But is it art? Debut

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Jaywalker free magazine of the arts was published monthly in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and is still available online at all times right here! We hope to get some version of it going again. For now, it is an archival site only.

Check out our old publisher's new blog, The Metaphor Observatory, with plenty of examples of contemporary metaphor in the media.

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But is it art ?!

Introducing the latest addition to the Jaywalker. "But Is It Art?!" will accept submissions of black and white images which examine the question "What is art?"

We hope to generate discussion surrounding this enduring and often emotional subject, which was perhaps most fiercely debated in our country when the National Gallery of Canada acquired the abstract painting "Voice of Fire". The famous piece, by American artist Barnett Newman, was purchased for a princely 1.8 million dollars as Canada was entering a recession.

Is Voice of Fire artwork because it is it fetched a high sum on the market? Or is it art because Voice of Fire flamed the passions of realists? Is an artist's intent important to art? Must art be beautiful? Should we value beauty over meaning, or vice versa? So much to discuss...!

Our first subject is an untitled photo by the Jaywalker crew. Taken at the corner of Montreal and Princess streets, this photo shows aging and repair over the lifespan of the walkway.

It is the various shapes, tones and shading that caught the photographer's eye. But it is the lack of "artistic intent" or "built-in meaning" that leads to the question "Must the meaning come before the art, or may the art come before the meaning?"

Our photographer sees a mathematical beauty in this happenstance artwork. Though beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, is this art?

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