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I like to think that 'art' (and this is where things get a bit hairy and dangerous) is something which involves a bit more than looking at your bed after you've been depressed in it, and deciding to exhibit it. That's where the effort thing comes in, as far as I'm concerned.
As the Ungodly one says, for the average person, a bed in that kind of physical state is not the sort of thing you could get exhibited. You need the reputation or contacts or whatever. And that's not art... more like marketing, or networking, or resting on your laurels, or something like that - cunning, perhaps, but that's not necessarily artistic.
Maybe this is part of the problem with so much modern art, as far as the average person is concerned; we want to feel that artists have to sweat for their craft, that it takes at least a modicum of effort - or, at least, that it LOOKS like it did. Emin's work strikes me - and I doubt I'm alone in this - as self-absorbed and lazy, and I think the nearest any of her stuff comes to art is in the performance-art element that accompanies it; she seems to believe her own hype - or, at least, does very well at pretending she does. And that - plus the way that she seems to have convinced so many people she may have a point - could be the real art.
"But is it art?" is the eternal question; and as the answer will inevitably be a subjective one, unless there's some way that people can feel it IS (if they look at it and it makes them feel or think something in particular, or if they can at least see what the creator intended, whether or not they succeeded), it's going to get the kind of reception that Emin, or Hirst, or many other artists receive from the general public : a frown, a scratch of the head, and a dismissal as NOT being art.
I don't think people want to look at something like an unmade bed, and be told the artist was depressed in it, and that's pretty much it; they're going to see an unmade bed. And for most people, that's an everyday sight. And everyday sights - whilst it would be wonderful to pretend they can be always beyond the mundane - are all too often made unmagical and unartistic by their commonplace nature.
I think Flyboy's right that only our responses are quantifiable, but I suspect most people will use certain shorthands in terms of their reaction (like the ones I mentioned above) to gauge whether, to their mind, something is art. It's bound to be a personal thing, but if it doesn't work for that person, they're unlikely to say it's art (or successful as a piece of art). Which isn't to say it isn't art, but the artist has to accept that that person doesn't see it as such.
And, as a parting swipe, I'm not entirely convinced that art which needs explaining does itself (or any movement it might be part of) any favours. Indeed, that need of explanation might be what puts people off, and leads them to damn it as 'not being art', if you see what I mean...
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