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CMV: Most attempts to dismiss a medium or work of art as "unartistic" only serve to validate it further, since it's challenging the detractor's expectations of what art is, ergo it is art

Lengthy title, but this is something I think about a lot. My personal philosophy (which I suppose is equally CMV-worthy and probably would've made for a snappier title) is **"Not everything is art, but anything can be made into art"**. To elaborate, if everything is automatically art, the word doesn't mean anything at all, but any materials we can find can be moulded by humans to form a work of artistic expression (this includes "readymades", pieces of natural debris that are presented in galleries with minimal or no alterations). I think that principle is broad enough to be sound, while still retaining some level of definition to the word, though I suppose from a religious 'intelligent design' standpoint, everything was created by God, therefore everything truly is already art as it was designed by an intelligent being. I dunno, I don't want to get into that hot mess. Anyway, onto the main topic, it's one of the main debates you'll always find in any artsy sphere. "X cannot be art because of some arbitrary quota it doesn't entirely conform to", "Y cannot be art because it's just a rock in a museum, no one did anything to change it, it means nothing", or more often than not, "Z cannot be art because... it's bad and I don't like it". But if a proposed piece of art is challenging your expectations, if it's giving you a visceral reaction of rejection, surely it is successfully performing one of the principle "jobs" of what a work of art should do, yes? It's challenging, it's making you think, you're reacting in some way to it, and a person (or multiple persons) have put some creative effort into presenting it. Now of course, everyone's personal definition of art is different, it's about as subjective as art itself. Hell, even I'm nowhere near na?ve enough to say something insipid like "all art is equal", of course I have my own subjective preferences, and I definitely do not put everything on the same level of artistic value. As much as I enjoy, say, *He-Man and the Masters of the Universe*, I'm not going to put it in the same universe of quality as *Dimensions of Dialogue* by Jan Svankmejer, and that's in the specific medium of western animation alone. Let's get some of the biggest elephants in the room out of the way. Video games. While I do naturally see video games as an artistic medium, I firmly believe that it's still in its infancy. There's some latent potential left to be fulfilled, for sure. However, there are a great many games that have genuinely innovated and pushed the mould, both in gameplay and narrative. The dedication to the former is a sticking point for many, as the inherent interactivity of video games is antithetical to the "shared experience" of art, to some. Every decision made in a video game makes the experience different to somebody else's, as the argument goes. I fundamentally disagree with this. For one, everything in a video game is curated. No matter the arbitrary path you take, it's all a part of the game. For two, comparing a video game's narrative to a film's is moot. It's like comparing a film to a static portrait and concluding that the painting is inherently worse because there's no movement (funnily enough, I have heard this bilic argument in real life from an otherwise very intelligent friend of mine). No shit there's interactivity in video games, that's exactly the point. From a tonal standpoint, I do understand the argument, there are relatively few games that have shown a comparable level of meaning, nuance or depth to the venerated works of prose, poetry, cinema, etc throughout history, though I've been to several respected museums that have had video game-themed or interactive exhibits, showing a recent willingness to open up to the idea. On some level, almost any art is interactive for people crazy enough to do so -- a public statue can be defaced or displaced to another location, a painting can be stolen, a film reel can be cut up and re-edited, a video game can be hacked and modded into unrecognizability. It is a very complex matter that I feel boils down to a totally different, alien set of priorities that applies solely to video games which other mediums simply cannot equivalate, combined with the *extremely* corrupt, unabashedly greedy and corporatist nature of the mainstream "TrIpLE AYyyYyY" video game industry that often goes out of its way to stifle change and creativity. It's comparable to the Hollywood studio system in that respect. Just about every medium has faced similar arrogant dismissals from elitists and connoisseurs. Cinema, television, and even literature have all been snarled at in the past. It's only to be expected. Okay, enough of that. Onto the next elephant, "modern art", an even more complex subject I'm probably not qualified to cover. "Modern art" is an incredibly broad, almost meaningless term (modern to whom, I wonder? The modern Ancient Romans?) but everyone kinda knows it as a sarcastic diminutive to refer to perceived low-effort, meaningless, ultra-mega-postmodern rubbish that anyone could make. There's an excellent [Imgur](https://imgur.com/a/GIsdl) album from r/Exhibit_Art that can act as a crash course. Even now, many people tend to be skeptical of so-called modern art, including professional appraisers, but I feel that the main point of many of the most controversial pieces, from Piero Manzoni's *Artist's Shit* (ninety tin cans of literal human shit) to Duchamp's *Fountain* to Banksy's self-shredding *Girl with Balloon*, is to mock the fundamental pretentiousness of the art collector community who will pay millions for actual trash so long as it's placed in a museum or signed by a respected artist. It's still art, but it can also be seen as a big reflexive joke. The story of the *A pair of glasses on the floor* in that Imgur album illustrates this well. There are more genuinely meaningful works that have similar aesthetics, like Warhol's *Campbell Soup Cans*, John Cage's *4'33* and Yves Klein's *The Void*, but in any case, all these pieces elucidate that even the most ignominious objects and abstract concepts can be tools for expression. In all honesty, I don't particularly want my view to be changed as I feel very strongly on this topic, but I hope to see some other perspectives at least.