what is great art?

(created by banksy)

-all of us are great artists and greatness is too narrowly defined.  celebrities make it easier for people to follow rather than keeping up w/ our neighbors.  ralph waldo emerson said that when readers read a work by a great author they get the return of their own "alienated majesty."

-projection sometimes works to our disadvantage (we look for the best and worst of us in other people b/c we are not only afraid of failure, we are afraid of success).

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM ("stand by me" video) of people around the country covering the song in different voices and on different instruments.  the concept is that everyone can be a great artist, and although some people are more "talented" than others, idol worship of musicians or otherwise can negatively affect those who "woship" those people b/c more often than not they end up thinking that they can never be that great

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myq8upzJDJc ("pearls before breakfast" experiment) where world famous violinist joshua bell played a priceless violin in the subway station in washington d.c. during rush hour during the morning commute.  dressed in street clothes and a baseball cap, he was largely ignored by passerbys and got little to no money thrown in his violin case.  only a select few stopped to really listen and the social experiment asks the question, "what is great art?" and brings up the question that does art needs to be in the right  "frame" or venue to be truly enjoyed?  in other words, if you took a kandinsky out of a frame in a museum and put it up in a restaurant and asked an art historian what he thought of it, he would have a completely different reaction to it than if viewed in the "proper" setting (i.e. a museum).  story by gene weingarten.