itch.io

You replied to me, instead of replying to the topic ;-)

doesnt the passion of the artist and the effort make it art?

Not really, no. Just because someone is an artist (called so by whom?), work created by them is not art. It is human made, artificial instead of natural. But the art in artificial is not the type of art we are talking about. Art is a display of skill. There can be passion put into it, and it usually makes art even better, as it engages the viewer. Even if that passion is accidentally attributed by the viewer.

Oh, I read softer definitions about art, that even lack the skill attribute. And it has long tradition to argue about what is art and what is not. There are like 5-7, maybe more defintions in dictionaries for "art".

But if you use the softest defintions, literally everything would be art. And art is supposed to be special. If everything is art, none is.

Or what about masterfully painting a portrait on canvas, catching the moment and the light with your brush - but putting no emotion into it, since it is your paid work and you just do your job. Is it art or is it not?

So maybe the heat in such discussions comes from one person using defintion A of art and the other person using definition B of art. And one of the defintions of "art" is: stuff that an artist made. But that lacks the definition of what constitutes an artist. It is circular, if you say, someone that creates art. It no longer gives information about the merit of a work and reduces art to human made. Think about it. Even without skill, anything I make is either art because I put emotion into it, or art because it was not made accidentally. Oh, and even for this, there are "artists" literally doing random stuff and call it art.