Dear jfsher91:

In your original post you wrote: ” Currently, the audience for art is mostly affluent, well-educated people…”

My input is that affluent and educated people, the artists and audience have fears, anxieties, worries, hurts, sadness, anger, rage, mental challenges, despair… and so, they can express that in art and see that in art.

What’s in the eyes of the Mona Lisa? What is that lonely feel in that picture? Etc.

This is the difference art makes for me: an expression of emotions and experiences on the part of the creator and a validation of emotions and experiences on the part of the observer (and what the creator intends to express is of course, not the same as what the observer sees as what we see is what we project).

The Arctic ice chuck in your example, I don’t see it as art but as a a piece of ice representing the disappearing ice in the Arctic. Might as well be a picture of ice, or the word “ice”- i don’t see the creativity there because there is only one projection when you observe it: ice. When there are several possible projections, or even thousands or as many projections as there are viewers, then that is art for me.

anita