What Makes a Great Work of Art?

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DAR

Can't Leave
Aug 2, 2020
355
1,114
Tiburon, California
To put it simply, art is what you think qualifies as art. That's the beauty of art. It doesn't matter if someone doesn't "like" it. That's almost the point of art. Evoking either a shoulder shrug or a passion. Music, writing, architecture, nature, some guy beating on a garbage can, business decisions, legal arguments, pipe making, tobacco blending..... it's all art to me. At least that's how I have to look at life. Otherwise I'd just check out.... and yes, I got serious enough to be considered unartistic.
 

workman

Lifer
Jan 5, 2018
2,793
4,222
The Faroe Islands
One of my customers is the National Gallery here. I help with taking down and arranging exhibitions, repair frames on old paintings etc, so I get to be around a lot of visual art, new and old.
It all speaks to me in varying degrees.
I can appreciate beaty, what I find beautiful that is, for beauty's sake, I can also appreciate composition in abstract art that isn't exactly beautiful, though I'm not very good at it.
There are myriads of ways of expression and good art can be found in all styles, genres, cultures and places.
I consider myself privileged to get be around all this art and I feel that it widens my intellectual horizon.
That said, the art that I personally like the most always tells me a story. The story doesn't have to be contained in the artwork itself. Take the cave paintings at Lascelles or any cave paintings. They invoke in my mind the images of young hunters, intimately familiar with their subjects, climbing high up in underground caves and with a few genious brushes of paint invoking majestical beasts in motion, brilliantly done and for reasons unknown to me. It fascinates me.
A cathedral like, say, Notre Dame de Paris where I have been, also tingles my mind with all kinds of stories about the church, politics, exploitation and so on.
Painters like Caravaggio, also a female artist from the same place and time whose name eludes me, Rembrandt, Bosch, Degas, Manet, William Blake. The pictures make my mind create other mental images and stories.
Yeah and I like country music.
 

anotherbob

Lifer
Mar 30, 2019
15,817
29,664
45
In the semi-rural NorthEastern USA
I think that most of the problem with "Art" and the community is caused by media.
View attachment 96923
The news made such a big deal out of the guy who taped a banana to the wall. It made it sound like this is all artists are doing nowadays. Bullshit.
Also is bullshit is that all art is a commodity. It is not a measure of success by how much something costs. That's media bullshit too.

When I go to meetings to help set up art shows, you never hear artist talking about the price as a goal. Most are people who work other jobs to stay alive and make art to be happy. I know that I will never make a work that is worth millions, but I have never had that as a goal. I could care less.
More of a measure of success to me is whether or not I have adequately reached someone, conveyed what I meant, "someone picks up what I'm puttin' down" Know what I mean? That is SUCCESS to me.

The banana guy... no one will know who that fucker is in a few years. Does anyone know his name now without googling it? I think not. What you hear in the news is put there to merely shock you. It has nothing to do with art.
art and the art market are two different things.
 
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bullet08

Lifer
Nov 26, 2018
8,946
37,969
RTP, NC. USA
Art is a complete BS. Make believe crap for rich to spend money and poor to think they have a bit of class. It's worse than religion. If religion is opium of human mind, art is crack.
 
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art and the art market are two different things.
There are many things. There many different arts and art markets. Most of the stuff I refer to as bananas, are things, events, and ideas that aren’t even for sale. Just philosophical mental masterbation.


Art is a complete BS. Make believe crap for rich to spend money and poor to think they have a bit of class. It's worse than religion. If religion is opium of human mind, art is crack.
Valid, but is music crack? Movies crack?
 
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bullet08

Lifer
Nov 26, 2018
8,946
37,969
RTP, NC. USA
Well there is a bold statement in search of three billy goats, LOL.
Not really. It's the definition of "art". There is no concrete consensus as to what art is and what it is about. It's in the eye of the beholder. That, is what I see from most current form of visual arts, buncha garbage. Crap.
 
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SoddenJack

Can't Leave
Apr 19, 2020
431
1,285
West Texas
Supposedly my great aunt slept with Picasso in the 1920s, at least that’s the family legend. She was somewhat famous as a dancer and Ziegfeld girl. My dad has some signed Picasso prints he supposedly have her. Might be a letter or telegram too if memory serves
 
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Supposedly my great aunt slept with Picasso in the 1920s, at least that’s the family legend. She was somewhat famous as a dancer and Ziegfeld girl. My dad has some signed Picasso prints he supposedly have her. Might be a letter or telegram too if memory serves
Wow, and the 1920’s Picasso. That’s awesome!!! All we have in my family is a story about my mom almost touching Elvis’s jacket after a concert.
 

telescopes

Pipe Dreamer and Star Gazer
Not really. It's the definition of "art". There is no concrete consensus as to what art is and what it is about. It's in the eye of the beholder. That, is what I see from most current form of visual arts, buncha garbage. Crap.
I like to think of the definition of art as being the act of repurposing something so that it not only serves a different purpose, but it either adds to or helps focus ones attention on the environment in which one lives.
 
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I like to think of the definition of art as being the act of repurposing something so that it not only serves a different purpose, but it either adds to or helps focus ones attention on the environment in which one lives.
Try this on...
Art is when a phenomena occurs somewhere in the creative process that elevates the created above the level of ordinary. Each of us senses this quality or phenomena depending on our age, sex, race, culture, or beliefs.

Please don't ask me to defend it. I've written so much... so many years.... and even defended it three times on here over the years over the course of dozens of pages, to the dismay of unfortunate observers.

Lets just say... it's ok if you disagree with it. Disagreeing is even built into the wording, ha ha.

But, really, just post some pictures you like. puffy
 
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