Does a photo need to say something?

[Ronnoco]

If someone intentionally makes a technically bad photo, prints it, frames, and hangs it on a wall WITH the intent to share/exploit the photo with others then it only takes one other person on this planet to sincerely like it......to make it art. IMO.

You don't understand the nature of art. There is a difference between scribbling and writing, stories and literature, noise and music, self expression and communication, talking and public speaking, painting and art, and picture taking and photography.
The difference is in the quality of the work and the fact that it communicates something to a majority of viewers or listeners if it is truly art.

Anyone can put paint on a canvas but how they do it and inter-related with that, whether they communicate something to a majority of viewers by means of the finished product, determines whether it is art or not. Anyone can press the shutter button, but pressing the shutter button alone does not make the person a photographer or the product an artistic photo.

I'm pretty sure that the best of the best art will have admirers and dislikers.

"Universal appeal" is probably unattainable. "General appeal" is probably a better word to characterize art that that gets over 50% approval from the audience that looks at it..

To repeat my point, everyone may have their own view of particular art but when it comes to high quality work, there is a genuine consensus that it IS in fact art. Historically, some people at the time did not like the Beatles music but almost everyone recognized that it was music whether they liked it or not. Everyone who looked at the photos of Yosuf Karsh or Boris Spremo would recognize them as artistic whether they liked them or not.

Art can not be bound by rules or it can not evolve.

Art is not bound by rules but it is based on them, since rules create a more objective set of criteria for determining the nature of art. The same holds true for music, literature, film, video, or any other form of creativity.

Ronnoco

[poker]

Ronnoco,

Where does ABSTRACT ART fit in your arguement?

If I intentionally create a technically poor photograph, print it, frame it, and put it on an easel while I sit outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Most will pass me by, some will laugh, and maybe a small handful of people will STOP, LOOK, WONDER, SPECULATE, DEFINE, DISLIKE, APPRECIATE, and FEEL what I want to show the public.

If what I display to the public is not art then what do you call it?

Ever heard of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. When I was young, they put up a bunch of yellow umbrellas throughout California in tandem with putting up blue umbrellas in Japan. They put about 3000 umbrellas in total and two people even died in the process. They call that art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo

[Ronnoco]

Ronnoco,

Where does ABSTRACT ART fit in your arguement?]

Abstract art still gets into the use of colour, shape, line, texture, lighting, reflection, perspective etc. The very best of abstract art in my opinion is the computer art that is in some American and Japanese museums of art. Some americans have a world reputation as computer artists. By the way, have you seen my primitive example of imaging or maybe art, (still open to question) done with the equivalent of a toy computer (8 meg of ram and a speed of 16 megahertz) in this forum?

If I intentionally create a technically poor photograph, print it, frame it, and put it on an easel while I sit outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Most will pass me by, some will laugh, and maybe a small handful of people will STOP, LOOK, WONDER, SPECULATE, DEFINE, DISLIKE, APPRECIATE, and FEEL what I want to show the public. ?]

If it is technically and compositionally poor, then it will not catch any more than a cursory look from anyone and even that short glance would be only because of your choice of location rather than any interest or quality in the work.

If what I display to the public is not art then what do you call it??]

Well, in an Arts and Crafts Show, it would usually be called "junk" by those passing by, even if it was on an easel, and some certainly would laugh or shake their head in amazement at anyone who considers it art.

Ever heard of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. When I was young, they put up a bunch of yellow umbrellas throughout California in tandem with putting up blue umbrellas in Japan. They put about 3000 umbrellas in total and two people even died in the process. They call that art. ]

Well, Christo and Jeanne-Claude may have called it art, as did probably those that assisted them but I highly doubt that the community of artists that have worldwide reputations and their work in famous museums shared this view. As a matter of fact, I doubt that even a majority of the general public shared that view either unless I am missing some important detail in your example.

Ronnoco

[Photo-John]

Where does ABSTRACT ART fit in your arguement?

If I intentionally create a technically poor photograph, print it, frame it, and put it on an easel while I sit outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Most will pass me by, some will laugh, and maybe a small handful of people will STOP, LOOK, WONDER, SPECULATE, DEFINE, DISLIKE, APPRECIATE, and FEEL what I want to show the public.

If what I display to the public is not art then what do you call it?

Some art is meaningful only within a particular cultural/historical context. A lot of what is called "abstract" art can be classified as such. During and after WWII there was an artistic and philisophical backlash against "representational" art. Artists began playing with intellectual ideas about meaning and blurring the lines between images of things and the things themselves. A lot of powerful artistic statements and ideas came out of that time. One of my favorites is the American flag painting by Jasper Johns. Is it a painting of a flag or is it a flag? What's the difference? Can a painting be a flag?

To some extent, a lot of this type of art is elitist. It requires a certain level of artistic and historical education. It may not be pretty and it may not speak directly to your gut. But within the context of art history and our culture, it's still very meaningful and it helps define what does speak to your heart. There's art that's accepted now that would not have been accepted 100 years ago. And it's accepted because the ideas and work of esoteric/fringe/elitist artists pushed the limits and became incorporated in our cultural understanding of beauty, meaning, and aesthetics. All photographic art actually falls into that category. If you look at the history of photography, the first artists simply copied the style of contemporary painters. The first pure, photographic images that were shown as art were made by Edward Weston, I believe. And they were seen as a radical departure by the art community and even other photographers. But now we consider those photos to be artistic masterpieces.

Is this not an interesting subject? There are so many angles and levels from which to approach it.

[poker]

Everyone who looked at the photos of Yosuf Karsh or Boris Spremo would recognize them as artistic whether they liked them or not.

How would anyone say that Yosuf Karsh or Boris Spremo's work was not artistic? You're making it too easy.

Show me that you are capable of appreciating art that doesn't quite fit the text book style you are an advocate of. I have a gut feeling YOU stray away contemporary or modern art museums.

[WillCAD]

You don't understand the nature of art.

And you do? That's an incredibly arrogant and conceited thing to say.

Maybe manasca's (and mine, truth be told) definition of what constitutes art differs from yours, but that doesn't mean he doesn't understand the nature of art.

Your definition of art seems to be something along the lines of "whatever everybody agrees is art", while mine is more like "something created for purely aesthetic or communicative purposes."

Miriam-Webster's Online Dictionary defines art as "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced." There's nothing in there about the relative level of said skills, or the approval or recognition of others.

Do you think that a childs spagetti creations are art? Or crayon drawings of dinosaurs? Crude, perhaps... child-like... simplistic... raw... but definitely ART.

How about a canvas splattered with a color or two, is that art? Museums and collectors certainly seem to think so, but let's face it - it takes no skill at all to splatter a canvas with colors. In fact, that is a form of art which mostly creates itself, since the mass of the paint, air resistance, gravity, centrifugal force, and the surface tension of the paint on the brush are all factors that are almost totally out of the artist's control - and yet paintings of that type are recognized as art and often sell for big bucks. And the people who create them are called artists.

Art is where you find it. Just because something doesn't fit your narrow definition of art doesn't mean it's not art, nor does it mean that the creator of such work is not an artist.

[robbierichard0123]

The quality of the material can be seen in the pictures, here I have an example of that, I was clicking a picture of a steel building made by https://zentnersteelbuildings.com. l, and the clarity of the picture was exactly same as of the material. I want to share this picture but unfortunalty the forum will not perrmit me for this.