If a person can mistaken an artwork as not-art, is it really art?
Science museums have certainly followed that route, and I think they're better for it; becoming interactive makes for better learning. For those really valuable objects that could be damaged by willing interaction, there should be some kind of physical protection anyway.
Certainly, in such museums focussed on interactivity and a child-friendly experience, this is the (commendable) modus operandi, and it works exceptionally well.
Contemporary artists and curators at modern art museums, however, seem to have been pushing for less physical demarcation around their exhibits. Ground covering installations are sometimes placed right in the path of visitors (who are often caught up in their imagination admiring some other piece of art), with no barrier or warning in place.
With art installations that actually are intended to be interactive, I never feel comfortable interacting with them because of this air of ambiguity. Doesn't help that this may have very well been the artist's intent in the first place…
I like the definition of art as being: It's art if anyone has ever called it such.
One may think a piece of art is worthless, but saying it's "not art" is rarely a useful way to express that.
The latter leads to responses like "Oh no, it's still art because art means..." instead of "Oh but I really like X which doesn't fit your criteria, what do you think?"
At that point, it's just stuff.
Indistinguishable from trash to you maybe. This [0] was an piece at Ai Weiwei exhibit I saw in Berlin last year (I don't much care for his work, but that's beside the point). This is mostly indistinguishable from this [1]. One is a pile of crabs intentionally placed in in order to make a pun in Chinese (if I remember right). One is a pile of crabs. One is art. The other is not.
I'm saying the Ai Weiwei piece is art because 1) he did it on purpose, 2a) he calls it art, and 2b) other people call it art. If I sculpted an exact replica of a trash can in the house I grew up with to symbolize {the passage of time, childhood, whatever, no symbolism at all}, then that's art even if it is literally made of trash and nobody but me ever called it art.
At the risk of sounding like a children's show with a shallow message: anything can be art if you want it to be.
[0] - https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/exhibitions/images/201... [1] - http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/a-pil...
But do you? I mean really, what gives anyone any authority to say that?
Quoting wikipedia[0]:
> Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.
Maybe it was the artists intention to horrify and disgust, in which case stapling body parts on canvas certainly seemed to have that effect. Certainly that qualifies it as art.
I really think it's exclusionary and elitist to tell anyone their creative works aren't art.
That's why I prefer to use words like 'art' for things that are unambiguously artistic. Instead of abandoning the word (like that Wikipedia author) to goofy madeup definitions just not to offend somebody.
How about this: Its my 'performance art' to offend folks on HN by disputing what art is. Now any objection to my remarks is hypocritical. I have full authority! Hey! Every troll is now an artist! Fits the Wikipedia definition anyway.
I'm not saying "literally everything is art always." Yes, a hobo who is mentally unstable mooning people isn't art. Someone a hobo mooning people as a statement about nudity and people's obsession with being proper, sure, yeah, that's art.
> I prefer to use words like 'art' for things that are unambiguously artistic
Unambiguous to whom? That lends it's self to all sorts of biases based on culture, nationality, class, age, etc.
> How about this: Its my 'performance art' to offend folks on HN by disputing what art is.
Yes. If you think it's some sort of art to do so, then yes, what you are doing now is art.
> Every troll is now an artist!
If every troll claimed their ability to enrage the internet is an art form, then yes. Since most of them don't, no.
> Instead of abandoning the word (like that Wikipedia author) to goofy madeup definitions
I'm pretty sure all definitions are "made up." Propose a better one for what art is, and I'll debate you on that.
I refuse to call Trolling 'art'. We all know it isn't. Well sometimes a particularly inspired, evil troll comment can be said to 'rise to the level of art'. We all know what that means. Its not art just because somebody says it is ('frames it' as art). Its not art because it generates an emotional response, like the hobo or troll. Its not art because it took skill to do. That whole Wikipedia definition is flawed.
This is why I like a definition of art that is overly broad, so no one can get swept away and called not art. I don't want someone's real, actually creative efforts to be casually dismissed because it was lumped in with something that "isn't art."
If it cannot be discerned as art, it isn't art. It's just..random stuff.
This isn't about the perceived quality of art. A children's drawing is art, even though it's likely not a masterpiece at all.
So, it's also perfectly acceptable for Ai Weiwei's artwork to not be art, or art to someone else.
Let's say there's some country that considers the the exact dishes are organized in a cabinet to be art (pretty sure this isn't a thing anywhere). People have cabinets in their house so that they can show off their dish stacking. Now someone from another culture visits and is shown the display. They say "that's not art." Not to them, maybe not. But it's still art simply because someone (one person or many) calls it so.
Is this [0] or this [1] music? Some might just call that "sounds," but I like the wikipedia definition [2] for this as well.
> Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence.
Extremely broad and allowing for many things to be considered music. If someone wanted to record an album of them dropping coins into plastic cups and call it music, then they should be able to.
[0] - https://soundcloud.com/pet-the-tiger/beyond-the-mind?in=pet-...
And in terms of conveying that, saying that they don't like it might lead to a discussion of aesthetics. Whereas, saying they think it's "not art" almost invariably leads to a semantic argument, in which people state their own personal definition of "art" and then getting annoyed when people don't agree. Which is no where near as interesting or satisfying.
> Museum director Eva Krause said she believed the damage could be easily repaired.
If I were them, I wouldn't erase the words. I'd say the incident should increase the value of that piece, now that it has been widely reported.
I recommend the works by Arthur Danto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Danto) for very interesting definitions of "art".