We were having a debate about this in our Writing class earlier. Half of the class was split on this. Some say it is an art, some say it isn't. Opinions?

I say no.

I say it depends on the sport, and what you deem a sport.

Well, in some ways it can be, but only for those who treat it as an art. My belief is all art has no purpose. Art is only here for those who wish to find something better than life. Some people, through sports, could achieve the reason art exists. However, most athletes don't play sports to find things better than life itself, but they do it for the benefits and fame, etc. Just as some music "artists" do. Which is why some music could hardly be called art. When the athlete is lacking the passion that all art, the art i have defined, has then he or she is just simply doing purposeful activities that work toward earthly achievements, which is not art.

So, only under certain circumstances where the athlete has no reason for playing the sport is the sport truly an art, to that one athlete.

^but plenty of people do art for the monetary benefits and fame, but it's still called art. also, lots of art doesn't exist to find something "better than life". i'd argue that most art doesn't exist for a reason like that. a bunch of it exists for practical reasons. (graphic design, architecture, advertising, furniture design...every kind of design...ect ect)

I agree, somtimes it can be like to me gymnastics and Sycronize swimming can have a bit of that artful taste but soccer and football are not.

no. It may include artistic elements, but it is not art.

Yes, it can be, depending on the application of the performance or body to the conscious use of aesthetic quality and creative delineation. A martial art (which can be a sport, such as boxing), for instance, is an art of warfare (hence "martial"). The physical administration of the concept is quantified as art.

I believe that sport can be an art depending on how the action is executed.


Same!

and then you could argue that math is art






where'd I'd try to say HAIL NAW NINJA... but it's true...
supposedly there's art in anything and everything

Yeah, pretty much that. Stuff like Diving, and figure skating and all that are art. Men piling on top of each other to get a ball from one side of a field to another, is not.

But the "art" in "martial art" denotes the older meaning of the word "art". Prior to around the twentieth century, an "art" was simply a skill. Look at the phrase "liberal arts", which came about during the Renaissance; subjects like math were considered to be liberal arts.

During the twentieth century, "art" began to refer to the specific skill once known as "fine arts" (painting, sculpting, etc.), which is what "art" usually means now. A martial art isn't really an art in the more modern sense (or, at least, you can't argue it's an art because it has the name "art" in it).

"Art" has denoted the same precepts of aesthetic creativity for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci unequivocally referred to his paintings as "art".



If the example for "liberal arts" only came about that recently, then that's even less convincing because martial arts have been devised as documented and systemized forms of combat since the 600 B.C. era by the Greeks.



"Art", in and of itself, has almost always been used for such applications.

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection." -Michelangelo



Sure you can. Having the delineating characterization in the word itself makes it an analytical precept. A "martial art" is an "art of war". Now, whether or not one is using the same contextual "art" is another matter entirely, but it obviously must be a form of art if it is to be what the term contains.

So what about that context? For one, a contemporary application of "art" most commonly meaning paintings and sculptures obviously is not the exact same conditions under a martial art. That'd be like saying golf isn't a sport because there aren't any defensive linemen. We could break it down further and say that a sculpture is not the same type of art as a painting. Even beyond that, a watercolor painting is not the same type of art as an oil painting. High-end paintings and sculptures = art, but art =/= paintings and sculptures.

What you're trying to say is that a "martial art" is along the same lines as a "liberal art". This also isn't the case. The Japanese word for art, "jutsu", has been a locational bound morpheme for centuries. We can go back even beyond jujutsu schools in the Edo period for that. Moreover, interpretations of jutsu's translation to "art" (because remember, this can be equivocated) are often likened to that of...a painter.

"At the beginning he gets familiar with the variety of colours and learns how they can be combined. Then he takes the brush and tries to draw his first lines and outlines, and then he gives colour to his work. This takes years of study and development. After some years the painter has developed its own form and stile, and now he can start to create his own paintings. Because of his development he livens his own paintings up. Due to his personality the process of painting has gained a new development, a new quality. Now the painter has become a part of his art.

