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The Bath, a painting by Mary Cassatt (1844–1926).

The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night, Vincent van Gogh, September 1888.

Art refers to a diverse range of human activities and artifacts, and may be used to cover all or any of the arts, including music, literature and other forms. It is most often used to refer specifically to the visual arts, including media such as painting, sculpture, and printmaking. However it can also be applied to forms of art that stimulate the other senses, such as music, an auditory art. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy which considers art.

Traditionally the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery, a concept which altered during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science".^[1]
Generally art is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention
of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind; by
transmitting emotions and/or ideas. Beyond this description, there is
no general agreed-upon definition of art. Art is also able to
illustrate abstract thought and its expressions can elicit previously
hidden emotions in its audience.

The evaluation of art has become especially problematic since the 20th century. Richard Wollheim distinguishes three approaches: the Realist, whereby aesthetic quality is an absolute value independent of any human view; the Objectivist, whereby it is also an absolute value, but is dependent on general human experience; and the Relativist position, whereby it is not an absolute value, but depends on, and varies with, the human experience of different humans.^[2]
An object may be characterized by the intentions, or lack thereof, of
its creator, regardless of its apparent purpose. A cup, which
ostensibly can be used as a container, may be considered art if
intended solely as an ornament, while a painting may be deemed craft if
mass-produced.

Visual art is defined as the arrangement of colors, forms, or other
elements "in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically
the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium".^[3] The nature of art has been described by Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture".^[4]
It has been defined as a vehicle for the expression or communication of
emotions and ideas, a means for exploring and appreciating formal elements for their own sake, and as mimesis or representation.^[5] Leo Tolstoy identified art as a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another.^[5] Benedetto Croce and R.G. Collingwood advanced the idealist view that art expresses emotions, and that the work of art therefore essentially exists in the mind of the creator.^[6][7] Art as form has its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and was developed in the early twentieth century by Roger Fry and Clive Bell.^[5] Art as mimesis or representation has deep roots in the philosophy of Aristotle.^[5]

Usage

The most common usage of the word "art," which rose to prominence after 1750, is understood to denote skill used to produce an aesthetic result.^[8] Britannica Online
defines it as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of
aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with
others."^[9] By any of these definitions of the word, artistic works have existed for almost as long as humankind: from early pre-historic art to contemporary art. Much has been written about the concept of "art".^[10] Where Adorno said in 1970 "It is now taken for granted that nothing which concerns art can be taken for granted any more[...],"^[11],^[12] The first and broadest sense of art
is the one that has remained closest to the older Latin meaning, which
roughly translates to "skill" or "craft," and also from an Indo-European root
meaning "arrangement" or "to arrange". In this sense, art is whatever
is described as having undergone a deliberate process of arrangement by
an agent. A few examples where this meaning proves very broad include artifact, artificial, artifice, artillery, medical arts, and military arts. However, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology.

The second and more recent sense of the word art is as an abbreviation for creative art or fine art.
Fine art means that a skill is being used to express the artist’s
creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities, or to
draw the audience towards consideration of the finer things.
Often, if the skill is being used in a common or practical way, people
will consider it a craft instead of art. Likewise, if the skill is
being used in a commercial or industrial way, it will be considered Commercial art instead of art. On the other hand, crafts and design are sometimes considered applied art.
Some art followers have argued that the difference between fine art and
applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than
any clear definitional difference.^[13]
However, even fine art often has goals beyond pure creativity and
self-expression. The purpose of works of art may be to communicate
ideas, such as in politically-, spiritually-, or
philosophically-motivated art; to create a sense of beauty (see aesthetics); to explore the nature of perception; for pleasure; or to generate strong emotions. The purpose may also be seemingly nonexistent.

Painting by Song Dynasty artist Ma Lin, c. 1250. 24,8 × 25,2 cm.

The ultimate derivation of fine in fine art comes from the philosophy of Aristotle, who proposed four causes or explanations of a thing. The final cause of a thing is the purpose for its existence, and the term fine art
is derived from this notion. If the final cause of an artwork is simply
the artwork itself, "art for art's sake", and not a means to another
end, then that artwork could appropriately be called fine. The
closely related concept of beauty is classically defined as "that which
when seen, pleases". Pleasure is the final cause of beauty and thus is
not a means to another end, but an end in itself.

