Found Art

Based on what I thought the "Pick-Up Art" thread was about (it's not about that).

Do you think Found Art does, or at least can, have artistic merit? Do you believe in objective artistic merit at all?

My answers would be yes and no respectively. Sometimes all you need to do to make something art is change the context it's in.

? and no. Art has no merit.

I consider it functionally equivalent to taking a photograph of a waterfall—you didn't make the waterfall, but you figured out how best to present it.

For the most part I consider it very lacking in artistic merit.

I went to the surrealism exhibit at an art gallery a while ago. There was this object that, while it looked quite exotic to me, turned out to be a very common household implement of the time. Every cellar had one, and the artist literally just picked it up out of his own cellar and stuck it into a gallery unaltered.

To me that is not art. I could grab the plastic shelving out of my pantry and stick it on a dais with a label, but that wouldn't be art.

Which makes it seem like the only criteria for art is 'an artist made it', which seems like circular logic to me: "I make art, therefore I am an artist. I am an artist, therefore what I make is art".

To me that is not art. I could grab the plastic shelving out of my pantry and stick it on a dais with a label, but that wouldn't be art.

yes it would.

My answers to the OP's questions are also yes and no. Concerning found objects, taking and arranging them as "art" is no different than taking and arranging paint particles as "art"; you're simply using a different medium.

I concur with Inferno.

If you were to take hundreds of those shevles and arrange them into a pattern, then that too is art. Its just a different way of doing art.

What's that old saying:

I don't know about art, but I know what I like.

I'm pretty sure I just had the best idea for an art exhibit ever:

I go to an art gallery, tell a bunch of people to come see my exhibit, get them to follow me into an empty room, and then tell them that they are the exhibit.

I should get paid for this stuff.

Inferno I'll pay you in irony dollars

edited 25th Aug '11 6:23:49 AM by joeyjojo

I accept!

Deboss, if you think art has no merit then why do you post on a website dedicated to the arts?

And yeah, found art can absolutely have merit— check out Duchamp, for instance. The art doesn't have to be the thing, it can also be how it's presented and the audience reaction to it.

(Also, Inferno— John Cage already did that. That's the point of his piece "4'33"")

I post on a website dedicated to entertainment.