Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/08/definitions-of-art.html
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At its most basic root, art is the act of creating.
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Art… is.
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art is whatever somebody can convince an art collector to pay for
“magic” is always good for getting rich people’s wallets out
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Back in college, my friends became enamored of this definition for Music: “Sound and silence, punctuated by time.” They struggled for years to find an equally satisfying definition of art.
My suggestion was “Any media or medium, the perception of which has been altered by man.”
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If the entity creating something did it with the intention of making art, It’s art. Quality of said art is entirely subjective.
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To my mind, art can be anything.
Trying to concretely define something which is inherently abstract* and dependent upon the observer is an exercise in futility… or click bait.
(*Abstract as in the the grammatical sense ie; abstract idea vs concrete ideas.
Don’t try to earn the pedant’s pendant today, pet.)
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I feel like making it art needs to be the intent of the creator though. If I take a shit in a bowl it’s not art. If I take a shit in a bowl and call it art? it’s art. At least that’s my thoughts on it.
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So, what distinguishes art from craft? Does craft demand skill while art does not?
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Perhaps providing something/ stuff for another which isn’t utilitarian may be a an idea of art.
The video is necessarily a very narrow and modern idea of aesthetics - to ask what art is, is to ask a very ‘Western’ question. What is a beach towel of the ‘Mona Lisa’?.. art on a towel but not real art, a towel is functional where as you can’t dry yourself with art.
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I would add that when it is art, the creator intends to provoke some emotion in the viewer. Else it’s just a craft. I write code for a living, most of it is not art, it’s just me making something.
Even my definition is flawed. My wife knitted me a really nice hat, I’m really pleased with it. It’s maybe art because she did it to make me happy, but she is an artist and probably doesn’t think knitting hats is art. And I think anyone else who sees my hat doesn’t get any sense of the creator’s intent or finds any emotions when they experience it. Maybe it’s just hyper-specific art for just one person. 
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Art is what you say it is. Good art is what I say it is.
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Art is anything that communicates a concept from an artist to an art consumer. The depth of communication determines the quality of the art. A canvas painted pure white is art. A building wrapped in pink plastic is art.
Craft is applied skill. Art is applied craft that communicates an idea. For instance, building a rocking chair is craft. Building a rocking chair and presenting it as a metaphor for loss, is art.
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IOW art is attitude, and craft is actually doing something. Thus if I carve a fairly representational statue, it’s craft, while if I stand naked on a street corner with IMAGINE painted across me, it’s art.
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I’ve always been fond of Scott McCloud’s take on it…
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That depends on how old you or your quote are. In the early 1800’s ‘art’ used to mean the practice of technique, and the employment of ‘tricks of the trade’ and guild secrets; and ‘craft’ was what the individual bought to a task over and above that. Some of this usage survives in patent terms such as ‘state of the art’. At some point, and it is hard for me to tell exactly when, ‘art’ was raised to an ineffable ideal, and ‘craft’ picked up what was left.
I would like to knock ‘art’ off its pedestal. ‘Art’ is some intelligent thing doing something, and being appreciated for it by an audience of intelligent beings. It takes lower precedence than any other intended outcome: if you make a good car, people would say “It is a car but it is also a work of art”.
Artificial Intelligence shows us that intelligence is not the refiner’s crucible that separates golden Truth from dross, as Descartes and others of that ilk might have us believe, but a squishy and falliable process. Words are squishy too. Using words to imbue ‘art’ with some spiritual depth beyond and outside the action of the intelligences involved may itself be art, but it is not really factual communication.
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Yeah, my take really is that art is whatever you get away with if you call it art.
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All craft can also be art, but not all art gets to be craft.
I think they refer to different aspects of the work in question. When I think about the “Craft” that went into something, I’m thinking mostly about what the creator went through to produce it. When I think about the “Art” of a thing, I mostly think about its impact on its audience.
Your mileage may vary.
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I’m not so sure about that because AI has nothing to do with human self aware intelligence. Basically it’s just complicated statistics that’s optimised to solve one particular problem.
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Art is whatever you think is art. The hard part is convincing a bunch of other people that it’s art.
True art is not giving a shit what other people think.
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