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Photography can be both art and not. Most would not consider GW product photos to be artwork and most viewers would consider the real art to be the painting of the model itself compared to the product photo.
Furthermore there are many famous photos that have nothing to do with art or are only casually artistic, but they capture critical or important moments in time and history.


Where the line is between the two is blurry - art as a term is very blurry and hard to define without creating a situation whereby we are simply trying to build a definition based upon biases.



That said I still do think that the tate modern and much of the "modern art" wave is utter trash. Doesn't matter to me if a person has or hasn't been trained professionally or not. Your experiences and history are not important really - however it can explain contacts and how a person might break into a huge amount of sales whilst some others, who might not have the contacts but are far better skilled, never do.
In fact I'd say a lot of the modern art "tate modern" style stuff we get is a fantastic example of marketing and sales skill than it is artistic skill and craft.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Another point worth thinking about is that many conceptualist modern artists are classically trained, but have to some degree rejected classical forms.

I have in mind Mondrian and Philip Glass (composer.)

Tracey Emin attended a design school and a prnting school -- a lot of her work is based on fabrics and textual elements.

Tracey Emin has life drawing skills..,.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/25/tracey-emin-drawing-art

Well I guess she went.....

Whilst its obviously highly subjective I see very little evidence of skills learnt there - I guess you could call them "primitive" but it would appear she rejected an art style she had difficulty with.

Honestly her life drawing skills are - well - significantly lacking. I suspect most of us could achieve the same if not better with one or two days practice and teaching.

That's probably true, though if nearly everyone can be taught to draw well, it might not be such an important skill for creating art.

To be clear, the commercial artists I have worked with have all regarded drawing as an important art skill.

A lot of people would say that commercial art isn't "art art", of course, however that is part of the argument around moderen artists such as Tracey Emin.

Drawing certainly isn't the only skill, its just a nice one to highlight at present - we could go onto about any number of artistic mediums.


Also I realised that I'm falling into a very easy to fall into trap, which is to equate the definition of art with the quality of art. What she's producing (as shown in the linked article) might well be artwork - however it is very bad quality; lacking in any real show of skill or talent.

Art can lack skill and talent, however most art that lacks in such areas is often very bad art - often why it comes with an essay to give it some sense of justification.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That's probably true, though if nearly everyone can be taught to draw well, it might not be such an important skill for creating art.

To be clear, the commercial artists I have worked with have all regarded drawing as an important art skill.

A lot of people would say that commercial art isn't "art art", of course, however that is part of the argument around moderen artists such as Tracey Emin.

Well I am sure we could all learn to create art of that "quality" but I doubt that many of us could without significant effort and time be able to recreate a Rembrandt or even more impressive, create a new image in the style of and equal in quality to a Rembrandt.

However all of us could create a piece of art that complements or is in the style of the infamous bed but as we are not famous it would not be considered art.

Learning to draw is a much more definable and measurable skill, my father was an architect and like many others is similar rolls was a artist but never really considered such.

Almost all art is commercial and always has been - I work with old masters and most of them were looking to make money and live as much as anything else

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That's probably true, though if nearly everyone can be taught to draw well, it might not be such an important skill for creating art.

To be clear, the commercial artists I have worked with have all regarded drawing as an important art skill.

A lot of people would say that commercial art isn't "art art", of course, however that is part of the argument around moderen artists such as Tracey Emin.

You mean it's the argument that "artists" like Tracey Emin put forward to elevate their vacuous postmodernist drek above people who've gone out and invested the time and effort to develop genuine skill but have the audacity to use that skill to put some food on the table rather than either being wealthy by birth or conforming to some ridiculous "starving artist" stereotype.

For my money the litmus test for whether something qualifies as good art or not is simple - if what you've produced looks like the result of grabbing a random person off the street, giving them a bunch of random guff, and telling them to do something random and pretentious, it's gak. I don't care what warbling nonsense justification the "artist" comes up with to link a blank canvass just covered uniformly in black gesso, or an unmade bed, or a pear floating in a bowler hat filled with absinthe or whatever to some juvenile pseudophilosophical "point", it's pish, and if the purpose of art is to evoke emotion then the only thing I feel when I look at stuff like this is soul-deep disgust at the fact some talentless hack can shart out such vacant, nihilistic garbage and be regarded as a visionary genius while genuine artists can create stunning, evocative works that require serious skill to achieve only to be dismissed and denigrated.

if the purpose of art is to evoke emotion then the only thing I feel when I look at stuff like this is soul-deep disgust at the fact some talentless hack can shart out such vacant, nihilistic garbage and be regarded as a visionary genius while genuine artists can create stunning, evocative works that require serious skill to achieve only to be dismissed and denigrated.

