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"Okay, kids, play on my lawn"
Honestly, I don't see why there's such a big deal over whether or not video games are, or can be, Art™. Personally, I disagree with him in that I think they most definitely can be (and some already are, e.g. Shadow of the Colossus which Ebert himself mentions in that article), just as works in any other medium can be. But Ebert's opinion is his own, and he's welcome to it. It's not like he's saying something retarded like games should be banned forever, for whatever reason. I'm glad, though, to see that he's softening on his position, even if only in the most minute and curmudgeonly of ways.
Honestly, I don't see why there's such a big deal over whether or not video games are, or can be, Art™. Personally, I disagree with him in that I think they most definitely can be (and some already are, e.g. Shadow of the Colossus which Ebert himself mentions in that article), just as works in any other medium can be. But Ebert's opinion is his own, and he's welcome to it. It's not like he's saying something retarded like games should be banned forever, for whatever reason. I'm glad, though, to see that he's softening on his position, even if only in the most minute and curmudgeonly of ways.
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Date: 2010-07-03 03:26 am (UTC)From:I have a first year art history book whose first chapter is showing what is art and what isn't.
For example, the Sistine Chapel...not art
But Fountain, by Duchamp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_%28Duchamp%29)...that's art.
See, the idea the book presented was that the Sistine Chapel's intent was not to be gawked at and glorified. It's intent was to tell key moments of the Bible to illiterate peasants. It IS beautiful, but it technically isn't art.
Dechamp's Fountain IS art because it's intent was to sit in a gallery, be gawked at and pondered about by art snobs and such. Stupid? Yes...
However, this distinction can easily be applied to movies, comics, books, and even games. It all comes back down to the intent of the game designers. Designers like what-his-face that made Braid, to me, he set out to create an artistic game. Epic with Gears of War, not so much. They just wanted to create a kickass game that looks awesome.
If people were to understand the concept of INTENT there wouldn't be an issue with "is it art" because that is something the "artist" needs to determine for himself first before unleashing his/her creation into the public.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 07:21 am (UTC)From:If one looks at the Sistine Chapel and says "That moves me in an artistic way. In my eyes, this is art." who is to say that they're wrong? If someone says, "Fountain isn't art, it's just a urinal" or "Campbell's Soup Cans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans) isn't art, it's just drawings of cans of soup." who's to say they are wrong as well. You may not agree with them (and for the record, I'm just playing devil's advocate with the last two points, as I don't agree with them myself), but that doesn't mean that they are objectively wrong. To them, the Sistine Chapel is art, and Fountain isn't.
To me, what is and isn't art is purely subjective, on a person-to-person basis. Something that I may consider to be "art", Roger Ebert may consider to be "not art". Sure, you can say something is or isn't art, given a certain definition of "art", but it depends on which of several (http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/art) definitions (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art) you use, and someone else may use a broader (or narrower) definition than you do. That was Ebert's dilemma: he couldn't find a good enough definition of art allowing him to definitively exclude video games on principle, and so had to concede that they could be art (to other people).
To use a somewhat absurd example, I may look at, let's say, a well-crafted hammer and find it to be a true work of art because I find it to be aesthetically pleasing (maybe the handle is a particularly bright shade of red which contrasts in an interesting manner with the blue head or some such thing), and I may mount it on my wall in a frame. The creator of that hammer likely intended for it to be used solely to pound in nails (and probably wouldn't even comprehend someone else using it for a purpose such as mine, even if he did want it to look nice given that he painted it red and blue). Is wrong of me to find artistic value in that hammer? Someone else (maybe even the creator of the hammer himself) may come up and say "What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you have that hammer mounted in a frame?" Are they wrong for not finding artistic value in that hammer? (Full disclosure: as broad as my definition of art may be, I don't have a hammer mounted on my wall.)
Heck, for that matter, some people consider a sunrise or sunset to be art. Just because it is a natural phenomenon not created by man, does this preclude it from being art? Maybe, depending on your definition of art. I'd personally probably say that it's not. If they take out a camera and snap a photo of it, does that suddenly make it art? If they pull out a canvas and paint a picture of it, does that make it artier than a photo?
TL;DR version: I don't think it's possible for one person to definitively and objectively say that something is or is not art, in a way that can be applied to any who is not that particular person. Just because some art snob tells me that a bunch of random scribbles or paint splotches on a piece of canvas stuck on a wall in a museum should be considered art doesn't mean that I have to agree with them. Just because some yokel off the street tells me that that same piece is NOT art doesn't mean that I have to agree with them. Just because the guy that took a can of paint and lobbed it pell-mell at a canvas tells me that the result is art doesn't mean I have to agree (or disagree) with him.
As an aside, I notice that Ebert has changed all the screenshots in his article from whatever they were before (I assume they were from Clive Barker's Undying, since they looked like something from a horror game, though I don't know that for certain since I haven't played that game myself) to now all be screenshots from Shadow of the Colossus. I know that he didn't have any screenshots from SotC in there when I read through it before, and now all of them are from SotC. Interesting.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 07:24 am (UTC)From:Even so... screw you, LJ, and your stupid, arbitrary limit.