that's art?!

Spot the difference: Damien Hirst painted only FIVE of the 300 'spot paintings' in his latest collection

this brings up the interesting question of "why the hell is that art?"

when i was a kid i asked my dad the same thing when looking at some jackson pollack paintings. he said "because he was the first person to say that it was art." which i thought (and still think) made a lot of sense. of course, it's not enough to just be the first person to do something and claim it, it has to be revolutionary at the time. and if it isn't revolutionary, it at least has to be made with a lot of skill.

or... maybe it isn't really art and someone just got away with making art critics look like fools. :)

anyway, here a few famous artists who's work constantly gets questioned as legitimate art by the general public. mondrian, marcel duchamp (esp his "fountain" which is really just a urinal), barnett newman, and that guy who paints white canvases white. cannot remember / find his name. if you know it, please comment with it!

(and i know, i didn't even talk about what makes art art, cause i have no good answer for that. but if i had to say... it's a representation of an universal idea.)