[ThirdSight]

It's kinda' a bum deal that Alpha was Banned though, seeing as how an intelligent conversation and discussion was turned, at the later portion, into a quasi-hate thread against someone who posed an interesting idea.

Credentials: I don't know a thing about Geishas. At all.

I do however, know a bit about art. The problem I've seen so far in the discussion is a rather biased view and definition of art, coming from whoever decides to post their definition of it. Art seems to be a universal, or a term that's hard to pin down to a singular definition due to the nature of what the word trys to explain. Therefore, what first needs to be done in order to determine if Geishas really are artists, or if the idea of a Geisha is art, is to define what art is, to some degree.

A first, loosly based definition that you'll find in most dictionaries is that art, or an art, is something that appeals to the aesthetic senses. This idea travels all the way back to Aristotle and his wrestle with the beautiful and what it is. Art appeals to the aesthetics because there is something inherently aesthetic about it. From here, we define, for ourselves, what is beautiful and what isn't, which translates to our appriciation for art and it's respective artists. Plumbers, as earlier mentioned, wouldn't be considered artists, noting that their profession deals more so with efficiency than it does with aesthetic value. Architects also fall into this category, but unlike plumbers or other professions concerned cheifly with efficiency, the arcitect has more creative liscence in the layout of a building, even if it's only the outer appearance of it. It's safe to say, or at least assume to only a slight degree, that art has more relevance to aesthetic value than it does to efficient value, and any profession that focuses primarily on efficiency may not be considered an artist, nor their art form considered art.

However, art is also something that is defined to be learned; a craft that one can study, learn, and eventually master. In this case, by this definition, keeping in mind the definition above as well, anything that can be learned and put to use, here meaning a sort of trade or profession, can be considered art or an art, even if the product produced is not art itself, meaning the product carries with it no aesthetic value. If we use the above example, a plumber may be an artist or a practictioner of the art of plumbing, even if his product produces no aesthetic value. If that and other similar examples are true, then it's possible for an artist to produce no art, a product with no aesthetic value. This does not mean that an artist can necessarily produce bad art, as this implies one's personal definition of beauty, which we're not concerned with here.

Therefore, going only off of the information about Geishas I could understand from the precursing conversation, a Gehisa could be considered an artist (a practitioner of the art of dance, the art of conversation, the art of social interaction, etc.) even if some of what she does or produces produces no aesthetic value intrinsic to themselves. From here, the intrinsic aesthetic value of dance, conversation, etc. tangents away to even further discussion, but for now, art seems to be defined, albeit loosly, until someone either amends this definition or adds to it.