Now that Jane Fonda has dotted the final "i" of the idiocy that defines her politics, let us turn to a less stressful consideration. What is art?Well? Is it whatever an artist claims it is? That would beg the question, who is qualified to self identify an artist? Reminiscent of a dog's common activity, n'est pas? (No, not that one; I refer to chasing its tail.)
My inclination to identify art via the ruthless but intrinsically fair operation of a free market has the drawback of associating art with filthy lucre, as if that never happens. I, therefore, propose that art, if it is to be adjudicated as something of value, which I claim it must be to someone, needs to have a modicum of creativity. The latter attribute obtains whenever an activity produces negative entropy. Put another way, art, at a minimum, needs to be distinguishable from a product of random activity.
If TheBigHenry produces a sketch, that sketch is not art because it is indistinguishable from random scribbles. If a blind man drinks a bottle of tequila, swallows the worm, and then picks up a bucket of paint and throws it at the wall in his bathroom, he hasn't produced a work of art, by similar reasoning. If Marcel Duchamp paints "R. Mutt 1917" on a discarded urinal and submits it as a work of art, he is joking, but you never really know with the French ...
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