Blog post Week 2: Samantha Rhynard

What is art? One official definition of art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”, or also “works produced by human creative skill and imagination”. Art is usually found in the form of paintings, sculptures, or drawings; it usually is depicting some image, like a landscape, a bowl of fruit, or a person. It is usually considered to be the property of the person that creates it, because it is original to them. More modern art includes photography and generally more abstract concepts, and the term “art” has shifted to encompass not just the “beauty and emotional power”, but also the symbolism and meaning behind the paintings. Modern art differs greatly from what would be considered art in the past—today, a blue square is considered a masterpiece, where in the past a piece had to be a beautiful, accurate depiction of something to be considered art. This difference can be seen in the change in definition; the shift from beauty and emotional power to the meaning and symbolism means that the specific hue of the blue square and the thoroughness of the brush strokes, or even what the artist was experiencing at that point in their life can hold a deeper meaning to art critics than a painting of a sad-looking girl. This can be seen in pieces like the Italian artist’s banana taped to a wall, or even the Richard Price cropped photograph of a Marlboro poster. These pieces pose the same question to many, but it is asked for different reasons; Is this art?

For the banana, it seems like an ordinary piece of fruit taped to the wall is not something that should be considered art (if you were concerned about what to do when the banana expires, fear not—there is a certificate that says the piece is original to the artist, and should the fruit decay or otherwise be mangled from original form by say, someone eating it, the artist will replace it). Anyone could tape a banana to a wall, especially with a regular banana from a convenience store and regular, plain grey duct tape. But the reason it is considered art, is because this artist thought to do it, and no one had thought to tape a banana to a wall and call it art before.

The same question—is it art?— can be asked of Richard Price’s untitled cowboy, albeit for a slightly different reason. While the banana may not have been traditionally creative art, it was still an original idea. Price took a photo from an add—that someone else had taken—and cropped out the advertisement part of the photo, leaving the subject—in this case the Marlboro man—as the focus of the picture and the attention, instead of the name brand he advertised for. The argument for whether or not this should be considered art hinges on whether or not you believe Price cropping the photo makes it his original work, or if it should still count as him stealing someone else’s work. True, no one had thought to crop the add like that before, so the way it is displayed is unique to him, but if this had been a famous painting he had taken a picture of and cropped, people would not be so quick to call it his work. They might be willing to debate about how he brings a new perspective to the art, showing the fine details of a specific hat, or one orange in a particularly moving still-life, but they wouldn’t consider it his own creation. This distinction most likely comes from the fact that he is using photography. If Price had taken the Marlboro ad and created a compellingly realistic painting of the cowboy without the logos and advertisement, it would be more widely accepted, seen as inspired by the ad instead of copied from it. People would feel more right in saying that he has seen the ad and been moved to create something compelling from it. The difference people see is in the effort; a photograph takes a few minutes to shoot, edit, and produce, whereas a painting takes hours to slave over until it resembles something like what you started out with. This distinction categorizes the photograph, as the original photographer for the add said, as “plagiarism”, where as art should be more strictly qualified in original creation. 

Therefore, the best definition of art should be somewhere along the lines of original creation that holds a deeper meaning for the artist, and/or a group of people.