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What is Art?

IJesusChrist

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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22 Juil 2008
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What do you think it is?

It doesn't have much use in survival, in the most simplest terms, people thousands of years ago probably didn't have much better chance at surviving if they wore decorative beads or not. It may have had an affect on reproduction - those with many decorative on themselves may have attracted a mate more so than those who didn't. But really, there doesn't seem to be a strong connection between scientific evolution and actual art. However, creativity is a different matter.

So whats up with this. To me, painting and drawing, even music itself seems to be like that of a male nipple in science - why is it here?

Where did it come from? Why do we have this innate ability and urge to create, contort, and contrast reality, or that which is within our reality? I'm sure by asking this to 100 people I'll get 100 different answers, but lets go deep on this one;

Why do I enjoy painting? Why do I enjoy creating? How do I even have this ability to imagine what isn't, but wish it was?

Of course this goes for all of you, not just me :)
 

IJesusChrist

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22 Juil 2008
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Thank you for that! I didn't want anyone to agree with me :)

The way I see creativity is the brain's ability to see or imagine possibilities that are not currently real; A pink elephant.

However, the purpose of painting a pink elephant?

I do digress though, the beads, the warriors helmets, these are imbued with a creative mind's abilities, able to replicate what one believes is sources of power. However, wouldn't this be, more or less, superstition, rather than art, at play?

I guess when I said art I was imagining paintings, all of them. Realism to Dali to Escher to graffiti artists. It is an output of creativity. But I think you are correct in that it plays a role of communication, and more so inspiration. The ability for one woman's art to reflect, congeal, and amplify in another mind allows for an idea to spread which is much stronger than words can describe.

The 1000 yard stare
thousand-yard-stare-21470242.jpg

Just a quick search for "eerie"
coal.jpg
 

ararat

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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8 Juin 2006
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3 374
it never really occurred to me to think about a down-to-the-point definition of art, but found it interesting to do.
photography is pretty central to my understanding of art :) so I may be rather biased towards it in my explanations. also it's a big fucking topic and no matter how much I write it'll feel like missing a lot. if you don't want to read all of this, the last two or three paragraphs are the more important ones in this post.

there seem different ways to approach art, depending on which aspect one emphasizes. one could say that art is manipulating something material so as to make it recognizable as art and thus to stimulate a perception process (ideally), which may work on many different levels: intellectual, emotional, aesthetic/visual, audible and sometimes but not very often spiritual (I may be leaving out a lot here). so you take a pencil and colors, apply them to a canvas in a special way, and voilá, you got yourself a work of art. or you take wood and carve out certain areas while leaving others. or you take light sensitive film and put it in a box and whatever it needs to produce a picture. but then again, there are artforms that can be art and yet don't need to manipulate material, such as dance or singing.
also, you can manipulate tons of material, and it won't be recognized as art, because, simply, it wasn't intended as such. you can take thousands of photos, but they won't be recognized as art, because they are photos of the table you want to sell on ebay.so quite central to art seems to be intent, which gives thousands of possibilities. for example, you can do art because you want to bring an awareness of something into the consciousness of other people which wasn't there before. this was my understanding of art for a long time. I went to an exhibition once, by Boris Becker (not the tennis guy), and what it basically showed was houses. just houses. straight and precise pictures. at first it bored the hell out of me, I came from a background of surfing deviantart, which seems to specialize in absurdly colorful and dramatic pictures, also, cats. it was quite a let-down at first to go to the gallery and just look at prints of houses, but what it did when I went back outside was that I opened my gaze to take in these things, and it was very very interesting, because I stopped just running by these houses, but actually look at them.
very closely related to this is art that seeks to bring awareness about matters more serious than architecture, namely global warming, poverty, war, environmental issues etc.. Edward Burtynksy appears as a hero in this regard. a video of him at ted: http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_burtyns ... f_oil.html that's a short one, there's a 30 minute video as well.

you can do art to convey intellectual ideas. it is a kind that I dread a bit, because these works are often hard to read if you haven't spent much time in your life getting into this kind of thing. it's a bit elitist, no question. furthermore, it's a bit boring. it's intellectualizing for the sake of intellectualizing, which can be fun, but soon looses itself in pointlessness and in my opinion often in pretentiousness. much of the viennese photography scene seems pretty hooked on this. not all of course, but a part of it.

you can do art out of a simple joy to create something, out of a simple joy about patterns, geometry, colors, textures etc.this seems very central to art in general, I don't know much to say about it though. it seems that man has an innate desire to somehow replicate and imitate his surroundings. if we are to be hyperbole, the universe is a complete work of art. look at a tree! what marvelous forms these things take, these grand sculptures. the lines of washed out stone, the patterns on burnt wood, the absolutely chaotic scattering of stars in the sky - irreproducible by humans, any attempt to do so would have a pattern of intent in it. (I'm speculating here, maybe there are some zen artists who mastered this one way or another)
no doubt, humans have been inspired by these things a lot, and tried to imitate them, or take their own spin on it. sometimes this feels a bit like a hoax. why would I go into a sterile museum to look at a picture of a tree or person that someone painted, when I just could go outside and stare at the most splendid trees and beautiful intelligent faces outside?
it may be a question of time and conserving something. the outside world is in constant flux, people get annoyed if you look at them for a long time (I don't like that. india is pretty cool in that respect, everybody can stare at everybody and it doesn't matter). so because of the world being in constant flux, you could say that art is a way of trying to get hold of it, to make it stop relentlessly changing. I was always a bit skeptical about that, making a photo of something seemed more like acknowledging change, rather than fighting against it.
the list of intents could go on endlessly, I feel like I covered only a very very tiny fraction, some art seems to express thing that I have no idea how I am going to put it in words. Rothko for example

every definition of art is bound to be revised and overthrown. if I were to define art as this and that, someone would come along and do something outside of this definition and it would still classify as art if I am honest.
this brought me to the conclusion that art becomes art when you say it is. kinda lame I know, but this is the broadest definition I could come up with. if I were to say that art is manipulating material to make it stimulating in the above mentioned ways, someone would come along and do a performance, or something else that wouldn't fit into the current theory of art, and we will have to start anew.




