“Now, I would never deny that these are not considerations when creating art – after all, the artist cannot violate the laws of physics, and presumably the artist wants to sell his or her work eventually. But these are not the primary concerns of the artist. They are, however, typically the primary concerns of the designer. And this is what distinguishes the artist from the designer, and also shows that the two are (at least in principle) distinct.”
i’m not sure if i’m going to word this in any coherent way. Perhaps I do need more elucidation on the arguments behind those elements (or a link to where they are discussed).

What I’m curious about is whether to be art (painting, sculpture, mosiac, what have you…) something must be, in a practical sense, useless?
Or said in another way: Useful only in the sense that it, being observed, “makes you think” (for lack of a better expression).
Is this where the difference between what we call design and what we call art lie?

I’m trying to think of a good example for what I’m trying to explain and think i will fall short of the task. It would probably be more appropriate to find an example of good historical “art” that is by the above differentiation, design (perhaps an example from architecture?…).

For example, a MacBook computer, most would say, an example of good design; and that makes sense to me given that it was designed with the intention of being sold. Surely, though this computer has the necessary criteria listed to be considered art; the crux which separates it from being art is it’s intended end use. This doesn’t mean it lacks in form, content, or context, does it?

I keep getting back to the idea of intent, because this seems to me the most muddy part of the water in this whole discussion. You can never know absolutely the mind of another (at least science hasn’t yet been able to document it) and yet for all the talk of form, content, and context, the key assumption is that it all must have been intended by the maker as the PRIMARY concern.

I think there are a number of different kinds of art that LEGO models might be. It’s not right to say that “all lego is sculpture” of course; there are plenty of easy counterexamples – mosaic being the most obvious one.

Some LEGO creations are sculpture, and therefore art. I would argue that some of Nathan Sawaya’s work falls into this category (he certainly thinks so, I assume, based on his use of brickartist.com for his Web site).

But a lot of LEGO creations are more like models of objects, either real world or imaginary. I think it’s more like the argument about photography as art – since all you’re doing is capturing an image of a real object, how can that be art? Well, the answer for photography is that the artist chooses the composition, to some extent the lighting, whether to use black-and-white or color, choices of lenses and exposures that affect things like depth-of-field and brightness/darkness, how to focus, etc., and by doing so inserts the element of creativity that makes it possible for it to be art. But are all photographs art? Probably not.

And so, I would say that LEGO models which represent real-world objects may be art, in that the artist chooses what parts and in what configurations to place those parts to achieve the desired effect. But they may also be just models.

As for the quantum sculpture thing, I’ve seen plenty of other examples of quantum sculpture outside of the LEGO world. People build sculptures out of junk, for example: are car parts necessarily an art medium? Probably not if they’re built into a car, but they certainly are if they’re built into a sculpture. So I would argue that LEGO parts are not inherently an art medium any more than car parts or photography are. I think it’s more that LEGO is one way of implementing art of various other media, such as sculpture, images (mosaics), etc.

But what if they’re the focal point of a technic based helmet built along the lines of the mask that Winston has to endure in “1984″? They don’t even have to be flick-fired to freak some builders out; they would simply have to be there…

Other helmets in this series would have a Jack Stone figurine, the old Technic figures, and anything else that would cause the wearer to recant their unorthodoxies…

I would also be interested in what people might have to say about the following:

Art is the overarching concept we are talking about. It can be defined by the following: form, content, context (and assumed intention of the artist?).

With that as a starting point I would say that everything that is considered art falls into one of two categories: 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional. ***

Are there additional criteria for deciding what is “good” and “bad” (or successful and unsuccessful if you prefer) within these categories? I don’t think so.

Going further you can have possibly infinite subcategories (aside: Roy, did I just step in a minefield mentioning the word infinite in your presence? ha) and with each subcategory (Renaissance, Surrealist, Painting, Pottery, LEGO, origami, painted eggs, etc, etc.) it would be necessary to consider how the artist made choices within the chosen limitations of the medium.

While it is useful to compare art within a specific subcategory for is effectiveness (or lack thereof) eventually it must be judged within the greater context of Art. (Ergo, classifying LEGO as separate from sculpture is only useful for making the successful/unsuccessful conversation easier by limiting the pool from which to judge.)

