So, What is Art?
“I don’t know much about Art, but I know what I like…”
…there has always been difficulty in defining exactly what art is and that old ‘chestnut’ may be one of the best definitions we can agree on!
The definition of art is closely linked to the aesthetics of the culture that produced it and those perceptions of aesthetics vary so much from culture to culture. Even from person to person. Oh, no! Now there are two more words that we need to define: ‘Aesthetics’ and ‘Culture’… but perhaps art is its own definition, and the art a culture produces, defines that culture?
Let’s look at the word, derived from the Roman Latin word, ‘ars’ — which was defined as ‘a thing of beauty that is of human (as opposed to natural) origin’. (I think it’s pronounced ‘arz’ but it gets more laughs if you say ‘arse’.) Hence other similar words such as ‘artificial’, ‘artifice’… but just because something is artificial, it does not mean it is art… which means that there has to be a judgement of whether the thing is beautiful or not.
So, what is ‘beauty’? And…
We’re right back to cultural differences and aesthetic perceptions…
In antiquity, there was not just ‘art’, there were ‘the arts’, which were perceived to be of two orders:
The first order were the liberal arts, or artes liberales, which were: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music and Philosophy — which was the highest of all and from which all other arts were derived. Aesthetics was a philosophy of beauty.
The second, lesser, order of arts were the technical arts: Architecture, Agriculture, Painting, Sculpture… and other manual Crafts, which seems closest to how most people think of ‘the arts’ today. So, perhaps we should show more cultural appreciation for the ploughed furrows of the farmer’s field and consider them as eARTh art.
So what is ‘art’?
I don’t think there will be a definitive answer, though we can explore and discuss what makes good, or at least successful, art. I predict this will become a recurring theme in The Signifier.
