There has been a large push from the "foodies" into the mainstream culture. While the celebrity chefs became actual celebrities who became famous for their work. While the foods are clearly works that require dedication, skill, direction, and effort, can they be really considered as art pieces? After all, they only last few hours at maximum. In short, I believe so, foods have multiple layers of flavors that often has very delicate design in its flavors.

Are art works getting better over time?

Charlie Chaplin created master pieces during 1920's when the movies were just few decades old. These movies have lasting impact on the American culture ever since it came out and influenced numerous artists. On the other hand, we have Michael Bay who .... makes a lot of money. In a perspective, Michael Bay should have distinctive advantage over Chaplin because he has years of cinematographic development to learn from. Yet, his works' not as good as Chaplin's, especially considering how Chaplin had to innovate everything that is around. It is unfortunate to say this, but art is not something that always progresses.

Minimalism and information.

     This is a logo of American Architects Center designed by Pentagram. I always adored minimalistic art because they are often more informational than many other forms of art. This is because the minimalistic art focuses and highlights one specific feature of the information, and it is especially effective because we only intake few information at a time. Hence, by making information into bite-size materials, the artists can tell stories and messages more effectively.

Different tools

      The drawing above is made by David Jon Kassa, a contemporary hyper-realism artist. Hyper-realism is a genre of art dedicated to making a realistic art as possible, and the drawing above shows the capability of hyper-realism today. I thought it was interesting and notable that his drawing is much more realistic than the masters of art in the past like Leonardo da vinci. I am certain that Kassa is also respected and skillful artist, but da vinci is clearly more popular and considered skillful. Of course, this is because Kassa is using the techniques and methods that have been developed and practiced by the previous artists and hence in advantage. Nonetheless, I thought it was very interesting that younger and less well known artist can be more skillful in terms of realistic depiction. Even though we don't think like this often, the difference is similar to professional driver in 1920's racing against me in 2012 in our own cars; while I am probably not the more adept driver by any means, I am pretty certain that my car will be able to overwhelm my opponents'.

     When many people say "advanced technology can be an art", they are referring to the physical beauty of the object that is created by an advanced technology. This is essentially incorrect, as they are referring to an object's beauty to be an art, not the object's technology. I believe that advanced technology can be considered beautiful and artistic without creating an object. Many subjects of hard science are about figuring out the world and universe that we live in. Hence, if we assume that the universe is artistic, and science is about explaining the universe, science it self has a potential to be artistic.

Opera and technology

It is often easy to think that opera is very exclusive. This is because the shows often have limited seats and the price of admission is pretty high. However, this is not too accurate thanks to new broadcasting technologies that allows live stream of a show from stage to movie theaters. In fact, according to the link below, 3 million individuals watched a play via this service.

http://imgartists.com/news/watch_fleming_bychkov_and_tatum_in_otello_for_met_live_in_hd_saturday_27th/

Arts ARE weird....

Let's be frank, modern abstract arts are weird and obscure. In fact, I don't even understand how to start appreciating them. Yet, I hear numbers of stories where such abstract and odd arts are praised and appreciated globally. So, does this bother me, a person who does not understand the art? Not really, I understand that such art pieces can be appreciated by many people for some reasons, but I do have taste and ability to appreciate other forms of art in a different way. In conclusion, I don't think anyone should feel particularly bad about it.

Propaganda and appreciation of their style

Just like any other tools or methods, arts can be a dangerous thing. For instance, The propaganda art above is calling for a violent act against the USA. This particular art is produced by professional working for North Korean government; so it reflects very biased point of view. Anyhow, even though one may not agree with the message presented in this art, it is difficult to not to appreciate its style. With high contrast of colors, abstract imagery, and clear focus on easily detectable meaning, the styles of propaganda art are highly stylized and easily noticeable. In fact, many pop artists are using similar styles to make interesting works like the picture below.

Artistic humanism and inffluence of religion in our daily lives

     Starting in renaissance, humanism in art started to become popular. In this particular style of art, people's lives and emotions were depicted and glorified. Different from previous Gothic style, that focused on pious devotion and glory of religious figures. Few centuries later, religion is seldom a topic of art and human secularism is widely spread.

