fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2799 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2799 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 058 secrets from Secret Submission Post #400.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't mean "theme or message" in the sense of "buy this" or "Cheerios are delicious." I mean theme or message in the sense of "What is this work trying to say about the human condition?" or "What idea is this work trying to get across?" as two examples.

And I absolutely think that both music and purely visual arts (such as photographs) can answer these questions.

But it's just my personal definition of art at the end of the day.

Well 1, that's an awfully selective definition of message. And 2, yes they can, but not all musical or visual works do, our even attempt to. You'd have to start excluding a lot of things traditionally considered art.

I just meant those as two examples. I'm well aware that it would potentially exclude a lot of things traditionally considered art but…eh…I'm not too bothered by that fact to be perfectly honest.

Guess it's good you're not too bothered but some other people might be when you arbitrarily toss out half of the museum and the art history books. What you've done is create a definition that's completely subjective and therefore useless. In redefining art you've also had to redefine message as only those messages you fine important in order to exclude the things I mentioned above. You might as well say "art is what I like and think is good."

Well…then let them be bothered, I guess.

If my opinion rattles them so much, I'm not quite sure why they're giving me so much power over their emotional state. It's not like I'm going to museums and ripping down half the galleries or anything.

I don't think my definition is any worse than the one Merriam-Webster provides:

something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings

And I do think a lot of what we consider art is subjective. I mean, some modern art gets thrown out of museums because people mistake it as trash.

I really don't get why my definition would bother someone though. Just because *I* don't consider something art doesn't mean you can't.

Moreover, I never said in my definition that I had to agree with the message or that the message/theme had to be "important." I disagree with Fyodor Dostoyevsky HUGELY on morality and ethics. Yet, I would say that Crime and Punishment is still art -- it's a book I enjoy enormously and that I think has very powerful themes. I just don't agree with them in the slightest. But it's very well done.

Why bother with words if they can just mean whatever you want them to mean? For language to work definitions shouldn't be subject to your personal preferences. If I don't like green beans can I stop calling them food? We already have ways to express subjective things like enjoyment and emotional investment, it's redundant to have 'art' mean the same thing. If it's going to continue to be a useful term at all it needs something at least approaching objective qualities. This isn't about you hurting feelings, it's about you abusing language.

Let me ask you something though…is my definition really all that different from Merriam-Webster's? Because I don't see a huge difference.

Moreover, I hardly see how I'm abusing language when there are people -- respected people -- such as Roger Ebert who stated that video games aren't art.

The point of my secret was just to say why I consider Spec Ops: The Line to unequivocally be art and what art means to me on a personal level.

If you disagree, feel free to but I don't see how I'm "abusing" language.

Art isn't objective anyway. Even experts disagree. TS Eliot, for one, considered Hamlet to be an artistic failure. Doesn't he have the right to express that opinion?

the words 'everything' and 'intended' change the definition quite a lot, actually

a piece can express feelings or messages or themes without everything about it being intentional

did Monet's paintings stop being art when his eyesight got shittier and his brushstrokes became about 5 times fatter and blurrier? of course not, but he had no control over his own visual deterioration, it wasn't an artistic decision that he made on purpose, and it completely changes the appearance and impact of his later work

although I'm not sure what Monet's central theme would be according to you anyway - 'light is beautiful?' 'color and effect are more critical ways of seeing than photorealistic detail'? that seems bizarrely dry, though. it seems to me much more like that he was just trying to share beauty the way he *saw* it. Perhaps a theme needn't be verbal - but that makes it bizarrely broad in addition to bizarrely narrow to exclude advertisements and, like, essays, where literally every word should theoretically contribute to your thesis. A philosophy paper would even do this in regard to Big Questions About Human Nature, but not be anything we generally consider art.

it sounds to me like your definition is what you consider GOOD art - is it possible to have bad art? even mediocre art? where most elements form a cohesive message but a few are extraneous or contradictory? your definition seems like it would preclude that possibility

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nyrt