What is ART? (add some pics of art you like...)

[Cliff Huckable]

Mr. Tippster asked the question in another thread...so, what is art?

ADD SOME TO THIS THREAD and maybe we'll get near an answer.

Hard one for me to answer, so I'll post some examples of art I like. Picture worth a thousand words and all...
Mostly figurative, but that's what I'm into right now

Jana Sterbak - Flesh Dress for an Anorexic Albino


Takashi Murakami


Tara Donovan - installation


Takashi Murakami My Lonesome Cowboy


Jeff Wall


Loretta Lux


Eric Fischl Bad Boy


Mark Tansey - Bricoleur's Daughter (I think that's the name...could be wrong)


Michael Boremanns


Andy Goldsworthy - installation with snow


Lisa Yuskavage Big Blonde Squatting

[brice618]

Gordon Matta Clark




Robert Smithson



Christo and Jeanne Claude




i really like earth artists if you can't tell, especially ones that deal with architectural ideas


bruce nauman has some great projects, but i find myself either really liking his stuff or really hating it.

again he really designs his installations well.

[leroy jenkins]

I'm tempted to post a picture of my penis, but I'll refrain.

[Blizzard7763]

Jime Litwalk

[AbsolutStoli]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/32

[skikola]

www.alexgrey.com for some crazy stuff....

[AsheanMT]

http://www.kelticdesigns.com/Pages/J...SlideShow.html

[Rasputin]

Dali:

Swans Reflecting Elephants


Dream

_____________

Van Gogh:

The Starry Night



Sower With Setting Sun


_____________

Da Vinci:

Self Portrait



The Madonna of the Rocks


_____________

Rembrandt:

Self Portrait

[Ripzalot]

i ran across this site a few weeks back. hyperrealisim....its a painting!



http://denispeterson.com/

[neck beard]

I quite like Edward Hopper







I also like the interior and exterior of e type Jaguars

[NeigeÉternelle]

Art from NSFW

[BeanDip4All]

This opinion is going to be unpopular, I feel as though I am exposed to a lot of fake, pretentious, psuedo-intellectual "art" in nyc. No-talent hipster idiots try to pass off a lot of crap art... maybe I can't appreciate it because I am not wearing a black turtleneck and thick framed glasses?

I am jaded after living with two "artists" who made a toilet seat out of shalcked(sp?) startbucks donuts and tried to sell it for 2k (no buyers... aww sad). Also retard trust fund DJs claim getting coked up and spinning madonna at pink elephant is "art." I say BS.

I don't know I guess I am a cynic.

Dave Barry had a hilarious "what is art" column a few years back, here is the piece in question.

Dave Barry... "Not for the Faint of Art"

Whenever I write about art, I get mail from the Serious Art Community informing me that I am a clueless idiot. So let me begin by stipulating that I am a clueless idiot. This is probably why I was unable to appreciate a work of art I viewed recently, titled: “Chair.”
I saw “Chair” at Art Basel, a big art show held recently on Miami Beach. It attracted thousands of Serious Art People, who wear mostly black outfits and can maintain serious expressions no matter what work of art they are viewing.

This is hard, because a lot of Serious Art consists of bizarre or startlingly unattractive objects, or “performances” wherein artists do something conceptual, such as squirt Cheez Whiz into an orifice that has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for snack toppings.

But no matter what the art is, a Serious Art Person will view it with the somber expression of a radiologist examining X-rays of a tumor. Whereas an amateur will eventually give himself away by laughing; or saying “Huh?”; or—this is the most embarrassing—asking an art-gallery person: “Is this wastebasket a piece of art? Or can I put my gum wrapper in it?”

But back to Art Basel: I didn’t go to the main show. I went to an officially sanctioned satellite show called “Art Positions,” which was a group of large, walk-in shipping containers set up on the beach, serving as mini art galleries. Serious Art People drifted blackly from container to container, solemnly examining the tumors.

I managed not to say anything stupid until I encountered a slide projector sitting on the floor, projecting a rectangle of white light and twitching lens dust onto the wall. I asked the gallery person if there was supposed to be a slide in the projector; he patiently explained that, no, this was a work of art titled, “Autofocus Slide Projector Dust.” I didn’t ask why it was on the floor, because I didn’t want to make a total fool of myself.

