Defining Art

To follow up on my last post, I had an interesting discussion with my photography teacher last night about what art is.

He told the class that any photo, painting, drawing or other famous artwork can be reproduced with programs like photoshop fairly easily with tutorials.

As a photographer who has seen the progression from dark rooms to digital, I asked how he felt about his own statement. The photos he spent hours planning, developing and mounting can now be reproduced by an average person who takes an average photo and manipulates it mindlessly as the computer tutorial tells him to.

This can't really be considered art can it? It's robotic.

He answered that eventhough a person can reproduce, they can never have his eye, or think just like him. For that matter, no one can. A person will never look at a tuscan field and see just what VanGough saw or look at a building and see the same angle and lighting that the photographer standing right next to them sees.

We admire art because of the artist's unique eye and the way it makes us feel. True art evokes emotion and thought. It takes thought to create and thought to understand. Even the simplest art is nothing more than scribbles if the artist did not have a plan.