Porn vs. Art

Forget hammers or any other "distressing" sound. Even complete absence of any sound at all, has qualified as music and thus, as art:

 
Last edited:
Mirrorglass said:
He did, actually. I though a soundtrack from a game renowned for it's music would be close enough, but alas, the Southern winds did not blow favourably upon my attempt.
Click to expand...
No, he didn't ask for only that.
Southwind17 said:
Please show me a commonly accepted meaning of "music" that includes the noise made by a jack-hammer. Maybe you can go further and link to a CD on Amazon, for example, being a recording of a road gang in full flow, or such like!
Click to expand...
See?
 
Ron_Tomkins said:
Forget Hammers or any other "distressing" sound. Even complete absence of any sound at all, has qualified as music and thus, as art:

Click to expand...



I really would have liked that better without the japanese subtitles. :P

Still, 4'33'' is a great piece, and one of the best examples of why art can't be defined easily. I'm not too hopeful Southwind will be convinced, though. :)
 
Last edited:
SkeptiChick said:
No, he didn't ask for only that.
See?
Click to expand...

Actually, you're right. I actually misread "road gang in full flow" the first time. Well, I suppose at this point I should know that whenever Southwind asks for an example of an art piece, he'll only accept the works of true Scotsmen.
 
Southwind17 said:
Well now, that's a whole different question from where we started, ain't it, raising a question as to relevance. Unless, of course, we're agreed that "per se" is superfluous, in which case of course porn can't be art. Again, "artistic"? Yes; "art"? Nope.
Click to expand...
This appears to be a "no".

I disagree, I think that porn can be art, it could be that you just haven't seen enough. Perhaps JFrankA can provide some recomendations.:)

And yes, it's a different question, but plenty close enough to be on topic, this thread has ventured much farther afield than that.
 
Mirrorglass said:
I really would have liked that better without the japanese subtitles. :P

Still, 4'33'' is a great piece, and one of the best examples of why art can't be defined easily. I'm not too hopeful Southwind will be convinced, though. :)
Click to expand...

Well, that's perfectly acceptable. One of the things about art is that, because it is a man-made concept, based on arbitrary rules that are reliant on human culture (and that change over time); a heck-of-a-lotta people are gonna disagree on what qualifies as art. So mr Southwind does not hold a privileged place at all for being one more who disagrees.
 
Last edited:
quixotecoyote said:
I don't think Mirrorglass not "going further" negates that he met Southwinds's challenge.
Click to expand...
I didn't say it did. In fact, I think he more than met Southwind's challenge, since Southwind's challenge was structured in such a way that the "road crew" bit was entirely unnecessary.
 
Mirrorglass said:
Actually, you're right. I actually misread "road gang in full flow" the first time. Well, I suppose at this point I should know that whenever Southwind asks for an example of an art piece, he'll only accept the works of true Scotsmen.
Click to expand...
Not to mention the constant moving of goal posts... Ask for A, receive A, revise request so that A becomes B... You more than met what he asked for, imo. But of course, it wasn't what he --really-- meant, or some such nonsense, so it got dismissed with hand waving.
 
You gotta wonder, if the Silent Hill clip Mirrorglass posted wasn't good enough, how about the Merzbow one? Surely that's gotta be more than good enough. Besides, the fact that there IS a genre of music called "noise" just blows his whole claim out of the water. :newlol
 
I'm pretty sure he doesn't really want anything; no example is going to convince him that anything he doesn't like is art. If I had found a popular record of a "road gang in full flow" (it wouldn't really surprise me if there was one), he'd just say anyone who thinks it's art is an idiot. At this point, I'm just trying to get him to acknowledge the fact that many common definitions of art do, in fact, include some pornography. Though I'm no longer very hopeful.
 
Mirrorglass said:
Well, from your posts I've gathered your definition is something like "A work created by a person skilled in making those kinds of works, with the intention of making true art and definitely not arousing any sexual reaction in the audience that is also accepted as art and considered beautiful and conforming to some other vague standards set by SW". Feel free to correct me if I left something out.
Click to expand...
Ahem ...
Mirrorglass said:
So you don't actually want this argument to go anywhere?
Click to expand...
:rolleyes:

But in case you are really interested let's try to work with your largely cynical retort:
"A work created by a person skilled in making those kinds of works, with the intention of making true art and definitely not arousing any sexual reaction in the audience that is also generally accepted as art and considered beautiful by virtue of its primary inherent ability to evoke visual gratification in the viewer and conforming to some other vague standards set by SW".
 
Southwind17 said:
Ahem ...

:rolleyes:

But in case you are really interested let's try to work with your largely cynical retort:
"A work created by a person skilled in making those kinds of works, with the intention of making true art and definitely not arousing any sexual reaction in the audience that is also generally accepted as art and considered beautiful by virtue of its primary inherent ability to evoke visual gratification in the viewer and conforming to some other vague standards set by SW".
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Then do you agree that Duchamp's urinal, pretty much all of Warhol's works, 4'33'' and Mulholland Drive all apply? (well, the 4'33'' isn't visual, but I assume this can be extended to music as well?)
 
Mirrorglass said:
Fair enough. Then do you agree that Duchamp's urinal, pretty much all of Warhol's works, 4'33'' and Mulholland Drive all apply? (well, the 4'33'' isn't visual, but I assume this can be extended to music as well?)
Click to expand...


Nothing can be assumed with SW. As it stands music is not art to him. Perhaps he will revise his current definition to include it.

So far we've got ...

"A work created by a person skilled in making those kinds of works, that is generally accepted as art by virtue of its primary inherent ability to evoke visual gratification in the viewer."

​
So we are currently limited to ...

"skilled" - we'll need a definition for what constitutes "skilled". No amateurs need apply. That means everyone was wrong about Anna Moses, I guess.

"generally accepted" - there's a real escape clause here. We know that by SW standards millions of people considering something to be art doesn't count, nor does the ability to command millions of dollars in price, so neither public approbation nor financial merit are valid indicators of "generally accepted". We'll have to fine tune that.

"visual" - seems somewhat limiting. Not only does that blow off music, but cooking is right out, too. (I can't stomach that. :()

I can foresee trouble with "primary", "inherent", "evoke", and "gratification" up the road, but we need to start off with the obvious problems.
 
Yeah, but what I'm really worried about is the "primary inherent ability to evoke visual gratification in the viewer". I can't think of any object in the universe with the primary quality of being able to evoke visual gratification. I'd say the primary quality of any object, art or not, is a bunch of atoms in a clump. It's starting to seem to me that the group of "true art pieces" excludes all real, existing objects in the universe, and only platonic ideals apply. What this means for the art industry I shudder to think of.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom