basically my incredibly basic definition of art is anything which has been consciously shaped/formed in order to have some sort of mental/emotional impact on me
so i don't really consider nature itself as 'art' per se, even though i do find it excruciatingly beautiful and moving at times and artistic, but i would consider a good photograph of that same piece of nature 'art'
Sure. Art doesn't mean it's good art. And the Squeakquel had nude female chipmunks in it, which those downtown art galleries would consider art of a sort.
Don't god damn remind me.
The film had a bland enough storyline that, while screening it, that's really the only thing that stood out. Chipmunks breaking into synchronized song at any opportunity, slapstick pratfalls from a Home Alone movie. cartoonishly stereotypical sleazy agent guy, and then WHOA what is this you are doing here in a kids film why didn't they tumble out of the bag with shirts on?
And yet Jeanette had glasses already.
But the decision to have her wear glasses and nothing else was an artistic decision.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Sure. Art doesn't mean it's good art. And the Squeakquel had nude female chipmunks in it, which those downtown art galleries would consider art of a sort.
Don't god damn remind me.
The film had a bland enough storyline that, while screening it, that's really the only thing that stood out. Chipmunks breaking into synchronized song at any opportunity, slapstick pratfalls from a Home Alone movie. cartoonishly stereotypical sleazy agent guy, and then WHOA what is this you are doing here in a kids film why didn't they tumble out of the bag with shirts on?
And yet Jeanette had glasses already.
But the decision to have her wear glasses and nothing else was an artistic decision.
Art should evoke an emotional response based on a theme.
That is why Picasso's "Guernica" is considered art, and your average comic book is not.
That is why "The Empire Strikes Back" is art, but "The Phantom Menace" is not.
"Final Fantasy VII" is art. "Battlefield 1942" is not.
You have obviously never seen comic book fans nerd ragin' then.
Lots of emotion over the ol' funny book.
But not based on a theme!
Unless that theme is Joe Quesada's loathing of Spider-Man.
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BusterKNegativity is Boring Cynicism is Cowardice Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
To me art is just a point of view in a particular medium
So art is an effort decided by the creator
Whether it is good or bad, simple or complicated, moral or perverse
That part is in the eye of the viewer
for me art is primarily message-bearing and revelatory; it exists to help us understand people and see the world better, in a way that plain language and direct imagery cannot.
or, i say, that's what art should be. in reality we can see the word has more or less been slaughtered. bring on a new one
superart
And I don't think art for art's sake obviates the communication or revelation of art. It just lets the air out of the critical analysis of that revelatory experience.
it kind of does. it's saying, 'the best art, true art, has no purpose at all but to justify its own existence.'
i think it's the philosophy of someone who's struggled to articulate why great art is great. and maybe that's what we need a word for. great art. in books it's 'literature'. it's houk's 'high art'. it's the ideal art that ebert's arguing video games cannot be. it's not the squeaquel but it is taxi driver
me i think it's mostly about restraint of elements and subtelty, about doing a subject ultimate justice by arranging a text around them in the best way; but i'd need to hammer it out with people who actually subscribed to the notion that this strange superart is a real thing that we could define
That is not Houk's high art. That is the general concept of high art, and people who give it the level of distinction you seem to want to are the reason great books are frequently excluded from "literature."
That is not Houk's high art. That is the general concept of high art, and people who give it the level of distinction you seem to want to are the reason great books are frequently excluded from "literature."
there are a lot of awful, awful books admitted to 'literature' too, but only if you mean the 'literature' section of your local bookshop. there can actually be a working definition of literature that isn't quite as thoughtless as 'Everything That's Not Genre'. i'm talking about literature in theory, not literature in retailing
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BusterKNegativity is Boring Cynicism is Cowardice Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
"Literature" is just a qualitative adjective
Like good or bad
That is not Houk's high art. That is the general concept of high art, and people who give it the level of distinction you seem to want to are the reason great books are frequently excluded from "literature."
there are a lot of awful, awful books admitted to 'literature' too, but only if you mean the 'literature' section of your local bookshop. there can actually be a working definition of literature that isn't quite as thoughtless as 'Everything That's Not Genre'. i'm talking about literature in theory, not literature in retailing
I am not comparing your stance to the guy that alphabetizes inventories. I am comparing your stance to the geniuses that even now give only the most nominal lip service to subaltern discourses while still ghettoizing them out of the Great Western Literary Canon stamped in gold.
