Why is "art" a dirty word?

[downwithpants]

the problem of classifying anime music videos with 'high' or 'fine art' is not endogenous to anime music videos so much as what the modern definition of 'fine art'. is entertainment art? a creative work may contain all the elements of fine art - expressive and stylized deviations from a prototype; years dedicated by the creator to learning the craft and developing her skill; but when it becomes a widely popular attraction, it loses its artistic credibility. does a creative work, then, need to be unattractive to the masses to be considered art? it's not really only something about anime music videos that prevents people from considering it as fine art, but also the fact that anything immediately entertaining is not considered fine art.

[Infinity Squared]

Well... let's take two AMVs. Choose one to be as generic an AMV as you can find and the other as pretentious or artsy as might be considered.

Then we take it to a room full of Visual Arts/Multimedia students, preferably those who don't know anything about anime and AMVs...

Now you ask them... do you think this is art?

I'm sure you're going to get some yes in there, and in fact besides someone being a smart arse, I'd question anybody who said no. Really, why wouldn't someone consider this art, if even at least in the most simplistic sense of the word. After all, Sun Tzu calls even something like war as having art.

The way I see it, the more reason you have for saying this isn't art, the more you're thinking too much and forgetting to appreciating what you are seeing, which after all, is what AMVs and art in general, aims to do anyway.

[Moonlight Soldier]

Art: The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty.

Amvs are art. I really don't see how you can argue otherwise.

Now, when you try to define what is considered "good art", you run into a problem.

Whether I'm fingerpainting or dabbling with the most expensive oil paints around, it's art.

Now switch fingerpainting with your a-typical Naruto video, and expensive oil paints with Urban Suite or something considered equally 'artistic' and try to wrap your head around the concept.

Art is subjective. Deal with it.

[Jebadia]

Art is pretty big for a 3 letter word.

[Fluxmeister]

Art is seen as an indication that the given subject is somehow better than some random creation. Calling my own stuff ass is much more humble and comes across a lot less high and mighty.

... you shouldn't refer to anything as art unless it has already been established as "art" by the masses. Okay? Any questions? Dare not oppose, the masses do not have time for your arguments. Be gone fools.

[inthesto]

As many other people have said or alluded, it's all a case of perception.

From day one of kindergarten, we are conditioned to think that the Mona Lisa is art, while the skid mark on your tightey whiteys is not. The question is how these standards arose, and whether or not one can cast them off after being imprinted with them.

I could go on and on about this, but I'll save it for the morning.

[Arigatomina]

Before I read the second sentence in this thread, the first word that popped into my head after thinking 'art' was "pretentious." Since I was forced to read about 'art' in one of my literature classes, that's the word I associate with the concept of inherent aesthetic beauty in a thing.

I don't believe in self-proclaimed artists. Even when we had to debate whether a pile of crap on a pedastool was as artistic as 'found' art like a chipped shell, I've found the entire issue to be worthless as a subject of discussion. Art is what the majority of viewers consider art. No one is an artist unless his work is considered art by those looking at it. He might consider it art, but one voice makes no difference.

A work is art when it evokes an aesthetic appreciation from those considering it. A found object like a bag of trash on the side of the rode can be as artistic as any famous painting if enough people look at it and decide it's art. You can defecate on a chair and there will be groups who call it art.

Since there is no set standard for judging and determining 'art', not even a limit on the number of people who have to claim it's art for it to *be* art, I have nothing but contempt for the entire concept. Why would I brag that something I put effort into doing is just as good as a pile of human feces? I want nothing to do with the artistic world. If some people consider art a compliment, and consider my work art, then I'll accept that as praise. But I won't insult my effort by putting it on the same level as things I consider useless and worthless - even if it just so happens to be the same level my favorite writers and painters are on. The level includes everything from crap to greatness. Everything is art if other people say it is. To me, that's nothing to aim for.

I have similar contempt for poetry and literature being considered 'art', since none of it is judged on anything but a subjective standard according to the critic, which differs depending on who you talk to.

Calling one's self an artist as if it's a good thing is either pretentious or naive. Until you have to do more than take a dump to be an artist, I see nothing in that title to be proud of.

[godix]

Michelangelo didn't sit around debating the definition of art, he just went and painted the sistine chapel. The Last Supper was painted by someone too busy to spend paragprahs talking about how and why he painted. Vincent van Gogh wouldn't argue on if he was producing 'high art' or 'low art', he'd be too busy going 'EH? Speak up, I can't hear as good as I used to'. So when people debate what is art I gotta wonder if the answer is 'Something you guys are to concerned with navel gazing to produce'.

I personally settled on a fairly simple definition, art is anything that makes you go 'That's kinda pretty but does it do anything useful?' Once I noticed that people will claim that four colored soup cans side by side is great art and they aren't cracking a smile I gave up trying to figure out a better definition.

[Infinity Squared]

Well, it's pretty straightforward the art is subjective and anything can be considered art if you put enough pretentious people in the room to look at it... but that leaves the question of what to call AMVs if not another form of art.

Once again, I guess it falls to one's own conceptions to decide that answer, which might equally be as pretentious as labelling it art (or worse, in that you are turning your head at every other thing considered art before this and saying I'm above this)...

[TaranT]

I'm going to remain an agnostic on the subject of "Are AMVs art?"

But it seems to me that someone who says

• Anime is art.
  Music is art.
  But AMVs are not art.

...well, the logic here is clearly moronic.

And I'm not sure it's worth the time to make comparisons to High Art. Most of what the intelligentsia passes off as art is crap, and sometimes literally that. Even classical art isn't all that it's cracked up to be (ref. the movie Amadeus).

UNDRESSED but unabashed, The Venus of Urbino has been staring slyly back at her admirers for almost 500 years. Completed by the Venetian master painter Titian in 1538, and frequently cited as one of his two or three greatest achievements,...she hangs in the Uffizi, one of the great art temples of Florence, at once a symbol of fleshy Renaissance humanism and of the spirit of art that is not of this world....

But listen to the account of this painting and its contemporary reception offered by Lisa Jardine in her 1996 history of the Renaissance, Worldly Goods: "Titian's canvases of statuesque naked women in recumbent poses were regarded as learnedly symbolic by nineteenth century art historians....Only recently did contemporary correspondence come to light which showed that these works of art were painted to meet a vigorous demand for bedroom paintings depicting erotic nudes in salacious poses.

source

In short, these high-falutin' paintings were originally created as the Renaissance equivalent of Playboy centerfolds. They weren't necessarily called "artistic" back then; their owners hid the paintings in closets or behind curtains. The artists - today they're called masters - were undoubtedly talented, but they were also trying make a buck (or lira) by catering to the desires of paying customers.

So, wait a few centuries and you might see Moneyshot and Ugly Girls of Anime playing in the Louvre.