Art can describe several things: a study of creative skill, a
process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill,
or the audience’s experience with the creative skill. The creative arts
(art as discipline) are a collection of disciplines (arts) that produce artworks (art
as objects) that are compelled by a personal drive (art as activity)
and echo or reflect a message, mood, or symbolism for the viewer to
interpret (art as experience). Artworks can be defined by purposeful,
creative interpretations of limitless concepts or ideas in order to
communicate something to another person. Artworks can be explicitly
made for this purpose or interpreted based on images or objects. Art is
something that stimulates an individual's thoughts, emotions, beliefs,
or ideas through the senses. It is also an expression of an idea and it
can take many different forms and serve many different purposes.
Although the application of scientific theories to derive a new
scientific theory involves skill and results in the "creation" of
something new, this represents science only and is not categorized as
art.

Theories

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. 1917

In the nineteenth century, artists were primarily concerned with ideas of truth and beauty. The aesthetic theorist John Ruskin, who championed the raw naturalism of J. M. W. Turner, saw art's role as the communication by artifice of an essential truth that could only be found in nature.^[14] The arrival of Modernism in the early twentieth century lead to a radical break in the conception of the function of art,^[15] and then again in the late twentieth century with the advent of postmodernism. Clement Greenberg's
1960 article "Modernist Painting" defines Modern Art as "the use of
characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline
itself".^[16]
Greenberg originally applied this idea to the Abstract Expressionist
movement and used it as a way to understand and justify flat
(non-illusionistic) abstract painting:

Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to
conceal art; modernism used art to call attention to art. The
limitations that constitute the medium of painting – the flat surface,
the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment — were treated
by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only
implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came
to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly.^[16]

After Greenberg, several important art theorists emerged, such as Michael Fried, T. J. Clark, Rosalind Krauss, Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock
among others. Though only originally intended as a way of understanding
a specific set of artists, Greenberg's definition of Modern Art
underlies most of the ideas of art within the various art movements of
the 20th century and early 21st century. The art of Marcel Duchamp
becomes clear when seen within this context; when submitting a urinal,
titled fountain, to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917
he was critiquing the art exhibition using its own methods.

Pop artists like Andy Warhol became both noteworthy and influential through critiquing popular culture, as well as the art world,
through the language of that popular culture. Certain radical artists
of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s took those ideas further by expanding
this technique of self-criticism beyond high art to all cultural image-making, including fashion images, comics, billboards and pornography.

Utility

One of the defining characteristics of fine art as opposed to applied art is the absence of any clear usefulness or utilitarian
value. However, this requirement is sometimes criticized as being class
prejudice against labor and utility. Opponents of the view that art
cannot be useful, argue that all human activity has some utilitarian
function, and the objects claimed to be "non-utilitarian" actually have
the function of attempting to mystify and codify flawed social
hierarchies. It is also sometimes argued that even seemingly non-useful
art is not useless, but rather that its use is the effect it has on the
psyche of the creator or viewer.

Art is also used by art therapists, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists as art therapy. Art can also be used as a tool of Personality Test.
The end product is not the principal goal in this case, but rather a
process of healing, through creative acts, is sought. The resultant
piece of artwork may also offer insight into the troubles experienced
by the subject and may suggest suitable approaches to be used in more
conventional forms of psychiatric therapy.

Spray-paint graffiti on a wall in Rome.

Graffiti art and other types of street art are graphics and images that are spray-painted or stencilled
on publicly viewable walls, buildings, buses, trains, and bridges,
usually without permission. This type of art is part of various youth
cultures, such as the US hip-hop culture. It is used to express political views and depict creative images.

