"Can Wargames have a dimension of "art" ?" Topic

Can War games have a dimension or a stage at which it becomes "art." That is art in the sense or spirit of fine art, though not perhaps the plastic objective artifact? Art, fine art, is so because it is a blend of materials, style, media, sensibility, composition and effect that produces a transcendent, or supra-real quality that might be best described as "more than the sum of its parts."

This might take the place of an army which is collected, painted, and ordered to evoke a mood or a sensation of emotion totally above the mere use of it in a game. That is, as thing in and of itself which has meaning outside and above of its utility only in the boundaries of a game.
For example, the construction of a unit or army that tells a story?

This is not at all limited to fine painting or shading. It refers to the encapturing of a transcendent quality, with the painting being quite ordinary.

I don't see how it couldn't be. Such judgments are subjective. So, it really is all in the eye, and mind, of the beholder…

I don't think so. I put this hobby firmly under the 'craft' banner. That's not to say that models couldn't be used to create art – the Chapman brothers demonstrated this approach in their work.

yes!

Art is one of those things people never agree on.

My gut feeling is that it isn't art but then, I couldn't define why not.

I would like to think that when I do "aerial photograph" style accurate terrain, with realistic streams, gulleys, fences and hills, there is some small aspect of "art" in the result. Entirely subjective.

I suppose it's "art", but then so are coloring books and paint by number kits.
That doesn't mean that they can't look very nice.

Yes.

The first show I had after I left the Corcoran school of art was a room I constructed around a Nap. battle scene. You looked thru an oval frame into the room. Around the outside I had drawings and paintings of model soldiers. This was in 1977. It was art in an art gallery.

The way I look at it, art has no purpose other then itself. Art is useless. A painting typically is a flat surface but it is not a table or a counter. If you put something on it you'll be in trouble. Figures, terrain, rules all have a purpose, to play a wargame. So to me Wargaming starts as a hobby and at it's best it is a craft. Of course it depends on your view of art, as a button I have says: "Art is anything you can get away with."

Yes

Dear List

For me the "art" of war games does not even need the movement of the games, war game armies and "objects" can have an art all itself.

I have this theory that there are two "essences" of war games. The first is that all war games are composed in one sense of "objects" and "order." "Objects are rules, troops, terrain, concepts, etc., anything about the game, and these are linked by "order" that is in which way and how the objects are invoked. That is brought into play and out of play. The second thing is that the "objects" of a game are moved by the players (consider "chosen" as a more illustrative synonym to "moved" and thus the game relies on the MOVEMENT of pieces, rules, terrain etc., and the resulting special relationships with each other. Such "movement" can be also on and off the table top.

The point of this is only that in these we do these things with an eye to a notional reality, which invokes within us emotional and sensory responses which trigger pictures in our minds eye that are greater than the sum of the objects, orders, and movements we see. That is where the real "art" is, or in another way, expresses and makes vivid in our minds eye what we cannot evoke with the munane things of which we make our armies alone, and at that point- the combination of both objects, order, and movement, that the art is achieved.

Again, we are not talking about the Mona Lisa here, but the categories are not equivalent, but the effect of transcendent transporting of the aesthetic sensibility is.

If we are going to fall back on that old cliché of "art being in the eye of the beholder" then if that eye can see MORE than what is merely apparent, that is attach to it an emotional and passionate response which is very very real in the beholder (indeed, he feels it) then that is art.

Granted this lays open to crucifix's in beakers or urine being "art" because of the sensations or passions it arises in the beholder, but that says nothing and does not go to the question of good art or bad art, or if those passions raised are commendable or contemptable. You see, that is where the cliché "Art is in the eye of the beholder" destroys itself.

If you believe that a crucifix in a beaker of urine is art and it arouses a response in you that is greater than the mere picture, then you have to decide if you are comfortable with that, or more so, are you comfortable with other people knowing that you believe it is art, or in other words, those that behold the beholder? In a sense then the beholder becomes an object for the evaluation of others and the sensations and emotions released by that.

It's all very complicated BUT!!!!

It is obvious that many, many many gamers attempt in their "craft" efforts to create something beyond the mere functional collection of war game figures for the prosecution of the game and attempt to portray not only a unit or a house, or a town or a leader, but something BEYOND the mere "sign painting" of telling us what that unit is. They wish to embody the "spirit of." the "essence of," the most fidelity of reproduction of" something and therefore transcend the mere utility of knowing what it is.

