Warning: I have been taking a philosophy class and therefore having expressive thoughts. I shall be having more of these as time goes by and I start reading the book on my own.

to question what is art....? I believe that what I post here is "art" and that I am an artist, but then we fall under duchamps definition of art: "something is art because of the place it has in a certian social system" or as Tilghman implies of Duchamp's definition: it's art if the artist says it is. But what of the motives behind creating it then? much of my art was started as depression that was released through drawing and as I evolved as a person was when I started drawing for the sake of drawing instead of just to let go of something. No, I think that's wrong. I think I started as an artist for the sake of expression, but not nessacaraly for depression. I was never very eloquent as a child, nor through out most of my schooling. I'm just now evolving to include words as a means of deeper communication. (Thank you sweetie!) but even before this evolution I used drawing and "my art" as a way to design costumes and just show my version of something pretty that I saw. So then does that exclude expressionism? (claiming that expression of emotion is a necessary condition of art) or perhaps the idea of showing something pretty is my way of sharing a pleased emotion at the view of the sight? If the intention is to "communicate the emotions of {the artist's} soul to the souls of the audience" then I don't believe it holds true because the artist doesn't always feel what the audience pulls from it. Art is individualistic. A person ties their own past experiances into what ever they see... sort of like an ink blot test. Of course they see the surface, but all the deeper veiws are pulled from their life as well as what they see.
Then of course there's Plato's veiw of art being very negative. His 'moral' objection is what interests me the most. Many people seem to forget that art is simply images (a great example is the painting done by surrealist painter Rene Magritte called The Treachery of Images which is a painting of a pipe with the words Ceci n'est pas une pipe {this is not a pipe} below it) Plato claims that since people look to art to find an example of an ideal case, such as refering to a literary character as if he were real, it causes a person's views to be skewed. things like "Violence on television or in video games peretuates violence in society" are said with this argument in mind. But I disagree with this. The main problem I have is that people do use this to appeal to a person's passion, but they do nothing to develop the reason enough to become their own person. I realize at this point I shall deviate from art being the topic so I shall end it here and continue on this point another time.

PS any thoughts on the subject are welcome! ^_^