When we hear that word, we usually think of museums or framed pictures, and in that context

some people think: "I'm not a big fan of art. I just don't understand it." Or they think that art is
only for intellectuals or people interested in art. But art is actually for everyone who wants to
experience it.

And it's in more places than you might think. Songs you love, movies you watch, poetry,
theatre, or even a quilt your grandmother made. All that, and even more, is art. So, you might
be asking, "So what exactly is art?" How to define it? It is hard. Art has been around for
thousands of years and has developed in different directions over time.

Also, the reasons for creating art vary from person to person, depending on many factors.
Therefore, defining art is very difficult and has been debated throughout history. There is
simply no definition that everyone has agreed upon. However, many believe that art is
anything that moves feelings in a person.

However, the feelings that are triggered in you depend solely on your past, your story and
everything that makes you who you are. And because of this, three different people can
experience the same work of art and have completely different reactions to it. One person may
think it is the most beautiful thing they have ever seen, another person may not like the same
work at all, and a third person may feel nothing.

And none of them would be wrong. Everyone is entitled to their preferences and feelings when
it comes to art. Let's say, the feelings you have towards your favourite song can be the same as
someone feels towards their favourite sculpture. And while you may not like that sculpture, it
may be worth considering why that person enjoys it so much.

You might learn something about them, and maybe even about yourself. The term "art" is
really just a label. Over the years, many people have tried to define what art is and isn't, but
that really isn't what art is about. The essence is your personal experience with art and the
meaning you can derive from it. Everyone responds to art differently and everyone has
opportunities to grow and learn through art.

It gives us the opportunity to tell stories and perpetuate history and immerse ourselves in our
emotions as few things can stir in us.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZQyV9BB50E&t=8s

Art, a visual object or experience consciously created through an expression of skill or

imagination. The term art encompasses diverse media such as painting, sculpture, printmaking,
drawing, decorative arts, photography, and installation.

The various visual arts exist within a continuum that ranges from purely aesthetic purposes at
one end to purely utilitarian purposes at the other. Such a polarity of purpose is reflected in the
commonly used terms artist and artisan, the latter understood as one who gives considerable
attention to the utilitarian. This should by no means be taken as a rigid scheme, however. Even
within one form of art, motives may vary widely; thus, a potter or a weaver may create a highly
functional work that is at the same time beautiful—a salad bowl, for example, or a blanket—or
may create works that have no purpose beyond being admired. In cultures such as those of
Africa and Oceania, a definition of art that encompasses this continuum has existed for
centuries. In the West, however, by the mid-18th century the development of academies for
painting and sculpture established a sense that these media were “art” and therefore separate
from more utilitarian media. This separation of art forms continued among art institutions until
the late 20th century, when such rigid distinctions began to be questioned.

Particularly in the 20th century, a different sort of debate arose over the definition of art. A
seminal moment in this discussion occurred in 1917, when Dada artist Marcel Duchamp
submitted a porcelain urinal entitled Fountain to a public exhibition in New York City. Through
this act, Duchamp put forth a new definition of what constitutes a work of art: he implied that
it is enough for an artist to deem something “art” and put it in a publicly accepted venue.
Implicit within this gesture was a challenge to the established art institutions—such as
museums, exhibiting groups, and galleries—that have the power to determine what is and is
not considered art. Such intellectual experimentation continued throughout the 20th century
in movements such as conceptual art and minimalism. By the turn of the 21st century, a variety
of new media (e.g., video art) further challenged traditional definitions of art.

Art is treated in a number of articles. For general discussions of the foundations, principles,
practice, and character of art, see aesthetics. See also art conservation and restoration.

For the technical and theoretical aspects of traditional categories of art, see drawing; painting;
printmaking; sculpture. For technical and historical discussions of decorative arts and
furnishings, see basketry; enamelwork; floral decoration; furniture; glassware; interior design;
lacquerwork; metalwork; mosaic; pottery; rug and carpet; stained glass; tapestry. See
photography for a complete history of that medium.

For treatments of the various arts as practiced by specific peoples and cultures, see, for
example, African art; Central Asian arts; Egyptian art and architecture; Islamic arts; Oceanic art
and architecture; South Asian arts.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/art/visual-arts

Ways of Defining Art

By Lisa Marder

about-copy.com-photo

Lisa Marder

MLA, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Lisa Marder is an artist and educator who studied drawing and painting at Harvard University.
She is an instructor at the South Shore Art Centre in Massachusetts when she is not working on
her own art.

