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Is photorealistic art really "art"?

Is photorealistic art really artistic?

  • Yes

  • No

  • It can be.

Results are only viewable after voting.
Aladdin said:
If I paint 100 paintings and never show them to anyone...have I failed at creating art?

Does a painting have to hang somewhere and be seen for it to be art?

Let's say an artist's intention and purpose is to paint. Say they just love painting. All they want to do is paint....they couldnt give a rats arse if their art works are not bought.
It's still art. Even if it ends up only on their walls.
Click to expand...
If it's only communicating to one person and that person is the artist itself. It's fulfilling its intended purpose.
If it's in a cupboard never to be seen by anyone it's still art. It's just not performing it's function as art.
I didn't say art has to communicate to be art.

A car is a car whether it's driven or not but it's purpose is to transport people.
 
Aladdin said:
If I paint 100 paintings and never show them to anyone...have I failed at creating art?

Does a painting have to hang somewhere and be seen for it to be art?

Let's say an artist's intention and purpose is to paint. Say they just love painting. All they want to do is paint....they couldnt give a rats arse if their art works are not bought.
It's still art. Even if it ends up only on their walls.
Click to expand...
If no-one ever sees it, it doesn't matter whether it's art or not, 'cos no-one will ever know.
 
RoyReed said:
It's the act of viewing that makes it art. Its all in the eye of the beholder.
Click to expand...
dnd-beholder-5e-xanathar.jpg


:confused: :confused: :confused: ​

 
The OP asks 2 questions which are slightly but crucially different. First it's 'Is photorealistic art actually art?' and then in the poll it's 'Is photorealistic art actually artistic?'

I voted 'It can be', which was the correct answer to the first question, but the wrong one for the second - the correct answer being Yes.

Any creative endeavour can be described as artistic, but most creative endeavours do not produce art.
 
It depends. It might not be interesting art, but shit or dull art is still art. It’s a bit like asking if a certain genre of music is art.
A lot of photorealistic art seems to be an exercise to show off a technique or skill, without enough consideration of anything else.
A lot of bad art is posted on the bandwidth thread that is mere flashy technique - like sculptures made from fruit or sand or whatever. The subject is often trite or uninteresting though. Still art, though, just shite art.
 
Gromit said:
Not really. You basically tried to bring 'communication' into it as yes communication is also 'expression of thought and / or emotion'.

Although similar there are distinctions between the two. Art and Communication are seperate but not mutually exclusive.

Art has to be communicated somehow to fulfill its intended purpose.
Communication can be artful but doesn't have to be.
Click to expand...
You're proving my point about your definition. It's too loose, and defines more than just art.

"Art has to be communicated somehow to fulfill its intended purpose."

There are huge, impressive, statues robbed from the Miiddle East in The British Museum, which are 4-5000 years old, where we don't know the intended purpose, nor the cultural context, does that make them 'not art' because we can never know with certancy what the intended purpose of these statues were/are? What about cave painting? Which is arguably the birth of art (although probably there was a lot more neolithic art done on more perishable mediums, and some of which may predate that). We can only guess at what it was communicating, or what its intended purpose was. Are these cake paintings art?
 
Aladdin said:
If I paint 100 paintings and never show them to anyone...have I failed at creating art?

Does a painting have to hang somewhere and be seen for it to be art?

Let's say an artist's intention and purpose is to paint. Say they just love painting. All they want to do is paint....they couldnt give a rats arse if their art works are not bought.
It's still art. Even if it ends up only on their walls.
Click to expand...
Does it matter if it's considered 'art' or not? What matters is the creating of it. That being outside of yourself, that scratching of an itch inside of your soul.
 
ohmyliver said:
You're proving my point about your definition. It's too loose, and defines more than just art.

"Art has to be communicated somehow to fulfill its intended purpose."

There are huge, impressive, statues robbed from the Miiddle East in The British Museum, which are 4-5000 years old, where we don't know the intended purpose, nor the cultural context, does that make them 'not art' because we can never know with certancy what the intended purpose of these statues were/are? What about cave painting? Which is arguably the birth of art (although probably there was a lot more neolithic art done on more perishable mediums, and some of which may predate that). We can only guess at what it was communicating, or what its intended purpose was. Are these cake paintings art?
Click to expand...

Just because we don't know the purpose of those statues doesn't mean that they're not art. Sculpture is a form of art. It might be done by a lone artist purely for the aesthetics of it, or it might be commissioned by some ancient potentate as a demonstration of their worldly power. Considering the size and age of the sculptures in question, it's more likely to be the latter. It's still art even if it had some kind of mundane function or messaging in addition to being things made with creativity and skill. Cave paintings may have had a practical function as ritual guides or even just decoration, but again it requires the creator to apply their imagination and technique to give expression in a medium.

Both those statues and the cave paintings communicated something in the days that they were created. That we can't fully understand the echoes of that communication today doesn't nullify that.
 
ohmyliver said:
You're proving my point about your definition. It's too loose, and defines more than just art.

"Art has to be communicated somehow to fulfill its intended purpose."

There are huge, impressive, statues robbed from the Miiddle East in The British Museum, which are 4-5000 years old, where we don't know the intended purpose, nor the cultural context, does that make them 'not art' because we can never know with certancy what the intended purpose of these statues were/are? What about cave painting? Which is arguably the birth of art (although probably there was a lot more neolithic art done on more perishable mediums, and some of which may predate that). We can only guess at what it was communicating, or what its intended purpose was. Are these cake paintings art?
Click to expand...
I just said communicated. Never said it had to be successfully communicated. A lot of art is incorrectly interpreted, even by so called experts.

Art can just be about an aesthetic. It can just be pretty. That's where emotional content rather than intellectual content comes into my definition. You've conveniently ignored that very important half of my definition.
 
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