"In a martial art it is quite the same. We get familiar with basic elements via Kihon Happo, fill this learned kihon up with henka in order to liven up the kihon-forms and at the same time we add colour with our developed taijutsu movements. By the combination of these learning-processes we develop our taijutsu and also our personality on a physical level.

"By the interaction of heart, mind (NIN - spirit) and taijutsu (JUTSU - body) we develop our individual personality and become due to this a part of our art."

If the qualifier for what is "art" must be deemed by the chronological application, which is what your evidence stands upon in citing historical and popular usages, then a "martial art" is clearly not a homophone to actual "art".

Another example: the Agni Purana of the eighth or ninth century describes an early form of varma adi, a southern Indian wrestling style, as an "art".

To me all that stuff isn't truly art. It's just called art because it's the name we've given it based on the art that artists created for no reason at all. Not everyone does today, and only few pieces of what we call art actually are.


Also, if art exists for a reason then I really don't see it as my definition of art. Really the opinion of whether or not something is art can only be proven by a definition, and there are many definitions and therefore many opinions about what art actually is. Also, a good example of how art with a purpose just can't match art without a purpose is Mozart's ballets, versus Mozart's symphonies. Mozart wrote his ballets for money, where as he just wrote his symphonies because he just felt like writing something for no reason at all. The majority of music critics would think his symphonies better than his ballets and I believe the reason the majority believes that is because the ballets have a purpose where as the symphonies do not. Again, there's really no way that could be a definite reason why art is better in its purest form, but rather and example to understand where I'm coming from.

Sometimes architecture has no purpose either. Details serve no purpose in the structure of the building, and I highly doubt the artist who designed the detailed parts of buildings put it there to please other people unless he or she was getting paid. If it were someone who was just designing a building and adding details for no purpose it could very well be art. Same with furniture. Since when was advertising art? It may be an important part of pop culture, but does not even touch art.

I don't think true artists are practical. If they were art would never evolve and we would just create art to please society. Artists certainly don't aim to please society, they aim to just create something, whether or not it pleases or benefits others. That's where abstract art comes from. Whether that be a sport, musical, or anything, it's still art. Almost everything with no reason behind it is art.

like what? how are only a few pieces of what we call art actually art? maybe by your impracticable definition.





well, i guess you can say that's your opinion, but to me that makes absolutely no sense. there has been tons and tons of great works of art over the centuries that were commissioned and that doesn't make them any less artistic. i mean that's just completely impractical to say. that means we're going to have to rule out tons of art as less worthy of the title just because they got paid for it. i mean...i don't know, i just don't see how you think that makes sense. so is an artist not really a real artist to you unless they take no money or assigned tasks?






architects don't just add details because they get paid, they add them because they are necessarily to further express their structure. sometimes what buildings lack is what makes them artistic. there you go into the realm of nonsense again with the idea that an architect has to do everything for no purpose to be an artist. any architect can randomly add fancy meaningless details. that doesn't make them artistic. have you even studied architecture? becuase i have, and i think you're completely wrong.

since when was advertising art? maybe you should go study it some more then. not that it would matter since you're view of art pretty much means almost nothing can be art. great artists are nothing compared to the shitty ones because you know, the shitty ones don't get paid and aren't doing it for other purposes. i can wake up tomorrow and go throw some paint on the wall without a purpos and that will make me more of an artist than da vinci was.





plenty true artists are practical. that is another nonsense thing to say that an artist can't be practical. art can be practical while still evolving. art itself can cause practical things to evolve. artist aim to please society when they want to, and no they don't always just create something for the sake of creating it. if someone asks them to create something and they do, that doesn't mean it's not art.


you are completely wrong in my opinion, and since i'm an artist and an art major, i think i know a bit about it.

Certainly. And I don't believe I implied that what da Vinci did wasn't art. But the truth remains that the term "art" was a lot broader back in da Vinci's day than now.