Sure. Art doesn't mean it's good art. And the Squeakquel had nude female chipmunks in it, which those downtown art galleries would consider art of a sort.
Don't god damn remind me.
The film had a bland enough storyline that, while screening it, that's really the only thing that stood out. Chipmunks breaking into synchronized song at any opportunity, slapstick pratfalls from a Home Alone movie. cartoonishly stereotypical sleazy agent guy, and then WHOA what is this you are doing here in a kids film why didn't they tumble out of the bag with shirts on?
And yet Jeanette had glasses already.
But the decision to have her wear glasses and nothing else was an artistic decision.
That is not Houk's high art. That is the general concept of high art, and people who give it the level of distinction you seem to want to are the reason great books are frequently excluded from "literature."
there are a lot of awful, awful books admitted to 'literature' too, but only if you mean the 'literature' section of your local bookshop. there can actually be a working definition of literature that isn't quite as thoughtless as 'Everything That's Not Genre'. i'm talking about literature in theory, not literature in retailing
I am not comparing your stance to the guy that alphabetizes inventories. I am comparing your stance to the geniuses that even now give only the most nominal lip service to subaltern discourses while still ghettoizing them out of the Great Western Literary Canon stamped in gold.
what, you mean all those guys who had to stifle a giggle when they set murakami and marquez on the postgrad reading lists? the ones who made me sit through fight club and read part of the godawful book, and watch a handful of episodes of buffy? i hate those guys, elitist silly geese
edit: that was undue sarcasm. what i'm trying to say is that the definition of literature is wide open in modern academia, in a lot of cases irrelevant, as in a lot of places it should be, and in other places very important and the subject of intense debate. but i can assure you that if, as you say many great books are being excluded from this nebulous category it's only because things are being included then excluded then recluded on an essay-by-essay basis, and even then only until the next guy sticks his hand up
Now that Ebert's elaborated on it a bit, his thing about video games not being art is that it hasn't had enough time to turn into an art form.
But how long, exactly, was it from the invention of motion photography to film as an artform?
In general Ebert's a pretty smart guy, but this sort of thing, he really is just a crotchety old man who does not and never will "get it". He will never acknowledge any example or argument even if it destroys whatever argument he makes, because he simply defines things differently than the rest of us.
i'm glad someone does, because everything you just described sounds incredibly masturbatory and dreadfully uninteresting. so if someone else can take care of that so i don't have to worry about it, aces
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Now that Ebert's elaborated on it a bit, his thing about video games not being art is that it hasn't had enough time to turn into an art form.
I'm just taking that as him backpeddling. I don't care what Ebert thinks, I don't think his say or anyone else's say is going to make things true or untrue. But I still think he can fuck off with his opinion.
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BusterKNegativity is Boring Cynicism is Cowardice Registered Userregular
i'm glad someone does, because everything you just described sounds incredibly masturbatory and dreadfully uninteresting. so if someone else can take care of that so i don't have to worry about it, aces
Man, I went through four years of an English Degree and not one professor talked about "What is art" or "What is Literature"
You read the shit because it was assigned
And if you didn't like it you gave good reasons
i'm glad someone does, because everything you just described sounds incredibly masturbatory and dreadfully uninteresting. so if someone else can take care of that so i don't have to worry about it, aces
Man, I went through four years of an English Degree and not one professor talked about "What is art" or "What is Literature"
You read the shit because it was assigned
And if you didn't like it you gave good reasons
i only did it in postgrad literary theory, but that's basically all the unit was. defining literature. one semester.
i'm glad someone does, because everything you just described sounds incredibly masturbatory and dreadfully uninteresting. so if someone else can take care of that so i don't have to worry about it, aces
Man, I went through four years of an English Degree and not one professor talked about "What is art" or "What is Literature"
You read the shit because it was assigned
And if you didn't like it you gave good reasons
i can only assume professors save the good stuff for like, other professors
all hoarding the true meaning of art and literature and shakespeare's fossilized donger
Honestly, I quite like Ebert's piece. It's obvious he knows nothing nothing about computer games outside of the fact that they are games that you can win or lose. I tend to get most of my enjoyment from computer games by approaching them in this manner, so it's not really offensive to me.
