Let me have another go at making the bed (into art). By taking the bed out of its usual context and putting into an art gallery, the artist asks you to look at it in a very different way.

You start looking at form rather than function and noticing the way the sheets folds, or the colours contrast, or whatever. The artist elevates the mundane by changing your relationship with it.

Then you consider the wider concept of the unmade bed as metaphor for the artist’s life, maybe for your own life, possibly even for modern life in general. You start to think about unmadeness in a different way entirely.

I’m using the bed as a fairly well-known example, but let’s go even more mainstream and traditional. We’ve all at some point sat on the bus or train opposite a woman with a faint, wry, slightly bitter smile.

We didn’t really pay her much attention at all. Possibly even got off at our stop without having even noticed her. And yet, the Mona Lisa is one of the world’s most treasured artworks. What made that happen?

Partly the artistry of the paintwork, granted, but partly the fact that, taken out of context, we are encouraged to really concentrate on her. The art isn’t in the picture, it’s in what goes on in the brain when you look at it.

I suppose what I’m saying is that essentially the magic pixie dust of art is sprinkled onto things (including beds) to make us look at them properly. Opening Blake’s doors of perception, Zen mindfulness, that kind of thing.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=27072

… I quite like it for provoking much of the above, ie. what constitutes art? I don’t define art as “must be framable” or anything like that. I simply enjoy being challenged by what an artist presents as art. It’s all about statements, presentation, and reactions (of myself and others) to me. If it’s crap, I’ll say as much

On another (related) matter, did you ask/seek permission about taking photos, or did you sneak it? Just wondered as I got directed to the press office at Glasgow council, who said I could use low-res photos on personal websites, but not for community sites such as, erm, flickr. I think it’s overly restrictive. Just wondered if you’d found out anything?

Oh, and check out the FAlbum wordpress plugin (See pictures tab at my website for an example). Marvellous flickr integration into WordPress.

Something that you’re glad exists, regardless of wether you like it. And obviously, which isn’t already something else instead.

An unmade bed is just an unmade bed. An unmade bed in an art gallery isn’t really a bed in the practical sense and it’s pretentious nonsense, but I’m glad that there’s someone wanting to put unmade beds into art galleries.

To me, yes, that is art.

I won’t try to make the same argument as Adrian, that art depends on skill – although from a personal perspective I prefer ‘art’ in the more traditional formats: painting, sculpture, literature, etc. Maybe that just shows that I’m sticking to the preconceptions of what art ‘is’.

Do I see the cow-in-formaldehyde, or the sub-made-of-bricks as art? No, probably not. But at the same time, yes, I can see that they can be perceived as Art. As Gordon said, I loved Marsyas when it was at Tate Modern, and yet that apparently is filed under ‘installation’ rather than ‘sculpture’.

So really, I dunno. I think that one’s perception of Art is entirely that – one’s perception. One man’s Van Gogh is another man’s Damien Hirst. And vice versa.

I think that if you decide something is Art, then it is.