Nicely done goofy and Wookie!

Jalfrezi,

Not really fully understanding your stance of actors not being artists, or musicians not being the artists but the composer is, so I have some questions if you will entertain me.

Let's say I am a rich independent producer, and I decide I want a film (and artistic one at that!).

So i hire myself a director, a writer, some actors and I say, look, what I am financing here is an artistic film about two lost dogs and a cat who meet some hobos going across the country and they go on grand trip and learn about life and love and humanity.

The writers write the story, the directors and cinematographer film the thing, the actors give a stellar set of performances, transforming the written word and taking the direction making it all so visceral. All along the way all parties involve are intending to make art.

Is the resulting cinematic film a work of art? Who in this process do you believe can call themselves artists? And as the originator of the whole thing, do I?

Frankly I find your positions and arguments in this thread absurd and lacking in rigorous principle.

And feel free to take a crack at my earlier two questions if you could

Yeah...I think programmers maybe are the least likely to understand the artistry,

zikzak, Max Cut, do you think this building is art?

Based only on the photo, I think it's beautiful and remarkable. I don't feel qualified to categorize it as art or not (and I don't feel it's a very important label either).

If I understand the film-making process (and I'm not claiming to fully, though I do have an old friend who's a film maker), in your fantasy scenario the Artists would be the director and screenwriter who have control over the creative process (ignoring the likelihood of interference from the producer). Cinematographers are a bit of a grey area but although they are heavily involved in the process of creative process I wouldn't call them Artists because the 'vision' isn't theirs (they are helping it to be realised).

Suggesting that Producers could be Artists is as absurd as saying the Pope was an Artist for financing the Sistine Chapel.

(I realise you're probably just trolling as usual, but it's amusing to read your thoughts!).

You sure Poincare didn't say that?

I am not 'trolling', my thoughts on the subject have been pretty clear, have been interested in the thoughts of others, and spent a good bit of time reading on the topic outside of the forum after this subject was introduced.

My feelings on the subject of film is that of course the actors are artists as well, even if one wishes to differentiate 'performance artist' in some manner, though of course the defining of words is where much of the debate on the topic comes about in the first place.

Actors interpret the written word and the direction of the directors. In effect they 'create' the character, even if doing so under a director that is to the extreme on the controlling---freedom spectrum of direction.

If I hop in my local excellent phone booth and bring back Renoir and Manet, give Gal Gadot a ring and tell her I need some quick modeling done, and then tell my two painters I need them to paint me a nice sad portrait of Gal...... I am going to get two seperate interpretations of what was directed and what was depicted by my model. I am going to get two separate painting performances and end products as interpreted by those two artists.

And I am not going to tell them "Sorry suckers, this isn't art, back to the past with you so I can do tequila shots with Gal!", because that would be absurd. (At least the first part that is)

Annnyhow, thankfully enough reading on the topic has cemented my view that actors are indeed artists and no arguments have been presented in this thread yet to shake that view.

Care to answer the other questions quoted above?

Not when you look at improvisation as insta-composing.

I don't think so, as I have only ever seen it attributed to Einstein (along with a slight variation on the same note).

Unless you are making a Poincare joke I am overlooking?

Anyhow, enjoy a video on Poincare from one of my top 20 favorite people, Persi Diaconis:

Improvising is listening, interpreting, composing, and projecting all at once. At the purest levels, one's subconscious is merely speaking the music directly, and the best work of their lives are being created right there in the moment.

Relativity priority dispute joke.

I don't think i'll ever get Andy Warhol.

Hi JayTeeMe, I have a gift for you!

God damn Capitalists stole my gift

It's very artistic, but imo architecture isn't pure art. Sculpture is pure art, and something like Gaudí's Park Güell blurs the lines between the two.

You're as wrong about this as you were with your absurd implicit suggestion that Renaissance Popes were artists.

If you're attempting to draw an analogy between the work of a film director with a clear vision of what he wants from his cast, cinematographer, cast and technical support and everyone else (based on the script), and a financier asking artists to paint sad-looking portraits, I can only lol and assume you're either way out of your depth or just larking around.

I don't find it a very interesting question because it doesn't deal with the nub of this thread which is how to distinguish art from craft.

But anyway...at the moment programs can't be artists because art is defined not by the product but by the process, and that necessitates a sentient, curious being. In the future, who knows?

I was not "implicitly suggesting" that I view Renaissance Popes (or a financier) as an artist. That was simply one of many questions I was posing to you to get you to fully state a coherent position, as your views in this thread have lacked intelligent foundation and clear definition.

But your false claim above just goes to show you inability to have rational discourse, and your inability to actually answer any questions and argue from first principles speaks plenty. In the words of the great performance artist Gene Wilder.

This is why I asked you about collaborative art, though. You have the screenwriter and the director both as artists. But strictly, the director is only interpreting what the screenwriter's written. And if you go by the auteur theory, it's the other way - I don't think the script itself constitutes art on that.

It just seems like you're drawing a line at actors pretty arbitrarily. I have written scripts and produced them and actors have a fantastic amount of input into their character and its depiction.

For a film, I would say that the direction of a film isn't an art form, and screenplays aren't an art form, composing a sequence of shots isn't an art form, but all of these and more are marshaled into the practice of making films, which is an art form. As a collaborative art, then, anyone with legitimate creative input should be considered an artist.

Saying there is "an art" to doing something because you can do a shitty job versus a good job at it does not mean it is art, not even close, wtf?

I think directors are as much Artists as anyone else working in the arts - painters, writers etc - and this becomes apparent when you hear them talk about their films.

With the collaborative arts I agree it seems a bit harsh on some major contributors to draw the line somewhere, but if you don't want to do that you end up with gofers, secretaries, production assistants etc as Artists because without them the film wouldn't be made. I think the lesser evil is to draw the line under those who have a creative vision.

That's not to say that others aren't creative - clearly some are highly creative - but if photographers for example aren't regarded as Artists why should cinematographers be (who arguably have less control over the creative vision)?

Yeah, but I don't see how that can bar actors, though. No-one thinks the gaffer is an artist.

Photography can be art, so I don't see the issue.

Anything can be art if an artist says it is. We've known this since Duchamp.

We need to define the artist, not the art.