Can something be successful art in the larger context (Art with a capital A) and unsuccessful art in it’s subcategory? Or vice versa?
I would venture to guess the answer is that it must have the same artistic merit in both if you consider that successful and unsuccessful are “real properties that hold of particular objects”. Which, probably unsurprisingly, I do consider to be the case. (The only exception I can see is, like this situation with LEGO, where there isn’t a great historical context, one can say that something is successful as LEGO art and not as Art, only insofar as it hasn’t yet been done better….)

***now, having just reread what i’ve written it has occurred to me that i haven’t taken 4d work into account, which would encompass things like the difficult to define “performance art” (or any 3d object moving through time). Which makes me wonder what category film would fall under…. So my above thought is imperfect, but i’m going to leave it like it is for the moment because i need to get to sleep and I’m sure you’ll get what i’m arguing here anyway….

(…. “a quick thought”, my @ss….. didn’t realize this was all going to come out of me…. this is such a great discussion!)

You wrote:

“I hope you don’t feel assailed or overly defensive because this.”

Quite the contrary – I am immensely pleased that my little editorial has gotten this much attention.

Additionally, I am fully aware that many of the views I have expressed (in both the editorial and the follow-up) are rather controversial (it was, of course, intended this way!). And, as Tim, among others, have made abundantly clear, even with all of the essay-length follow-up comments that I have made, I have certainly not fully and adequately defended all of the claims I have made. But that’s okay, I expected that.

The point of this (in my opinion) was not to prove I am right (although, as you will notice, I am nevertheless trying as hard as I can to argue for my views). The point is to get people thinking about the issues, even if they don’t agree with me. And that has certainly been accomplished!

As a final note: I am leaving for a conference in Austria tomorrow, and I don’t know if I will have regular, or even any, internet access for the next week. So I am likely to disappear for a while (I may try to post again this evening – we will see.) Please, please continue the discussion without me!

Roy

Actually, I really don’t think that the technique I use in class is a case of ‘fear tactics’ (mainly because I am enough of a laid-back teacher that I don’t think anyone in the class believes for a moment that I am actually going to fail them, including the student in question. It is always clear that the point is being made for the sake of discussion). And as for the relevant notion of fairness being relative to expectations within the university, and not some absolute notion – this is one of the first things that I bring up in the discussion: of course I would get into trouble if I failed people merely on whim. But, and here’s the real point: even if the University decided to give professors complete freedom regarding how they graded, and students and faculty knew this, so that there was no institutional notion of ‘fairness’ in play here, most people’s intuition would be that I would still be doing something wrong by grading them in such an arbitrary manner.

At any rate, this is a bit off-topic, and was only meant for a comparison.

Roy

You said:
“Well, I would like to suggest that the terms “good” and “bad” are not merely human constructs, but are real properties that hold of particular objects (i.e. artworks) and particular actions. The idea that they are not is merely feel-good relativism gone to extremes. (There is a difference between saying that everyone has a right to their opinion (at least, in cases where the answer is unclear, and the options are reasonable) and saying that everyone is right (which is just incoherent, in most cases).”

I think the idea that good and bad are _not_ human constructs is merely feel-good spiritualism gone to extremes. In taking relativism to extremes myself, I would never claim that “everyone is right,” because I agree that that is incoherent. Instead, I would claim that “no one is right” (we just approximate the ideal).

As for proving your point to your students with the grade book, it seems to me that you are using fear tactics to get them to give up the argument, instead of having a real discussion. I don’t see their complaints of unfairness as attempts at absolute moral categorization. It’s all contained within the artificial human constructs of “higher education” and economics, in which you and they make certain mutually-beneficial agreements. They pay to be taught and to be judged fairly, and you get paid to teach and to judge fairly. They know that they have recourse if you do judge them unfairly: they can complain to the administration, and you can be punished for it. They don’t want to go to all that trouble, so they just give in. Even if it did go that far (and if you weren’t just squiggling in the margin), the argument would never reach the plane of abosolute right-and-wrong, because you would likely submit to the construct of fairness in order to keep your job.

