Cholla The Painting Horse

neltana

Critical Thinker
neltana
Joined
Feb 14, 2008
Messages
337
So, is this horse an Abstract Expressionist, or is it just impossible to differentiate random doodles from Abstract Expressionism? :D

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/10/16/horse.painting.exhibit.ap/index.html

thum_2341148f799b58258a.jpg

It actually isn't half bad. That being said, I think I won't spring for the $100 to get my own custom print http://www.cowboyartshow.com/gallery/cholla/desc21.htm.

My first thought was that somebody was faking the paintings, but there are a few videos floating around of Cholla painting. Here is one: http://www.artistisahorse.com/video.htm

So, lot's of folks would ask here "is it art?" I'm not going to...I feel it is, no matter how it was created. Art is in the beholder, in my opinion.

What I am going to ask is whether folks think that the horse is trying to create art...or even trying to create an image? I mean, the horse clearly holds a brush in its mouth and moves it against the paper, but I suspect I could train a horse to do that. Is this horse painting or just making random marks?

What do you think?
 
Elephant painting is quite a common trick; rather than anyone claiming it's great art, they usually sell them as fundraisers for elephant protection.

It is not surprising that animals with the physical grace of horses or elephants would, given the materials, create artifacts of beauty. But this would be no different than calling a spiderweb or a ficus tree "art" simply because it's beautiful.

If Horse art were really art, it might be unfair to judge it by human standards. In any case, it is worth noting the following differences between horse art and human art:

1. Horses to not linger to appreciate their creation, nor do other horses appreciate it.
2. Horses don't spontaneously make art.
3. To the extent that it seems to be representational, it does not seem to be of anything that horses are known to be interested in.
4. Horses do not make variations on their themes.

In a more general sense, I think a "Turing Test" could answer the question of "what is art". People are heard to say that their five-year-old could paint like Picasso, which suggests that the proof of Picasso's genius is that you could actually distinguish it from the work of a five-year-old in a blind trial.
 
Well, I could probably pick out a Picasso painting at a 100 yards...but that is because I have seen so dog gone many of them. If somebody who had never seen a Picasso could look at a late period Picasso and one done by a five-year-old and reliably pick the one that had been painted by a master, that might help affirm Picasso's status as art...but what of the five-year-old?

If it is detectably inferior to a Picasso, do we judge it "not art?" What if we ran the same test with Picasso and Manet? Would the loser become "not art?"

I bet I could reliably pick out Cholla's paintings from Koko's...and certainly from that hack Michael! They could still both be random noise.

I think that the four criteria offered are good, don't get me wrong. I think #1...if true...would pretty much indicate that the horse was not intentionally making an image. Koko, on the other hand, I'm not so sure.
 
My take on this, and I live with (currently) 13 horses. No, the horse is not trying to create art. That is not the sort of thing horses are interested in.

It's quite easy to teach a horse to do this. Several of my horses are conditioned to a clicker (operant conditioning) and could probably learn to do this in a couple of short sessions. Not all of them would be interested in keeping at it though, once the "cookie" phase was over. But some horses are very mouth-oriented and like to play with things using their almost prehensile lips. (Those are usually the horses everyone describes as "stupid" because they can figure out just about any gate latch and so escape.) Such a horse would probably keep at it and soon you'd have a stack of "paintings".
 
Hi

Amapola said:
....

It's quite easy to teach a horse to do this. Several of my horses are conditioned to a clicker (operant conditioning) and could probably learn to do this in a couple of short sessions....
Click to expand...


Uhhh... so... you're a horse Skinner?
 
neltana said:
What I am going to ask is whether folks think that the horse is trying to create art...or even trying to create an image? I mean, the horse clearly holds a brush in its mouth and moves it against the paper, but I suspect I could train a horse to do that. Is this horse painting or just making random marks?

What do you think?
Click to expand...
I think it might be trying to paint an image, but it's hard to tell because it's so bad at it. This elephant is better:

 
Fredrik said:
I think it might be trying to paint an image, but it's hard to tell because it's so bad at it. This elephant is better:
Click to expand...
D'oh. There was an extra ] in my youtube link, so it doesn't work. Let's try again:

.
 
Huh. To go meta here, this brings up an interesting question of whether art is art because the creator appreciates it as such. That's my own personal opinion - being aesthetically pleasing at random is not necessarily art, as my own personal view requires a level of intent on the part of the creator of the art - but I'm willing to admit that it's an interesting question at least.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom