A Question of Taste

I just responded to a journal concerning whether or not something was Art. I got out my speech-writing powers and posted this comment:


"...I guess I can go on and be totally cliche and say that it depends on who's looking at the art, right? I mean, we certainly haven't gotten tired of the "Art if Subjective" comment, right? Right?

In reality, I think we shouldn't bother trying to define what art is. Because Art - any form of it, whether it's a painting or a poster or music or a book; fanfiction, poetry, comic books, video games or machinima or hell, even a wall of GUM - is different than anything else we have in the world. It's different than Science, or Math, or anything else we have on Earth because it alludes its definition - how many people have a universal definition of Biology? Okay, well good. Now how many people have a universal idea of Art? Exactly. Some people say this gum-wall is Art, other people argue that it isn't. And yet, there is no way to determine who is right in this aspect. You can toss around words like 'accidental art' or 'postmodernism' or 'abstract' or just 'something that looks cool,' but is it Art?

Why should we define Art? Why should we try and limit this natural, skilled, messy creativity and imagination we have been producing since man itself was born? Why do we want to turn Art - this beautiful expression of the Human Condition - of suffering and love and tragedy and normalcy and religion and symbolism and Nothing and Everything - into something as dead and trite and easy to pin down as the definition of, say, geometry? Why would we do that?

So - is this wall of gum art? I can't tell you that. Only you can tell yourself that. And you can't go out and tell your parents or your friends the status of the piece because that's what you believe. Art is Anything. Art is Everything. But Art can also be Nothing; it's all in the eyes of the beholder."

Thoughts?