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Originally Posted by dazedcola
Who's to say what is and isn't art.I mean is something "art" just because you hang it on a wall ?
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according to some people, yes.
i'm taking aesthetics this semester and we've been talking about things like this for pretty much the whole semester. for your enlightenment let me give you the basic theories of art as i know it:
1) art is an imitation of reality. (plato, aristotle)
2) art is the expression of emotion. (leo tolstoy, r.g. collingwood)
3) art is significant form. (clive bell)
4) art is that which is intended for an artworld public. (arthur danto, george dickie)
5) art is a loosely defined set whose members are bound together by "family resemblances" to each other. (ludwig wittgenstein, maurice mandelbaum)
6) the concept "art" cannot be defined because to give such a definition would conflict with the creative and boundary-pushing nature of art. (morris weitz)
7) art is the selective recreation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments. (ayn rand)
there's some truth to all of this, but no one theory (i think) has a monopoly on the truth here.