Dear Rick,

You really come up with some really tricky ones don't you ? In my humble opinion, it seems that art is in the eye of the beholder, and if a majority agrees that something is art, then it is. Not that I agree with this. Or the definition that if it gets into a museum, it is art. This doesn't mesh with my feeling at all. So that leaves us with a sticky wicket. How is art defined, and by whom?

I shall now rant about one of the worst excesses I see as semi-art, Thomas Kinkade. Yes, I think his paintings represent a hollow art. An art used to arouse feelings of warmth, and humanity, but tempered with an isipid blandness. This leads to one of the first things I like about "good" art. It is not insipid. It not only expresses warmth, but a whole range of emotions, love, hate, sorrow, majesty, dirtiness, etc. WIthout hate, there cannot be love, and without evil, there cannot be good. A simple coexistence, the sacred and the profane.

Nature is perhaps the best expression for art in the world. It holds both elements in it. Death and life, peace and violence, I could go on. You do not have one without the other. I still have not attemted to explain what art is, and I shall not attempt to do so. I can ramble on about what art isn't. Unmade beds are not art, pornogrophy is not art, etc. I just can't explain what art is. A window to the soul? An imperfect creativity derived from a perfect divine creativity?

Dzerzhinski