keryx: (Default)
keryx ([personal profile] keryx) wrote2005-02-11 12:40 pm
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what is art? who am i?

Is there a global, universal definition of art in your mind?

Is that definition somehow apart from Art or high art or whatever one might call it?

NPR was talking to some guys yesterday morning. Some relatively random New Yorker and some other dude who was an art professional of some sort (historian? critic? professor?). The random guy was very certain that the Christo thing in Central Park wasn't Art (and you could tell he capitalized it in his head) and the professional art dude was very much of the opinion that there is no such thing as Art v. art.

I tend to agree with the latter. Art (no special caps) is pretty much anything that is created to move you. And anything created to move you pretty much does, in some way, if you actually pay attention to it. Christo's work, while pretentiously described, is arresting. End of story, I think.

I thought there was a weird class aspect to this at first, that the Man On The Street was all "that's not Art!" and the professor wasn't. But I think it was more a reactionary v. not reactionary thing, now that I've seen the Today Show (which is basically a media stand-in for the MOTS) getting all "yay, art" about the installation.

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