WHAT IS ART?

The above is by an artist by the name of Mark "Boom Boom" Rothko. Do you like it? Is it art?

Or is this in fact "Art"?

Is art subjective, based on the observer's perceptions, or it art art, independent of what or who is staring at it, much like truth. The truth is the truth, once and always, regardless of  a person's opinions or perspective. What makes this mess:

...more worthy as art, and thereby more profitable than say, THIS:

Is it the intent implicit behind the art that makes it art? Duchamp wanted to reject the work of many of his fellow artists as "retinal" art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, wanted to put art back in the service of the mind. Marconi played the mamba. Anybody wanna buy a used chair and mattress I found?

Duchamp, for instance, took a random urinal, graffited by a Mr. "R. Mutt", named it "Fountain" and called it art. The scandal! Warhol, of course, took wholesale a Campbell soup can, screen printed a picture of it and, bam! turned the art world on it's ear. Is art Art or is it an illusion a large number people, some in ascots, most with wallets, agree on? Like religion or money or the career of that one guy, played a cop all the time? Once time burns away the intent behind the art, and all that's left is people's interpretation, does that make art even more artier?

Mmm, what?

Here's a for instance. Last summer:

I spied a Sonic cup that resolutely would not leave it's perch atop a fire hydrant, took some pictures and damn if scores of people on the Facebook didn't jump onboard the juggernaught that was The Story Of The Little Cup That Could. Found art, and a meaning behind it, in a silly cup somebody stuck to a hydrant.

Or, you  know, whatever.

I posted the Mattress and The Chair picture above on my page and asked whether it was art or crap. A friend said, "Crap." I said "Well, How does the picture make you feel?" And they responded, "I have no feelings." I said that's a great title for the picture, And now, with that applied to it, it has meaning, at least more than it did before, when it was just picture of a stack of nothing. How wacky.

So what it art? What legitimizes it, makes it last down through the decades and centuries?

I dunno, but here's a blurry picture of my dog peeing on an Exercycle.

P.S: Pink Floyd made their albums cover real arty, so here the story of one of the geniuses behind them, Richard Manning