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No problem Terry... I like this conversation because it forces me to clarify my own thoughts. Or even realize that I can be wrong and re-structure the way I think.
I started thinking on Duchamps urinol. It's powerfull question, the ad nauseum "What is art?". If it tells you something it is art is intent, I think. Even 1 billion individuals recognize something as art what should I abide if it doesn't resonates with me? What makes their judgment better than mine? If this was physics I could do a reality check. Does the results predicted by theory conform to reality? But art plays on pure human reactions, ideas, emotions. What reality check can be done, then?
So I ask, is this thing someone calls "art" doing something to me? Does it moves me? Does it makes me think? Smile? What is it's purpose? I am the "reality check". If it doesn't touch me some way you can take it and call it art at will, for me is nothing, no harm done. It can say something to me tomorrow (I remind myself of a Sonic Youth concert I disliked one day. Two months later I was thinking "I should have been listening to that now, f***, it would be a great concert". Why? Because my perception of their music changed in those two months, I've re-listened their album with other years, in another contexts).
Those "artsy fartsy" you mention, saying "everything is art" got it wrong. Anything can be art, sure. But it takes someone to make it art. It takes someone to give it meaning. And without meaning, there's no art. But more powerful than that, art is not sacred and you don't need to bow to it and put it in a shrine. At least not just because someone put a label on it and said "behold, this is Art". Do you want me to pay for what you're doing, I ask? Then convince me to pay for it. That's the ultimate thing.
These are some thoughts I have on art. They are not written in stone, they are my perception on this subject right now.
You mentioned about pleasantness. I remember a piece (sorry, don't recall the artist name), it's a bunch of boots, empty, suspended from the ceiling, it looked they were marching. It brought to mind directly the image of military dictatorships. I saw photos of it, I could listen to the marching sounds on my mind just by looking at them. Was it pleasant? For me it surely wasn't. But it was powerful. It raised questions. It hammered it's message. It was an artistic work that resonated with me.
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