What even is art?

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What the hell is art? And why am I so bad at it? Why can't I draw even a straight line on the AP Physics C exam without redoing it 7 different times? I doubt I'll ever find the answer but maybe that's why all those modern "artists" make the stupidest-looking "art." Maybe they're just so incapable of creating actual works of art that they resort to throwing a bucket of paint onto a canvas or knocking over a sand castle. 

Years after nearly getting kicked out of the DIA for being a stupid kid, I finally decided to visit an art museum - The Art Institute of Chicago. I was reminded of why I never went to such museums in the first place. I saw a pretentious snob (Jay Shyn) looking at a seemingly blank canvas while nodding as if he understood some deeper meaning of the world. 

White AIDS #3

It was only when I searched up this seemingly blank canvas that I found the real symbolism that the artist was going for. Although greatly obscured (I couldn't see it in person), this painting reads AIDS and is a reconfiguration of Robert Indiana's Love.

Meant to symbolize how the fight against AIDS has been obscured, the gesso on the canvas obscures the true message. On a somber note, two of the three artists who collaborated on this project eventually ended up dying of AIDS. 

On the other hand, we can see the artwork with no real meaning in Brilliant Yellow #9.
This I just absolutely don't get. I could create the exact same piece of "art" with $30 worth of paint and a bit of masking tape. I don't see how there is any further meaning behind any of this. All I see is a black border (which I didn't even notice in person), and a thin yellow outline. There is no meaning, no symbolism, no tugging on my heartstrings about this. When experiencing other art forms such as listening to music, I always feel something from the music. Whether it's a poorly run 5th-grade band (I feel hurt) or the hardest bebop jazz (I feel inspired to practice), there's always some sort of feeling associated with the music. With this, there's absolutely nothing. All I'm left with are complaints about how stupid this basically empty canvas looks next to all the other amazing art that was there. I've always felt like there are two ways for art to be good: for it to either try to show something to the viewer or for it to just genuinely be good art. This fits into neither of those qualities. The craziest part of this is that similar paintings from the same artist sold for several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet paintings from the same group as the one that made White AIDS #3 sell for only a few thousand dollars a piece. 

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