I don't appreciate L.S Lowry's depictions of the industrialised north of england. I particularly dislike the way he stuck to such a simple medium most of time, choosing to work in pencil for long stretches, depicting extremely simplistic images which in all honesty, a 5 year old could make. I understand that there is a theme behind his work and that that is all made from the perspective of a young man growing up in a heavily industrialised part of britain during a bleak period where times were hard. But I don't like his work. I think alot of it is bad.
However, I would never have the guts to say that it isn't art. It is, all of it, very much art.
This is the only problem I have with Ebert's comments. Not only is he talking as if he has the right to label something as art or not, but he is labelling from a very poor position whilst masquerading as someone who knows what he is talking about. But then even if he did know what he is talking about, it's still not his place to label videogames as such, and neither it is any of ours.
Art is perspective.
If I take a shit on a canvas and someone loves it and wants to pay me 50 grand for it, nobody can argue that my bumspray in a frame isn't art to that person.
And art is definately not a measure of quality either. Bad art is still art. And in my opinion we need bad art as much as we need good art. And if it annoys you, tough shit. It's still art.
Lowry has his own Gallery near where I live, there is a theater and a shopping centre named after him all in the same square. Who am I to say the guy wasn't an artist?
The thing about Eberts piece is its obvious he's not really trying to provide an actual concrete definition to what art is art, and thats why everyone seems to get riled up about it cause without providing that it just sounds like he's being obtuse just for the sake of it.
But the thing about a question like "what is art" is that it doesent neccisarilly have a solid answer, but its a valid question nonetheless because of the way it forces you to examine what you consume.
Thats why the broad "everything is art, picasso is art, FFVII is art, my ass poops and makes art, thats the answer there" defence has never really struck with me.
No, the point of Ebert's post is that games are not his medium. Movies are--people tell me that I watch far too many movies, but I don't watch half as many as my brother does, and he hasn't watched nearly 0.1% of the movies Ebert has.
Movies are his thing. It might be a passive medium, but that's what he's into. And been into, for almost forty years now. You can see where his passions lie.
So the guy can't see the appreciation for a medium that's outside of his realm of expertise. So what? He's still arguably the foremost scholar on film studies to this day, yet people want to disown him because of something he doesn't understand.
Sure, he offered his opinion without provocation about said unfamiliar medium... on a blog. The realm of the asinine and mundane. I guess he just had a thought and wanted to talk about it like a regular person (and, to be fair, he's done a hell of a job keeping up with the insane amount of comments that said blog post has garnered, bringing the debate over to Twitter as well), like most bloggers do.
So we have to vivisect the guy because he doesn't think our form of entertainment is art? The dude offered up a list games that are art, albeit from Cracked.com, moments after that initial blog post. He knows both sides of the issues, and he's taking his stand from his perspective.
And so what do we, the gaming community, do? We take cheap shots and call him a crotchety old man because he "just doesn't get it." And true, he doesn't get it--but that was the whole point of his blog.
Let's grow out of this, because if you really want games to be taken seriously you'll have to approach them like adults, and this backlash has been anything but.
I think almost everyone has had a valid argument for or against videogames being art in this thread, Ebert included.
But it's one of those subjects that while providing stimulating conversation, can never really have a definitive conclusion either way.
[EDIT] So while trying to change people's minds is okay, it's not really worth getting your panties in a twist if you can't manage it.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
My take on it is that some games can be art, and some games are just made for shits and giggles. It's the same thing as with movies. End of story there.
Looking up my old review, I see I described a four-star movie but only gave it three stars, perhaps because it was a "spaghetti Western" and so could not be art.
Seems like he just picks and chooses what is art for that day.
Well some definitions of art would allow for attaining cultural iconography to elevate something to being art.
Under those definitions, shadow of the colossus wouldnt be art, but pong might be.
I recall--bear with me--Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 90's moving Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane over the Sea from the bottom 3rd of the list to number 4 overall, when they did a revamp.
Tastes changes, and hindsight is not always 20/20. Lasting appeal always brings more artistic credit to something that may have been considered trash initially.
