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 kathleen fitzpatrick | course sakai site
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What is art?

Submitted by racinian on 18 October 2006 - 2:28pm.

I think the good ol' what is/what is not art discussion has popped up on this blog before, I'm thinking in the discussion of Duchamp's Fountain (discussion isn't the right word, I don't think, is there another word for the commenting we do here?). I found McCloud's rather brief definition of art pretty interesting, and I'd like to hear (read?) other people's comments.
McCloud writes on page 164 "Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn't grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction!" This seems too simple to me. He later draws a distinction between art and "pure" art (page 169), but how did other people react to this passage with the cavepeople?

I loved the last row on page 168, with the man pointing to a painting screaming "That's not art!" because I've heard that so many times, and I can't tell you how annoying it is. While I agree that art is not an either/or, I'm not sure that everything that is not tied to our survival or reproduction is art. This seems to be an all or nothing argument.

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Yeah

Submitted by bloggityblog07 on 18 October 2006 - 3:20pm.

I also found this very interesting. I found his definition to be a bit too exclusive. Some of the "best" artists create their work for a living...aka a means of survival. Just because works are created with monetary gains in sight does that mean it can no longer be considered art? He addressed this matter to some extent in Chapter seven but I was a little unsatisfied. I did however like a statement he made on page 166, "Because of it's independence from our evolution-bred instincts, art is the way we assert our identities as individuals and break out of the narrow roles nature cast us in." Though I don't think art can be wholly separated from the evolutionary instincts of survival since many an artist create art to survive, I like the idea of art being an assertion of identity. Like McCloud says, "Rare is the person in any occupation who expresses nothing...and rare is the artist who cares nothing for success i.e. survival." I think this is an interesting point.

Why can’t someone just end all the anxiety and provide a definitive definition for art so we can all stop arguing about it and just appreciate it?

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