A recent thread on a forum I belong to sparked a question. What is art and, does it have to have a meaning to it? By definition from the Wikipedia of art is:

Art is a result of human creativity which has some perceived quality beyond its usefulness, usually on the basis of aesthetic value or emotional impact.

The modern use of the word “art”, which rose to prominence after 1750, is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result

My stance may be a bit jaded from your normal person however. I was never one to go to museums and stare at paintings or artwork. Even to this day it is not something I will go out of my way to do. I may have a simple mind and thought process about this, but for me I like to look at and buy things that are visually apealing to me. The meaning behind it or some covert message that it may be putting on me comes secondary. Yes I am interested in why the artist did what they did and why they did it that certain way, but I like to look at things that are visually appealing to me.

What I don’t get is this, from someone else in the thread:

But in the fine art world, the image is nothing, and the intent is everything.

As someone who does fine art photography, I strongly disagree. I am also up for the debate as to whether or not photography is an art or not as well, but I’ll start another post for that. Again, I’d much prefer someone visually enjoys my work and then gets whatever message they want out of it.

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