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64 Opposites of Art

John Spacey, February 01, 2021

Art is unconstrained creative expression. Opposites of art commonly indicate works that have commercial, academic, political or technical constraints. This is the reason that design or advertising aren't art despite being potentially creative. Likewise, works that bend to impress the audience may be considered entertainment. Other antonyms of art tend to stress that a work is unoriginal, unskilled or that it lacks creative spark. Art doesn't require talent as a small child can create art. Likewise, adults can freely create art as a leisure activity without any in-depth education or experience. However, if you describe your works as fine art -- your works become fair game for criticism. The following are possible opposites of art.

Academic	Advertising
Amusement	Artificial
Artless	Bogus
Bureaucratic	Businesslike
Calculated	Cliche
Commercial Art	Commodity
Common	Confined
Constrained	Copy
Corporate	Counterfeit
Cowardly	Design
Dull	Entertainment
Fake	Forgery
Formal	Imitation
Impotent	Incapacity
Ineptitude	Institutionalized
Leisure	Matter-of-fact
Mediocrity	Methodical
Mimicry	Numb
Obvious	Phony
Propaganda	Publicity
Recreation	Rigid
Routine	Science
Spectacle	Spineless
Stagnant	Stale
Static	Stereotyped
Sterile	Stock
Systematic	Technical
Timid	Unexpressive
Unimaginative	Uninspired
Uninventive	Unoriginal
Unrefined	Unremarkable
Unskilled	Utility

Notes

There is a long history of influential art movements beginning with harsh criticism that accuses the art of not being art. This can originate with either art critics or the public but usually not both -- where the art goes on to change the art world. Historically, this is so common that people may feel that such criticism is a sign of brilliance. This thinking suffers from survivorship bias -- hundreds of works that were criticized as non-art were later recognized as brilliant. However, millions of works that were criticized similarly may have been actually awful.

The term anti-art refers to a specific type of art that is, perhaps ironically, embraced as fine art.