The problem with much of today's "art" and postmodernism generally, as you phrased in a more positive light, is that we have removed all criteria, and now anything at all can be "art." This is somewhat like the "noise" movement in music that occurred around the same time (beginning in early 1900's) as more modern movements in other arts. What sounds qualify as music? Why should someone get to say that one type of sound is music and another type of sound is not? Why does music have to be made on a 12 or 16 note scale? Why do there have to be any rules at all? What's the difference between Bach and banging on a pot?
No, no, no. WE have not removed all criteria. WE have expanded the notion to allow for the free expression of ideas.
What is art has never been up for debate. It all is at some point.
The question is rather, "What is good art?"
That subjective question does have at its roots a criteria. I think Jesse -
@sablebrush52 - someone who is paid as an artist and lives off the proceeds - stated that criteria quite succinctly. I thought I did as well, but hell, what do I know, I like my Grabows just as much as my Dunhills.
At any rate, there is a criteria, and the ages speak to this criteria. Photo realism, drawing inside the lines, all that was bullshit rules set to control sales by guilds that had to ensure profits - rightly so - for artists who needed to make a living.
Today, we have democratized art. We have broken the yolk of what is and what is not considered art.
All of it is art. Not all of it is good by any measure. But art it most likely is - even the taped banana and the screaming loco Yoko.
Who is anyone to say what is or is not art?
But everyone of us may judge for ourselves what we like and what we don't like.
Right?
