I'll extent that widely: bathroom decoration is art.

Marcel Duchamp famously made scandal with his "Fountain", which is precisely a bathroom element.

What he meant is that the gesture of declaring that a readymade object is art is art by itself.

So pure intent is art.

Some may find it ridiculous, but please try and reconsider: the scandal it provoked and the questioning about what art is - that was the intent of Duchamp when he declared that urinal (that he put upsidedown and signed) a piece of art.

And truly that gesture is still considered today as an important moment of the History of Art.

https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/materials-...

Paradoxically, some crafts by non-artists are considered ad art, despite being without any intent of art.

It's called "art brut" which translated from French would mean something like "raw art". Some guys do their thing for their own but their artistic value is difficult to miss.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/art-brut

So execution without intent can be art.

So what about bathroom decoration? Well, some people can turn their bathroom into a piece of art. They may be artists or common people.

But saying that doesn't mean that everything is art, just that we should pay attention and notice art when it appears to you, even in an unexpected place.

When you wrote "execution", you meant the material result produced. But the act of making art ... is also art.

Jackson Pollock is a famous painter but he's mainly remembered for the videos of him painting. Watching him is fascinating. The paintings themselves, well, not much so (some will disagree, and they are right to, more on this later).

I never saw a Pollock's painting in a museum without a video next to him showing him painting. He never asked that. But it's no mystery that he wanted to be filmed.

So the act of creation is art by itself.

But many disagree on the artistic value of most of modern and contemporary art, usually saying that their infant or a monkey could do it, or themselves.

So what is the place of judgment in art? In fact, it's a non-question. A piece of art doesn't exist if nobody look at it and/or experience it.

A book exists not because it's written but because someone reads it. The vast majority of the production of artists, writers, painters, sculptors is forgotten. Most of books that receive literary prizes are considered piece of xxx 50 years later. To the point where it's difficult to apprehend why it was considered as art... So we are right back at the beginning, right?

Well, no: experiencing a piece of art is not passive. The watcher or the reader is active. Phenomenology as well as scientific experiences have demonstrated that our senses are not passive. We build what we see and what we read. For example, when reading a novel, we build in our imagination a representation of the characters, the places etc. That's why watching a movie based on a novel is almost always disappointed. What we see on-screen doesn't match with our representation.

So the audience is a co-creator of a piece of art. Artists are absolutely divided on this: some consider that the audience is passive and the art is totally theirs. But that's just untrue, it's nothing but an ego issue. And nobody care about their opinion on this. If a writer dislike how a character is understood by its readers, well, what can he do about it? Once produced, a piece of art totally escapes from the artist's hands. Other artists go totally on the opposite side, saying plainly: 100% of what you feel and understand from my work is yours.

So the question if something is art or not is ... a non-question. In the end, what matters is what you, as someone of the audience, experience from it, in an active way since each if us - actively even if often unconsciously, co-creates the art.

What you feel, what your emotions are, the questions that arise in you, that is the only thing that matters. Art doesn't need validation. Nor fom any authorities like museums, neither a social consensus.

A proof of that? Go to a museum and look at paintings from, let's say, the XVIIIth century. The craft is often amazing. It's obvious that all those guys were super skilled. But do you feel something?

Well, some do, but I rarely. I appreciate the craft but most of the time I'm bored. Quite often I go to an exhibition and ... I'm disappointed. Because I didn't feel anything.

That's also true for super famous artists. The Sixtine Chapel from Michaelangelo? I stayed quite a while but couldn't see it. So it's not art? Obviously it is, but my art education is insufficient to apprehend it. It's like classical music. You need to learn it. And once again learning is not gulling data. It's an active process where you train your mind to see the world differently. It's also having the basic keys to decrypt what's in front of you.

I was raised in Brazil and frankly, classical music is hard. I have started my own modest education, just by listening the whole symphonies of the melodies everybody knows and likes. Little by little, I learn to appreciate. I haven't go far but well, it's getting enjoyable while I'm still totally uninterested by the Sixtine Chapel.

Too bad for me, and who cares if I consider art or not. I could say it's just a church "decoration".

So the whole debate of deciding if it's art or not is ... pointless. The only one interested are of 2 kinds:

- those making money with art. It's art if it has a financial value. As if a book was judged by the $21 you pay for it. Ridiculous but price depends from rarity, so it's important to them to build a totally arbitrary wall between what is art and what is not. Most of the museums are also in the same logic, hence their incapacity in general to display the art of our time.

- those who need social validation to make their own judgment. The mastery in painting reality as it appears to us, as if it was the true thing, is a socially constructed norm to design art. Why? Because it only reveals the mastery of crafting. As if being able to write verses that rhymes makes you a poet. It doesn't, does it? :-)

Consider music. When you dislike it, do you question it as being music? 99% of the time I don't. I just don't feel anything or I plainly dislike it.

So finally, art is a continuum, with no segmentation. From the intent (Duchamp) to the execution (Pollock painting) to the "piece of art" (which can be anything, like a graffiti or the soup cans of Warhol, e.g. simple industrial reproduction of a picture) to the active work from the audience grasping what they are able to from it.

Sometimes, it's easy to experience it: a great song, or the melting watches of Dali - which is a weird case because it's difficult to put the right words onto them (for me at least) but absolutely everybody remembers that picture once they have seen it. Many people don't know it's by Dali but somehow they can't help not remembering it.

Art is where you feel it. I remember some bathrooms. Many people decorate them without any limit, as if everything was permitted just in that place because it's for poo anyway, right? You can let your inner craziness express itself because this is a place where nobody is supposed to judge you on. It's for poo! The decoration of your living room is the exact opposite, the place where you display were you belong in the social hierarchy. It has a view on the skyline or not. It's leather or a basic fabric. It's a basic stuff from IKEA or an stylish leather couch.

Bathrooms are definitely the place where there is "art brut" to discover, and to discover that your friend has an artistic sense that he refrains to express elsewhere. Maybe they paint but they are reluctant to show you. Well, it's too soon, my production is shitty still... And back to the bathroom we are!