The definitive meaning of Art
Posted by lemiffe in Art, Literature on Aug 18th, 2009 | 2 commentsMy sister studied the Visual Arts career for 2 years. I have a couple of other friends who are also in that career. Along the course of my life I have also met several artists, or people who claim to be so. But the particular thing that interests me is the diverse effect the question “What is Art?” produces on them.
I have heard such disparate meanings, some that seem utterly garbage to me. “Art is Anything”, “Art is Everything”, “Art is Beautiful”. I have also read things that actually make sense, such as “Code is Art”. I also believe that scenic acting and comedy are art.
Wikipedia considers art to be “The process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions”. But what if it doesn’t appeal to the senses or emotions? There could be a painting that doesn’t appeal to me in any sort of way, nor make me feel anything when I see it.
Some dictionaries place the meaning to be “the products of human creativity”, “the creation of beautiful or significant things” or “a superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation”. These are all ambiguous to me, they don’t mean anything and at the same time they mean everything to someone.
In my point of view, we need to have a solid concrete meaning for art that means the same to everyone. So I consider this to be a good time to stop debating about the meaning and let’s give it a fully comprehensible, objective meaning to the word:
Art is the product of anything you apply creativity and effort into.
Why? Because it is something (visually, orally, written, or expressed in any way) on which one or more people (or automated objects) worked on, using their skills (or not) while creatively imagining the final product, or applying creativity in a continuous process to obtain a result. The result of this process is art.
That way we englobe all possible forms of art: Comedy, Dance, Music, Painting, Literature, anything in which you obtain a result via a creative process and work.
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No estoy de acuerdo, creo que el arte es complejo de explicar y depende de muchos puntos de vista, no se puede crear una definición general para eso… en fin, no me meteré en debates con este tema, porque nunca terminan y son pérdida de tiempo.
Are you sure about that? I think it is not as complex as it seems. There is an end to the debate, it’s simple, anything you have created using creativity and effort is a work of art.
From a house, to the plans of the house. From a roundabout to a statue. From a painting to a musical show. From a one man stand-up to an old wooden table.