Magic: Art versus Entertainment

[Cain]

I will save my opinion for later.

EDIT to add:

Argh, the last option -- "mostly entertainment" -- seems to me as an indisputable empricial fact. But I'm asking each individual's opinion, not your description of the popular view.

Define "art" and "entertainment" in your reply.

[Bob Klase]

I don't think magic is inherently any of them. A performance may be art, or entertainment, or both. It can also easily be neither. There are performers who are artists and can't entertain their way out of of a paper bag. There are others who can entertain with very simple tricks- which likely means it's not going to be art.

And any given performer may be an entertainer and/or an artist in one performance and a boring slip-shod trickster in another.

You might as well ask if painting is art or employment. If you're Rembrandt or Picasso it was usually art. If you paint houses for a living it's employment.

So there is really no valid answer unless applied to at least a specific magician/performer and even better if applied to a specific performance.

[Jeff Wagg]

I've become very interested in magic lately, and I think that it's an art, thought like most art, there are varying degrees of artfulness.

When I look at something like Scotch and Soda, the art is in the original idea for such a thing, rather than the performance. A particularly good performance would of course be art as well, but I'm much more intrigued by the idea.

Now the problem with the poll is whether there's a difference between art and entertainment, or if art simply a form of entertainment.