Art

1. What is art?

Art is a word for fashionable and practically useless self expression. If the result of skill and application of creative effort results in something useful they call it by another name primarily.

2. Do you consider yourself an artist of a sort?

No.

3. What is an "artist"?

A person who engages in artful activity regularly and identifies this activity with their concept of self.

4. Does art serve a purpose, or is it just a useful means of escapism?

Escapism. If art is meant to educate its stops being art and becomes commentary or the like.

5. Has art become just a new, inventive form of product placement due to rampant capitalism?

No, artists have always been hungry for sponsorship due to its inherent uselessness. All capitalism has done is allow artists to get sponsored their whole life for a single work. For example, mickey mouse. Intellectual property law has destroyed innovation, one can blame art for that, if one were so inclined.

6. Can things like advertisements or commercials, et al, be considered "artistic"?

No, graphic design is not an art, it is a marketable skill.

7. What do you make of Banksy?

A human lucky enough to have the technical skill needed to drag his mental images out of his head and put them into the world.

8. What do you make of graffiti art?
No different then other art forms.

8.1 Is it improving our banal living conditions, and thus enhancing our lives, or taking away from the "inherent beauty of cities"?

Neither.

9. The Supreme Court defines pornography as a form of media: "(a) whether the 'average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

That aside, can art be pornographic, and vice versa?

No, art is useless, pornography serves to motive slaves to breed and work. Carrot on a stick. Thats why paying someone to blow you is illegal but paying someone to blow you and then selling the video is not.

10. Given the way the record industry has worked with pop culture in the last decade, can pop music be considered art? Should we continue to call some musicians "artists"?

Music is a mathematical skill, a language. It is no more art then Japanese What is said may sometimes be art, depending on its uselessness and expressiveness

11. Are tribute bands actually a form of art?

See above.

12. Were Dada and surrealism good for the artistic community as a whole?

Unqualified to answer.

13. Who do you consider to be the most under-appreciated artist of the last century?

All artists are under appreciated, only artists who are also salesmen or have sponsors are appreciated. That being said philosophers are even more under appreciated.

14. Is Chuck Palahniuk an artist or a cultural critic?

Philosopher Chuck has a clear very of the world, and is expressing an opinion about its nature.

15. Is Agitprop a form of art?

Unqualified to answer.

16. Can one lead an "artistic life", or is that simply a pipe-dream many aspire to have without considering the implications?

Sure, so long as one finds a sponsor I consider an artistic life an unethical indulgence. There is much work to be done. Too many people hurting for anyone to live like a fop.

17. What do you consider to be the most underrated form of art in today's culture?

See above. Art is useless and subjective by definition, my personal favorite is the dark comic, but thats a blending of ink and philosophy.

18. The scientist seeks "truth" through presumably unbiased observations in the real world, while the philosopher seeks truth through his/her understanding of the mechanics of both the world around him/her and his/her own mind. Does the artist seek a "truth" or has s/he dispensed with the notion of Truth altogether?

An artist is not interested in truth by definition An artist who is interested in truth becomes a philosopher with an artistic hobby or vice versa depending on respective degree.

19. Artistically, have we evolved as a culture, or devolved?

Waxes and wanes. We are on a down turn thats to intellectual property law and sexual saturation coupled with only harmful means of sexual satisfaction. The day the first sex bot walks to the store to get a gallon of milk for its owner and no one notices its a robot, will mark the beginning of the rebound.

20. Is art "fallen from grace" or in the process of seeking its own liberation?

Technology will save us from ourselves, because people like me will see to it with our very lives if needed.

Nice work Klassy.

Incidentally the replies are art. No one cares for care itself.