Whether a "pastel" is a "painting" is a moot point. They're both "art", and that can be anything from the Mona Lisa to a dude who plops a crucifix into a jar of piss. Art is subjective. It's painting, drawing, sculpting, kinetic, macaroni glued on construction paper, architecture, whatever the **** you want it to be. IIRC the Mona Lisa is painted on a wood board. Some of Rembrandt's most expensive works are tiny pencil sketches. A one-sheet poster for the original "Frankenstein" movie is a giant lithograph done with machinery, and yet some consider it "art" enough to make it a million-dollar poster. Some of the most expensive modern "art" is indeed actual painting, but it's nothing more than a red circle with a yellow line through it (which some stuffed-shirt will tell you encompasses "man's insignificance" or some other total bullshit).
Hell, personally I expand the definition to include objects constructed for films, such as the sci-fi props sold on the TV auction show "Hollywood Treasures"; if a master craftsman sculpts a monster, and it's a one-of-a-kind, and it's used in a film, why isn't that "art" any more than the Mona Lisa?
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