Is this Art?

nicarius — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:33:53 +0000

A long time ago I was at work and I had a book on abstract painting. As a friend and I were scanning the pages our boss showed up. He looked at the book and smiled and started explaining us what was art and what wasn’t. Of course that was not the first time I heard somebody say that art is only figurative and or elaborated and not something that “my kid can do”.
Nonetheless I wanted to hear what he had to say. In the middle of his ramblings he grabbed a piece of paper from the desk and drew a black “X” with his pen. “If that’s art…” -he said – “then this is art too…”. My friend, who by the way is a painter and was going through his abstract phase started arguing with him and I don’t remember how it ended. Plus I had to get back to work.

Another day, I was reading a book about Van Gogh’s self portraits. This guy came and started flipping through the pages as if it were “People’s magazine”.
I thought I knew what was coming next…but he really surprised me. He said and I quote “-esto para mi es un tipo con barba…” which means something like “this is just a guy with a beard…”. He was talking about Vincent Van Gogh self portraits. He really cracked me up. That phrase stuck up in my head forever. I still use it in certain situations as a funny remark.
By the way, on Wikipedia’s page on art there’s a Van Gogh self portrait. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

This is what his drawing looked like

The point of this story is that everyone, artist or not, has an opinion on what is art.
I would like to hear yours:

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Nico.

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Is this Art?