Do you consider anime/manga to be art?

[desideraht]

Damn, this is too old to help your sis with her essay, but I want to contribute anyway.

All drawing is art, if it came out of your pen, your hand... But a lot of anime/manga is incredibly unoriginal, drawn by this weird formula of same-shaped heads and eyes with different colored hair... I can say that about a lot of furry art, too, though. I think that this is all art, but a lot of it looks incredibly similar. I try very hard to keep my manga original! I do not feel art has to be unique to be art... but it's uniqueness can make it stand out and shine with it's own superior quality without receiving trickle down fame from a similar style.

[Durvin]

If we distinguish between illustration and art, then no, Japanese comics and cartoons aren't art, any more than any other comic or cartoon, and for the moment, the Japanese style has yet to make the jump to fine art, at least in the Western world. I'm sure it'll happen, but successful applications of Western comic tropes are hard enough to manifest in fine art--see Roy Lichtenstein for the only A-lister to have done it, plus a few minor stars from the past decade or two. A good start for someone that wanted to see the Japanese drawing style take hold in the art world would be to start rendering famous works of history in the style--the Sistene Chapel, the Venus de Milo, Seurat's "Grand Jatte", a few Tolouse-Loutrec posters, Rembrandt's portraits, maybe Andy Warhol's portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis...this actually sounds like a pretty cool series, if somebody wants to give that a shot. A post-Impressionist or Fauvist take on any iconic images would certainly work too. The main thing is to distance it from the line-drawing sketches of the standard stuff; it doesn't matter how you draw it, you're always going to have a hard time convincing art-house snobs that a group portrait of your favorite cartoon characters is "art".

On the other hand, if we don't distinguish between illustration and art, then yes, but I'm not sure how anybody can make the case that it isn't a form of illustration. The dividing line is a tough one to define; if you can't tell by now, I spent four years in art school, and I can tell you that even the people that think about this stuff professionally have yet to come up with a clear definition for art versus illustration. Comic-based art, be it Eastern or Western, is an inherently illustrative style--it shows people doing things, as opposed to, say, the works of Alexander Calder or Mondrian.

* Continued from above suggestions: anything by da Vinci, Vermeer or Freda Kahlo, "School of Athens", that photo of Hugo Ball reciting "Karawane", Artemesia Gentileschi's "Judith Decapitating Holofernes", the Shroud of Turin...okay, okay, I'll stop.

[desideraht]

...the Japanese style has yet to make the jump to fine art

Yeah, but American cartoons don't look like Rembrandt's work either... >_>

[blankd]

If we distinguish between illustration and art, then no, Japanese comics and cartoons aren't art, any more than any other comic or cartoon, and for the moment, the Japanese style has yet to make the jump to fine art, at least in the Western world.

Yeah not like it's already happened or anything.

Or you know, had an exhibit or something. On more than one occasion.

These are off the top of my head or with scant google-fu, but my point still stands.

Also I'm sorry but this:

A good start for someone that wanted to see the Japanese drawing style take hold in the art world would be to start rendering famous works of history in the style--the Sistene Chapel, the Venus de Milo, Seurat's "Grand Jatte", a few Tolouse-Loutrec posters, Rembrandt's portraits, maybe Andy Warhol's portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis...this actually sounds like a pretty cool series, if somebody wants to give that a shot.

Does not make fine art and apes concepts already done. Try arting harder.

An aside, all the "fine art" examples you listed mostly pertain to realism or an art period long gone by, not to say they aren't worthless as I enjoy them, but by your own definition no "modern" fine art is REALLY ART.

As another aside "Japanese Style" is a horribly ambiguous term, if you're going to try discussing academic Art differentiate, we do have "Japanese Style" fine art that is respected by the west (branch from the wiki). We also do have "anime/manga" style that is considered fine art as pointed out by what I posted 8V. Regardless, still try to specify for future discussions.

[Durvin]

Of the links you posted, one was an exhibition of actual animation cels, and the other two were what I was talking about. The anime/manga style, if it wants to be considered art, has to *be* art, and not just anime/manga. I saw a lot of people try and fail to market their sketches of school-girls in bunny-suits as art, and nobody fell for it.

Also I'm sorry but this:

A good start for someone that wanted to see the Japanese drawing style take hold in the art world would be to start rendering famous works of history in the style--the Sistene Chapel, the Venus de Milo, Seurat's "Grand Jatte", a few Tolouse-Loutrec posters, Rembrandt's portraits, maybe Andy Warhol's portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis...this actually sounds like a pretty cool series, if somebody wants to give that a shot.

Does not make fine art and apes concepts already done. Try arting harder.

You'd be amazed at how many people have made a career and some damn fine art by doing this; the concept is not to "ape concepts" but to legitimize a concept by invoking the classics. One good example is Fernando Botero's series of copies of famous art, but with the figures made hugely obese; another I've seen (but whose name I can't give you since my art history book is mysteriously missing) was a feminist that made classic women butch. The distinction I'm making here is best explained by tvtropes' home-page: you're looking for the tropes here, not the cliches.

