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comment by rob05c
rob05c  ·  3841 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Can Art be Taught?

    That's a pretty broad definition though, isn't it?

That's a good point. The problem is, as soon as you narrow the definition, someone creates art that doesn't fit it.

Music has the same problem. I had a music teacher in undergrad who asserted you could push a garbage can down a stairwell and it would be music.

    How could that definition be narrowed to weed out the obvious exceptions?

I don't think it can. Not everything that creates emotional response is art, just as not all sound is music. But I don't think it's possible to narrow the definition further than that, without excluding valid art.





ghostoffuffle  ·  3841 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, I had a music teacher like that, too. I came to the conclusion that the ol' trashcan down the stairs (or whatever) is more performance art than music. But you're getting at a point that pretty much everybody here seems to be getting at, that art is just a hell of a thing to define. And until we define it, the original question is patently tricky. If we can't preclude emotional response from the definition, maybe there's a way to just add other modifiers?