Exactly.

Art in all forms most certainly follow rules! It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about Jason Pollack, Picasso, Rembrandt or poets like e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, or Joy Harjo.

Jazz performers knew music. They knew the forms. They were able to intelligently stretch those forms because they knew the form.

Rock performers have to learn how to play their instruments--that follows rules, forms, functions.

With this definition all one has to do is pick up a guitar with no knowledge of how to play or even tune the guitar and just bang on it. It’s art as long as it’s an “expression of the soul”!--as long as it’s “heart felt”--Sorry, that isn’t art. That’s noise. Sticking with music--every form of music follows rules and has structure.

“Expression of the soul” sounds so noble, spiritual, and good--but the truth is if it is poorly expressed, it becomes so much drivel.