An aside, all the "fine art" examples you listed mostly pertain to realism or an art period long gone by, not to say they aren't worthless as I enjoy them, but by your own definition no "modern" fine art is REALLY ART.

That was because the anime/manga style is inherently a figurative one; if someone was to go with my suggestion, invoking things like Rothko and Pollock isn't going to work. (I'm assuming by "modern" you mean "abstract".) My main point about that was that after years of arguing it with professors, coffee-house snobs, and radical art-revolutionaries that act more like Andy Kaufman than Claude Monet, not a damn one of them was able to agree on a finite division between "low art" and "high art"; when discussing a comic style, see the famous Calvin & Hobbes strip on the subject. Takashi Murakami name-checks this very problem all the time, and his way of dealing with it is exactly what I was talking about: anime and manga are not themselves art, but you take the elements of anime and manga, and you make them into art. He actually got his start in purely "high art" before bringing in the cartoons, which I think is the way more artists need to go about it. My first good art teacher always said that before you could really make art, you had to do your "art push-ups" to learn how everything worked; you can't learn to make a good painting by copying Clamp any more than you can by copying Dilbert.

To summarize: rather than starting with your DBZ fan-art and trying to market it as fine art (as many have done), learn how to do fine art and then, if it is appropriate to your personal style and the concepts you wish to illuminate and communicate with your portfolio, do some DBZ fan-art.

[BlixtySlycat]

Of course it's art in the strictest, most literal sense of the word.

Whether or not it's "worth" anything depends on who you ask. I think most--say--college professors would probably disagree that it is. But obviously a mangaka is going to have a different opinion on the subject.

I'm personally of the opinion that arguing about what is and is not art is a rather silly thing to do, to be quite honest. Since no two people think the same thing about the subject, and it's not something you can measure.

[momoismyname]

of course. they was in the same way.

[MacSimon]

I can't say no, knowing this man.

[AngelsMelodie]

It depends I guess... if it is the right proportion and it looks good, I guess it is.

[AngelsMelodie]

I can't say no, knowing this man.

Is that.... who I think it is?????

[MangaKnight]

Since this has been necromanced I shall help in the zombie uprising...

Do you consider the anime/manga style to be art?
My personal answer to this is yes, why would you not consider it art? That's pretty absurd especially if you can consider something like a detached urinal art or a cheap reproduction copy of the Mona Lisa with a mustache and goatee scribbled on art. Je suis tres desole, vraiment. Je blague M. Duchamp... Le "Fountain" et Le "L.H.O.O.Q" sont des chefs-ouevre du monde d'art. Please don't kill me pwease by forcing me to descend the stairs the hard way...

How do you define art?
Anything and everything that can be done. Everything is art.

What kind of art form do you like most?
Art forms that have flow. I like that feeling you get when things smoothly transition from one thing to the next. Really well done animation and sequential artwork like comics can sometimes do that. Dancing, juggling, yo-yoing, skateboarding all have that feeling of being able to do a combo. That has flow as does the most obvious form such as music. I really like that feeling of smooth movement although choppy movement can also work to a flow like tapping to a beat. You know I like any art which you can like feel it glide and stop and pop. No I'm not high... I hope you guys understand lol... It's like typing the the keys jkl; all in one smooth motion in that order. You feel your fingers smoothly go down one after another. xD

Does anime/manga take part in your life in any way?
In terms of anime from Japan I am fond of using the word japanimation for it although if you say anime I would probably understand it as such. I say that anime definitely played a big part in my life as I was exposed to much of it. My first anime series were things such as Ninja Hattori-Kun, Doraemon, Candy Candy, Honey Honey's Wonderful Adventures, Dragon Ball and Sailormoon. It introduced me to animation. Animation led me to start reading comic books and that was really important. I would also say that japanimation has introduced deep plots and some pretty violent stuff into my life where prior to it, I would be more used to cartoons with no continuity save a few. Manga is what inspired me to draw comics so I would say that it very much played a part in my life.

Also omg that photo... It can't be it's the famous Walt Disney of Japan... Colonel Sanders!

[Disturbed Goth]

Do you consider the anime/manga style to be art?
Of course I do. Anyone that would say it isn't probably doesn't like the art style. But yes, it is a form of cartoon, and I consider cartoons to be art because they can be very expressive, which to me, is what art is all about.
How do you define art?
Just like I said, expressive. The artist expresses himself/herself through his/her brush stokes, pen/pencil markings, sculptures, etc. What the artist is expressing, defines his/her style. I do not believe in "bad art". There is no such thing because every artist has a different style. And the reason people do not like one's art, is because that person does not agree with the artist's style or thinks the style is under-developed. The only thing I don't consider art is porn. There is no aesthetic or artistic value in porn. But I DO consider Erotica art.
What kind of art form do you like most?
Cartoons ;p
Does anime/manga take part in your life in any way?
Yes, I do have two manga styles. One, being more traditional manga style and the other, a more realistic, 3-D style (kinda video game-looking type). The style my manga "Be My Doll" is actually a combination of the two.