Chess is not an art

D'oh.

Well played sir.  Well played. 

Chess doesn't appear to be:

-a fresco painted by pepsi

-a tip that the father left, but the grandmother picked up

-a teacher admitting they're not helping

-a ken burns documentary that joseph goebbels wouldn't admire

-a beaver going to church

-someone to do the dishes

Now my life can have meaning. Thank you for opening my eyes!

my pleasure

"Life is art.

Our aim is to make a piece which makes everyone around us happy."

This is so far away from my goal...

From the perspective of an artist: I am a poet and playwright. I get a similar feeling of satisfaction from finishing a beautifully played game of chess as from the completion of a good poem or well-plotted play. Poetry and drama are arts that combine the logical with the creative. For me, chess is one of several arts I participate in. Like the drama, it is dramatic, since it involves conflict. Like poetry, it has rhythm, since the sides move alternately, and its moves, like words, carry emotion, since they involve menace, and retreat, and defiance, and fear. Like music, it involves abstract patterns of beauty, since its geometric forms evolve, something like a kaliedescope. In may other ways, it is artistic. That is why it was so attractive to a literary light like Vladimir Nabakov, one of many to celebrate its artistic side.

How can static geometric forms in two dimensions be art when it is hard-edge abstractionism, and the flowing, interlocking, changing of surprising geometric patterns on the chessboard not be art?

I believe that chess can sometimes rise to the level of art, but that doesn't mean that is an art. Just as someone putting paint on a brush and applying it to a canvas doesn't automatically qualify it as art, neither does moving the chess pieces around an 8x8 board constitute an art form. BUT! Sometimes you come across a game where you realize someone is playing inspired chess! Check out the recent "Personal Mona Lisa" series of columns right here at chess.com by GM Gregory Serper for some great examples!

That's beautiful man. 

Art in its multivaried forms gives us great pleasure just to experience. We strive to immerse ourselves in it for its own purity and essence.

Science we don't give a damn about until it gives us flying cars.

Chess is not a John Denver Christmas Special.

That is not agreed on by all.

Especially if there's a butterfly on the cover. A unicorn would also be dynamite.

All this talk of the creating/creative aspect making it art... and comparisons to music.

And yet no one has mentioned the obvious comparison out of the fact that it takes two participants - even if one is artificial - to carry out the act.

Thus chess, has very much qualities of dance, which is undeniably an art form.

I think I'm a dance denier! But I LOVED "The Red Shoes"!

The Red Shoes was visually lush, but the rest of it was barely digestible...

Yeah dance isn't art, at least not where I see people dancing.  It's a means to an obvious end.

Everything we do is a means to that end.

It was a great film! And you're not supposed to eat it, you watch it.

Oooh.  You know, this explains my aversion to a lot of films, particularly the ones directed by fat, old, sweaty men.