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Art isn't just paintings and sculptures in museums and galleries

by kbrecordzz July 17, 2026 art, general thoughts

(This post won't be about hockey or Wayne Gretzky, but his goals are a good example of something that feels like art, but isn't often included in what people mean when they use the word.)

The term "art" is very historically contaminated with various ideas that don't resemble what I think when I think about art. One idea is the idea of museums, fine art and art as a thing you're not meant to understand. People somehow listen to music and love the instrumentals of it, which is really something very abstract (what does a musical soundwave represent, what does it try to imitate? What's realistic about it?), but don't understand abstract art in paintings, because that's "fine art". I do believe there exists good art and bad art, but I don't think the current idea of "fine art", or probably any previous idea of it, does a good job at this distinction and ranking. Capitalism, peer pressure and elitism skew the idea so that bad art can easily sneak itself into the fine salons and good art can just as well be found in some outskirt of the internet or by some rando in the streets as in a museum or an official theater. Weirdly enough, this high status of the word art in some ways gives it a lower status, because the majority of people don't identify themselves as upper-class gentlemen who go to art fairs and contemplate pieces of art, which means they'll close themselves off from discovering art they could have liked.

Another way the term "art" and "artist" is often used is to talk exclusively about the drawing arts (as an aside, in Swedish we also use the English loan-word "artist" for pop artist / singer / musician while our own word "konstnär" is mostly used for painters, which shows even more how language shapes our view of things). If I want to find likeminded artists online, I'll mostly end up finding painters, which always confuses me since that's just one subset of artists, among many. Even if we know art is more than just the drawing arts when we think about it for a bit, how we use the word "art" does affect how we see art, and also more importantly how we create it. We view paintings as very much art, music as pretty much art but also much more folkly entertainment, and video games more as technology, tools, products and kid's toys. This means painting always has that automatic art "flair" to it, while creating video games forces you to constantly remind yourself and others that it's art. Art is a concept of high status, so even without the fine art / not fine art distinction, simply calling some things "art" and others "entertainment" or "music" or "games" or "movies" or "TV" will automatically give different works different status. This isn't just a status others give you as a creator in some field, you probably do it to yourself in some manner too. I often get the same feeling as I get from art from other things outside the art fields as well, so in a way I'd need a completely new word to describe what I mean when I talk about this feeling. But a new word will just confuse people and you can't just create words by pure opinion and force. They arise naturally. So I still think art is the best word for what I mean.

What we connect to the word "art" will affect both how society treats art, how you experience art and use it in your life for a positive effect, and maybe most importantly how people create art, and with which ambition creators in different fields do it. It affects whether they even try to do it at all, or if they resort to commercial products and pandering. I try to consistently use the word "art" for the more broad idea of products and experiences that make you intrinsically interested and inspired, regardless of form, material, author, status or history, to try to restore some balance to the word. But I'm just one person changing my small part of the world.





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