Art or Not?

Politics & Art• What is politics?• What qualifications does a work have to meet

to qualify as ‘art’? – What’s the difference between popular culture

and art?• What is the difference between art and

pornography/ smut?• What purpose should/does art serve?• How is a value put on art?

Tony Cragg’s Axehead, 1982

• Consists of 49 separate objects • Arranged on the floor to form the fan-like

outline of the head of an axe• A ‘study of the relationship of the part to the

whole’• Idea derived from particle physics • Artist trained as a scientist; complains that

science lacks images for its theories

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHxi-HSgNPc

Scene from American Beauty

“Sometimes there is so much... beauty... in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in."

Weaver’s FoundoukFez, Morocco

Nature surrounds usSoft, softly whispers the windListen closely, breathe

Georgia O’Keefe, White & Blue Flower Shapes, 1919

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN2zcLBr_VM

John Cage, 1952, classical musician

Nobuyoshi Araki, ‘Turtle Tied’, 2006

Science Daily, (10/27/08) Picture from article entitled ‘Orange Peel Can Help Clean up Dirty Water’

Titian’s Venus of Urbino, c. 1510

Moche Warrior, circa 500 AD

Robert Mapplethorpe , Phillip Prioleau, 1980