This is generally true in theory, however in practice, I find that what constitutes “art” lies as much in the audience it is intended for, and how they interpret it, as the artist itself.

Lets take, for example, rap music. If you were to ask, say the classical music crowd, whether Rap music is “art”, you are likely to get many different answers, depending on who you ask. And even within the Rap music crowd, you will have many differing opinions. Even supposedly “unskilled” rap musicians will have followers who deem their work “art”.

So the question then becomes, is there some universal definition that we can fall back on to decide whether something is “art”? And how do we define a “skilled” artist? I have never found any black and white answers, but I remember reading about an experiment someone performed at a prestigious art gallery, where they mixed in a munch of random 6 (or something like that) year olds paintings along with a bunch of well known, contemporary artists’ work.

Quite surprisingly, a large number of the so called art “connoisseurs” regarded the six year olds work on par with the professional artists work. That, to me, suggests many things, the most interesting ones (to me anyway) being that the rules regarding what constitutes art are not universal, and also that skill is not necessarily a determining factor in making art.

One could possibly argue that the six year old in question was a prodigy, but even so, without any training/artistic background, or experience, there should still have been a significant gap in the perceived quality of the work, compared to a seasoned artists work. So at the end of the day, I think that not only is art a highly subjective endeavor, but the idea of artistic skill is equally subjective.

Well, to paraphrase another saying, “One mans garbage is another mans art.”

A lot of the things that many contemporary artists call “art” doesn’t seem all that artistic to me. I recently watched a youtube vid about a guy who collects New York city trash, organizes and repackages it, and sells it to people in other states and abroad, for a rather sizeable markup.

Apparently there is an “art” to doing this, and he is quite “skilled” in this “Art”. But based on the amount of money he’s made doing this, people apparently do consider this art. Me, not so much. But then again I’m not into artsy garbage. Who knows.

So unless a person can quantify what specific aspect of thier art requires the prerequisite “skill”, it is hard for a person not familiar with that particular the art form to judge the skill level of the artist.

So personally, I prefer to avoid the subjective pitfall of trying to formally label anything “Art” or “Not Art” and will simply say I like what I like, don’t like what I don’t like, and could care less about the rest.

This? I don’t know. Personally, I think not. But this discussion reminds me of the business card scene from American Psycho:

Was it just me, or was Paul Allens business card just absolutely mind blowing? Now THAT was art.
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Not. 😛