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Comment by TheRealNGenius | Hacker News Reader

Sure great points. But in my view, it remains just that, a photograph. A photograph can be deliberate, complex, and evoke many emotions. It can be pleasing, utterly horrific, or anything in between.

But when I take art classes, I'm not taking photos. I do that in photography class. So as a matter of definition, a photo for me qualifies not as art.

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So because you don't take photos in your "art" "class", photos aren't art.

Fuck. Can't argue with that.

Yeah, I mean, that pretty much sums it up. Of course, you're free to think differently. I think that's pretty fair. You don't tell me what's art, and neither I, you.

I mentioned Marcel Duchamp's Fountain in another post, slightly tongue in cheek as the previous commenter mentioned bathroom designs.

It’s actually, very, very relevant though.

I see it as the point where Modern Art and discussions of “what is art?” really start.

All that really matters is what an artist intends to be art.

That leads to, well who is an artist then?

Answer: anyone who says they are and who we all agree is one.

i.e. it’s an unsolvable riddle which will always be fun to debate amongst friends.

Right, you touch on basically the same points as I: https://w0nder.herokuapp.com/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/...

Does your art class perhaps only cover “fine art”? Or does it also include the performing arts like music, theatre, even cinema? In my experience in the UK, “art” in school commonly only means fine art, and other forms of art are different enough that they’re broken out into other “subjects”.

Yeah I think that's pretty fair. Music, theatre, cinema are performing arts. Not art. You qualify it with "performing".

And that's my point really. It's a distinction based on definition. Collectively, institutions recognize this and inherently add qualifiers to distinguish between these varying disciplines.

So am I right in understanding you aren’t saying photography isn’t “an art”; just that it isn’t “fine art”? In which case I think you’d see much less disagreement here.

I'd probably drop the fine and call what you call fine art, art. But functionally, would likely agree with the distinctions you make between them.

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