I have no evolutionary explanation for art, and I doubt it would make great sense to approach it that way - I'm not entirely sure about that though. what I feel is that the biologistic viewpoint often leaves out so god damn much that it hurts in its naiveté, it views life in a way that makes it (seemingly) loose its grace and wonder.
"do not measure the tree, sit in its shade, look at it"
when we talk about evolutionary purposes, we ask how something helps our survival, but that is very reductionistic. I believe, no I'm 100% certain, that humans have a metaphysical faculty, a plane of existence of sorts that natural sciences like to be blind to. this plane is not concerned with survival, for it is never born and never dies, and thus doesn't need to seek to survive/achieve goals. it just is. it is out of which everything stems and grows, where all the energy for life, let alone the possibility for it, comes from. it may be that art is an expression of this creative principle, rather than an expression of animal faculties. I don't rule out the latter though, considering that symbol making and reading had a very important role in our survival, and art pretty much classifies as symbol making.
I'll leave it at that, if you read all of this, thank you :)
 

Light

Glandeuse pinéale
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1 Juil 2011
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Evolutionary explanation, you asked?

Look at peacocks. Those big feathers are very unhandy, why would they have them? It's because of the other half of the theory of evolution, besides natural selection/survival: sexual selection. Bigger feathers with bright colours show a female peacock (peahen?) that the male is strong and not afraid of dangers. Same holds for art, even jewellery. When you show it to the world, it shows you are not afraid of thieves or other dangers. When the early humans started to develop symbolism and such, this slowly evolved into more abstract representation of ideas that are not mainstream, to stand up to the masses. That's also why art is destroyed in Totalitarian regimes.

In a sense we are all artists in the way we shape our lives and deal with others.

There are quite a few poor artists among us.
 

Sticki

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13 Sept 2007
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The expression and interpretation of emotion and/or perception.

Some people call what others could never call art, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder :wink:
 

IJesusChrist

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Yes, banana you definitely hit some good points.

I think I've come to the conclusion that ART is a direct result of consciousness. That is, no animal can see, produce, or enjoy art if they are not conscious. I think that art is the ability to see what is objective reality, and create something which is not. In a sense, art a result of creativity, is the manipulation of matter through the filter of the mind.

Much like a code can go through a computer, and out come a picture, matter and information can go through our beautiful minds, and we can transpose, morph, create and ultimately spread ideas which originated within consciousness and can have only the slightest bearings on reality.

Art is manipulation of reality. It is the proof that we are conscious beings. Yeah?
 

BrainEater

Banni
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21 Juil 2007
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i think art is impression, expression and eventually communication or just exhibition. :?: :arrow: :idea:
:D :D
 

Illegalsmile

Alpiniste Kundalini
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24 Avr 2009
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[youtube]hOG9SEJiViI[/youtube]
is this art u guys? if so how does it differ from human art? ive been thinking about this lately
 

samboy22

Matrice périnatale
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12 Nov 2013
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i think art is impression, sign and finally communication or just exhibition.
 

Finarfin

Sale drogué·e
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20 Juil 2013
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t can be many things. It can be a hobby. It can be entertainment. It can be propaganda or advertisement.
Art can be provocation. It can be religious. In the documentary the mindscape of Alan Moore comic writer Alan Moore says that art is a form of magic.
In the documentary Moore talks about how the artist has a place in society as a modern shaman.

I think art is above all a way to communicate. On a conscious or subconscious level art is communicating something to the public. Bringing a message, whatever the message may be. Writing is also a form of art so. without writer we could not communicate like this. letters them selfs can be seen as a creation of art.


In the early day,s art was seen as craft. When we look at art like this someone who is skilled is called an artist. a skilled cook for example could be seen as an artist.
 

hugspot

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4 Déc 2013
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Art for me is one way of exercising our freedom of expression. through art we can express what we feel
 

CeceliaMclemore

Neurotransmetteur
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18 Nov 2013
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ha .. the fact is well known an there is none unaware with it so nothing new i have learnt about what the art is all about ..
 

Hiperballls

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7 Sept 2014
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Art have very fundamental place in human evolution of civilization and society,first way of more or less accurate communication was art-cave drawings.
 

PeterPete

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6 Nov 2014
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Art is definitely to express yourself, who really you are, what are you thinking at the moment, what botheres you, what make you feel happy for now. In conclusion, art is you, us. you paint because you want to express some idea or let go a emotion.
 

lobsterapples

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19 Mai 2015
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in my humble opinion art is the representation or projection of an internal something... it could be anything! all the way from a thought or emotion to vast metaphysical assumptions like unity or duality, and meaning in life.
Imagination is one of the things that separates humans from all the known earth animals (look up Yuval Noah Harari Ted Talks!!!) so art that expresses said imagination into a perceivable object is one of the highest forms of communication a human can embark upon
 
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