Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics, and even disciplines such as history and psychology analyze its relationship with humans and generations. Traditionally, the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery. This conception changed during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science". Generally, art is made with the intention of stimulating thoughts and emotions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art
Is this art or is it training? [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk]YouTube - ORIGINAL Elephant Painting[/ame]
Does it have to be one or the other? You need training to create most art. The question is not if thats art or training, its whos art is it. Is the trainer expressing his art through the elephant? Or has he simply given the elephant the tools to express himself?
If it was the elephant creating without being told how....then that would just blow my mind. I could see the trainer showing the elephant like " this is a brush, dip it here, paint it here" If thats all the trainer did and the Elephant painted the self portrait on its own it's implications would be gnarly. Do you "NEED" training? what have you say about prodigies or savants who just have natural talent without being told how? Does art need to evoke emotion for it to be considered art? Whats to stop a a carpenter viewing an ordinary chair as art from someone else saying thats just a chair?
Training is needed. Where the training comes from, well thats up in the air. You can train yourself, you can be trained by others, but no matter what to create art you need some training, no matter where it came from or how minimal your training is. As for natural talents, i think they just make it much easier for you to learn how to do something, they don't give you the ability to do that thing.
ok...I see what your saying. Natural progression through repetition, well that helps us out as far as how the art is created goes. What about accidental art? Can art exist on its own without an audience? does it then lose its relevance?
Accidental art... hmmm thats interesting... I don't think that art can be accidental personally. Someone may see the beauty in something accidental, but i don't know if i would call that art. Art can exist without an audience, the same way that language can exist to a hermit. No matter what, your art is still expressing things, it doesn't change if no one can see it. I have no idea about the revalance question. Whats the point of expressing something with no one to see it? Can art really exist without an audience? Or do you become your own audience when you finish your work and take a look at it?
"Whats the point of expressing something with no one to see it? Can art really exist without an audience? Or do you become your own audience when you finish your work and take a look at it?" Some say its cathartic... whatever emotion that piece evokes...I think thats art. Whether its the painters eye or the audiences. I mean some of the great masters never got famous until after they died. Only then was it really appreciated.