In a social context, art can serve to boost the public's morale. Art is often utilized as a form of propaganda,
and thus can be used to subtly influence popular conceptions or mood.
In some cases, artworks are appropriated to be used in this manner,
without the creator having initially intended the art to be used as
propaganda. From an anthropological perspective, art is often a way of
passing ideas and concepts on to later generations in a (somewhat)
universal language. The interpretation of this language depends upon
the observer’s perspective and context. So conversely the very
subjectivity of art demonstrates its importance in facilitating the
exchange and discussion of rival ideas, or to provide a social context
in which disparate groups of people might congregate and mingle.

Classification disputes

Main article: Classificatory disputes about art

Image of a horse from the Lascaux caves.

It is common in the history of art
for people to dispute whether a particular form or work, or particular
piece of work counts as art or not. In fact for much of the past
century the idea of art has been to simply challenge what art is. Philosophers
of Art call these disputes “classificatory disputes about art.” For
example, Ancient Greek philosophers debated about whether or not ethics should be considered the "art of living well". Classificatory disputes in the 20th century included: cubist and impressionist paintings, Duchamp’s Fountain, the movies, superlative imitations of banknotes, propaganda, and even a crucifix immersed in urine. Conceptual art often intentionally pushes the boundaries of what counts as art. New media such as Video games
slowly become co-opted by artists and/or recognized as art forms in its
own right, though these new classification shifts are not universally
adopted and remain the subject of dispute. ^[17]

Philosopher David Novitz has argued that disagreement about the
definition of art are rarely the heart of the problem. Rather, "the
passionate concerns and interests that humans vest in their social
life" are "so much a part of all classificatory disputes about art"
(Novitz, 1996). According to Novitz, classificatory disputes are more
often disputes about our values and where we are trying to go with our
society than they are about theory proper. For example, when the Daily Mail criticized Hirst's and Emin’s
work by arguing "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great
civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to
make barbarians of us all" they are not advancing a definition or
theory about art, but questioning the value of Hirst’s and Emin’s work.^[18] In 1998, Arthur Danto,
suggested a thought experiment showing that "the status of an artifact
as work of art results from the ideas a culture applies to it, rather
than its inherent physical or perceptible qualities. Cultural
interpretation (an art theory of some kind) is therefore constitutive
of an object’s arthood."^[19][20]

Controversial art

Theodore Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa" (1820), was a social commentary on a current event, unprecedented at the time. Edouard Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe" (1863), was considered scandalous not because of the nude woman, but because she is seated next to fully-dressed men. John Singer Sargent's "Madame Pierre Gautreau (Madam X)"
(1884), caused a huge uproar over the reddish pink used to color the
woman's ear lobe, considered far too suggestive and supposedly ruining
the high-society model's reputation.

In the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) used arresting cubist
techniques and stark monochromatic oils, to depict the harrowing
consequences of a contemporary bombing of a small, ancient Basque town.
Leon Golub's Interrogation III
(1981), depicts a female nude, hooded detainee strapped to a chair, her
legs open to reveal her sexual organs, surrounded by two tormentors
dressed in everyday clothing. Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1989) is a photograph of a crucifix, sacred to the Christian religion and representing Christ's
sacrifice and final suffering, submerged in a glass of the artist's own
urine. The resulting uproar led to comments in the United States Senate
about public funding of the arts.

In the twenty-first century, Eric Fischl created Tumbling Woman as a memorial to those who jumped or fell to their death in the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Initially installed at Rockefeller Center in New York City, within a year the work was removed as too disturbing.^[21]

Art, class and value

Versailles: Louis Le Vau opened up the interior court to create the expansive entrance cour d'honneur, later copied all over Europe

Art has been perceived by some as belonging to some social classes
and often excluding others. In this context, art is seen as an
upper-class activity associated with wealth, the ability to purchase
art, and the leisure required to pursue or enjoy it. For example, the palaces of Versailles or the Hermitage in St. Petersburg
with their vast collections of art, amassed by the fabulously wealthy
royalty of Europe exemplify this view. Collecting such art is the
preserve of the rich, or of governments and institutions.

Fine and expensive goods have been popular markers of status
in many cultures, and continue to be so today. There has been a
cultural push in the other direction since at least 1793, when the
Louvre, which had been a private palace of the Kings of France, was
opened to the public as an art museum during the French Revolution.
Most modern public museums and art education programs for children in
schools can be traced back to this impulse to have art available to
everyone. Museums in the United States tend to be gifts from the very
rich to the masses (The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, for example, was created by John Taylor Johnston,
a railroad executive whose personal art collection seeded the museum.)
But despite all this, at least one of the important functions of art in
the 21st century remains as a marker of wealth and social status.