I don't believe I said that the term "liberal arts" was the first use of the term "art" to denote a skill. In fact, my point was, in fact, that "art" had equated to "skill" for a very long time, up until about the twentieth century. So I'm not surprised to see the Greeks using it in that way; in fact, that observation only serves to support my argument.


Sure. If you're using the term "art" in the historical definition, to mean "skill", then yes, a martial art is obviously a skill. But art, as used in "martial art", is still rather different from the modern meaning of the word "art", which is tied more closely with fine arts.

Which, I believe, is what the poster is asking. I don't think they're asking whether a sport is a skill, but whether it is a "fine" art.


Thanks. I believe that's exactly what I said in my post -- that the use of the term "art" now is different than the use of the term in regards to martial arts. Which supports my assertion that a martial art is not an art as used by the original poster.


The Japanese have always been interested in aesthetic qualities, and Japanese writers often liken things like warfare, etc., to art. I'm also not going to discount the fact that (a) the term was used differently back then as opposed to now, and (b) the Japanese have a different culture in regards to art. Unlike English speakers, the Japanese don't delineate "art" and "skill" -- they are essentially the same thing. A more modern example is computer programming, which the Japanese consider to be an art (that's why a Japanese computer scientist created the language Ruby, in fact, because he thought programming had certain aesthetic qualities that weren't brought out in other programming languages). But in English, we do have separate concepts of art and skills, even though we usually translate the Japanese to "art". So I wouldn't be surprised to see the Japanese not only draw an analogy between a sport and an art, but call it an art as well. Still, this is different from the modern English use of the term art.

You did, in regards to the principal denotation of the term. You said, "Prior to around the twentieth century, an 'art' was simply a skill." This is not the case, since we have quotes on record using "art" in the context that you claimed did not exist (or, at least, was not common in the lexicon) in that time.



Yes, this is what I've been saying. "Art" has always had what you thought of as the "modern sense". The problem you're facing is that this contradicts you positing that "'art' was simply a skill". How can it "simply" be that one interpretation exclusively if the term is also very broad?



I certainly would hope not, because I didn't say you did.



Your predecessor from a few minutes ago would agree that "art" had not simply incited that single inference up until then, but that it has always been a definition for your "modern sense".



There are numerous citations demonstrating that the historical usage of "martial art" was treated very analogously to that of a more-commonly perceived "artist", not the equivocation of an artisan. And again, the "modern definition" is a fallacy.



See above, but on another note, a "fine art" can also mean a skill, and is not limited to a Renaissance-esque sense.



Except it's not. Being a different type of art, merely in the sense of not being physically expressed through an identical medium, does not speak on it chronologically.



Precisely. There is an extensive history of "art" being applied to such instances.



As an affluent speaker of Japanese, I can comfortably say that they do. The Japanese language has a plethora of different characters for "skill". There's even one with jutsu in it, but with a preceding qualifier to specify.



Yes, a liberal art, as would any culture.

And as for Matsumoto, whom I'm already familiar with, his incentives were what "balanced functional programming with imperative programming." It may just so happen that this results in a poetic and artistic structure that one would not be adverse to aspire to, but these aren't anything other than a means to the actual end. Even if they were, however, and one wished to refer to such a process as "art", that does not speak for the Japanese interpretation of computer programming as a field. Otherwise, all sports would have to be art by definition just because I said that certain applications of them certainly can be.

Moreover, the passage that I brought to point clearly wasn't likening a martial art to that of a broader artisan sense, but to what you thought of as the contemporary usage of "art". The author is not in the minority with that interpretation.

"Art", in a general sense, did refer to a skill prior to the twentieth century. Painting is certainly a skill, so yes, the use of the term "art" to describe da Vinci's work is still true. Moreoever, "art" was also used in the same sense as it is today (to denote a fine art); it had broad, general usage at one time.


No, there is no contradiction. I never said that, hundreds or thousands of years ago, "art" could not refer to "fine art"; I just said that it referred to other things, too. Again, it had a broad definition.


How so?


