The second one is better art.

I don't get it.

Is this photo art? I like it. I'm also potentially strange.

Marcel DuChamp would think so.

Marcel DuChamp would think so.

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The "is it art" question is one I've been working on with the art department here at the world's largest investment bank. My favorite surf landscapes were rejected from consideration for my office wall on grounds of not being fine art. This is my current scheme under consideration (I've been given a few criteria I have to hold to that don't really bear enumerating, though spelling them out would take up less of my time and MeCha's bandwidth than this particular sentence did):

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And I think both your photos are art, shane, though I prefer the "this" link to the "Yes" link.

Come to Philly, shane. The art museum has an awesome Duchamp collection and my collection of Wild Things and garden gnomes would also please you. Art abounds.

I think the Levellers did a song slightly sarcastically titled "But is it art?"

;-) It's always a fun question, sometimes serious, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes pretentious and silly.

jrossi, I'll be there! Wild Things and garden gnomes? Hell yeah ;-)

Seriously, I should be visiting Philly sometime this or next month. How about a Meetup? We can get soyjoy from MeFi out too. I've never seen Philly.

The answer to "is it art", for me, is almost always 'yes'. I think art is about intention. In other words, if someone has applied a human intelligence -- a way of viewing -- to objective reality, they have created art.

So let's try and look at the intentions here. There was an objective reality, a truck with some equipment parked near a sign. The sign itself has some artistic merit -- typeface and coloring -- but just thinking about the photograph: someone had a reason to select that scene as the subject of a picture. It might have been a non-artistic reason (documentary, crime scene, part of a zoning application...), but if the intent was artistic, then the photo is art.

Then, along came someone and cropped that photo. In doing so, they removed detail they considered extraneous and directed the viewer's attention to an interesting composition of complicated but linear forms and primary colors. That's a huge part of what makes it art -- selecting content and controlling the viewer's gaze.

The question always gets thornier when you want to decide what's good art, or fine art, and what's bad. Then it's time to talk about technique and taste. But art is art - visual material, intentionally constructed/selected/presented for an artistic response. That's my view anyway.

Post-view: That Duchamp exhibit in Philly is truly great! Don't miss it.

And I think both your photos are art, shane...

I forgot to mention, I didn't take those, I just fished them out of survey photos for a sign installation company. That's half the fun, finding found art. But I take photos like those too, obsessed with color and composition and textures.

Heh, okay.

Wow, Hugh, at least you get to have serious discussions about art with your employer!

On preview:

Then, along came someone and cropped that photo. In doing so, they removed detail they considered extraneous and directed the viewer's attention to an interesting composition of complicated but linear forms and primary colors. That's a huge part of what makes it art -- selecting content and controlling the viewer's gaze.

Miko, I love you! See, that's why it was all the more fun that this was "found" art, just a completion photo of an installed sign taken by a worker so he could prove he finished the job. This makes my day--this and MeCha.

"Why don't they call it art?"

Yeah shane, but it doesn't change my basic point of view. It just means that you become the one who first saw it as art, then presented it to us with artistic intention. I guess I tend to think that "art" lies in the viewer and in the context, not in the image.

I guess I tend to think that "art" lies in the viewer and in the context, not in the image

Right, you think it sucks. That's okay.

;-)

No, really, I understand what you're saying. Very cool.

No, I really like it, actually!