Performance by Joseph Beuys, 1978 : Everyone an artist — On the way to the libertarian form of the social organism.

There have been attempts by artists to create art that can not be
bought by the wealthy as a status object. One of the prime original
motivators of much of the art of the late 1960s and 1970s was to create
art that could not be bought and sold. It is "necessary to present
something more than mere objects"^[22] said the major post war German artist Joseph Beuys. This time period saw the rise of such things as performance art, video art, and conceptual art.
The idea was that if the artwork was a performance that would leave
nothing behind, or was simply an idea, it could not be bought and sold.
"Democratic precepts revolving around the idea that a work of art is a
commodity impelled the aesthetic innovation which germinated in the
mid-1960s and was reaped throughout the 1970s. Artists broadly
identified under the heading of Conceptual art... substituting
performance and publishing activities for engagement with both the
material and materialistic concerns of painted or sculptural form...
[have] endeavored to undermine the art object qua object."^[23]

In the decades since, these ideas have been somewhat lost as the art
market has learned to sell limited edition DVDs of video works,^[24]
invitations to exclusive performance art pieces, and the objects left
over from conceptual pieces. Many of these performances create works
that are only understood by the elite who have been educated as to why
an idea or video or piece of apparent garbage may be considered art.
The marker of status becomes understanding the work instead of
necessarily owning it, and the artwork remains an upper-class activity.
"With the widespread use of DVD recording technology in the early
2000s, artists, and the gallery system that derives its profits from
the sale of artworks, gained an important means of controlling the sale
of video and computer artworks in limited editions to collectors."^[25]

Forms, genres, mediums, and styles

Main article: The arts

The creative arts are often divided into more specific categories, such as decorative arts, plastic arts, performing arts, or literature. So for example painting is a form of visual art, and poetry is a form of literature. An art form is a specific form for artistic expression to take; it is a more specific term than art, but less specific than genre. An artistic medium
is the substance the artistic work is made out of. So for example,
stone and bronze are both mediums that sculpture uses sometimes.
Multiple forms can share a medium (poetry and music, both use sound),
or one form can use multiple media.

A genre is a set of conventions and styles within an art form and media. For instance, well recognized genres in film are western, horror and romantic comedy. Genres in music include death metal and trip hop. Genres in painting include still life, and pastoral landscape.
A particular work of art may bend or combine genres but each genre has
a recognizable group of conventions, clichés and troupes. (One note:
the word genre has a second older meaning within painting; genre painting
was a phrase used in the 17th to 19th century to refer specifically to
paintings of scenes of everyday life and can still be used in this way.)

Detail of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, showing the painting technique of sfumato.

An artwork, artist’s, or movement's style is the
distinctive method and form that art takes. Any loose brushy, dripped
or poured abstract painting is called expressionistic (with a lower
case "e" and the "ic" at the end). Often these styles are linked with a
particular historical period, set of ideas, and particular artistic
movement. So Jackson Pollock is called an Abstract Expressionist. Because a particular style has very specific cultural meanings it is important to be sensitive to differences in technique. Roy Lichtenstein's paintings are not pointillist,
despite his uses of dots, because they are not aligned with the
original proponents of Pointillism. Lichtenstein used Ben-Day dots:
they are evenly-spaced and create flat areas of color. These types of
dots were used to color comic strips and are intended to combine the
"high" art of painting with the "low" art of comics - to comment on
culture and its unreality. Pointillism employs dots that are spaced in
a way to create variation in color and depth - it was an attempt to
paint images that were closer to the way we really see color - an
attempt to get closer to reality. They both use dots but the meaning is
opposite.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849), colored woodcut print.

