ever is a comment on the human condition. The stand for an art piece could totally be that, until the artist tells you it's just the stand the art is still coming. Even some artists who make amusing and animated art have been accused of not making art at all but some kind of crafty floss for the eyes bullshit that so totally not art. (Please be aware that when I wrote the above I had sculptures in mind, not video games.) Art, and I don't just mean the products of art, but the all encompassing culture, critics, buyers, sellers, "artists", groupies, the whole thing: it is all a social hack. If you totally buy into and can't use your own taste to tell something good from something else, we'll then you've been totally 0wn3d. If you just like music and some other artsy type things, but don't get "it". Well then you're doing much better then people who overpay for crap they don't understand, but you still don't get it. If you get recognition and/or fame, money, what ever, but you get for something which requires a lot of work/effort/time/talent, what ever, then you're really good at that thing! But you're not necessary also really good at art. Even if the thing is something everyone agrees is super artsy, like painting. If you're getting paid, especially if it's a lot, for anything that doesn't require much of anything, this includes work/time/loss of dignity/etc, if you can get paid a lot from "art" for not doing much, well then you get it and are winning at this particular game. |
Art is the social objects that people like to own, produce, view, reproduce, etc., in order to advertise certain aspects of themselves: their taste, their wealth, their vow of poverty, their snobbery, their connection with "the real", their flights of fantasy, etc.
Art is like rational argument, but with metaphor in the place of logic.
Art is that which is perceived while in a self-consciously art-consuming mode of thought.
Art is symbols in a web of epistemology, postmodern constructs the mastering of which generates academic status.
None of these is truly correct, and there may be many more. It's up to you which judgements to use. But don't expect other people to agree with you if you put all your eggs in just one of these baskets.
Myself, I hew most closely to the metaphor as logic approach. Art, for me, has to be visceral, it has to engage the senses; as well as being interesting, engaging the intellect; as well as being emotive. It should engage at all these levels, and resonate with me, things in my experience of life, and make it richer.