What is art

I had quite a severe discussion about this with someone who is absolutely not in the art related world today.

Some interesting discussion points:

what is art and what is not art? well, i guess this is the important question right? but isn't arguing whether something is art or not art just semantics? similarly to the argument of whether pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet. whether something is art or not does not change what it is, it does not make it any less of a thing or more. the label just allows a people to easily identify and categorize things around them. it's like trying to find a category for a non-existent idea (what is god? or what is sadness?). you just end up describe what is art by using art (like, how do you describe to a robot who does not know what happiness is without using arbitrary concepts that are so related to happiness that without experiencing happiness, one could never know). so thus, art is about art (recently i heard vasa use this phrase), is actually true! haha. art is everything that has been art before and discovering the new art.

ok, now that we established that arguing art is just semantics, then how do we deal with that knowledge? well, let's look at the institution of art. as with all disciplines, the people who are not in the discipline subscribe to the opinions of certain few who have been popularly elected (metaphorically) as filters of all that is in the discipline and those elected choose what to expose us to. these filters are curators, gallerists, and critics. just like the magazine SCIENCE or NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, we ask these people to filter the vastness of research and the new and ask them to tell us what, of all the discoveries, is really brilliant or great.

now with all institutes like this, there will be hesitation to radical new ideas. this is not new in the sciences or the art world. just as duchamp struggled against his peers to accept the fountain, galileo struggled against established perceptions. what always holds true is, this will change, and those who can not adapt get left behind. we are all here learning what has been discovered, and constantly discovering the new to either support or refute what we learned. this is just how progress works.

just like the sciences, art has an economic and political side. how do we judge good art? the same way good theories are judged: how influential are the ideas on the masses? when duchamp turned the urinal sideways and called it a fountain, if no one was influenced from this and art didn't change, it wouldn't be as important of a piece as it is now. thus, how much something is "art" is determined by how controversial it is. the more people talk, the more popular something is. i think this goes along with my saying: if everyone likes you work, you make good art, if everyone hates your work, you make bad art, if half of the people love your work, and the other hate, you make GREAT art. the more an art piece gets talked about the more interest it generates, the more fame, and thus the more value. if enough people follow the ideas behind the piece, then the piece becomes a classic, influential, and belongs in a museum for all to see and say: this is the point in time where everything changed.