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.