9/10 review - Brutalgamer

Sculpting is indeed an art because a sculpture of a man is not a man. It is an object meant to create the ILLUSION of a man.

A car, on the other hand, is merely a car. It is not meant to create any illusion. If it DOES create an illusion (by having, for example, the body of a Ferrari but the engine of a Fiat), then it is a BAD car. While a "sculpture" of a stone, which tries to create the "illusion" of a stone, is a BAD artwork, because there's no illusion there: a stone is just a stone.

But that definition is false?

art1
ärt/
noun

1. 1.
   the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
   "the art of the Renaissance"
   synonyms:fine art, artwork
   "he studied art"
2. 2.
   the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.
   "the visual arts"

Ok dude, yeah you are right. Cars and stones and urinals are art. Thanks for clearing that up.

Calm down. Just because you feel strongly about your subjective truth it does not become everyone else's subjective truth, all of a sudden, too.

No of course not. And I wouldn't have it any other way. After all, subjective truths are no more equal than subjects are. (Which changes nothing about how strongly I feel about the issue.)

You really are trying hard to be a Kant.

Kant was an old scared geezer. I don't even like him. But let's not go into philosophy in this thread.

google is amazing

I'll try to explain how we humans create and use words. We create words by lumping similar things together, and coining a label for them, so that we can more easily refer to them. So, for example, you can sit on a table and write on a chair, if you want, but for the most part when we say "chair" we mean an object that's made primarily for sitting on, and when we say "desk" we mean an object that's made primarily for writing on (or for reading, or playing computer games, etc.)

You guys are doing the equivalent of saying: BUT YOU CAN ALSO SIT ON A SKYSCRAPER! OR ON A DOG! OR ON MY FINGER! HENCE SKYSCRAPERS, DOGS AND FINGERS ARE ALSO CHAIRS!

You are basically DEBASING the word when you are extending its use TO EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE. And that's why no one can talk about art today without appearing like a (word too bad for Uber to allow it to be posted on this forum).

I'll just remind everyone for the last time that all these issues have been solved in that link I gave above, and leave this thread for good. For reals.

So yes, those PARTICULAR urinals feature a minor artistic aspect (the illusion: that they are made to look like flowers), but they are not art to the level that a novel or a movie or a photograph or a videogame are. In the same way that you can INDEED sit on a finger, but a finger is not a chair to the level that a desk chair or a couch are. The one is a human appendix, the other a piece of furniture. /rant

And here you can feast your eyes on the results of debasing the concept art to apply to everything:

cdrkf should be delighted to know that that's "worth" 60,000 dollars, by the way.

I still don't think lumping some truly beautiful classic cars with that is really fair. Maybe you are correct that 'art' is a bad term- still there are things about classic cars that give them value beyond the pure performance. Also your argument against cars is a little tenuous- though I get the point you were trying to make (as if you think about it, looking at a car from a functional perspective no high performance car really makes sense as they are built to move people or objects around. For that you need a sturdy box with seating etc, otherwise known as a 'Volvo' who are famous for going on record about their large estates simply saying "we make the best boxes"...).

Modern cars beat older cars in other categories too. Handling, cornering, "feel", "connection with the road", "comfort", etc. You are shortchanging them when you only talk about speed.

And I am not lumping cars together with feces-filled-tin-cans. The only thing they have in common is that neither of them are art.

And like I said, if connection with the road is your number 1 priority, you should just stick to walking. Barefoot even. That's not the reason we invented cars, and therefore it's not the number 1 criterion by which we judge them.

Greatest.
Troll.
Thread.
EVER.

My remarks are lost on this thread, I am afraid.

This will probably seem a bit left-field, but I am struggling to find where your definition of Art has come from. So in an attempt to bring a bit more clarity to this discussion: (I know these are heavily slanted and based on bad assumptions, but I hope you will overlook that [or correct the questions ])
- Why must Art be illusory?
- Why should something with purpose not be able to be 'artistic'?

And on a different note:
- Why are you so opposed to the meaning of 'Art' that others are using?

Oh and I would not object to trying to answer similar questions if you could pose some. I would've put some answers in already, but I'm horrible at trying to write without a fairly specific purpose in mind.

No one else is "using any meaning to art". And that's precisely the problem. They are simply saying the first thing that comes to mind, and trying to attack everyone who attempts to define the concept. That's why we have a billion definitions of art, and that's why we can't communicate on the issue. How can someone study art, when people say that everything is art? So maybe I should study entomology then, since insects can also "be art" if they are beautiful? Or maybe I should study mechanical engineering, since cars can be art too? Or maybe I should study medicine since hospitals can be art too if they have urinals shaped like flowers in them?

What do Ferrari engineers and Shakespeare have in common?

Nothing.

But what does Homer and Shakespeare and Steven Spielberg and El Greco and Jon Mavor have in common?

That they all create illusions.

So, as for where my definition comes from, I made it myself. I looked at all existing artforms, found what they have in common, and simply defined the concept by that common thing. And the common thing is illusion. And then I wrote a book about it (and about some other stuff, like for example how the worst artists create anti-art in order to make lots of ca$hmoney and discredit real artists, etc.)

As for the "art has no purpose" fallacy. Art has purpose. To relax, entertain, inspire, etc. It's just a different purpose from a car, or a hospital, or an insect. Cars can also entertain, and hospitals can relax you, and insects can inspire you. But we are talking about the MAIN features here, in order to define the concept.