Reply To: Debate: What is art?

[Omar Domenech]

I agree with William Miller, AKA Willy The Milly, AKA Billy The Willy, there has to be a line… there’s art and then there’s not art, that line gets blurred way too much and people get away with it too easily. Waving the magic wand and calling upon subjectivity…. it’s in the eyes of the beholder….. it’s the meaning you put into it, etc,  always feels to me a cheat code that people exploit way too much. 

Putting a dot in the middle of a white canvas and calling it a masterful piece of art is akin to  playing tennis without the net, kicking the ball anywhere and calling it a goal, striking out and say you hit a home-run because it’s just how you feel you perform anyways.

I mean c’mon, why bother then investing so much time in grinding away in a 3D software trying to get that awesome render, trying to comprehend what makes a render feel and look appealing. I’ll just render the default cube setup and argue about how that feels to me and I get a pass.

Going into Artstation or CG Society and feeling helplessness and despair and  going into a 2 year old kids classroom art section shouldn’t be up for discussion, even though their mothers holds their child’s work as a piece of art…. getting hired or not getting hired by Pixar means a large the degree of objectivity is present, I don’t see people that can express their most inner self with any rubbish being hired by big studios. 

There is art and then there is not art, otherwise by the mere act of existing we are all producing art all the time, so then why do I bother in learning and getting better if I can just call upon wishful warm fuzzy feelings.  

I believe what’s happening is that there’s a subset of people that have exploited the “what art feels to you” card way too much and it has permeated deep into the culture, their bullshit’o’meter is off the roof and people fall prey upon their charms and furthermore, by assigning monetary value to pieces of art, the perception of what counts as art has gone further down into a spiral.