Are Games Art?

[Grislygus]

The indie game arena is where the argument actually gets interesting, I think the most recent contender was some game where you could choose one of several "little red riding hoods" and you simply explored the forest on the way to grandmother's house and decided whether or not to leave the path (I may be remembering this incorrectly). In the end, though, no one in the outside world really gives a fuck one way or the other in regards to a few incredibly obscure exceptions, so it's a fun debate but amounts to nothing.

Originally Posted by Dimnos

Couldnt some mainstream games full under this description? Obviously not with museums in mind but instead retailers or game conventions or maybe even a magazine or website?

No, the key point is that games are utilitarian. As are illustrations, but illustrations can be considered fine art if, and only if, they stand alone as masterworks outside of their original intention and context. And even THAT can be disagreed on. Gustav Dore was and still is, after his death in 1883,the western world's single greatest and most prolific illustrator (though he used plates and woodcuts, he still counts as an illustrator). He also was skilled with watercolors.

His watercolors were completely ignored (or ridiculed) in his native France, but their gallery run in Britain was a titanic success. To the rest of the world, the watercolors were proof positive that Gustav Dore was a true master. The French thought that they were just more illustrations done in watercolor (and inferior to the genuine grand-mastery of his normal plates) and in no way comparable to "real" fine art like Michelangelo or Raphael (I can't remember who his fine art contemporaries were, we need an art history major to jump in here). And that's in an arena where the difference between applied art and fine art actually IS blurred.

[dextire]

Originally Posted by Grislygus

In the end, though, no one in the outside world really gives a fuck one way or the other in regards to a few incredibly obscure exceptions, so it's a fun debate but amounts to nothing.

So, you're saying a game can only be considered fine art if it's mainstream?

I'm learning a lot from this thread. Grislygus explained in one paragraph what an entire "applied art vs. fine art" book couldn't teach me.

[Grislygus]

Originally Posted by dextire

So, you're saying a game can only be considered fine art if it's mainstream?

Art "being" mainstream and being accepted as art by mainstream society are two different things. In the latter context, yes. Remember Lord Byron? Alcoholic womanizing badass outsider that sent monumental shockwaves through the literary world, whose Byronic heroes inspired the entire concept of the anti-hero, in other words arguably the sole originator of the modern cutting-edge in writing?

Byron was a great writer and he was a the bad boy of literature in his time. He was also nothing more than one of the first 'modern' pop culture sensations. Same was Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, and Lord Alfred motherfucking Tennyson.

As I said earlier, if videogames are ever accepted as art by art dealers, art critics, the majority of ground-level artists and (most critically) society at large, it will be universally considered "art" in the Western world, which is the same as BEING art in the Western world.

Key term: Western World. "Art" in Africa isn't considered real art if it isn't manufactured in a specific way for specific purpose, usually cultural or religious. I remember watching a documentary on African art, and the narrator recounted praising a couple of local women for the intricate bead work that they entwined in baskets they were selling, telling them that it was a great example of local art, each basket being unique and beautiful. They laughed at him. In a friendly way, but they thought that he was being funny. In their view, if it WAS great art, it would be carefully and respectfully duplicated. The fact that each basket was unique OBVIOUSLY indicated unimportance.

[Pentegarn]

Originally Posted by Grislygus

Art "being" mainstream and being accepted as art by mainstream society are two different things. In the latter context, yes. Remember Lord Byron? Alcoholic womanizing badass outsider that sent monumental shockwaves through the literary world, whose Byronic heroes inspired the entire concept of the anti-hero, in other words arguably the sole originator of the modern cutting-edge in writing?

Byron was a great writer and he was a the bad boy of literature in his time. He was also nothing more than one of the first 'modern' pop culture sensations. Same was Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, and Lord Alfred motherfucking Tennyson.

There's something interesting in this. It seems in most cases hindsight tells us something was art. Shakespeare is another example. His works, when broken down to their base elements, are gutter tripe pandering to the lowest common denominator, filled with violence, sex jokes, and the like. Critics in his time found him vulgar at best. Yet these days he is considered an important literary influence.

It would seem time is a better judge of these things than any man.