I could wad up a bunch of paper, throw it in a corner, put a small label in front of the ball and call it "art." If I wanted to get especially cute, I could call the piece itself "Art." Humanize it, you know. I thought of the loose nature of language while reading this Althouse post about a "performance artist" who buried himself under gravel.
That's deep, man.
As irritating as it is to see how anything - anything! - can be called art there is another common blur that has far greater significance. I know people who are agnostics, who politely smile at those of us who hold religious beliefs, and yet, in many respects, they have their own religion. It is called Politics. To them, everything is political - the coffee you buy, the clothes you wear, the language you use, the number of children you have, the car you drive - and they approach those topics as seriously as any Puritan ever regarded the Sabbath. They are as zealous as any zealot in following and enforcing the requirements of their faith. They covet power. [All for our own good, of course.]
The non-artist artists may use government grants to fund their bohemian lifestyle but, aside from that, they leave us alone.
They're looking better every day.
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