Who cares about art anyway, what's important is that you like something. If Metal Gear Solid 2 made you cry it wasn't because it was art, it was because you liked it, because you had a "wholly valid experience" in Tycho's words. Or possibly because you really really wanted to play as Snake
I bet Ebert wouldn't have stirred up nearly as much controversy if his article was titled 'Video games can never be a thing I like'
But that's basically what this is
I guess he's just riled because someone told him video games were art, and he was like "they can't be, I like art" so now he has to say they're not art to reconcile his views, which isn't so hard since no one can agree on what art actually is so all he as to do is stick with a definition that doesn't include video games
All his opponents have to do is support a definition that does include video games, and once each side decides on a good one that fits what they already think they meet back on the internet to shout at each other
I bet there isn't a single person who hates video games but thinks they're art. 'Art' in this case just means 'thing I like', only if we actually called it that it'd be like arguing over whose favorite food was tastiest.
Actually, I'm the opposite... I love video games, but I don't think they're art. True art has the power to impact your life in a profound manner, and no video game has managed to do that. Not even Braid or Shadow of the Colossus or Katamari Damacy, which I all adore and are held up to the "video games as art" standard.
The closest thing that I can think of would be Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which inspired me to write a non-fanfic story.
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so i don't really consider nature itself as 'art' per se, even though i do find it excruciatingly beautiful and moving at times and artistic, but i would consider a good photograph of that same piece of nature 'art'
kind of a weird definition, but it works for me!
wow this timeless gallagher joke really loses a lot when you only see it written
That is why Picasso's "Guernica" is considered art, and your average comic book is not.
That is why "The Empire Strikes Back" is art, but "The Phantom Menace" is not.
"Final Fantasy VII" is art. "Battlefield 1942" is not.
But the decision to have her wear glasses and nothing else was an artistic decision.
Lots of emotion over the ol' funny book.
Satans..... hints.....
Keep going I'm almost there
But not based on a theme!
Unless that theme is Joe Quesada's loathing of Spider-Man.
So art is an effort decided by the creator
Whether it is good or bad, simple or complicated, moral or perverse
That part is in the eye of the viewer
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it kind of does. it's saying, 'the best art, true art, has no purpose at all but to justify its own existence.'
i think it's the philosophy of someone who's struggled to articulate why great art is great. and maybe that's what we need a word for. great art. in books it's 'literature'. it's houk's 'high art'. it's the ideal art that ebert's arguing video games cannot be. it's not the squeaquel but it is taxi driver
me i think it's mostly about restraint of elements and subtelty, about doing a subject ultimate justice by arranging a text around them in the best way; but i'd need to hammer it out with people who actually subscribed to the notion that this strange superart is a real thing that we could define
most people don't
Much anger in him
Like his father
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Satans..... hints.....
there are a lot of awful, awful books admitted to 'literature' too, but only if you mean the 'literature' section of your local bookshop. there can actually be a working definition of literature that isn't quite as thoughtless as 'Everything That's Not Genre'. i'm talking about literature in theory, not literature in retailing
Like good or bad
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kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
Awwww, snap.
I am listening to the TED speech linked in the news post. It starts of on shaky ground. Maybe it will improve?
I am not comparing your stance to the guy that alphabetizes inventories. I am comparing your stance to the geniuses that even now give only the most nominal lip service to subaltern discourses while still ghettoizing them out of the Great Western Literary Canon stamped in gold.
God I wish that were the case.
what, you mean all those guys who had to stifle a giggle when they set murakami and marquez on the postgrad reading lists? the ones who made me sit through fight club and read part of the godawful book, and watch a handful of episodes of buffy? i hate those guys, elitist silly geese
edit: that was undue sarcasm. what i'm trying to say is that the definition of literature is wide open in modern academia, in a lot of cases irrelevant, as in a lot of places it should be, and in other places very important and the subject of intense debate. but i can assure you that if, as you say many great books are being excluded from this nebulous category it's only because things are being included then excluded then recluded on an essay-by-essay basis, and even then only until the next guy sticks his hand up
i like academia
But how long, exactly, was it from the invention of motion photography to film as an artform?
In general Ebert's a pretty smart guy, but this sort of thing, he really is just a crotchety old man who does not and never will "get it". He will never acknowledge any example or argument even if it destroys whatever argument he makes, because he simply defines things differently than the rest of us.
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I'm just taking that as him backpeddling. I don't care what Ebert thinks, I don't think his say or anyone else's say is going to make things true or untrue. But I still think he can fuck off with his opinion.