Maybe. I think you're being overly pedantic here. The fact is, we do use the term "art" to describe something slightly different than the manner in which it was used at one time. That is to say, "art" now is narrower, but different from it's previous usage.

The whole point of this argument being that the term "art", as used in the original post in this thread, is different from the term "art" as used in martial art; so without further supporting evidence, you can't simply say "'martial art' has the word 'art' in it, so it is an art", and still be answering the question in the original spirit of the question. Moreover, because the use of the term "art" has changed slightly over time (in that it has narrowed, not that it has changed completely), citing historical references to back up the claim that a martial art is not an art isn't very convincing in this thread.


Maybe. But the original point of the thread was to relate sport to arts as a creative medium (the modern, current use of the word "art"); arguing from a historical perspective may be correct, but I would say it's not in the spirit of the thread.


This may be so. But culturally, the Japanese don't make a distinction, at least not in the same way that a Westerner would.


Okay. Well, I'm glad you can read Wikipedia, but if you go so far as to read any interviews with Matz, or anything about his original creation of the language, you'll see that his motivation stems at least partly from the fact that he was trying to make programming an art form -- because culturally, he doesn't see a distinction between art and skill. Matz has often spoken that his real goal in creating Ruby was to make it fun and aesthetically-pleasing, in order to feel and express joy while programming (1) (2).

And I really think this idea is key, because as we can see, "art" can have connotations, based on both time and culture. So it is possible to argue that, say, martials arts are artistic in some sense, and be completely correct; I just don't think it's correct, given the definition the original poster likely had in mind. Of course, without a stricter definition, it's really hard to argue one way or the other.

(Perhaps what may also be causing confusion with this point is whether I feel that computer programming is an art. I don't, but that's a topic for another thread, I think.)


True, but this refers back to my argument that the term "art" has certain connotations based on culture as well as time period. I'm not surprised that the Japanese may describe various martial arts as "arts", and I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's also a culturally different use of the term than we have in the West.

i never really answered the first post here, so...

in general i don't think of sports as being art.


i think there are things in sports that can be artistic, but that it really depends on the person and the sport. since basketball is my favorite sport, i have seen moments and plays that i think are "beautiful" and "artfully" done. when the player has complete awareness of his teammates, opponents, the ball and his own body all at once. some of those instances i'd almost call art. but, i wouldn't expect someone else to think of it that way or for it to be called art in general. i think if you're a basketball fan though you could probably agree with me.

i think you probably have to be deeply involved in a sport to see the artistic aspects of it. there's a lot of sports that i don't see any artistic qualities too, but i'm sure those who watch/play them could find some.


overall though, no.

I understand what you're saying brooklyneast, but maybe my definition was a bit inclusive. Works of art in some way or form have purposes, but I think the parts of the work of art that give it the character of a masterpiece have no purpose. They're not there for anything. Intricate details serve no purpose at all in objects, even portraits. Of course details are needed in portraits but not the ones artists put on there that make it unique (or worthy enough to be called art). To me it's not nonsensical but it's really hard to explain how I feel about art. My theory comes from reading Oscar Wildes and he's wonderful at explaining things, if read up on some of his art theories I think it may be a little bit easier to understand.

Now you're trying to have it both ways, and that doesn't quite cut it. What this amounts to: "Okay, back then, art did denote paintings and sculptures and everything else that we traditionally label as such, except the kicker is that they weren't using it to extrapolate on what the medium conveys, but rather the labor that was behind it. So my point on art exclusively being in regards to skill in the artisan sense before the twentieth century still stands."

When Leonardo da Vinci spoke about his art being "divine perfection", he was quite clearly reaching for a context beyond an ordinary "skill". Anyone who doesn't apprehend the aesthetic appeal merited in his descriptions is living in the land of Oz. "Art is never finished, only abandoned" could not have meant anything other than what you perceived to be the "modern sense" of the word. The "art" in that quote is obviously in reference to a tangible object that is worked upon, not a synonym for "skill".



