Contemporary Art Mar. 2014 | Page 6

What is Art?   What is Art? v Art can range from drawing and painting to preforming and video making. If you want, you can consider everything to be a work of art. But I have criteria for considering what is art; considering all the things in the universe as art would make art a confusing subject, science would be art, English would be art, math would also be art. You can mix these subjects to create unique pieces of art, but the point is art is a separate subject and there should be a criteria for what is considered to be art. Criteria for Art: v The viewers’ should be able to interact with the artwork. v Art should allow the artist to tell a meaningful story to the audience; there should be content. v It should be a universal form of expression. People all over the world should be able to understand/feel what is being communicated. One example of an artist who follows these criteria is the artist Jeff Koons. The image displayed below, Rabbit is an appropriated art piece that people may identify as something familiar to them, a Mylar balloon kids and adults have received on special occasions. You can interact with it and use it as a mirror since it has a reflection, and it tells us about massproduced consumer products and how it represents our consumer life-style; this can make us think, "why do we mass produce these kinds of objects when it is not necessary in our survival?" or "Is there a better use of our resources than creating a Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1986. Stainless steel sculpture. lot of Mylar balloons?” Steel is formed into a shape of a Mylar balloon rabbit.     Page 1 Felix Gonzalez- Torrez, “Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991. Multi-colored wrapped candy installation. Candies are individually wrapped in multicolored cellophane and weight changes with time. Another example i ̃