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Comment by hiou | Hacker News Reader

I could not disagree more. What you are describing is craft and not art. Not to say that one is in any way better or more valuable, only that once something has a firm set of "particular effects or experiences" it have moved on from art and into the world of craft.

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Some realms of art still entertain this definition for art, but you are correct in that the vast majority of modern art is exactly this distinct departure from the notion that one must have an audience. Modern art came about because of the rise of the bourgeoisie, meaning, people of different classes could commission works, artists had more freedom in what they chose to depict, sell, create, etc, instead of being limited to being commissioned by the church or by nobility.

But you are getting into a debate that hasn't really been resolved in modern art either, this has been a debate in the concept of kitsch and collage, dada, Greenberg, photography, etc.

If you want to dance around the question linguistically, that's all fine and good, but there are people in the world who believe that art must be sold and there are people in the world who find value in it other than the fact that it sells. You've got the past and the contemporary interpretations of art conflated with the trends of culture. Plus, these circles weave and web together, people derive influence and inspiration from all sorts of places, art comes to mean different things depending on who is listening, who is speaking/painting/etc.

I mean, there is obviously either a rigid definition for Art which has no form in language and is thus inexpressible for all eternity despite the various shapes it may manifest as, or art is something else. No, just kidding, I have no idea what I'm patring on about.

I remember seeing a doco that was discussing the 'what is art' question. My favourite response was from an eccentric artist/rancher, who had made the three letters A R T in giant vinyl-covered foam blocks, and stacked them against a fence. His opinion on the definition question "What is 'art'?": 'art' is three letters up against a fence.

My favorite definition is in this footage of Gordon Pask speaking of the liberty to adventure, not limited to artists but also very common to sciences. Art and science are ways of questioning or proving asumptions about the world and that requires to asume risks. There is no risk in mastery. https://youtu.be/fifSXXS8fU4

But if the object of art is to make people to feel/experience, how do you propose one does that if they can't control what they do?

Or do you think art is solely about self-expression? But then again, how can you express what you mean, if you don't control the output?

Some amount of craft may be necessary to produce successful art, but the success/quality of art is not monotonic with the level of difficulty of the craft involved.

Very simple, low-skill artworks can be extremely powerful. Artworks that took 20,000 hours of practice can be dull.

It's not about difficulty, it's about mastery. It takes thousands of hours of practice to be able to draw the perfect line. Even if drawing said perfect line took seconds.

A large part of mastery also goes beyond the technicalities of expressing, it's also about having a good eye for what is worth expressing and what is mundane/boring/etc.

But it basically boils down to: art [of all kinds] is tricky and takes a lot of practice.

Here's a Flickr stream with lots of art with good to great technique:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/7474079@N02/

Boring isn't it? (Interesting as history maybe?)

The "what is worth expressing" is where creativity happens. Technique makes you a competent hack. It's not enough for originality. So it's misleading to think it's all art. Technique and originality are different skills. The best artists have lots of both, but they're not related skills.

(Software has the same problem.)

Huh. I thought many of those surprisingly good. Certainly better that what I see in local art galleries.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/7474079@N02/17227816585/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/7474079@N02/18470207921/

Any list of the same kind of scene done with the same methodology is going to be boring in bulk.

Thank you for linking to that gallery! It's very eye-opening. I dutifully went through several pages, trying to find something non-boring, and it was indeed all boring (with the exception of Bruegel, who shouldn't be in there).

Interestingly, I feel the same way about many works on ArtStation [1]. The artists try to draw something "cool", like a fantasy creature, but end up with just a basic picture of a human with lots of greebles [2]. Lack of imagination is very obvious.

At the other end of the spectrum for me is something like Wayne Barlowe's "Wargate" [3], an image with a whole new visual language for what it's trying to say, or Paul Veer's pixel art for Nuclear Throne [4], with very simple technique but very imaginative character designs. Apologies if my taste is pedestrian :-)

[1] https://www.artstation.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble

[3] https://simotron.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/tumblr_mv4vmddu...

[4] http://i.imgur.com/7V8Di0i.gif

I found it interesting. Why is it considered boring?

Ok, I'll bite. I found these fascinating. You could live in every one of them, it feels like I'm transported to different times and places, wondering what these people are up to, what's going on, enjoying the sunshine / snow / rain / rough seas. In a word, interesting.

What do you classify as interesting?

The divided opinions on this gallery are revealing. I can see why someone would find these works excruciatingly boring, in that they are all essentially photographs with no variety in artist's intent or 'method of art' for lack of a better term. But looking at them less abstractly, there is a rich variety of scenes depicted which are skilfully created enough to merit closer observation. I think the parent discovered a really useful litmus test for how someone approaches art.

Interesting litmus test indeed! Some were boring to me, some really interesting -- Monet's painting of a winter day on that page arrested me (and I didn't even identify it as Monet right away) because the way the light came down and reflected off the snow and the clouds was just... amazing. So few artists paint light well. And I noticed myself drawn over and over again to the featured paintings of Galien-Laloue. I like the light again. Bierstadt's paintings are always a little over-the-top but if you can get really close to an original the details are amazing and make you wonder about the time and the tiny people. The paintings of architecture do rather bore me.

My criterion for whether something is art is whether it changes how I see the world. I guess something like Wayne Barlowe's "Wargate" (referenced in a sibling post) doesn't change how I see the world. It's too far removed from my life. But the light in Monet's winter day...

A counter-argument would be that you don't need to have good handwriting to be an effective writer, and you don't need to have good draftsmanship to be an effective artist. "If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing".

See the highly popular /u/Shitty_Watercolour on Reddit or "Get Your War On" comics by Rees, David.

Practicing technique can be nice, but it can also hinder spontaneity and creativity.

The magical inspiration in art is something beyond technique. The way you practice that is to just live your life.

Lots of people hold themselves back from drawing, dancing, and singing because they are afraid of being judged for not having enough technical skill.

if you never leave the world of the abstract- sure, i can see how you would disagree. but everyone i know who is a good artist knows that craft facilitates art, and they all bust their ass on craft.

Much of contemporary art seeks to subvert that notion, even if you find it difficult to consider it real art (I do).

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