Precisely. You've finally come around. "Art" did not "simply denote a skill", as you previously asserted. It denoted many other things, including what you once said was the "modern sense" of it. If it was also used customarily before the twentieth century, then it is not on grounds to be differentiated between eras.



You said, "Prior to around the twentieth century, an 'art' was simply a skill." This is contradictory with what you're now putting forth, in palatability to my point. To say that "art" before the twentieth century simply denotes a specific context is to state it without compromise. If, indeed, art did indicate the "fine art" parameters after all, then your original case against mine - that a martial art is not in the same realm as a contemporary practice of art because it was established under different conditions that could not have equated to the fine arts of today (since, according to you, this usage did not exist at that time) - is lost entirely.



It existed and was used, now by your own admission, well before the coming of the twentieth century.



You attributing it to only partial conceivability says to me that the clarification was most definitely needed. "Fine art" can indubitably mean a skill instead of what you aligned it with. The reason why pointing that out isn't merely being picky for the sake of argument is that there's little merit in distinguishing between terms if one of them encompasses both of the definitions that you're trying to put in contrast with one another.



Not in the manner that you ascribed it to be, no. "Art" has had the same basic usages since well, well before the "twentieth century".



Supporting evidence was given:

"In a martial art it is quite the same. We get familiar with basic elements via Kihon Happo, fill this learned kihon up with henka in order to liven up the kihon-forms and at the same time we add colour with our developed taijutsu movements. By the combination of these learning-processes we develop our taijutsu and also our personality on a physical level.

"If the qualifier for what is 'art' must be deemed by the chronological application, which is what your evidence stands upon in citing historical and popular usages, then a 'martial art' is clearly not a homophone to actual 'art'."

"Another example: the Agni Purana of the eighth or ninth century describes an early form of varma adi, a southern Indian wrestling style, as an 'art'."



You don't know the "original spirit of the question." If anything, the circumstances of even asking it invite personal adaptation and interpretation of what constitutes "art", along with the contexts that can coincide with it.



That would be your position. My citations were in regards to a martial art being an art. Assuming that was merely human error, no, the historical adaptation of the term is not only one of the most convincing reasons to sustain the word in that associated context, but the continued usage of that same meaning seals the deal. The latter is evident by the painter analogy, just one example of many. The conditions of what constitutes a martial art have not changed.

You were the first to even bring up the historical roots. It would seem that your initial contention was "not in the spirit of the thread."

I'll defend your past self and say that the historical perspective is necessary to shed light on why it is a creative medium. What was it intended to designate, and did the usage evolve beyond its original circumstances?



Yes, they do. Culture is not mutually exclusive from vocabulary. A Japanese person is no more predisposed to label an engineer as an artist anymore than someone from another culture.



I found this a little funny.

For one, that description was quoted from the official website, in the purpose of accurately depicting the characteristics that mere memory could not definitively verify (the audacity one must have of double-checking information!), so an attempted outing on whatever violation that using Wikipedia entails falls flat. The aspiration of "balanced functional programming with imperative programming" is a pretty common bit of wording floating about.

More fundamentally, what would have been unusual if I had looked at Wikipedia? It was in quotation marks, so obviously, I'm aware of whatever source I got it from. What's the point of hyperlinking to that same source?



Matsumoto is an individual, not a culture. And no, there is nothing to suggest that he believes "art" and "skill" to be interchangeable. The fact that he pined for "beautiful code", in contrast to the programs that already existed, proves that he doesn't believe what you're claiming. He would not classify just any coding (which, by definition, would necessitate skill in order to even be the instructional system that is a "code") as "art".



From your source:

"I want to concentrate the things I do, not the magical rules of the language, like starting with public void something something something to say, 'print hello world.' I just want to say, 'print this!' I don't want all the surrounding magic keywords. I just want to concentrate on the task. That's the basic idea. So I have tried to make Ruby code concise and succinct."

Functionality was the primary incentive. Derived "beauty" (which was certainly a key inclination, to be sure) was a byproduct of adopting that policy.



That passage was an example of the contextual usage being the same as the "art" that you perceived the topic-creator intended.