This is the part I find so absolutely fascinating about the hobby. The varying degrees and means players strive to achieve this, and when they do, HOW OFTEN THEY LARGELY SUCCEED! This even when the "painting" and sculpting might be entirely mundane and ordinary, the dimension of composition and the effect of mass can often push a work into art from merely "a stand of troops."

This of course is to a large extent latent role playing but there is nothing wrong with that.

One more point.

Obviously the question is complicated.

But in our quest for this are we not also in a quest for complication? Which is why rules get exponentially more complicated. Achieving a sort of "art" by attempting to create that transcendence through infinite attention to detail that we see in so many complicated sets.

Certainly it can't be for the free flow of the game! The multiplication of rules can only slow the game down. However the inclusion of these in the transcendent sense to invoke that feeling of something more than the sum of its parts must surely flow from the same artistic urge.

Granted now and then the vogue goes from Empire III to a wallet-sized rule book, but they are all of the same urge to transcendence perhaps, and therefore it may not matter at all that one never uses a complicated set, it may be sufficient to BE on its own and hence still a work of "art."

Remember that it might be that we have "art" here as "artifice" or "creation" not just as a pretty picture.

This of course leads to the question if a picture Is EVER dismissible simply as a "pretty picture" at which point I will stop for that question is vast.

I celebrate creativity in all its forms. Art (in the 'with a capital A' sense) is, paraphrasing Glengarry5, non-utilitarian creativity … but historically its function has been as to teach or explain just as much as games principally exist to teach and explore.

Play entirely for leisure (like art entirely for leisure) is a relatively recent phenomenon.

So whether you want to blend art, craft and play into one concept (or choose to try to departmentalise creativity) is really down to you: as an art historian who collects toy soldiers, I see art in them; as a military historian who uses games to explain and explore war, I don't see wargames as necessarily just for leisure.

If you look at this recent exhibit in my local Gallery (no – it isn't from my collection*) you will find some of the 'sculptural' content familiar although presented as art …

It entertains the eye and has its place. It isn't for me to put rigid ideas in people's minds.

However I suspect Otto's question was more conceptual.

Phil
*my collection has recently been featured in the Museum (but for me there is quite a difference between the Museum context and the Art Gallery context)

Art is defined simply as this: Art is what the art world says art is.

So what Jeff Koons does is art and what we all do isn't art.

I've worked in what is described by fine art snobs (dismissively) as 'commercial art'* for over 30 years and that is a battle that will never be won.

So – on that basis – I'm guessing that what we do will be described by (to quote Python) "clever people who talk loudly in restaurants" as a craft.

At best…

So this is art

and this is not art

I think it's all art. Some is just more worthy than some other stuff…

John T

PS – I happen to like Antony Gormley (the artist I just showed the work of) but that's not the point I'm making. Jeff Koons, however, is a talentless charlatan.

* Graphic design (my field) is, of course, degraded by the very concept of it being 'commercial': that grubby business of earning a living from your art. So Michelangelo painted ceilings for free?…

See the Class Wargames website.

Vita brevis, ars langa. Does it pass that simple test? I'll have to go with -considerably too soon to say.

Wargaming is art in the purest sense, we create a fantasy world in our heads using some bits of plastic and felt. Even better it is interactive, no stuffy art galleries involved.

Fantastic.

"And you, you poor creatures, who conjured you from the clay? Is God in show business too?"

A (historical) wargame, being based on history but inevitably not being an accurate simulation of history, is a form of historical fiction. Fiction is a form of literature. Literature is a form of art.

QED.

Craft, yes. Art, no.

Are dioramas art? I should say so! I happen to have a 6x8 foot sized one. Take a snapshot anywhere on that table, and you have a small piece of a very large diorama, that is dynamic.

Putting on a convention wargame is performance art, with the players as participants.

Craft for its own sake, or for purely practical purposes, is craft.

Craft in the service of meaning is art.

The designer of a wargame scenario/table creates a space which represents a place that is geographically and/or temporally distant, real or imagined. One or more players then use that space to collaboratively improvise a story, within agreed-upon guidelines and perhaps under the guidance of a director (gamemaster). If that doesn't fit the definition of theater, then nothing does.

Well said sir. You are an artisan of words as well.

Nail on the head War Artisan.