Reading this article about tension between art, artist, and viewer, I am in search of ideas for my next paper.  The art world is filled with provocative statements just screaming at us to assess the question: what defines art?  In the article, a painting depicting a pipe is on display at an exhibit.  "This is not a pipe" is written on the painting.  The point is that it's a painting of a pipe.  Cursorily, this seems like a very meaningless debate of semantics, but I will give this some more thought.

More related to my sphere of music, I learned recently that one of my favorite musical artists, City and Colour (which actually consists of just one person), also played in another band called alexisonfire.  The two musical styles could not be more diverse, as can be distinguished in the following music videos:


This is alexis on fire's hardcore sound. Contrast that loud, harsh, aggressive sound with this song by City and Colour:

I believe there is definitely something to be researched here regarding the artist's intention with his music.  There is such a dichotomy of tone and style that I would like to read more about what fans say. I personally am lop-sidedly a fan of the more pleasant incarnation of Dallas Green (the name of the artist in question) over the other.  But maybe I should give alexisonfire a closer listen to see if I can glean as much value from them as I do from City and Colour's music.