Art surrounds us. Paintings, book illustrations, photographs, architecture, music, and countless other creations of the human mind are abundant in our daily lives, yet “art” is a word that is difficult to define. Art is subjective, and everyone has personal tastes and aesthetic sense, so what one considers art another may consider garbage. In order to identify true art, art must have a clear definition.
To define art, a good place to begin is the dictionary. The American Dictionary defines art as:
- Production of something beautiful or extraordinary. 2. Skill, ability. 3. Cunning.
Webster has a similar definition:
- Skill acquired by experience, study, or observation. 2. A branch of learning. 3. The conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects.
(Art is also different from design, which is visuals created for specific and usually commercial purposes, such as business logos.)
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a much lengthier and less straightforward definition of art that I will not subject anyone to here (though the entry is available online). What is considered art changes over time and between cultures. However, the first two definitions seem adequate to account for cultural differences and the progression of time.
Both definitions contain the word “skill,” and both refer to beauty. Art is a “production” of the “creative imagination.” As a process that requires skill, creating art requires “experience, study, or observation.” Combining these key terms together would make an encompassing definition of art; therefore, art is the conscious use of skill and creativity to produce something beautiful.
It is important to define art as a skill in order to distinguish a real artist from a fake one. “Art” has been used so broadly as to consider any human creation as art, including tools such as hammers, computers, and water bottles. Yet if the definition of “art” is too all-encompassing, then there is no difference between the works of Leonardo da Vinci and a student’s mindless lecture-doodles in a notebook, or between Beethoven and a high school garage band. Though art is subjective and someone may personally prefer the garage band’s music to Beethoven’s, Beethoven is objectively far more skilled. An artist is someone who employs creative skill, and skill comes with time and experience.
Art is also beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, though “beautiful” doesn’t necessarily mean that only paintings of relaxing landscapes and still life arrangements are truly art. For example, a painting of a battlefield or a skull may not be traditionally beautiful, yet still have a dark or unsettling beauty about them. Even if a work of art isn’t to a viewer’s taste, the viewer should still be able to acknowledge the skill required of the artist to create the piece.
With this definition, art cannot be something that anyone could easily create; if that were true, then everyone would be an artist because we all create products of some sort, and at the same time no one would be an artist because the word would mean nothing if we make no distinctions between artistic products and regular products — though this is precisely what postmodernism has attempted to do.
The definition of art seems to become broader over time. In the Victorian era, only classical, realistic art was considered true art, and the impressionists were scoffed at because their paintings were deemed incomplete sketches. Eventually, impressionism was accepted as true art.
The definition of art changed again with Picasso’s modern abstract paintings, and again with Andy Warhol, who introduced pop art.
Somewhere along the line, the definition of art became so broad that Duchamp’s “Fountain,” a urinal, is now considered a work of art — and Duchamp has many imitators, such as Tracey Emin and her unmade bed, which is accepted in galleries alongside Monet.
Yet so-called “found art” doesn’t fit the definition of art because the artists did not skillfully and creatively produce the work, and the pieces are far from beautiful; they are in fact particularly ugly everyday objects being posed as art.
Similarly, much of modern abstract art hardly fits the definition of real art; most abstract paintings are simply canvases painted a solid color, or splatters and scribbles, or deformed and simplistic figures that look like they were produced in less than five minutes. Such paintings cannot be considered true art because they require little skill, and they resemble children’s drawings more than the works of genuinely talented artists. When looking at modern abstract art in museums, many people think, “I could do that!” They’re probably correct that they are capable of scribbling on a canvas — yet are they capable of the radical dishonesty to claim that the scribbles are art?
Sophisticated Innocence 