Does that mean the composer of a symphony is not an artist because (especially the most successful ones) don’t usually often get to control the gestalt of the performance? The ironic thing is in music composition trying to control the gestalt of the performance too much is considered tacky, like a screenplay with too much scene direction. Ironically, we also have the question by this reasoning, if the author of a screenplay is an artist.
as a multimedia artist, I have long been frustrated with the philosophical shallowness of pure visual artists’ understanding of what art is because it never actually is something that is inclusive of plenty of things that everyone agrees is obviously art. Like almost everything in performance art (performing/producing/composing music, directing films, theater in general, etc) for instance. And in the performing arts we’ve understood for literally thousands of years the difference between the artwork, which is the execution of a concept, and the artwork which is the concept itself.
The biggest irony, though in my opinion, is that during the mid 20th century, the visual arts had a movement which is still ongoing (and as actually produced several notable modern works of art that you probably have heard of before, like the banana taped to the wall called “Comedian”) called conceptualism, which directly challenges, the exact sorts of ideas you’re expressing about art. One of my favorite artists of all time is called Sol Lewitt. He was a conceptual artist and one of his most famous works was a series called “the wall drawings” which were just illustrations that exist existed only as sets of instructions for people to follow, the idea that every “performance” of the concept is just as valid an art artwork as the concept itself. Which by the way is literally how we think of music and live theater as art already so there’s precedent for this, clearly.
“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” -Sol LeWitt. Really wonder what this guy would have to say about AI generated images, like imagine showing him a piece which is one of his wall drawings as rendered by several different generative AI models just to really make you think about the nature of art itself and what it even is. and in my opinion that’s really what art is about: connecting with people and sharing your ideas with them, using literally any means that are at you’re disposal. and if it’s really thoughtless, and you just used cheap tools to generate something really fast that ripped off pirated media in a manner that would get any one of us sent to prison, that doesn’t make it not art. it just makes it probably really bad art. But why are we so insistent on this exclusive definition of art? I don’t really understand.
Does that mean the composer of a symphony is not an artist because (especially the most successful ones) don’t usually often get to control the gestalt of the performance? The ironic thing is in music composition trying to control the gestalt of the performance too much is considered tacky, like a screenplay with too much scene direction. Ironically, we also have the question by this reasoning, if the author of a screenplay is an artist.
as a multimedia artist, I have long been frustrated with the philosophical shallowness of pure visual artists’ understanding of what art is because it never actually is something that is inclusive of plenty of things that everyone agrees is obviously art. Like almost everything in performance art (performing/producing/composing music, directing films, theater in general, etc) for instance. And in the performing arts we’ve understood for literally thousands of years the difference between the artwork, which is the execution of a concept, and the artwork which is the concept itself.
The biggest irony, though in my opinion, is that during the mid 20th century, the visual arts had a movement which is still ongoing (and as actually produced several notable modern works of art that you probably have heard of before, like the banana taped to the wall called “Comedian”) called conceptualism, which directly challenges, the exact sorts of ideas you’re expressing about art. One of my favorite artists of all time is called Sol Lewitt. He was a conceptual artist and one of his most famous works was a series called “the wall drawings” which were just illustrations that exist existed only as sets of instructions for people to follow, the idea that every “performance” of the concept is just as valid an art artwork as the concept itself. Which by the way is literally how we think of music and live theater as art already so there’s precedent for this, clearly.
“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” -Sol LeWitt. Really wonder what this guy would have to say about AI generated images, like imagine showing him a piece which is one of his wall drawings as rendered by several different generative AI models just to really make you think about the nature of art itself and what it even is. and in my opinion that’s really what art is about: connecting with people and sharing your ideas with them, using literally any means that are at you’re disposal. and if it’s really thoughtless, and you just used cheap tools to generate something really fast that ripped off pirated media in a manner that would get any one of us sent to prison, that doesn’t make it not art. it just makes it probably really bad art. But why are we so insistent on this exclusive definition of art? I don’t really understand.
Thank you for bringing nuance to this discussion.