it's art.

[cali]

if it's art to you, I guess it's art. Do I think what Kinkade did was art? No, because it doesn't change the way I see anything. It doesn't challenge me or move me or sooth me or even irritate me. It's just... meaningless to me, but if it does any of those things for you, then it may well be art... to you.

I think this is art, you may well disagree.

[blogslut]

1. There's a now-deceased art enthusiast from my hometown, who once...

had on his land, three enormous stuffed letters of the alphabet in the primary colors, red, blue and yellow. Those letters were; A-R-T. Whenever someone asked him "What is art?" he pointed to them.

[FSogol]

2. Dammit, you've put me in the position of defending the excretable Thomas Kinkade.

The schlock that Kinkade (and W Bush for that matter) produced is art. The distinction is that it is bad art. Many people feel that if something is art, they are obligated to appreciate it. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is good art and bad art, high art and low art. Art I don't like and art I love.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. From 'The Search For Intelligent Life In the Universe' by Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin:

Trudy the Baglady talks about her space chums:

" We think so different. They find it hard to grasp some things that come easy to us, because they simply don't have our frame of reference. I show 'em this can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is soup." Then I show 'em a picture of Andy Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is art." "This is soup." "And this is art." Then I shuffle the two behind my back. Now what is this?
Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theater, standing there in the dark, all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy, look." I said, "Yeah, goose bumps. You definitely got goose bumps. You really like the play that much?" They said it wasn't gave 'em goose bumps, it was the audience.
I forgot to tell 'em to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of strangers sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying about the same things...that just knocked 'em out. They said, "Trudy, the play was soup...the audience...art."

The full piece is here: http://www.whysanity.net/monos/soupart.html