Thomas de Groot wrote:
> There should be - at least - a certain "something" which appeals to a random 
> and miscellaneous group of (at least a bit) knowledgeable observers before a 
> piece is considered part of the artistic domain. If not, really everything 
> could be called art, killing art in the process and putting kitch in its 
> place. Would you consider the ubiquitous "tearful child" or "busty gypsy" as 
> art? Probably not. Still, many people love them enough to put them on their 
> walls, and thus indeed a subjective question of opinion at large, but not if 
> one has taken the trouble or the time to learn/understand what art is really 
> about.

This is the core notion which drives Fine Arts professors to sneer down 
their noses and say haughtily, "Ugh, Illustration.  That's not ART".

(Guess what my major at university was :P  )

"Oh no!" they cry.  "XYZ is removing mystique from The Thing Which 
Elevates Our Clique To Superiority, killing Art:  it's not a legitimate 
artform!"  (All photography was once in that category, you might be 
aware.  CGI generally still is.)

"Art" used to just be any skill performed by a crafter, before being 
corralled into a narrow pen of being something only a few, educated 
elite could 'understand'.  Skill used to mean more...but now, skill can 
be had at the push of a button.  Even if you don't use 
artificially-generated skill to accomplish a task, the end product is no 
longer considered something which someone skilled made, even though you 
can still have something that's very low quality made with pushbutton skill.

FFFFFfffffff.

</rant>

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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