Intro
In late Antiquity the arts consisted of the seven artes liberales, the liberal arts: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. Philosophy was the mother of them all. On a lower level stood the technical arts like architecture, agriculture, painting, sculpture and other crafts. "Art" as we concieve of it today was a mere craft. Art in the Middle Ages was "the ape of nature". And what is art today?
Can we give a definition?
Sir Roger Penrose, one of the foremost scientists of our time, when faced with a similar problem with regard to the definition of quite something else, viz., consciousness, states in his The Emperor's New Mind: "I do not think that it is wise, at this stage of understanding, to attempt to propose a precise definition of consciousness, but we can rely, to good measure, on our subjective impressions and intuitive common sense as to what the term means ..."[1]
The same seems to hold for art: You know what it is, I know it, but a definition is quite something else.
You can't say
Although one probably cannot give a real definition of Art, here are some thoughts (and a whole lot of quotations) on the subject. Let's start with a quote from "What is Art? What is an Artist?" by Chris Witcombe, Department of Art History, Sweet Briar College, Virginia.
"Arthur Danto, professor of philosophy at Columbia University ..., believes that today "you can't say something's art or not art anymore. That's all finished." In his book, After the End of Art, Danto argues that after Andy Warhol exhibited simulacra of shipping cartons for Brillo boxes in 1964, anything could be art. Warhol made it no longer possible to distinguish something that is art from something that is not."[2]
Anything could be a work of art. That gives us a lot of freedom in looking at, enjoying, or creating art. That's not what the other philosopher of art, Richard Wollheim states in his Painting as an Art:
"So, there are house-painters: there are Sunday painters: there are world-politicians who paint for distraction, and distraught bussiness-men who paint to relax. There are ... psychotic patients who enter art therapy, and madmen who set down their visions: there are little children of three, four, five, six, in art class, who produce work of explosive beauty: and then there are the ...
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... Science, Language, Ritual, Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1997. [Back]
Stewart (1995): Ian Stewart, Nature's Numbers: Discovering Order and Pattern in the Universe, London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995.[Back]
Vargish/Mook (1999): Thomas Vargish and Delo E. Mook, Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative, New Haven and London : Yale UP, 1999. [Back]
Wollheim (1987): Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art, London : Thames & Hudson, 1987. [Back to note 3] | [Back to note 4] | [Back to note 5]
Other Websites about "What is Art?"
SITO "Operative Term Is Stimulate" ask the visitors to their site to define art: "We'll accept any definition you're willing to give".
What Art Is Abstract and chapter summaries of What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi (Chicago etc. : Open Court, 2000).
What is Art? From the website "Art History: A Preliminary Handbook", by Robert J. Belton, Department of Fine Arts, Okanagan University College, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
What is Art? What is an Artist? by Chris Witcombe, Department of Art History, Sweet Briar College, Virginia.
If I were to ask you what is art, and how can one find it? What would you say? Well if it were me being asked those question, I would simply say that art to me is a form of a picture; a visual painting or model of some design and it could be found all among us. You may define it differently only because art could be defined in many ways. I could simply say that art to me is a form of a picture; a visual painting or model of some design. Well according to an article written by Shelley Esaak, an art history expert she mentioned that art has a way of stimulating different parts of our brains to make us laugh or incite us to riot, with a whole gamut of emotions in between. She also mentioned that art gives us a way to be creative and express ourselves. [1]
Art by definition is the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. Whether it was shown visually or musically, the arts of the twenties were reflective of the time period. Even in books, the extravagance that people lived in was evident.
Art is the intentional use of some medium to communicate emotions or ideas between minds. Some combination of the five senses is used to conduct information, so art may take the form of music, painting, sculpture, dance, and others. Art may be collaborative, as with the presentation of a symphony, which may involve a composer, a conductor, players, and a lighting crew all working to create the art of the presentation. Also, art occurs in at least one level of abstraction removed from reality, a representation of the real thing.
Art is defined as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. Jackson Pollock does an amazing job creating art. Pollock’s works are not as big as some of the other artists like Monet’s paintings but his works are still large enough to engulf the viewer.
Art is an imitation of nature and the features or symbol of imaginative skill in the mind. It is characteristically in a pictorial form such as portrayal, imagery, or fabricating, monument work to be cherished primarily used for exquisiteness or expressive power. Bruce Nauman, Kerry James Marshall, Maya Lin, and Louise Bourgeois demonstrate their artwork and their inspiration behind their work.
What does the work consist of? Who authored it, and how? What is it based on, and how does it relate? What is it, and what will become of it? The answers to these questions, collectively, form an important response to a bigger question: What is art? What does it mean to describe a piece as “a work of art”?
how it has evolved away from the stereotypical definition of what is “art” and how it is judged. This
The definition of art, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is human creativity. This definition does not take into consideration our desires to analyze, understand, and accept or reject what we see in front of us. The phrase, “art is in the eye of the beholder”, is a true statement, because everyone has an opinion on what they consider art. In my opinion, art does not need to be understood or accepted to be considered art. Art needs to invoke an emotional response, be translatable to our lives, be expressive of a period in time, and be bold. In order to clearly understand my interpretation of art, I decided to compare various creative works.
When trying to define art, humankind runs in to many difficulties. Traditional concepts of art include painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography. Art can also be one simple thought. The abstract idea of creativity is art. Imagination is art. Words are art. Simplistically, art is anything an individual creates. A painter with a lifetime of formal education in oils, acrylics, and watercolors, is just as much an artists as a three-year-old with a pot of red finger paint. By creating, one creates art.
Now this leads us to understand what exactly, is art. studies all the typical “arts”. This includes music, literature, theatre, dance, film, as well as painting, sculpture, and architecture. This directs the student towards a very broad field. For example, architecture may involve the Sistine Chapel, considered one of the world’s most loved works of art. However, it may also include the landscaping in a small town square. So then, art is defined as something that deals with both the “useful” and “fine” arts, insofar as they appeal to aesthetic taste, or as long as they are created with the specific intent to cause a reaction, whether it be positive or negative.
I have my own feelings about what should be considered art, and it is just that, my feeling. Art moves, inspires, disgusts, disturbs or touches us in some way. It may change us, it may not. There is one thing that would discount what I consider art. If I am indi...
Art is an expressive form of creativity and expression. Art involves the basic elements and principles that aid to form paintings, sculptures, and other forms of artwork.
Art is one of the most intriguing and exiting forms of human expression. A picture can tell a thousand words and often stir up feelings inside the viewer. Art is all around us.buildings,electronic equipment like a computer, and even automobiles are all a form of art.
Art can be defined in many ways by an individual. One can say that any creative output by a person is considered art. Others contend that art must conform to a societal standard and the basis of the creation should be understood by most intellectual people. For example, some contend that computer-generated images, such as fractals, are not art due to the large role played by a computer. E.O. Wilson states “the exclusive role of the arts is to intensify aesthetic and emotional response. Works of art communicate feeling directly from mind to mind, with no intent to explain why the impact occurs” (218). A simple definition may be that art is the physical expression of the ideals formed by the mind.
So to answer the question you need to think what is art? To me art is a form of representing a person’s ideas which can be in any form of media whether it be a painting, a film, or a song, a novel or a photograph. For it to be classed as art though it must provoke emotion or thought and show signs of creativity.