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Well, what is art?
The Big Ideas girl
loves these kinds of debates. There was a lot of talk about this concept when the Guggenheim launched shows of Armani clothing and historic motorcycles over the last few years. Does design count as art? Were those things -- and the quilts for that matter -- art, or artifacts? Maybe it's art if it expresses something in a new way. More likely, though, it seems like we tend to think of art as something that has no purpose other than expression (otherwise we call it a craft). Think about cave paintings -- I doubt the cavemen were thinking lofty thoughts like "The liquified buffalo blood really captures our innate hunting instinct, especially when I'm using the flat stone surface as a motif for my world." But, we consider those paintings art in retrospect, even though they may have served some everyday purpose back then. The art-beauty connection is a little more tenuous. Many modern art enthusiasts might say it's only art if it's NOT beautiful.
posted by
grandesidees
on August 26, 2002 at 5:23 PM
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