     Is today's secular societies part of natural change of people? Are we designed to seek better explanation of the universe such as science? Or is this result of ongoing humanism movement that may end one day?

     It is hard to conclude anything without extensive study, but I personally believe that it is a human nature to become secular over time. Of course, one may argue that I cannot see beyond the boundary of the societies' virtues and beliefs, and our entire society has been influenced by humanism; making my perspective skewed toward the secular movements.

Bloody money, blood art.

During 15th century, in the middle of golden age of renaissance, the Lorenzo Medici was the center of the world. As the head of the most powerful family of the western hemisphere, his wealth was unimaginable. Also, he was not stingy, he was patron of numerous artists. This inevitably lead to numerous great arts that changed everything, and made the art of the century flourish.

     However, it should be noted that the Medici family is not the most pious or innocent businessmen either. It is clear that Lorenzo Medici orders numbers of assassinations and threats to his competitors. In short, the Medici family may be considered as a mafia. So, does this make the arts supported from the Medici family less honorable? Well, I don't think it is a bad idea to avoid a business that treats others badly, but this has been centuries ago. Hence, it seems OK to admire the art as the art is perceived, without any other preconceived notion.

Comedy as art?

It is often difficult to treat comedy as a form of art. This is perhaps because comedy is very diverse in terms of its material within its genre. Ranging from slapstick to political satire, jokes can be cruel or sophisticated. So it might be easy to say that only sophisticated and dark humors and art-like. However, the comedy should be homogeneously considered as an art. This is because even the most dirty and cheap slapstick comedy involves format of the genre, effort, and purpose. So, an episode of jackass should be considered as a art. Of course, its quality and substance is still debatable.

War, what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing? Well, of course war is a horrible event overall. However, can a same thing be said regarding the art? In one perspective, during a process of battles and chaos destroys art, artifacts, and other precious pieces. However, it also inspired many arts just like Guernica by Picasso above. In fact, war greatly changes culture and lifestyle of the society and artists; since culture and art are so integrated, a change in culture will change art as well. So any war WOULD all arts made during and after the war. So, in terms of art, how is war overall? I believe that it is still a horrible casualty. Newly inspired arts are interesting and important, but loss of old masters' works are definitely costly, especially considering that the artists would have made other arts even if the war did not happen.

This is apparently considered as an art. The quality of the painting aside, the not-so-subtle message is clearly political, a skewed one at the best. Also, I believe it is fair to criticize the piece of art to be poorly made and malicious in intentions. In fact, this is absolutely disgusting insult considering the incorrect portrait of the subject matter. However, it is still fair to say that it is art, a piece of work that needed some creativity and effort designed to provoke a emotion.

Gnangnam style is now the most liked video on the Youtube ever. Also, it is #1 in iTunes and currently #11 in the billboard chart. Some are even suggesting that it will rise to the #1 spot in the billboard chart. This will make the Gangnam style the first non-English song to be the #1 in the Billboard chart, ever. How did this happen? Was it just the weird music video? was it the quality of the music? or is it just the people being silly? To be frank, it is clear that Gnangnam style is a fine pop song, but the unbelievable popularity is still a mystery.

Can art be a measurement of a culture?

1) Arts can be ranked in terms of their quality. 2) Arts and cultures are deeply integrated. Are those two statements true? If so, can the cultures be ranked in terms of their overall quality via judging their art? Frankly, the answers to the questions will vary from a person to person. However, I believe that it does not work that way. Arts should be admired and measured within the cultures' own context.

Is video game an art?

Just like movies, there are interesting visuals, music, story, ans settings. However, video games can have unmatched interactivity compared to both movies and plays. So, can video games be considered as an art? I believe so, but further, can it be considered as the most capable art medium? It will take decades for this idea to be widely accepted, but I believe that the medium is very capable of being the most capable art form due to its interactivity.

Giovanni Arnolfini and his bride (1434), realism

       This art from Jan Van Eyck was my favorite art piece in the first chapter of the book. It is difficult to easily identify what was so interesting about it. However, this piece showed something that other art pieces did not show; a realistic representation of people. Other art works were highly symbolized works representing highly pious and sacred imagery. While it may be historically important, the minimized style and lack of details about people’s everyday lives were not interesting. So when this art work showed a piece of the actual world that people lived in.