These are all ways of beginning to define a work of art, to narrow
it down. "Imagine you are an art critic whose mission is to compare the
meanings you find in a wide range of individual artworks. How would you
proceed with your task? One way to begin is to examine the materials
each artist selected in making an object, image video, or event. The
decision to cast a sculpture in bronze, for instance, inevitably
effects its meaning; the work becomes something different than if it
had been cast in gold or plastic or chocolate, even if everything else
about the artwork remained the same. Next, you might examine how the
materials in each artwork have become an arrangement of shapes, colors,
textures, and lines. These, in turn, are organized into various
patterns and compositional structures. In your interpretation, you
would comment on how salient features of the form contribute to the
overall meaning of the finished artwork. [But in the end] the meaning
of most artworks... is not exhausted by a discussion of materials,
techniques, and form. Most interpretations also include a discussion of
the ideas and feelings the artwork engenders."^[26]

History

Main article: History of Art

Venus of Willendorf.

Art predates history; sculptures, cave paintings, rock paintings, and petroglyphs from the Upper Paleolithic
starting roughly 40,000 years ago have been found, but the precise
meaning of such art is often disputed because so little is known about
the cultures that produced them. The oldest art objects in the world: a
series of tiny, drilled snail shells about 75,000yrs old, were
discovered in a South African cave.^[27]

The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the great ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Ancient Greece, Rome, or Arabia (ancient Yemen and Oman).
Each of these centers of early civilization developed a unique and
characteristic style in their art. Because of the size and duration
these civilizations, more of their art works have survived and more of
their influence has been transmitted to other cultures and later times.
They have also provided the first records of how artists worked. For
example, this period of Greek art saw a veneration of the human
physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show
musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions

In Byzantine and Gothic art
of the Western Middle Ages, art focused on the expression of Biblical
and not material truths, and emphasized methods which would show the
higher unseen glory of a heavenly world, such as the use of gold in
paintings, or glass in mosaics or windows, which also presented figures
in idealized, patterned (flat) forms.

The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire was written in Arabic calligraphy. It reads Mahmud Khan son of Abdulhamid is forever victorious.

The western Renaissance
saw a return to valuation of the material world, and the place of
humans in it, and this paradigm shift is reflected in art forms, which
show the corporeality of the human body, and the three dimensional
reality of landscape.

Landscape of pine valley, by Ming Dynasty artist Chen Hongshou.

In the east, Islamic art's rejection of iconography led to emphasis on geometric patterns, Islamic calligraphy, and architecture.
Further east, religion dominated artistic styles and forms too. India
and Tibet saw emphasis on painted sculptures and dance with religious
painting borrowing many conventions from sculpture and tending to
bright contrasting colors with emphasis on outlines. China saw many art
forms flourish, jade carving, bronzework, pottery (including the
stunning terracotta army
of Emperor Qin), poetry, calligraphy, music, painting, drama, fiction,
etc. Chinese styles vary greatly from era to era and are traditionally
named after the ruling dynasty. So, for example, Tang Dynasty paintings are monochromatic and sparse, emphasizing idealized landscapes, but Ming Dynasty
paintings are busy, colorful, and focus on telling stories via setting
and composition. Japan names its styles after imperial dynasties too,
and also saw much interplay between the styles of calligraphy and
painting. Woodblock printing became important in Japan after the 17th century.

The western Age of Enlightenment
in the 18th century saw artistic depictions of physical and rational
certainties of the clockwork universe, as well as politically
revolutionary visions of a post-monarchist world, such as Blake’s
portrayal of Newton as a divine geometer, or David’s propagandistic
paintings. This led to Romantic rejections of this in favor of pictures of the emotional side and individuality of humans, exemplified in the novels of Goethe. The late 19th century then saw a host of artistic movements, such as academic art, symbolism, impressionism and fauvism among others.

By the 20th century these pictures were falling apart, shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein^[28] and of unseen psychology by Freud,^[29]
but also by unprecedented technological development accelerated by the
implosion of civilisation in two world wars. The history of twentieth
century art is a narrative of endless possibilities and the search for
new standards, each being torn down in succession by the next. Thus the
parameters of Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc cannot be maintained very much beyond the time of their invention. Increasing global
interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other
cultures into Western art, such as Pablo Picasso being influenced by African sculpture.
Japanese woodblock prints (which had themselves been influenced by
Western Renaissance draftsmanship) had an immense influence on
Impressionism and subsequent development. Later, African sculptures
were taken up by Picasso and to some extent by Matisse. Similarly, the west has had huge impacts on Eastern art in 19th and 20th century, with originally western ideas like Communism and Post-Modernism exerting powerful influence on artistic styles.

