Art as Art

Someone call up the guy who designed the Liberian county flags:

Art is pretty good, but I like paintings more.

I think art is the ultimate expression of art. I wish more artists would understand this

I copied this reply from the Music as Art thread:

HackettFan wrote: Zappa once said something to the effect that art is anything you can put a frame around, not simply a literal frame, but anything that sets the boundaries that define it. A theatrical performance, for instance, has a time when it begins and point at which it ends. Artists are sometimes conventional in their use of frames, and sometimes more innovative. Some frames may be practical and trivial, or sometimes the same frame may be regarded as more meaningful. Jazz artists traditionally looked at album recordings as simply as a secondary momento of a live event, which was the primary artistic representation. Rock artists, especially Prog musicians, regarded the recorded album as their primary artistic representation.

I think the remark about the figurative frame is interesting, because painting frames often have an accepted aspect ratio, which is usually close to the golden ratio. The idea of frames can be extended to music where tonality, harmonic structure, timbre, rhythm, and other characteristics act as boundaries of a style. For example, most of us would recognize a previously unheard piece of music as being jazz, baroque, Celtic, flamenco, opera etc based on previous exposure to the corresponding stylistic frames of reference.

Of course, art is not all about following established rules and conventions, but also about bending and breaking them to make a statement. That reminded me of Dadaism and found objects/readymades, where the artist selects existing objects and declares them to be art, which may or may not entail modifying said objects.

Is something Art merely by virtue of the fact that someone claims it is?

Is John Cage's 4'33'' Art?

Is this thread Art?

Is Art Garfunkel Art?

What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs hanging on the wall?

I mean sure, art is art. But its sooooo overrated. Its just self-indulgent and pretentious. 

Magnum Vaeltaja wrote: ^ Ah, makes sense. Still gonna ask M@X if he can get some TeX on this site.

^ Ah, makes sense. Still gonna ask M@X if he can get some TeX on this site. 

I was about to make a smart aleck comment about "Art as Music" but then I remembered that you already elegantly explained that using set notation.