What is Art?

Given that this is an art blog, it’s time to ask what art actually is. Most of us instinctively sense what art is, but how many of us can define it? You don’t have to be an art historian to know that there are myriad definitions, depending on what period of history or which culture you’re focusing on. In fact, what is art? becomes an impossible question. Not that that has stopped anyone from trying to answer it.

A monument in Iran. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

Do you consider the images immediately above and below art? Does it matter whether they’re in a museum or gallery? If you don’t know who created them or where they’re located, might you think they’re abstract paintings? And is it necessary for the persons who created these images to identify themselves as artists? Is it art if you don’t think of it as such? Did the groups who created cave paintings call their images art? Were they expressing themselves spiritually or marking down instructions for hunting?

Unknown artist, Ship Cloth (palepai) (Indonesia), 19th century. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

From the Lascaux caves in France, made by Cro-Magnons in the Stone Age. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

Oxford Languages considers art “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.” But that’s not broad enough to encompass such arts as music, dance, theater, and literature. It also doesn’t refer to conceptual ideas conveyed through artwork.

Divyanshu Mishra Rajasthani Dance, Udaipur, India.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

Rwandese women performing traditional dance.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

While Western, Eastern, and indigenous perspectives on art certainly differ, even within a region such as the West, art is viewed through a variety of lenses. Here’s a sampling of opinions from among thousands:

Pablo Picasso: Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
Edgar Degas: Art is not what you see but what others make you see.
Twyla Tharp: Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Andy Warhol: Art is what you can get away with.
Elbert Hubbard: Art is not a thing, it is a way.
Marc Chagall: Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.
Theodore Dreiser: Art is the stored honey of the human soul.
Gustav Klimt: Art is a line around your thoughts.
Paul Gauguin: Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
Frank Zappa: Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
Anselm Kiefer: Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.
Oscar Wilde: Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known.
Agnes Martin: Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.
Jean Cocteau: Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

Gu-An, Bamboo in the Wind, 14th century (Yuan Dynasty), hanging scroll, ink on silk. Shanxi Provincial Museum, Taiyuan, China. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

The way we think of art in the West, in contemporary times, is not how the word was originally understood. In the early 13th century, it basically meant "skill as a result of learning or practice," and was derived from Old French art (10th century). In turn, that came from Latin artem, defined as "work of art; practical skill; a business, craft." And even before that, from ar(ə)-ti-, which is also the source of Sanskrit rtih, "manner, mode”; Greek artizein "to prepare"), stemming from the root ar- "to fit together." Speaking of Greek, the ancient sculptures and friezes we laud as art were designated as τέχνη (téchni), “craft, technique, or skill.”

Unknown artist, Cavalcade, block VII from the south frieze of the Parthenon, ca. 447–433 BCE. British Museum, London.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

According to art historian James Fox, at the University of Cambridge, it was by the 19th century that people in the West professed a clear understanding of what constitutes art: It is a thing/object, handmade by a talented individual, representing something in nature (portrait, landscape, still life), and possessing such aesthetic qualities as beauty and expressiveness.

Scene from Thanatopsis (1850), by Asher Brown Durand. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

But it was in the 20th century that these ideas were blown apart as artists created abstract work and French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) challenged earlier notions by exhibiting a manufactured urinal. He claimed that artwork does not have to be made by an artist, nor does it have to be unique or produced by hand.

1964 replica of Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp, Tate Liverpool, England. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

As a result, by mid-20th century, the old criteria of art were not sacred cows anymore. Art no longer had to be a painting or sculpture. It could be photography, assemblage, installation, happening, film, light, and so on. In addition, attitudes were gradually changing toward what had formerly been categorized as crafts or ethnographic artifacts.

Mithila painting artist. Photo by Abhishek Singh, Kathmandu Nepal.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

Pre-Dogon, wood, Bandiagara cliffs (Mali), late 15th-early 17th century. Louvre Museum, Paris. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

Fox says that because art is so diverse, it’s impossible to fix on a lone characteristic that exists in all art around the world. While there is commonality among the different objects, there is “no single intrinsic feature that belongs to all of them.” What turns something into art, he contends, is the way the object is used and the place it holds in society.

Peter Callas assisting Peter Voulkos (1924-2002), 1998. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

In the end, Fox believes that we are asking the wrong question. He quotes American philosopher Henry Nelson Goodman (1906-98): We should not be asking “what is art?” but “when is art?” Rather than think of art as an object or thing, art is something that happens—it’s a process—something that we do.

Tewa artist, Sara Fina Gutierrez Tafoya, native name "Autumn Leaf," pit-firing blackware pottery at Santa Clara Pueblo (Kha'po Owingeh), Northern New Mexico c. 1900. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/

Art was once done collectively and became individualistic. It has also served different purposes or functions. And it has expanded to encompass materials and techniques that didn’t even exist in earlier centuries. Art clearly responds to what is going on around it and thus continues to evolve. I suspect we will wind up with yet more questions in our attempts to understand what/how/when it is.

Questions & Comments:
How do you define art? What gets included/excluded?
What purpose or function do you believe art serves?
Is something art just because we think it is? What makes it art?