How broad is your definition of art?

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But how do you define 'actual' art...if it follows some predetermined standard someone else created?

Sorry you are totally wrong. Art is what someone makes of it not your opinion. What you might think is not art is most likely art.

So, basically... my opinion is invalid because it contradicts your opinion? If someone thinks something is art, but I don't, their opinion automatically overrules mine? Sorry, but that's not how opinions work.

I'm with you, but for different reasons. Art can be an iconic image. It's can communicate without speaking. It can connect people separated by time/place/culture. It can make you think. But above all, for me to appreciate it, it should be beautiful.

This is pretty much how I feel:

After the video ended, I saw how the next group of videos offered by Prager University clearly has a conservative political bias. Artists have always been at odds with stodgy conservatives who want to return to "the good old days."

If someone considers something art no matter if you think it isn't, it's art. No exception.

Oh. This thread may belong in PPR, if that's what you meant. Also, some works will absolutely qualify as art on the basis of provoking that reaction on your part.

I saw the Gulbenkian Museum yesterday, both the modern wing and part of the collection of older paintings. I respond more to the abstract pieces, although I also felt moved by the brilliant reproductions. Paintings like Break Up Of Ice by Monet bridge that divide. Rodin sculptures also capture a raw and undefined creative impulse within their faithful lines. Anyway, go out of your way to visit Lisbon, and see both sides. Ol' Calouste had excellent taste, and the resources to indulge it.

Look. I made art. I call it "Too Big For Small Minds." It's very deep and personal and full of meaning. It depicts why small minded people are bad, and I am better than them. If you don't get it, that's your fault, not mine. Since art is now defined by how personal and abstract it is, rather than skill or quality, I am hereby declaring myself to be an even greater artist then Leonardo DaVinci. Also, I demand $5 million for this art. You don't get to argue with me because this is my opinion, and my opinion is that this is amazing art.

Technically that is art.

You'll get no argument here. To comment on your work, I will put on my art critic hat.

Polemical art appeals to me, but I find the politics expressed here too shallow and unsophisticated to interest me.

It's not political, it's religious, you art hating philistine.

Comedy is not pretty, but it's one of the original arts. See my comments about the unfair derogation of Philistia elsewhere.

Everyone's an artist. that has been stated by Joseph Beuys in the 70ies. 40 years ago. Duchamp's urinal is now 100 years old. I'm tempted to say "get over it", But I'd rather make use of the art theory lectures I received while studying design:
Art with a capital A has been struggling with this question for quite a while. In antiquity, art was there to serve religious purposes, then "realism" was incented around 300 B.C.E. - so artists had something to do, either explore realism or make religious things. But then photography and modernism came about, and realism and religious stuff were no longer in fashion. So people started experimenting and exploring the question: what is "painting"- which ended in a guy painting a black square on a white background in 1915. so what next? well- Duchamp, and his generalized question of "what is art"- so things started to get self-referential here.
asking the question: what's better? a good idea, poorly executed, or a bad idea, well drawn, painted, sculpted- which gave rise to concept art, i.e. the idea, without the paintin (seriously, the renaissance guys had painting all figured out, so... why bother anyway)
then, after the war, andy warhol came about and printed (note the emphasis on industrial reproduction technique) pictures of everyday stuff, newsclippings and so on.
at the same time, fluxus artists started acting out in public. - so, the everyday stuff was out in a museum, while the art stuff was put on the street.
performance artists started to engage with the audience, and from that point onward, there was art that became art by the way people were interacting with it.
in the 80ies and 90ies, jeff koons put kitsch and porn in museums.
and today, people are still asking about what art is.
the answer is not so much in the art, as in whether you engage something as a piece of art.

your "piece of art" doesn't qualify, because you are sarcastically presenting it in a forum post, so I'm not engaging with it as a piece of art. I haveno reason to.
But I could.
now, what would an the audience get from engaging something like your post as Art?
the Art-experience. i.e., it depends on what you can interpret from it, what you know about the history of painting- for example, I could say that you are referencing other pixely-internet-reference stuff, and it engages me in thinking about internet-themed art and so on. And maybe, I'd enjoy thinking that. that would be my artistic experience, that enjoyment. If your Art were smart, I'd enjoy it more, and would get an Art-experience from it.

and yes, it is possible to get that Art-experience froma trash-can. which is why people have taken photos of trash-cans and hung them in a gallery. or take only the trash.
it's just, for most people, even the artsy types, it's a trash can, and they only start to look and think about it, when it's in a gallery, when it is presented as art, and the audience is looking for an Art-experience.
if you don't want to have an art experience, you will see trash.

I once saw a perfect white marble sculpture of a full plastic trash bag, now that you mention it. I liked it, but where would I display it?