On Topic Sources

What is art?

Adajian, Thomas. “The Definition of Art.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 14 Aug. 2018

This article is basically the holy grail of finding a definition for art: there is every historical general definition of art including times where the definition was put into question.

As I initially thought that the definition of art was always more subjective than objective, I learned that many philosophers in the past have tried to nail one definition to art. As I already knew that art itself was always either appreciated or protested against due to its uniqueness or its disturbance to mainstream society, I never really was aware of the definition of art from one philosopher being attacked by other philosophers or important people. I now have an even wider perspective on the controversy of art.

Senie, Harriet F., and Sally Webster. Critical Issues in Public Art Content, Context, and Controversy. Smithsonian Inst. Press, 2005.

The overall topic of this book is to present the topic and the aspects of public art and its effects on its receiving society.
To be honest, I didn’t even know what public art exactly was before reading a bit of this book. By only reading the introduction, I got to learn that public art can affect a wide number of people, making it a very political art form. Funding towards this form of art also started controversy. This newly acquired art form is going to allow me to broaden my perspective on art in general, and has allowed me to discover another controversial art form, which could complement other sources throughout my source list.

Photography as an art form:

1- Ruqeyeh, Ibn. “Why Photography Isn’t Art.” Medium, Muddle Mag!, 5 Dec. 2019,

This article is an argument about why photography isn’t art.
Although I was hesitant to read this at first, I was quickly drawn to some pretty calculated arguments. For example, I learned and found interesting that Roger Scruton’s argument is that art is always representation, when there is technically no representation in photography. This broadened my perspective on what other people consider photography to be. But, the author in my opinion is wrong by subtly saying that photography doesn’t convey and communicate ideas. This opinion could help me expand my first topic of how photography can indeed be seen as art and how this could be an example of conservatism being shown.

2- Jenika. “Psychology for Photographers and Other Creative Professionals.” Psychology for Photographers and Other Creative Professionals, 26 Apr. 2012

This article is about the importance of categorizing “art”
This article introduced to me a completely new aspect of looking at searching the definition of art. The author made this clever analogy using bees to describe the importance of categorization. Although I found this article to be a bit all over the place, I do value the fact that she explained at the end that people need to know how to categorize art, even if it is a subjective way of categorizing. This changed my view on my topic of defining art, as it can be a subjective definition for everyone. This could help me with my feature story especially at the end as it can conclude saying that art is whatever people think is art, as long as it’s clear in their mind.

Example of “breaking the rules” work of art:
“Death Grips – Guillotine.” 2011

Photography as an art form:

Getting a failing grade on an art assignment in high school
This definitely made me start questioning what was considered as “art”. As this event angered me quite a bit, I also learned that this was a basic factor of society that I was living in; the lack of creativity it can have. You can say that this event started my curiosity for how people can have the right to judge subjectively something that is yours and something you spent a lot of time working on.