Osler's Razor

I don't really think art can be singularly defined, but my feeling has always been that if it has to be explained, it's not art, or at least not very good art. I am looking at you, performance art/weird installations/other weird and/or stupid stuff that people pass off as "art."
 

I have never fully grasped "art." I know that there are moments that grab me, that take hold of my soul and toss it around with any myriad of results. Many of those moments were in the presence of various works, be they plays, songs, sermons or still, silent images. I will say that the "still" images that have moved me the most in life are natural settings more than representations of nature or imagination. Visual art that appeals to me is usually in the realm of satire, intended or not. One of my favorites is a reworked classic depicting Jesus bowling that hangs in my home office. I rarely remember that Christ is God. This reminds me daily that he was also Man.
 

Thanks, now I can't get the Big Lebowski quotes out of my head.

"You Don't F%&K with the Jesus"

As for art, I clearly love a well crafted comedy. In that vein, if I laugh when you tell me something I'm looking at is art...it's not art.
 

If it moves you, then it is art. What is art to you, may not be art to me, but all of creation and our ability to mimic our creator through our own creations, is proof enough to me that art must be very broadly defined.

By the way...your art lecture on the first day of PR did worlds for calming me in re: PC. I can't thank you enough for that. I thought, "this won't be all bad" and it wasn't! :)
 

After I saw the play "ART" in London where the three guys spent the entire time debating whether a white canvas was art or not, I will agree that anything can be art if that's what someone wants to call it.
 

ART -- A friend of mine in Tulsa, Okla., when I was about eleven years old. I'd be interested to hear from him. There are so many pseudos around taking his name in vain.
from The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan
 

Is it art? The photo you took is considered art and the item you photographed is in my mind art - of the folk/americana variety. Good art of all forms provokes conversation.
 

May I suggest another contestant in your "is it art" game?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKGRRIiR5xA
 

I am mostly with IPLG: art is in the eye of the creator (a paraphrase that I hope he will allow).

If someone goes to the trouble of creating something with a message, then I am inclined to accept it is art.

Now, "art" versus "uplifting art," this is perhaps a more challenging public question.
 

I look forward to viewing uplifting art when I return to FL in late January. There is a Fernando Botero exhibit opening in St. Pete and a Henri Matisse exhibit opening in Tampa.
 

I am with Ginger.
 

Art, can't define it, but I will know it when I see it.
 

"Art is why I get up in the morning.
But my definition ends there
It doesn't seem fair.
I'm living for something I can't even define."
-Ani Difranco "Out of Habit"