Seems like a fuzzy line still. What if the artist doesn't really "explain" that it is art so much as he tells someone it is art? If, as a classic example, you submit a urinal on it's side to an exhibit, I don't think the act of submission would necessarily be an act of explanation.
Of course you can go the other direction, and wonder who this explanation has to be directed to in order to disqualify something as art. If I am a particularly dense person and ask what the point of the Sistine Chapel is, that certainly does not disqualify the chapel's ceiling from being art.
Is there perhaps a threshold percentage of the population that has to understand something as art for it to be art?
Yes. An unfuzzy line would imply an objective definition, and I think it's clear a such doesn't exist.
But what I meant by "explain" was more the other way around - if the intended observer can't independently identify it as art, it's not. Mostly, really, I just tend to get a little upset over the pompousness of declaring something fairly trivial you've done "art", because you can construct some platitudes about it being a commentary on some social issue.
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Seems like a fuzzy line still. What if the artist doesn't really "explain" that it is art so much as he tells someone it is art? If, as a classic example, you submit a urinal on it's side to an exhibit, I don't think the act of submission would necessarily be an act of explanation.
Of course you can go the other direction, and wonder who this explanation has to be directed to in order to disqualify something as art. If I am a particularly dense person and ask what the point of the Sistine Chapel is, that certainly does not disqualify the chapel's ceiling from being art.
Is there perhaps a threshold percentage of the population that has to understand something as art for it to be art?
Yes. An unfuzzy line would imply an objective definition, and I think it's clear a such doesn't exist.
But what I meant by "explain" was more the other way around - if the intended observer can't independently identify it as art, it's not. Mostly, really, I just tend to get a little upset over the pompousness of declaring something fairly trivial you've done "art", because you can construct some platitudes about it being a commentary on some social issue.
"if the intended observer can't independently identify it as art, it's not"
Then what makes you think that you're always the intended observer for a particular piece?