BrainFuel

No no. Musicians are artists. Music is an ‘art’, I think. Wouldn’t you agree Howard Shore is an artist? That stuff he composed for the LOTR trilogy: golden. Seriously. He’s an artist.

I used to help my dad paint the house when I was younger, so hurray, I’m a bonfied artist!

So if musicians are not artists, then you can’t really classify music as an art — right? So what is it then, science? technology? culture?

Music is open to intepretation and creativity. Put those elements into science, and you’re likely to get junk science — so it can’t be science alone

Music can be made by opening your mouth and using different inflections in tone to create a melody – technology not required

Music doesn’t need any lyrics or a particular sound, so it could be difficult in some circumstances to identify as part of a specific culture

So, what is music? You claim it’s not art (or that rather musicians are not artists), can you prove you’re right?

Those questions are for anybody, and I don’t know the answers – they just occured to me as interesting points.

Great explanation, Ben.

Check out the first part of wikipedia’s entry for “art”. It’s too bad most schools today don’t teach much on art or how to interpret it, which at the very least makes it hard to seperate signal from noise and makes you open to exploitation by the “artist”… you should be able to explain why something should or should not be in a museum, I think.

logo? you mean the brainfuel header? I have an idea I could whip up…

back to *musicians* – they perform, i think performance is art. even if they play something alone, they get the art out of it (personal emotional connection) and there is an art to making music happen.

To address your point Chris regarding Bach and Mozart, of course they are artists, they are referred to all the time as classical artists. Why is “artist” more a thrown around term today? Well, welcome to the world of marketing and PR, where the almighty dollar rules the day. “Artist” is a much sexier term than “musician”.

It’s like the freelancing web designer who likes to be known instead as an entrepreneur. For some it fits, for some it doesn’t. For all, more prestigious however.

Am I going to have to hit Chris Tingom over the head with a bassoon? Music is art. Period. No further debate necessary. I can tell you’re about to argue, but don’t do it. Hey! I see that! Knock it off.

I’ve been a musician for the majority of my life (since age 4). I certainly consider it art. I consider pushing pixels art as well. Good art? Well, that’s purely subjective. Unless it’s my opinion. Then you can pretty much take it as fact.

Chris,
Thanks for the walking up and obviously kicking a sleeping bear of an idea. I being a painter had always believed when I was younger that is that all I did was create art and that I was an artist. I would have great objection to folks claiming that the had a friend or an Aunt Mabel that made quilts and they too are artists’. But years later while parking cars as a valet to make ends meet (see, I am a real artist). I had this discussion with a homeless man that passed by me pad of concrete where I waited to fetch – their cars. He as it turns out he used to be a classical basoonist with the Toronto Sympony before he fell for Opium. His name is Dean and he posed to me his theory. Simply art is the umbrella and under its great shield are painters, scultpurers, poets, novelists, film makers, singers, dancers, and musicians. But at the essence of all is a child’s will to create from nothing. So I am not here to tell you how to think, just to tell to Dean’s theory.

Yes, I do illustrate for lots of magazines. So perhaps you have seen my work.
Thanks for opening the bees nest once again.

Cheers,
B

Anyone who has read about Gardner’s multiple intelligences will know that what we perceive as art is a personal thing. The Naturalist for example, might appreciate gardening as an art. I would consider anyone who can arrange anything (images, sounds, ideas, etc…) in a unique, evocative, and aesthetic manner, to be an artist.

Musicians are musicians and painters are painters and geeks with pcs are geeks with pcs, it will take a high level of creativity, good taste, and performance in any area to deserve be named artist, that’s it.

Art, in my mind, is defined as the manifestation of creative expression. By “creative”, I mean “invented from nothing”. Creativity is a by-product of our intelligence, self-awareness, and seemingly random, un-explainable imagination.

If someone paints a picture by number, this is not art. They are not “creating” something from nothing. They are only following directions in the same sense that your printer might follow instructions from your computer. Would you call your printer an artist? No. It’s just a machine following instructions.

If a young piano player presses the keys on a piano in exactly the manner he/she is instructed to and hammers out a musical sequence, this also, is *not* art. It would *only* be “art” if the student were to connect with the music on some level and create a *new* song or variation using their imagination.

So when you ask someone what art is, why do you get so many different responses? Why is there so much ambiguity in the overall definition of the word? If you ask one person if a trash can is a piece of art, they might say “yes”, whereas another person might promptly reply, “No!”

I believe this problem arises from the way how humans arrive at definitions in their mind largely from context. They see an amazing painting and they hear it referred to as “art”, so they assume that “art” is defined only as “an amazing painting”. Another person might hear a piece of music or poetry referred to as “art”, so they come to the conclusion that “art” is defined as “music and poetry”.

As a result, if you stick the two people together, they might hem and haw and argue for days about what “art” is and what it means. Eventually they might arrive at the conclusion that “art” is defined as “amazing paintings, music, or poetry”.

The problem is quite simple. They’re failing to look at the true underlying concept that all these items share: None of these things would have been possible without human imagination and creativity.

So what about all the other paintings? You know, the crappy ones that never make it to a museum? Are they art? The people that created them would most certainly argue that they were! After all, many of the most famous paintings weren’t given proper credit until long after the artist was gone. It appears that “amazing” isn’t necessarily a requirement for something to be “art”.

You see, there are many different kinds of “art”, some of which are fascinating and amazing (the Mona Lisa, etc…), but there are countless other day-to-day creative expressions (an email written to a friend or a new spin on a pastry dish, for example) which are largely ignored.

However, just because a “creative expression” is ignored as “art” doesn’t make it “not art”. All it means is that it’s not intriguing or amazing art. It’s boring art. It’s every-day art.