Is D&D Art?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Art does not need to endure. I don't think anybody thinks that drama is not an artform. Yet, I have no remnant of a show after the curtain closes.

Art does not need an audience outside the artists. Improvisational theater often involves a type of theater in which everybody attending the performance participates in the performance. It is art.

Art does not need to be exclusively about making art. Artists are artists even if they are primarily interested in making money. (We call such people "commercial artists" or "professionals".) So the fact that the primary goal of RPGs is gaming does not render it ineligible to be art.

I agree with all of that.

I don't agree with:

I think roleplaying game absolutely involve a conscious effort to create art.

because I simply haven't seen it. Ever.

But again, in my first post on this, I said I was open to the possibility that it could be so, with the right intent.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If any of the above prompt answers of "yes to the first, no to the second", what's the difference?

The conscious intent to create art.

 

[Croesus]

The conscious intent to create art.

At which point, "art" is defined by the creator, and can be virtually anything. If I intend taking a bath to be art, by your definition, it's art. The definition is so broad as to be meaningless.

 

[nedjer]

At which point, "art" is defined by the creator, and can be virtually anthing. If I intend taking a bath to be art, by your definition, it's art. The definition is so broad as to be meaningless.

Now I'm getting baffled. A bath should not be art, but add a PlayMobill Viking longship and crew, a sea serpent, some flying witches and a selection of water-bearing ordinance . . . and you're roleplaying in the bath. Setting aside how I'd know this - and bearing in mind the advantages of a large bath - it could be art?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

At which point, "art" is defined by the creator, and can be virtually anything. If I intend taking a bath to be art, by your definition, it's art. The definition is so broad as to be meaningless.

Exhibit #1:
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Duchamp's urinal tops art survey

Exhibit #2:
Tate Collection | Equivalent VIII by Carl Andre

I'm not saying your critique is without merit, just that it is an old point, and one with which the art world would generally not agree.

The appeal of art need not be universal or even popular for something to be considered art. That you or I consider something bad art or not art at all is immaterial to whether the creator of a piece- and any who agree with him- has created art or not.

Which, observant readers will note, means that even if I and 99.9999% of the world doesn't consider playing D&D art, that it isn't art for someone. (See also poll, above.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Now I'm getting baffled. A bath should not be art, but add a PlayMobill Viking longship and crew, a sea serpent, some flying witches and a selection of water-bearing ordinance . . . and you're roleplaying in the bath. Setting aside how I'd know this - and bearing in mind the advantages of a large bath - it could be art?

Add Scarlett Johansen.

 

[nedjer]

Add Scarlett Johansen.

Shaken not stirred


Sorry if you're under 40 - doesn't work with Pierce Brosnan or that other guy

 

[wrecan]

I don't agree with:
because I simply haven't seen it. Ever.

I bet you have. Go back to my post and read the first two paragraphs. What I describe there is a conscious decision to create art.

Artistic effort is conduct designed to elicit an emotional response in the audience observing the product. That product may be a performance, a statue, or a snow angel. It may also be a shared story created with the use of improvised descriptions, dice, and rules.

So to answer Croesus' question, if the product is designed to elicit an emotional reaction, it's art. A short story is art, whether or not it is presented as fiction. Acrobatic maneuvers can be art, depending on why the person is engaging in the acrobatics (and regardless of the locale). Making a snow angel is art. Falling down (unless you intend the result to elicit emotion, such as a Charlie Chaplin pratfall, or a painter dousing himself in paint and falling onto a canvas) is not art because it is nto intended to elicit emotion.

 

[howandwhy99]

Some of the things being defined as art seem to have stretched the definition so much that almost everything we do falls within the definition.

If I write a fictional story, most people seem to consider that art. If I write the exact same story, but tell you it is non-fiction, is the story art?

If I perform acrobatic maneuvers in a plane, is that art? If I do so in combat, is it art?

If I lay down in the snow and make snow angels, is that art? If I fall into the snow and leave the impression of a snow angel, is that art?

If any of the above prompt answers of "yes to the first, no to the second", what's the difference? Or asked a different way, for those who believe D&D is art, what are examples of human activities that clearly are not art?

A popular contemporary definition for art is "If you define art, you limit it to less than what it is."

In other words, it's been "smurfed". The term has no limiting definition. If I call it art, it is art. If you say it isn't, it isn't.

What I posted was more about the language and ideas within which historically art has been discussed. Art doesn't require the concepts of this language, but demanding something be art can often shrink our ideas and conversations to these particulars and I don't care for that. Ditto for narratives.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Or asked a different way, for those who believe D&D is art, what are examples of human activities that clearly are not art?

Very pertinently, I would say that playing D&D is art, while playing a typical strategy game is not (chess, perhaps, or your miniature wargame of choice). In this case, all action takes place within predefined rules, and there is an explicit nonartistic goal (winning). Conversely, D&D rules are more guidelines than actual rules, allowing for greater creativity, and there is no explicit goal presented within them (leaving you free to decide your own, which may or may not be particularly artistic).

Semantically, I would say it's more accurate to describe D&D itself as an artistic medium than generalizing that all D&D is art. After all, it's been said someone can easily write words in a book that aren't art and put paint on a canvas without making art, so someone I think can do something that's described as D&D without creating art (although I would describe that as counterintuitive, similar to making nonartistic markings on canvas). That would not have been as good of a poll question, however.

The poll question asks about your game and your goals, which is why it's spread the way it is.

At which point, "art" is defined by the creator, and can be virtually anything. If I intend taking a bath to be art, by your definition, it's art. The definition is so broad as to be meaningless.

That's pretty much one of the main criticisms of art as a profession or an academic pursuit. And yet art is indubitably a cornerstone of human civilization, one of the things that separates humans from nonhuman animals. It's hard to refute that criticism. At some point, you are pretty much in "I know it when I see it" territory, an idea raised elsewhere.