Man, I went through four years of an English Degree and not one professor talked about "What is art" or "What is Literature"
You read the shit because it was assigned
And if you didn't like it you gave good reasons
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edit: hang on. he's the department head.
edit:
i only did it in postgrad literary theory, but that's basically all the unit was. defining literature. one semester.
all hoarding the true meaning of art and literature and shakespeare's fossilized donger
I'm not in it for the art.
Count one vote for the reeking ejaculate.
I don't appreciate L.S Lowry's depictions of the industrialised north of england. I particularly dislike the way he stuck to such a simple medium most of time, choosing to work in pencil for long stretches, depicting extremely simplistic images which in all honesty, a 5 year old could make. I understand that there is a theme behind his work and that that is all made from the perspective of a young man growing up in a heavily industrialised part of britain during a bleak period where times were hard. But I don't like his work. I think alot of it is bad.
However, I would never have the guts to say that it isn't art. It is, all of it, very much art.
This is the only problem I have with Ebert's comments. Not only is he talking as if he has the right to label something as art or not, but he is labelling from a very poor position whilst masquerading as someone who knows what he is talking about. But then even if he did know what he is talking about, it's still not his place to label videogames as such, and neither it is any of ours.
Art is perspective.
If I take a shit on a canvas and someone loves it and wants to pay me 50 grand for it, nobody can argue that my bumspray in a frame isn't art to that person.
And art is definately not a measure of quality either. Bad art is still art. And in my opinion we need bad art as much as we need good art. And if it annoys you, tough shit. It's still art.
Lowry has his own Gallery near where I live, there is a theater and a shopping centre named after him all in the same square. Who am I to say the guy wasn't an artist?
When critics get together they talk about theory, but when artists get together they talk about turpentine
But the thing about a question like "what is art" is that it doesent neccisarilly have a solid answer, but its a valid question nonetheless because of the way it forces you to examine what you consume.
Thats why the broad "everything is art, picasso is art, FFVII is art, my ass poops and makes art, thats the answer there" defence has never really struck with me.
Movies are his thing. It might be a passive medium, but that's what he's into. And been into, for almost forty years now. You can see where his passions lie.
So the guy can't see the appreciation for a medium that's outside of his realm of expertise. So what? He's still arguably the foremost scholar on film studies to this day, yet people want to disown him because of something he doesn't understand.
Sure, he offered his opinion without provocation about said unfamiliar medium... on a blog. The realm of the asinine and mundane. I guess he just had a thought and wanted to talk about it like a regular person (and, to be fair, he's done a hell of a job keeping up with the insane amount of comments that said blog post has garnered, bringing the debate over to Twitter as well), like most bloggers do.
So we have to vivisect the guy because he doesn't think our form of entertainment is art? The dude offered up a list games that are art, albeit from Cracked.com, moments after that initial blog post. He knows both sides of the issues, and he's taking his stand from his perspective.
And so what do we, the gaming community, do? We take cheap shots and call him a crotchety old man because he "just doesn't get it." And true, he doesn't get it--but that was the whole point of his blog.
Let's grow out of this, because if you really want games to be taken seriously you'll have to approach them like adults, and this backlash has been anything but.
But it's one of those subjects that while providing stimulating conversation, can never really have a definitive conclusion either way.
[EDIT] So while trying to change people's minds is okay, it's not really worth getting your panties in a twist if you can't manage it.
Well some definitions of art would allow for attaining cultural iconography to elevate something to being art.
Under those definitions, shadow of the colossus wouldnt be art, but pong might be.
Tastes changes, and hindsight is not always 20/20. Lasting appeal always brings more artistic credit to something that may have been considered trash initially.
I bet Ebert wouldn't have stirred up nearly as much controversy if his article was titled 'Video games can never be a thing I like'
But that's basically what this is
I guess he's just riled because someone told him video games were art, and he was like "they can't be, I like art" so now he has to say they're not art to reconcile his views, which isn't so hard since no one can agree on what art actually is so all he as to do is stick with a definition that doesn't include video games
All his opponents have to do is support a definition that does include video games, and once each side decides on a good one that fits what they already think they meet back on the internet to shout at each other
I bet there isn't a single person who hates video games but thinks they're art. 'Art' in this case just means 'thing I like', only if we actually called it that it'd be like arguing over whose favorite food was tastiest.
The closest thing that I can think of would be Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which inspired me to write a non-fanfic story.