So it worked then?

What about children's art?

It's usually executed with far more enthusiasm than skill, but it offers a vision relatively untrammelled by social concerns (especially of money.)

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What about children's art?

It's usually executed with far more enthusiasm than skill, but it offers a vision relatively untrammelled by social concerns (especially of money.)

In this case the art is executed (I think) for a different reason - it may be from sheer enjoyment, or to please their family and friends or even because they have been told to do so at school....

They don't (usually) have to earn a living but those who do can sometimes been found using their skills to generate income in this way - and are usually far more skilled than what Ms Emin produced in her life drawings - I cna;t see her getting much as a street artists for those scribbles without the advantage of her name.

Whilst I dislike conceptional art - I found it much more disappointing that it is currently praised to such heights above more conventional art.

Personally I wish fantasy art got more recognition - there are some utterly outstanding works of fantasy art out there; showing all the skill and creativity that can be astounding and yet unless you land it on a magic the gathering card front or an 80s rock metal album cover you're basically going to be unheard of.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What about children's art?

It's usually executed with far more enthusiasm than skill, but it offers a vision relatively untrammelled by social concerns (especially of money.)

In this case the art is executed (I think) for a different reason - it may be from sheer enjoyment, or to please their family and friends or even because they have been told to do so at school....

They don't (usually) have to earn a living but those who do can sometimes been found using their skills to generate income in this way - and are usually far more skilled than what Ms Emin produced in her life drawings - I cna;t see her getting much as a street artists for those scribbles without the advantage of her name.

Whilst I dislike conceptional art - I found it much more disappointing that it is currently praised to such heights above more conventional art.

I think to some extent the situation with art is that we've got centuries of conventional figurative art, much of it either commercial (portraits, etc) or religious in original purpose. As with pop music, history and time have filtered out the crap and we're left with stuff that is widely accepted as being classic, Mona Lisa, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to its last berth, and so on. There is so much left that maybe we're a bit bored with it.

In contrast we've got less than 100 years of conceptual art. It's still new and fresh and there probably is a lot of crap mixed in with the good stuff, which will get filtered out over the next 100 years. But we won't be around to see the results.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What about children's art?

It's usually executed with far more enthusiasm than skill, but it offers a vision relatively untrammelled by social concerns (especially of money.)

In this case the art is executed (I think) for a different reason - it may be from sheer enjoyment, or to please their family and friends or even because they have been told to do so at school....

They don't (usually) have to earn a living but those who do can sometimes been found using their skills to generate income in this way - and are usually far more skilled than what Ms Emin produced in her life drawings - I cna;t see her getting much as a street artists for those scribbles without the advantage of her name.

Whilst I dislike conceptional art - I found it much more disappointing that it is currently praised to such heights above more conventional art.

I think to some extent the situation with art is that we've got centuries of conventional figurative art, much of it either commercial (portraits, etc) or religious in original purpose. As with pop music, history and time have filtered out the crap and we're left with stuff that is widely accepted as being classic, Mona Lisa, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to its last berth, and so on. There is so much left that maybe we're a bit bored with it.

In contrast we've got less than 100 years of conceptual art. It's still new and fresh and there probably is a lot of crap mixed in with the good stuff, which will get filtered out over the next 100 years. But we won't be around to see the results.

By its nature I think there will be very little conceptual art that survives at all?

I would also agree with the comment about fantasy art being under appreciated.

There is also a tendency to equate technical skill with artistry, and a lack of skill with a lack of artistry.

Art is a weird concept, and I have to be honest that during my short time being active in the local art circuit (exhibiting and having pieces selected to various shows) it was a constant struggle within myself to figure out if I’m an artist or a fake.

I am not a moral relativist, but I find the discussion of what is or is not art exactly what makes art so compelling. There is clearly a difference between art and craft, but the question is always what is this difference. Does a guy painting a miniature count as art or is it craft? How about the guy making vases and selling them int eh town square? What about the person writing wargame rules?

I use this simple definition of Art as a medium that forces you to reflect on your own beliefs and re-evaluate what you thought you knew about the world around you.

With this definition then this piece is capital "A" Art.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


In contrast we've got less than 100 years of conceptual art. It's still new and fresh and there probably is a lot of crap mixed in with the good stuff, which will get filtered out over the next 100 years. But we won't be around to see the results.

Well, there is actual crap there. Piero Manzoni literally filled 90 cans with his own faeces back in the 60s and several of them have exchanged hands over the last years for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Not to mention Duchamp's "fountain" which is a classic just over 100 years old now.

"Is so-and-so thing Art" is just such an unbelievably pedestrian line of questioning. Yes, it is. Now what? No, it isn't. Now what?