Modernism, the idealistic search for truth, gave way in the latter
half of the 20th century to a realization of its unattainability.
Relativity was accepted as an unavoidable truth, which led to the
period of contemporary art and postmodern criticism,
where cultures of the world and of history are seen as changing forms,
which can be appreciated and drawn from only with irony. Furthermore
the separation of cultures is increasingly blurred and some argue it is
now more appropriate to think in terms of a global culture, rather than
regional cultures.

Characteristics

Art tends to facilitate intuitive rather than rational understanding, and is usually consciously created with this intention. Fine art
intentionally serves no other purpose. As a result of this impetus,
works of art are elusive, refractive to attempts at classification,
because they can be appreciated in more than one way, and are often
susceptible to many different interpretations. In the case of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa,
special knowledge concerning the shipwreck that the painting depicts is
not a prerequisite to appreciating it, but allows the appreciation of
Gericault's political intentions in the piece. Even art that
superficially depicts a mundane event or object, may invite reflection
upon elevated themes.

Traditionally, the highest achievements of art demonstrate a high
level of ability or fluency within a medium. This characteristic might
be considered a point of contention, since many modern artists (most
notably, conceptual artists) do not themselves create the works they
conceive, or do not even create the work in a conventional,
demonstrative sense. Art has a transformative capacity: confers
particularly appealing or aesthetically satisfying structures or forms
upon an original set of unrelated, passive constituents.

Skill and craft

Adam. Detail from Michelangelo's fresco in the Cappella Sistina (1511)

Art can connote a sense of trained ability or mastery of a medium. Art can also simply refer to the developed and efficient use of a language
to convey meaning with immediacy and or depth. Art is an act of
expressing our feelings, thoughts, and observations. There is an
understanding that is reached with the material as a result of handling
it, which facilitates one's thought processes.

A common view is that the epithet “art”, particular in its elevated
sense, requires a certain level of creative expertise by the artist,
whether this be a demonstration of technical ability or an originality
in stylistic approach such as in the plays of Shakespeare,
or a combination of these two. Traditionally skill of execution was
viewed as a quality inseparable from art and thus necessary for its
success; for Leonardo da Vinci, art, neither more nor less than his other endeavors, was a manifestation of skill. Rembrandt's
work, now praised for its ephemeral virtues, was most admired by his
contemporaries for its virtuosity. At the turn of the 20th century, the
adroit performances of John Singer Sargent
were alternately admired and viewed with skepticism for their manual
fluency, yet at nearly the same time the artist who would become the
era's most recognized and peripatetic iconoclast, Pablo Picasso, was completing a traditional academic training at which he excelled.

A common contemporary criticism of some modern art
occurs along the lines of objecting to the apparent lack of skill or
ability required in the production of the artistic object. One might
take Tracey Emin's My Bed, or Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,
as examples of pieces wherein the artist exercised little to no
traditionally recognised set of skills, but may be said to have
innovated by exercising skill in manipulating the mass media
as a medium. In the first case, Emin simply slept (and engaged in other
activities) in her bed before placing the result in a gallery. She has
been insistent that there is a high degree of selection and arrangement
in this work, which include objects such as underwear and bottles
around the bed. The shocking mundanity of this arrangement has proved
to be startling enough to lead others to begin to interpret the work as
art. In the second case, Hirst came up with the conceptual design for
the artwork. Although he physically participated in the creation of
this piece, he has left the eventual creation of many other works to
employed artisans. In this case the celebrity of Hirst is founded
entirely on his ability to produce shocking concepts. The actual
production is, as with most objects, a matter of assembly. These
approaches are exemplary of a particular kind of contemporary art known
as conceptual art.

Value judgment

Aboriginal hollow log tombs. National Gallery, Canberra, Australia.

