What is art?

This post explores the idea that my 3-D spoof Orange in a Bottle is art.  My vote is in for the water bottle/ clementine rind/ "neck warmer" installation and photo as real art.   

Mary-Gail King

Famous the Fish's body double and my final painting. (His container looked more like a water bottle than a fish bowl so I called in his double.)

famous the fish

17 hours ago via iPhoto Uploader ·  ·  · Share

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  Milenko Pempa Pribicevic and Mary Daniels-Yu like this.
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    Donna Carver Great way to concieve an abstract.
    

    6 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
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    Beth Warren Wait...I thought that was a real fish at first. I think that your model should qualify as 3D art. If it was a real fish in that bottle you would have to call him a STUNT double:)LOL Beautiful painting!
    

    3 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
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    Mary-Gail King Love those comments. Every time I think about Famous I smile. I think that may be his mission in the world. He brings happiness everywhere he goes. Here's a philosophical question. Does the orange (clementine) peel in   the water bottle qualify as art? If so/ not, why?
    

    about an hour ago · 

My reasoning is that the concept or intent to mimic fine art while appropriating contemporary images and process (Aquafina bottle photo taken by an i-phone camera and posted to Facebook) classifies it as classic pop art.  It is also be a stepping stone to a different way of looking at a subject.  Whatever else it is, it's sideways thinking and very funny stuff.


I'm spinning with ideas on this one but will just leave this wikipedia overview of pop art and my posting of the fish in a bottle.  (BTW, I'll never stop painting for this stuff!)


See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art 

"Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation.^[1][2] The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.^[2]

Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them.^[3] And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony.^[2] It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.

Much of pop art is considered incongruent, as the conceptual practices that are often used make it difficult for some to readily comprehend. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of Postmodern Art themselves.^[4]

Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising.^[5] Product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, like in the Campbell's Soup Cans labels, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the shipping carton containing retail items has been used as subject matter in pop art, for example in Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Juice Box 1964, (pictured below), or his Brillo Soap Boxsculptures.

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