Is it still art?

This photo, and oth­ers of sim­i­lar nature are con­sid­ered ‘art’ by some, but far from it by oth­ers. So is it Art? Or can you argue that this, along with an ad for tooth­paste, is just a form of pub­lic­ity and not artistic?

Well,‚ Art has dif­fer­ent mean­ings for dif­fer­ent peo­ple and there is no one answer for this issue. Think about it… have you ever been to a museum and seen a can­vas com­pletely painted in indigo blue? This is top of the line art accord­ing to avid artists. To oth­ers, this is sim­ply a waste of paint and can­vas. Or how about those early black & white nudes, oth­er­wise known as “early porn”. Time man­aged to some­how evolve these pho­tos into art. Or let us reflect on thou­sands of years back, when the cave­men wrote on the cave walls to com­mu­ni­cate and tell a story. Today, these draw­ings are etched in all art his­to­ri­ansž minds as the works of masters.

So truly, art and beauty is in the eye of the beholder and accord­ing to Edward Degas: “Art is not what you see, but what you make oth­ers see”.

Obvi­ously the ‘artist’ of this photo wanted us to see some­thing… A LOT of something.

FORUM LINK: http://www.photography.ca/Forums/showthread.php?t=570

Comments

  1. Ed says:

    Well, if you ask me (and it seems like you’re ask­ing me), it def­i­nitely has some craft to it, in that the image is prop­erly lit and nicely exposed, and nicely placed within the frame, etc. But it has no mean­ing, and nei­ther invokes nor pro­vokes (aside from hor­mones). In other words, it’s pretty enough, but it doesn’t say any­thing, so it’s no more “artis­tic” than a nicely woven basket.

    How­ever, some­times the “art” arrives with the con­text. As-is, there is lit­tle con­text, but if this were part of a larger body of work that did *say some­thing* then it might be closer to being art. But as is, it’s just a pretty picture.

    (We could, of course, go on for pages about this…)

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