What Makes Art?
Hi all, I was at a large art museum the other day to see a special photography exhibit. It got me thinking, what makes a photo become art?
For example, here was one of the images at the museum that I was able to find online muybridgeshorse.com/wp-content...
Now to me, I like the idea behind it, but if I was taking that I would have moved the tree near the left vertical third line (because the background looks more pleasant to the right to me, and also then I could have gotten that entire dog on the right in the frame), and used a faster shutter speed so the dogs weren't blurred. That's just what I, personally, would have found more enjoyable. Yet her pictures are in a museum, and clearly mine are not :)
So... I'm just kind of curious what everyone's thoughts are on what makes a photograph good enough to be considered museum-worthy? Not just this image, which was the most obvious example I could find a link to, but in general?
Shenandoah
Interesting thoughts from both of you. I do agree that art is different things to different people - but are there some standards that make it worthy of a museum? Or is it strictly whatever the curator's own personal interests are?
Does it maybe have to do with making the viewer think more about a deeper meaning, rather than just presenting the obvious in a pleasing way?
I do agree that the image I used as the example took a lot of skill. I have no doubt it turned out exactly as the photographer intended. It's just that her vision is quite different from my own, and it made me wonder how her vision gets chosen for a museum, out of the thousands of other excellent photographers out there who are hardly ever seen. I follow some excellent photographers on Facebook who have never had a public exhibition at all.
It just made me think.
Robert de Bock Well, that's a really difficult answer to give: What is art. Wikipedia is not very specific.
- Art does not require specific skill; see [Mondriaan](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mon...) or [Jackson Pollock](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_...).
- Art does not require more thinking or a deeper layer, see a Dutch artist [Herman Brood](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_B...).
In my opinion the only requirement is that it has to express the zeitgeist, give a clue about the current state of civilisation.
Although for the tree/dog image this really does not meet that "requirement"...
Wow, it really is a difficult question, don't think there is one answer.
Ian Prince Well, there are probably as many definitions as artists, echoing @Paweł 's comment that it's subjective.
I just read with interest petapixel.com/2013/03/13/the-h... posted here by @kevin and quite like the definition at the end of the article "Art is risk made visible".
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Paweł Kadysz For me, art is everything that brings any kind of emotions. Doesn't matter if it's anger, or laughter. But if I look at the pic and just say - 'meh' - it's not art. But it's not art for me. It may be art for 99.9% of people. Art is completely subjective. That's what makes it art.
And as for pure technical issues of the photo you mentioned... Sure, there are some rules (rule of thirds) or particular camera settings you should use in particular lighting conditions. But rules are also meant to be broken. And most famous artsist were breaking them. A lot.
I wonder what the rest of you think about this topic.