The highest art form: what is it? - Page 2

According to Nudie jeans, denim.

Sun Tzu never said this, but, he wrote Art of War. So, I guess, according to him, it would be war.

"Music is not illusion, but revelation rather. Its triumphant power lies in the fact that it reveals to us beauties we find nowhere else, and that the apprehension of them is not transitory, but a perpetual reconcilement of life."

-- Tchaikovsky

"Though everything else may appear shallow and repulsive, even the smallest task in music is so absorbing, and carries us so far away from town, country, earth, and all worldly things, that it is truly a blessed gift of God."
-- Felix Mendelssohn

"When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit."

-- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Music...can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable."

-- Leonard Bernstein

The Greeks breached the idea of art and they could almost grasp it through their Medea and Oedipal transgressions; however, being the abstraction that art is, it proved utterly impossible to quite get an hold of. The convulsive, tragic, frightening, and utterly sensual feelings of the transcendental can only be experienced by saints, and sinners. As they say, the name of God is unutterable.

Definitely up there..

I can't say there's a "highest."

Three higher: Love, music and philosophy.

In order:

Music
Literature
Distillation of cognacs and single-malts
The fine art of wave riding

Honorable mention:

Orthodontics
Internet porn

Orthodontics has a delightfully subversive sado-masochistic strain to the whole practice:

No one mentioned performance or video art.

I will say that I find it interesting that no one has mentioned tailoring or bespoke shoe making.

Philosophical dialogues.
Photography.
Music.

Tailoring, cobbling, millinery etc are, in my opinion, crafts practised by artisans, rather than arts practised by artists.

That is so Glamorama.


Zappa's Uncle Meat is perverse in a somewhat more visceral sense.

I know that there is no definite demarcation between 'art' and 'not art', but how would you class musicians and composers? I would suggest that a classical musician is not an artist, but a classical composer is.

This can also be transposed onto acting: Is De Niro really an artist when reciting the words of Schrader under the direction of Scorcese?