Sunday, January 31, 2010

Scout laRue Willis-What is art?



My last year of high school I did a solo art project and I put together a living room in the our art gallery. I took lots of things that I had from my own room and also furniture that I found in thrift stores and on the side of the road. at my opening I had someone ask me if I really thought this was art and it made me think about how people define art and to me what I did was art. the discovery and assembly of found objects is one of my favorite methods of creating art and challenging how people view art. to me this is art.

1-Elsa Obus: What is Art?

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I agree with Lucy when she says art has a lot to do with the viewer. I believe art is a display that solicits a reaction. It can compel the viewer to think and feel new things, which they must then confront. Good art can make the viewer have strong emotions and ideas even about something depicted that they have no personal connection to.

This painting, "The Death of Marat" by David, was one of my favorite paintings I learned about last semester in my art history class. I think David does a great job making the viewers feel the hopelessness and sadness associated with the French Revolution and specifically Marat's Death even though, obviously, none of us viewing it now have been very personally affected by the events.

Relatedly, I think art can span time as long as it continues to affect its viewers and bring out their strong emotions and reactions.

Lucy Schultz- What is art?



It is no doubt almost impossibly hard to define art, as it is a subject almost constantly evolving. But, to me, art is the use of imagery, movement, sound etc., taken from real life or the imagination, to inspire an emotional reaction in viewers. Thus, art cannot exist without its viewers.

Dali's "Invisible man" complies with this definition, as it is an image that draws from both life and the artist's imagination. As I view it, I am overcome with emotion. It is perplexing, beautiful, and perhaps even disturbing.

Though art is ever changing, one thing must always be present: perspective. I do not think art can exist without individual perspective, both that of the artist and of the viewer. This explains DuChamp's "Fountain" piece. Because of individual perspective, DuChamp and his viewers are able to see something beautiful and extraordinary in this piece, while those urinals or "fountains" seen daily go unnoticed.

2- Rachel Borders: Tuxedo T

I have never been a big fan of graphic Ts, but everyones got to love a good tuxedo t-shirt. I prefer to wear plan t-shirts unless the message is really funny or inventive. "Statement" t-shirts really bother me. The tuxedo T is fun and classic (almost as classic as an actual tuxedo).

1- Dan Cary: What is Art?


I'm not sure if it's possible to define art beyond the fact that you know it when you see it. For example, signing a urinal and putting it in a gallery doesn't make it art, at least to me. Some people find it brilliant art.

Different people will perceive different things as art. While in high school, I went to the Art Basel (one of the premiere art shows in the country). There were amazing works of art there. One of my favorites was a very large painting that from a distance appeared to be entirely white. It was about 15 feet wide and 8 feet tall and upon closer inspection revealed one of the most detailed works I've ever seen. It was all a matter of perspective. At first, it didn't seem like art at all. But, when you got close, it was a brilliant piece depicting an epic scale (that also sold early in the day for an epic price of over a million dollars).

At the same time, some of the works weren't quite as brilliant. There was the weird, a bronze entitled "Dead Crack Whore", to the just not art, a room made to look like a mad scientists dissection room and on the operating table in the center was an 8 foot tall toy rabbit with its plush entrails hanging out. That's why I don't think art can be wholly defined. Everyone's definition is different and those definitions are constantly evolving.

Take Nathan Sawaya's lego sculpture above. As a kid I loved legos (still do), so I can appreciate the skill and the difficulty in making such a work. Other people will just think that it's cool but not art and other people won't think it's art at all but rather on the same level as making something from playdough.

1 - Jonah Kagan: What is Art?


Art is the use of some sensory medium to transmit a message. If that sounds a little too technical, let me break it down:

First of all, all art must be perceived in some way. If one cannot perceive it, how can one even know it is there? For a piece of art to be perceivable, it must appeal to one or more of the senses.

Second, a piece of art must have some message. That is not to say that anything with a message is art. Art has been purposefully created (or at least distinguished as art) by an artist with some sort of message to convey. This doesn't necessarily mean the message is one about politics or the environment. It may simply be a comment on the beauty the artist sees around him in the world. If you ever see a piece of art that seems meaningless, it's meaning may be simply, "Look how pretty this is." That is enough to make it art.

Take, for example, the work of kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson. His work explores the beauty of one of the most basic facets of the world: simple motion. The picture above is a still of one of his pieces. Of course, a video is much better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pZXoayEL78. Or you can always go to the MIT Museum and see for yourself...

Allison Barker - What is Art?



Art. This one word has been debated since the beginning of time. I can just see one caveman grunting to the other in recognition of what they would have assumed to be art. Of course in modern era, our language has progressed, yet we still have the same arguments and acknowledgements on this subject. The free dictionary says that art is the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium, or the human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature. After spending some time I came up with this more primitive definition: Art is the interpretation of human perception in any media form. Art is a snapshot of history. The picture above is Edgar Degas' Dance Class and I love it for just that reason. It's a snapshot into a dance class. You can see all the different people in the room and they all have a different story. There's the girls not paying attention, some that are conversing in the background, the teacher, the girl actually trying... There's just so much detail... like a snapshot. Art is all around us, it's present every second and minute of every day, and it's our interpretations that make it come to life for others.

1- Leah Cogan - Life is art, art is life...too cheesy?