Anyway, back to the regular discussion:
I really like most of what you’ve said about Lego as art and about art in general. You’ve articulated things beautifully that I’ve thought about but have never been able to put into words. The only part I have a problem with is the assertion that pilosophical questions (especially the question “what is art?”) are completely analogous to scientific questions, with facts that are out there waiting to be discovered. I think they are fairly analogous, but in a different way…

You said:
“Ah, the very fine distinction between science and philosophy. I suspect that this difference of opinion between us stems from your being a scientist – thus, your quite reasonable (from a scientific standpoint) attitude of “our current theory is empirically adequate, it explains all the data, why go looking for another theory?”, and my (typical philosophical) rejoinder “because there is an objective reality out there waiting to be discovered, and even if empirically adequate, our current theory might be mis-describing it!””"

I think the best response in both fields is:
“Our current theory is empirically adequate and therefore useful, but we can never reach perfection. What we can do is continually refine and improve our theory to be ever more useful.”

-Chris

I realize that this question has an immediate problem – namely, does the minifig have to be used for its inherent “minifigness” or can it merely be another part? – but it brings in questions about the nature of Lego’s sets, the place of System and genre, and other things that may or may not be here. The example of Libera’s concentration camp piece (in the art sense, not the block sense), in a way, indicates that the presence of minifigs does not preclude artistic merit – or does it?

First time poster, long time reader. I was immediately reminded by this discussion of that famous quote by Ad Reinhardt:

‘Art is Art. Everything else is everything else.’

I’ve read the preceeding with interest. Admittedly, I’ve not thought through this issue as thoroughly as I’d like, however, I’ll share a few (not necessarily connected) ideas.

Art transcends the medium. The fact that something is made with LEGO has little bearing on whether or not it is art.

I would submit that LEGO as an artistic medium has at least these characteristics:

-three-dimensional (width, length, depth); this characteristic influences how the creation defines space and manipulates light/shadow

-modularity (a universal system) and simplicity (I think this is what recommended LEGO as a medium to Olafur Eliasson, as it is superbly suited to collective creation)

-the context of LEGO as a children’s toy (this can be used to the artist’s advantage as in Zbigniew Libera’s work and the works of John Cake and Darren Neave, the Little Artists)

-reproducibility

-plastic material, texture (probably connotes the modern age, machine aesthetic)

-a limited colour palette

-restricted geometries of form

-structure (pragmatic elements of programme/technique)

There are probably more characteristics that could be added to the list.

LEGO certainly has the potential to be art. But is most LEGO, art? Probably not. My hunch is that most of the creations we see posted here and around the LEGO community are not art.

For me ‘LEGO art’ is art when it transcends the medium of LEGO. The answer to the question ‘Why has the artist chosen to use the medium of LEGO?’ should have relevance to the proposed criteria of Form, Content, Context.

Cheers,
Brody

I think this is a very interesting point. Although the majority (mosaics aside) of LEGO creations are 3 dimensional, most of them don’t resemble sculpture in any significant way. For instance, town buildings and castles and space bases might be more properly categorized as (mini-)architecture. And people building mecha or certain vehicles might be doing something more like engineering. (Functionality – for minifigs or no one at all – seems to be an important concern in many LEGO works. Art does not seem so preoccupied with function – is this important?) Does this mean that each LEGO (art)work should be judged by the standards of the preexisting category it most closely resembles? Should Kevoh’s picture be judged just as any other photograph, or specifically as a LEGO photo?

Imhotepidus said: “In addition, it is likely that this context will involve, in some sense, the idea that LEGO was originally a children’s toy, and thus will involve our ‘utilizing’ or ’subverting’ this origin in some way.”

I’m really interested in the place of the System themes in this context. Because I think that some of the most incredible LEGO artwork are those big posters and catalog spread photographs LEGO used to do for all it’s themes until the late 90s. (In particular I think of the Aquazone poster that came with 6175 Crystal Sub Explorer, which is currently hanging in my living room and which I intend to have framed) The same is true for a lot of the old boxart.

That paragraph turned into a sentimental tangent. Sorry. Let me try again. I’m really interested in the place of the System themes in this context. I feel like a lot of what might be unique about LEGO art comes from the fact that creations are so often tied into a larger story. Whether or not this story is explicitly stated to the viewer, a lot of it can be inferred. (I think that the Brick Miner is especially good at wordlessly evoking a story.)

2 more (possible) examples: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sirnadroj/2742228165/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10836265@N07/1921761697/

This was planned/conceived as an image, not a 3-dimensional object. Not sure if its “art” but perhaps its useful as an example of LEGO not as sculpture…