> > I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're refuting my argument with this point, I'm missing something. My stance is that art is art if it has *something* to convey, whether or not it ever has an audience to do so. For that matter, I don't even think the goodness or badness of art necessarily depends entirely on other people's opinions, but certainly its impact on other people, particularly its intended audience if it has one, is telling.
>
> I seem to have misinterpreted your original post. I had misread the focus to be on the idea that others needed to be involved, rather than what the art was attempting to convey. I agree that art should convey something, but it should not matter whether it conveys to an audience or only to the creator.

You know, there's something about this I don't like. It's a niggling little something that always gets at me when I'm listening to this particular argument, and I think I know what it is. This line of thinking seems to mandate allegory as the only valid art: the artist must infuse it with meaning, or it is not art. I don't agree with that. And yet, the argument breaks down if that side is removed: if we define art as being something that one can get meaning out of, that's no less empty a definition than "art is whatever you think is art."

I did quite a bit of clandestine study of this when I was in college, as those who remember my poetry page may recall. I wrote all kinds of stuff, painted all kinds of stuff, and drew all kinds of stuff, and the purpose was to observe people's reactions to it, to see what *they* thought was art, and try to figure out if meaning must necessarily be put in by the artist in order for meaning to be present.

I agree that meaning *is* important for it to be art, but I have no idea how to judge objectively whether or not something has meaning - and that, it seems, is required in order to have an objective definition of art without falling into the allegory trap.

> As a side note, I've found that through my time as a composer (although nowhere near professional), I have a different perspective on these musical whackjobs than most people. This is music today, the way I see it:
>
> 1) Consonance is bunk.
> 2) Dissonance is bunk.
> 3) Where to next?

You left out "lyrical sophistication is bunk."