I don't care about Banksy but I'm not going to claim that he's not an artist. That's the dumbest possible kind of snobbery. I'd rather say that he's a bad artist who does bad art. That would at least be making a god damn stand for what I believe good and bad art is, not dismissing something like a coward.

Here I thought it was him pointing out how ridiculous it is that people pay so much for pieces of paper, essentially.

It’s no different than paying a ton of money for any other luxury item.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Here I thought it was him pointing out how ridiculous it is that people pay so much for pieces of paper, essentially.

Exactly. Just like Duchamp over 100 years ago.

And it still works.

It was Duchamp I was thinking of when I put the timeline of conceptual art at 100 years. Fountain arguably was the first major piece of conceptual art.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Duchamp was living in New York in 1917. He anonymously submitted an artwork to a competition, consisting of a urinal with a fake signature in nail varnish. The curators were outraged and rejected it as not being art.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Here I thought it was him pointing out how ridiculous it is that people pay so much for pieces of paper, essentially.

Sure it's dumb that rich people have so much money they have nothing better to do with it than pay enormous amounts to speculate in useless things, but the stock market has been going on for a while now and that's the same thing but worse.

 Azreal13 wrote:

if the purpose of art is to evoke emotion then the only thing I feel when I look at stuff like this is soul-deep disgust at the fact some talentless hack can shart out such vacant, nihilistic garbage and be regarded as a visionary genius while genuine artists can create stunning, evocative works that require serious skill to achieve only to be dismissed and denigrated.

So it worked then?

Given that's not typically what the "artist" is trying to evoke, no. But hey, maybe there are some artists out there who've so fully bought into smelling their own postmodernist farts that they would consider making something that causes people disgust at the idea such utterly worthless dreck would be considered valuable, meaningful art as successful art - as far as I'm concerned they're still wrong, and the whole idea is just as farcical as a chef considering a meal that causes people disgust by accident a successful meal.

Now, I've seen art that has disgusted me before, it was a collection of really stunning(in the sense of the skill and execution) sketchwork shown in a local gallery, done by a young refugee. The horrors depicted in those disgusted me, but horrifying and disgusting the audience was the point. That was "successful" art, because the artist had a genuine vision and the talent to execute it such that the audience could comprehend and feel that vision rather than having to spank away over prosciutto and wine until they could cobble together some "it's true to meee" pish based on the philosophy books they skimread at university to seem clever at parties.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

if the purpose of art is to evoke emotion then the only thing I feel when I look at stuff like this is soul-deep disgust at the fact some talentless hack can shart out such vacant, nihilistic garbage and be regarded as a visionary genius while genuine artists can create stunning, evocative works that require serious skill to achieve only to be dismissed and denigrated.

So it worked then?

Given that's not typically what the "artist" is trying to evoke, no. But hey, maybe there are some artists out there who've so fully bought into smelling their own postmodernist farts that they would consider making something that causes people disgust at the idea such utterly worthless dreck would be considered valuable, meaningful art as successful art - as far as I'm concerned they're still wrong, and the whole idea is just as farcical as a chef considering a meal that causes people disgust by accident a successful meal.

Now, I've seen art that has disgusted me before, it was a collection of really stunning(in the sense of the skill and execution) sketchwork shown in a local gallery, done by a young refugee. The horrors depicted in those disgusted me, but horrifying and disgusting the audience was the point. That was "successful" art, because the artist had a genuine vision and the talent to execute it such that the audience could comprehend and feel that vision rather than having to spank away over prosciutto and wine until they could cobble together some "it's true to meee" pish based on the philosophy books they skimread at university to seem clever at parties.

Well, your not wrong

In my mind, there are two criteria for being art. At least one must be fulfilled for it to qualify.

The first of these is the deployment of manual skill into the creation of something amazing; the stroke of genius and mastery which brings into existence an item of unsurpassable quality. This could be a painting, a bookcase, a piece of computer code. Something that your metaphorical monkeys could not create with a thousand years. A ring, a literary work, a piece of architecture. Something which needs someone to sit down and deploy both their genius and technical skill to bring it into a existence. A sculpture, a violin, a piece of unique unconceptualised philosophy. Something which strikes the people who see and comprehend it as true genius and a work of art; because they know they could never mimic what created it.

You get the drift.


The second kind of artwork is the kind where the artist sets out to evoke a certain feeling in the viewers and succeeds. Technical skill or genius is secondary here; the goal is to make people feel. Be it a painting like The Scream, a performative dance piece, or even an unmade bed. Success here is measured not by how complex the piece is in conception or skilled the execution; but in the interpretation that it drags, almost unwillingly, from the people subjected to it. You see their sculpture and are reminded of the grim inevitability of death, the never-ending nature of time, read the book which reminds you that there is still good left in the world, look at their giant floating eggs and accept the duality of existence. etcetc.