In another container there was a work of art consisting of a video, repeated over and over, showing a man—not in peak physical condition, I might add—rollerblading around a vast empty space, stark naked. I’m proud to say I betrayed no emotion while viewing this work, although my daughter, who is three, said, quite loudly: “You can see his tushy! Yuck!”

She is young, and has no art training.

Anyway, in the corner of one container there was a ratty old collapsed armchair—worn, dirty, leaking stuffing, possibly housing active vermin colonies. I asked the gallery person if the chair was art, and she said yes, it was a work titled, “Chair.” I asked her what role the artist had played in creating “Chair.” She said: “He found it.” She noted that “Chair” had been professionally crated and shipped to the art show.

“Chair” is for sale. The price is $2,800. Really. I looked up “Chair” on a Serious Art Internet site, http://www.artcritical.com, which said: “The chair offers not a weedy patina of desuetude but an apotheosis of its former occupant.” http://www.artcritical.com/blurbs/JSMcMillian.htm

See, I missed that altogether, about the desuetude and the apotheosis. I thought it was just a crappy old junk chair some guy took off a trash pile and was now trying to sell for 2,800 clams.

I was also baffled by an artwork called “Moonwalk,” presented by a Paris art gallery. You walked into the gallery/container, and it was empty, just blank white walls. Around the ceiling were a half-dozen speakers making a high-pitched sonar sound, like this: “boop.” That was the art: “boop.” Sitting outside on a folding chair was a gallery person, smoking Marlboros. I wondered what it would be like to fly all the way from Paris to Miami, only to spend four days sitting outside an empty shipping container going “boop.” I would go insane. I would have an apotheosis of freaking desuetude.

In another container, there was a work that consisted of a hole drilled in the floor, and some weeds stuck in it. I believe the price on that was $6,000. While I was examining it, I heard one Serious Art Person say to another (I swear): “Wouldn’t that be wonderful in the foyer?”

I want to state, for the record, that there was also some very nice-looking art on display. And I want to repeat that I am a clueless idiot. So you Serious Art People don’t need to write letters reminding me. I agree that you know much more about art than I do, OK?

So you buy the chair.

[schindlerpiste]

There are a gazillion more

[Dr. Send]

I think I asked this before, but does anyone know the name of the artist who released a jar of air into the desert and took a picture of it?

[Yonder_River]

J/K

[eirikainersharp]

i ran across this site a few weeks back. hyperrealisim....its a painting!

http://denispeterson.com/

that is wild

i right now I am really digging the photography of Galen Rowel http://www.mountainlight.com/:



and the art of Sam Flores: http://www.samflores.com/home.html



and my friend, up and coming Whistler based artist Lauren Javor: http://www.laurenjavor.com/

as well as tattoos by Steve Moore of Vancouver

http://www.getmooretattoos.com

[klar]

i ran across this site a few weeks back. hyperrealisim....its a painting!

http://denispeterson.com/

Ripz, check out Gerhard Richter. For stuff like this, he is the man.

http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/paintings.php

[greg]

toshio tshibata







not my favorite ones, but i can't find em.

de chirico







corregio



nice thread. but i'm having a hard time finding who and what i really like..

[summit]

I like the Luminists


by Albert Bierdstadt (1886)
(yes the 14er is named for this guy)

Some more of his stuff:

[PTracy P1]

The ALMS Maserati is truly a work of art.

[NeigeÉternelle]

Art and Illusion



M.C. Escher

[AbsolutStoli]

http://denispeterson.com/

i came across something similar a week ago. http://www.drublair.com/comersus/store/tica.asp

i like denis peterson's work more just because theres more a sense of commentary, but the skills of both is amazing.


margaret bourke white

[Speedfreak]

Lil bit of Shepard Fairey never hurt...

[72Twenty]

Bev Doolittle has always been one of my favorites...

(sorry for the crappy online versions of these images)

[Franz Klammer]

Oskar Kokoschka


Egon Schiele


Arnulf Rainer


Kiki Kogelnik


Alfred Hrdlicka


Alfred Kubin


You might be starting to see a trend here ...