Somewhat in relation to the above, the word art is also used
to apply judgments of value, as in such expressions like "that meal was
a work of art" (the cook is an artist), or "the art of deception," (the
highly attained level of skill of the deceiver is praised). It is this
use of the word as a measure of high quality and high value that gives
the term its flavor of subjectivity.

Making judgments of value requires a basis for criticism. At the
simplest level, a way to determine whether the impact of the object on
the senses meets the criteria to be considered art, is whether
it is perceived to be attractive or repulsive. Though perception is
always colored by experience, and is necessarily subjective, it is
commonly taken that - that which is not aesthetically satisfying in
some fashion cannot be art. However, "good" art is not always or even
regularly aesthetically appealing to a majority of viewers. In other
words, an artist's prime motivation need not be the pursuit of the
aesthetic. Also, art often depicts terrible images made for social,
moral, or thought-provoking reasons. For example, Francisco Goya's painting depicting the Spanish shootings of 3rd of May 1808,
is a graphic depiction of a firing squad executing several pleading
civilians. Yet at the same time, the horrific imagery demonstrates
Goya's keen artistic ability in composition and execution and produces
fitting social and political outrage. Thus, the debate continues as to
what mode of aesthetic satisfaction, if any, is required to define
'art'.

The assumption of new values or the rebellion against accepted
notions of what is aesthetically superior need not occur concurrently
with a complete abandonment of the pursuit of that which is
aesthetically appealing. Indeed, the reverse is often true, that in the
revision of what is popularly conceived of as being aesthetically
appealing, allows for a re-invigoration of aesthetic sensibility, and a
new appreciation for the standards of art itself. Countless schools
have proposed their own ways to define quality, yet they all seem to
agree in at least one point: once their aesthetic choices are accepted,
the value of the work of art is determined by its capacity to transcend
the limits of its chosen medium in order to strike some universal chord
by the rarity of the skill of the artist or in its accurate reflection
in what is termed the zeitgeist.

Communication

Art is often intended to appeal and connect with human emotion. It can arouse aesthetic or moral feelings, and can be understood as a way of communicating these feelings. Artists
express something so that their audience is aroused to some extent, but
they do not have to do so consciously. Art explores what is commonly
termed as the human condition
that is essentially what it is to be human. Effective art often brings
about some new insight concerning the human condition either singly or
en-mass, which is not necessarily always positive, or necessarily
widens the boundaries of collective human ability. The degree of skill
that the artist has, will affect their ability to trigger an emotional
response and thereby provide new insights, the ability to manipulate
them at will shows exemplary skill and determination.

See also

• List of basic art topics
• Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

Notes

Bibliography

• Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art. 2003
• Dana Arnold and Margaret Iverson (eds.) Art and Thought. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2003.
• Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey (eds.) Art History and Visual Studies. Yale University Press, 2002.
• John Whitehead. Grasping for the Wind. 2001
• Noel Carroll, Theories of Art Today. 2000
• Evelyn Hatcher, ed. Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art. 1999
• Catherine de Zegher (ed.). Inside the Visible. MIT Press, 1996.
• Nina, Felshin, ed. But is it Art? 1995
• Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art. 1991
• Oscar Wilde, "Intentions".
• Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel, "Themes of Contemporary Art, Visual Art after 1980." 2005

Further reading

• Richard Wollheim, Art and its Objects
• Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols
• Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, 1902
• Władysław Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas: an Essay in Aesthetics, translated from the Polish by Christopher Kasparek, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.
• Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?, 1897
• Kleiner, Gardner, Mamiya and Tansey (2004). Art Through the Ages, Twelfth Edition (2 volumes). Wadsworth. ISBN 0-534-64095-8 (vol 1) and ISBN 0-534-64091-5 (vol 2).

External links

• Art and Play from the Dictionary of the History of ideas
• In-depth directory of art
• Art and Artist Files in the Smithsonian Libraries Collection (2005) Smithsonian Digital Libraries
• Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) - online collections from UK museums, galleries, universities
• Artforum magazine - online art reviews - also previews of upcoming exhibitions
• Article on the meaning of Art in Ancient India on the website of Frontline