What is your definition of art?

A work/performance that is created with the intent to evoke emotion in an observer/listener.

I think gorillapaws’ answer is pretty good. Art is not easy to define, but I think it being created is essential. An accident of nature can be beautiful, but I won’t call it art since it wasn’t created, there’s no intention there. But not everything created is art. In order for it to be art, it has to be intended to be appreciated or regarded for aesthetic qualities. It doesn’t matter if I don’t find it beautiful, even disgust is a form of regard for aesthetic qualities.

I agree with the answers above. @gorillapaws is spot on. Intent and purposeful action is important too. I might add,

A representative or interpretive work/performance that is created with the intent to evoke emotion in an observer/listener.

Playing devil’s advocate with myself here: Would we consider it art if someone writes stories, paints, etc. only for themselves and never even shows anyone else, or even looks at it again after they’ve made it? Like if Picasso painted a masterpiece and then immediately incinerated it?

Is something as calculated and rule driven as a realism portrait considered art then?

@rockfan Photographs are realistic, but they convey a ton of emotion.

Just one consideration. By the definition given by @gorillapaws, wouldn’t a tweet by Trump then be considered art?

I would define “art” as a man-made interpretation. It could be an interpretation of something the artist sees or feels or thinks.

@seawulf575 Good point. One could argue that politics is a kind of “theatre.” It doesn’t really seem to fit with what most of us would consider art though.

@gorillapaws and oftentimes Trump tweets idiotic things designed to invoke a feeling in people. When he calls CNN Fake News, he is seeking to invoke the distrust of CNN, for example.

@seawulf575 Your definition is interesting. Would you consider an archeologist trying to interpret the purpose of a man-made artifact as art?

Interestingly enough, there’s a movie critic that listed he Kavanaugh hearings on his top ten list.

Stuff I like. The rest is merely there to trick the “unwashed”.

Trump is somebody’s work of art. He’s certainly colorful and unique. The colors are of course hideous, and the work evokes the concomitant emotions. The fool is a masterpiece.

@gorillapaws I guess there is a certain amount of art to archeology. But maybe I should put my definition together and say Art is the man-made interpretation of what the artist sees, feels or thinks.

@seawulf575 I’m liking it. I’m going to turn it over in my head for a while to see if I can come up with other edge-cases.

It’s a such a personal thing. It’s whatever a person thinks it is.

An imaginative creation intended to express something.

@Dutchess_III evaluating art is a personal thing, that is for sure. But the artist has something specific in mind almost every time. His/her skill at their art will determine if others can get their intention out of it.

My sister is an artists. The things she creates has a great deal of deep meaning to her. I don’t see it. It’s just morbid, in my opinion. It’s art, because it is, but I don’t like it.
She gets upset if I don’t understand her deeper meaning.

There’s a great deal of self righteous, pretentious snobbery when it comes to art, wine, food etc
Truth is, it’s really simple, art is something, anything creative like comedy or even a precision car engine can be defined as a piece of art.

@ucme If you define art that broadly, then the term ceases to mean anything. Defecating in a hole would qualify as art under that standard. Some people may believe that’s art, but I would argue against it.

I don’t define it. I don’t try to define aesthetic quality or what it means to create something, nor do I think “art” = “what I like” and “non-art” = “what I don’t like.” A lot of words have been spent on this subject over the centuries, and I don’t know of any that have closed the question.

What I do think is that there are big broad expanses of things that we can pretty much agree are art (the paintings of Rembrandt, the music of Mozart) and others that we can agree are not art (mayonnaise, a sandy beach, an office building, an amoeba), although in some cases artistry may have gone into their creation. I love cheese, but I don’t consider it art; however, there is an art to cheesemaking (and we obscure our distinctions when we subtly shift the definitions of words to fit various contexts).

Where we run into questions and conflicts is when we try to define an exact line that separates what is art from what is not art. It’s the gray area in between that perplexes us. People will draw the line in different places.

I say it doesn’t matter. We also have trouble stating precisely where the line of demarcation is between seashore and nonseashore, between sleep and nonsleep, between food and nonfood, between chair and nonchair. For most purposes it’s simply unimportant. We aren’t writing dictionaries or interpreting laws; or if we are, we’re employing words to a purpose that may serve some pragmatic need but will not enhance our understanding of art.

If I say something is art and you say it isn’t, what difference does it make? I honestly don’t care if you agree with me or not unless we’re judging a contest together.

But without defining it, I think I can describe art a little bit.

One thing I do think is that art in some respect man-made. Even scholar’s rocks, naturally occurring rock formations, become a human product when they are selected, placed on a pedestal, and displayed.

Art has boundaries. It has a frame, or a performance space, or a beginning and end, or dimensions of volume, or an interval of time, or some other definable limitation. If something is infinite or unbounded or endlessly mutable, it is not art.

Art is perceived. If it is not accessible to the human sensory apparatus, it is not art.

And something can, of course, be all those things and not be art.

Finally, I think something can be art at one time and not at another.

That gray area—it’s very broad. So much the better for art.

@gorillapaws You can argue all you want, makes no difference to the central point, art is whatever any individual personally defines it as such, a simple universal truth.
Anyone who says the sky’s the limit, tell them there are footprints on the moon.

This is one of those questions I think about too much and confuse myself. Like when my music appreciation teacher asked what music was and that some people considered ambient noise music and the whole class freaked out.

First I thought art has to be on purpose, but then there’s been accidental art, right? Or was the art accidental but the interpretation was on purpose?

Now I’m more confused.

For my own definition. Art is something that ones emotion expresses into something and brings it to life.

I’ll take the definition of Mu Xin who was imprisoned for his art during the Cultural Revolution in China.
“What is art in the final analysis? Art is the shining forth of one’s interiority.”

Do you supposed artists get upset when people can’t read the meaning they put into their pieces?

@Dutchess_III No, most artists feel they put in what they put in and you take what you want out of their art.

My definition of art is the group of things that are not on my list of things that I consider “not art”.
Things on that “not art” list include:
Golden toilets.
Literal piles of trash.
Women shitting paint filled eggs out of their vaginas onto a canvas in a public square.
Pictures of soup cans.
Jackson pollock.

@Dutchess_III No is the answer. Real artists appreciates those appreciate their works of emotion, and don’t care to the others don’t.

My sister certainly seems to care.