Not even the experts can define art in a way that all could relate to. As far as I know, art is for all to see, to understand. You may disagree. Our quest to define ourselves within the framework of a society makes it so that all that we do we crave to show, to share, to offer as bits of our identity within the whole. Art is just one way of expressing that identity. But the identity claims nothing unless it is communicating itself to another. And so, art communicates. It communicates humanity - what humanity sees, hears, experiences, tastes, feels - in a visceral, tangible array of portrayals. Everyone relates differently which explains the vast spectrum of art that finds an audience to appreciate it. Even a table can be loved!

Now Nature may be the exception to this human-centric view of mine considering there is truly nothing more stunning than a tree. In fact I'm obsessed with drawing trees because I want so desperately to understand them, to fit their complexity into my head like all the other art that we create for our minds only. Nature is rather exclusive in its genius but we can appreciate it because we are a part of it, rather than spectators.

I digress. Good art, you say? Well Fred would say differently than Ethel, therefor there really is no concrete answer to that question.

If you want to see beautiful art that transcends all the boundaries of communication, check out Shaun Tan's "The Arrival", a beautiful graphic novel. It's the only book I've ever known to actually become its story, sending the reader into a foreign place with absolutely no cultural reference points. None. Not even language (sorry to give it away). And what's magical about it? We still understand the whole story. All of you will. Everyone in the world will have the same experience of it. How's that for effective art?!

Art expresses. Art tells a story. Art relates. Art is life.

1- Rachel Borders: What is Art?


What makes V-J Day in Time Square, one of Alfred Eisenstaedt most famous photographs, art over the pictures that millions of people take everyday on their digital cameras?


On a global scale, art is whatever the majority of society believes to be art. Usually it's the artistic community's opinion that matters the most. On a more personal scale, art can be whatever someone wants it to be. You cannot put a definition on art because it is about personal expression and what people find to be "artistic". One person's art maybe another person's trash. Take for example the man in Nicaragua who starved a dog in the name of "art" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-561815/The-artist-whos-leaving-dog-starve-art.html). Was it art? On a global scale most people would hopefully say no, but to the artist it was... which makes it art in the eyes of some individuals. Art cannot be defined. People are always pushing the limits of what is accepted as art, and its our job as individuals to decide if we agree with their definition of art.

Josh Moses- What is Art

I had this question on my mind all week, its sort of like trying to define the color red. Red is red. There is no description for it, there are simply examples, red things are fire trucks, tomatoes, strawberries, and art things are Picasso, DalĂ­, or whomever else.

But, by a stroke of pure luck, in the first lecture of my comparative literature course my professor defined art as a way to see the leakiness of our perception of the real world. I'd like to elaborate. It is true that most people agree on most things about how to define the plethora of objects, ideas, and sounds that make up the world. Trees are trees to most people, including myself. But, it stands to reason that each person throughout their life has had a different interaction with trees, brought new concepts to what a tree means to them, specifically. In art, a person can show how they see a tree to the rest of the world, their internal concept of what it means to have branches, leaves, and to be made of wood comes across in everything from context to brush strokes. I think that the leakiness my comparative literature teacher was trying to describe is the differences in how we each see reality. What is just a urinal to some is beautiful art to others. What is art? It is the medium by which people can show the world the way they see it.

Below is how Pablo Picasso saw the tragedies of the Bombing of the town of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War

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1- Grace Watson: What is art?


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/

I define art as anything created, performed, or manipulated by someone that insights some sort of reaction in another. I included this image because it is aesthetically pleasing, but it challenges some notions of what art may be: the cloth is fashioned from silk that comes from wild spiders native to Madagascar. I think that the interesting, and rather pertinent, part is that it combines two elements not necessarily considered to be art: silk filament from an insect and textile. However, I think the product can surely be seen as the result of a very skilled and unique artistic endeavor.

1 - Katie Sola: What is art?


I think art resists classification. Every time I think of a new definition I come up with an exception. Something beautiful? See the top of this post for the Chapman brothers’ Fuckface (pardon my French). Something executed with technical precision and skill? We saw in class artists who only provide the instructions for their work. Something in an art gallery? Look at Banksy’s street art.
If I have to define art, I’d say it’s something that’s created with aesthetics in mind. Not that art has to be aesthetically pleasing – just look at Marcel Duchamp’s urinal – but it does have to convey its message, if it has one, through the eyes. Although defining art is an interesting mental exercise, it’s far more exciting to look for the art in everything. I’ve been inspired by all kinds of un-“art”like things, from a plastic bag to a chilli pepper squashed on the pavement. resists classification. Every time I think of a new definition I come up with an exception. Something beautiful? Look at the Chapman brothers’ Fuckface (pardon my French). Something executed with technical precision and skill? We saw in class artists who only provide the instructions for their work. Something in an art gallery? Look at Banksy’s street art. If I have to define art, I’d say it’s something that’s created with aesthetics in mind. Not that art has to be aesthetically pleasing – just look at Marcel Duchamp’s urinal – but it does have to convey its message, if it has one, through the eyes.
Although defining art is an interesting mental exercise, it’s far more exciting to look for the art in everything. I’ve been inspired by all kinds of un-“art”like things, from a plastic bag to a chili pepper squashed on the pavement.