However, that form of art is far harder to pull off. Feelings are hard to transmit in an artistic form, and if your misery manifests as a blank canvas painted entirely black; the odds are it simply won't transmit. In which case, it's a failed piece. If your 'art' can only evoke feelings in those who have spent a lifetime looking at pretentious art pieces until they can't tell the difference, or who have to spend twenty minutes grasping and guessing for the intended message? It didn't work. Unlike the first piece of art, where the quality is intrinsic to the item and obvious to anyone with the remotest comprehension of the art in question; the whole point of this art is that it lives and dies in the interpretation that it forcibly creates within you. And if it doesn't feel like it created something, that it evoked a thought or emotion? It failed.


Artists and celebrity being what they are though, much of the latter type (cough Hirst's shark cough) is often highly pseudo-intellectual and promoted far above its actual capability to make people feel. As the artists involved are the ones trying to express their feeling, their interpretation is the only one which doesn't count (we know they were trying to express something already, that's why the art exists). The measure of success therefore has to be whether or not they managed to pass on their emotions or thoughts to the target audience. It doesn't have to be everybody, a piece of art related to certain themes may well evoke feeling in certain segments of people but not others. But that's where the intent of the creator comes in the judgment. If your intent was to evoke fear of mortality in upper class white people, yet the only emotion obtained is that of mirth from all Japanese people? It failed.Yet celebrity status may well ensure your failed artwork is now hailed as masterpieces and worth five million dollars.

Such is celebrity, alas.

A lot of modern art movements are due to technology, the invention of the camera has made it so realism is easy to achieve and common therefore, realism isn't as valuable as it once was allowing artists to pursue more abstract and non representational concepts. Also, abstract art can be

deceptively difficult requiring a good sense of implied movement, focal points, crisp clean lines, precise geometry, strong understanding of colour theory, etc.

 Cheesecat wrote:
A lot of modern art movements are due to technology, the invention of the camera has made it so realism is easy to achieve and common therefore, realism isn't as valuable as it once was allowing artists to pursue more abstract and non representational concepts. Also, abstract art can be

deceptively difficult requiring a good sense of implied movement, focal points, crisp clean lines, precise geometry, strong understanding of colour theory, etc.

I think Abstract is different from Conceptual - the former as you say often requires skill and precision, the latter seldom does.

Whilst photography did impact initially on realistic art both conventional art and photography can and are able to embrace both this and much more exotic imagery.

Artists and celebrity being what they are though, much of the latter type (cough Hirst's shark cough) is often highly pseudo-intellectual and promoted far above its actual capability to make people feel. As the artists involved are the ones trying to express their feeling, their interpretation is the only one which doesn't count (we know they were trying to express something already, that's why the art exists). The measure of success therefore has to be whether or not they managed to pass on their emotions or thoughts to the target audience. It doesn't have to be everybody, a piece of art related to certain themes may well evoke feeling in certain segments of people but not others. But that's where the intent of the creator comes in the judgment. If your intent was to evoke fear of mortality in upper class white people, yet the only emotion obtained is that of mirth from all Japanese people? It failed.Yet celebrity status may well ensure your failed artwork is now hailed as masterpieces and worth five million dollars.

Agreed

Abstract art is any art that indicates departure from reality like old tribal art, surrealism, expressionism, abstract expressionism, impressionism, romanticism, Dada, cubism, fauvism, constructivism, pointillism, De Stijl, minimalism, cartoons, etc

 Yodhrin wrote:
and the whole idea is just as farcical as a chef considering a meal that causes people disgust by accident a successful meal.

I mean, some cultures considering the thought of eating crayfish absolutely horrifying but the fault would be the lack of communication in making sure that they're receptive, not the quality of the meal itself.

In my opinion "art" is something that requires skill to make. That is the literal definition of the word "art" (the word comes from the Latin word "artem", which means skill).
I don't mind abstract art all, but a lot modern art just doesn't require any skill whatsoever (except perhaps the skill to say a lot of nonsense about nothing). Modern art has just degraded into capitalism. What has become important is the ability to sell something, rather than the ability to make something that is actually nice or thought-inspiring to look at.
Nowadays modern art can be absolutely anything as long as the so-called artist has attached a nice sales pitch to it. As long as it has a nice sales pitch you can be sure some pretentious billionaire with more money than brains will buy it, even if it is just a dustbin or a bed he could have bought pretty much everywhere. And that is sad, in my opinion. It has really degraded the value and meaning of art. A lot of people nowadays do not care about art anymore, and I think that is in no small part due to post-modern art movements.