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Updated on July 26, 2019

There is no one universal definition of visual art though there is a general consensus that art is
the conscious creation of something beautiful or meaningful using skill and imagination. The
definition and perceived value of works of art have changed throughout history and in different
cultures. The Jean Basquiat painting that sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s auction in May
2017 would, no doubt, have had trouble finding an audience in Renaissance Italy, for example.1
Etymology

The term “art” is related to the Latin word “ars” meaning, art, skill, or craft. The first known use
of the word comes from 13th-century manuscripts. However, the word art and its many
variants (artem, eart, etc.) have probably existed since the founding of Rome.

Philosophy of Art

The definition of art has been debated for centuries among philosophers. “What is art?” is the
most basic question in the philosophy of aesthetics, which really means, “How do we
determine what is defined as art?” This implies two subtexts: the essential nature of art, and its
social importance (or lack of it). The definition of art has generally fallen into three categories:
representation, expression, and form.

Art as Representation or Mimesis. Plato first developed the idea of art as “mimesis,” which, in
Greek, means copying or imitation. For this reason, the primary meaning of art was, for
centuries, defined as the representation or replication of something that is beautiful or
meaningful. Until roughly the end of the eighteenth century, a work of art was valued on the
basis of how faithfully it replicated its subject. This definition of "good art" has had a profound
impact on modern and contemporary artists; as Gordon Graham writes, “It leads people to
place a high value on very lifelike portraits such as those by the great masters—Michelangelo,
Rubens, Velásquez, and so on—and to raise questions about the value of ‘modern’ art—the
cubist distortions of Picasso, the surrealist figures of Jan Miro, the abstracts of Kandinsky or the
‘action’ paintings of Jackson Pollock.” While representational art still exists today, it is no longer
the only measure of value.

Art as Expression of Emotional Content. Expression became important during the Romantic
movement with artwork expressing a definite feeling, as in the sublime or dramatic. Audience
response was important, for the artwork was intended to evoke an emotional response. This
definition holds true today, as artists look to connect with and evoke responses from their
viewers.

Art as Form. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was one of the most influential of the early theorists
toward the end of the 18th century. He believed that art should not have a concept but should
be judged only on its formal qualities because the content of a work of art is not of aesthetic
interest. Formal qualities became particularly important when art became more abstract in the
20th century, and the principles of art and design (balance, rhythm, harmony, unity) were used
to define and assess art.

Today, all three modes of definition come into play in determining what is art, and its value,
depending on the artwork being assessed.

History of How Art Is Defined

According to H.W Janson, author of the classic art textbook, The History of Art, “...we cannot
escape viewing works of art in the context of time and circumstance, whether past or present.
How indeed could it be otherwise, so long as art is still being created all around us, opening our
eyes almost daily to new experiences and thus forcing us to adjust our sights?”

Throughout the centuries in Western culture from the 11th century on through the end of the
17th century, the definition of art was anything done with skill as the result of knowledge and
practice. This meant that artists honed their craft, learning to replicate their subjects skilfully.
The epitome of this occurred during the Dutch Golden Age when artists were free to paint in all
sorts of different genres and made a living off their art in the robust economic and cultural
climate of 17th century Netherlands.

During the Romantic period of the 18th century, as a reaction to the Enlightenment and its
emphasis on science, empirical evidence, and rational thought, art began to be described as
not just being something done with skill, but something that was also created in the pursuit of
beauty and to express the artist’s emotions. Nature was glorified, and spirituality and free
expression were celebrated. Artists, themselves, achieved a level of notoriety and were often
guests of the aristocracy.

The Avant-garde art movement began in the 1850s with the realism of Gustave Courbet. It was
followed by other modern art movements such as cubism, futurism, and surrealism, in which
the artist pushed the boundaries of ideas and creativity. These represented innovative
approaches to art-making and the definition of what is art expanded to include the idea of the
originality of vision.

The idea of originality in art persists, leading to ever more genres and manifestations of art,
such as digital art, performance art, conceptual art, environmental art, electronic art, etc.

Quotes

There are as many ways to define art as there are people in the universe, and each definition is
influenced by the unique perspective of that person, as well as by their own personality and
character. For example:

Rene Magritte

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms
suitable for human use.

Thomas Merton

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

Pablo Picasso

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

All art is but imitation of nature.

Edgar Degas

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Jean Sibelius

Art is the signature of civilizations.

Leo Tolstoy

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain
external signs, hands-on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by
these feelings and also experience them.

Conclusion

Today we consider the earliest symbolic scribblings of mankind to be art. As Chip Walter, of
National Geographic, writes about these ancient paintings, “Their beauty whipsaws your sense
of time. One moment you are anchored in the present, observing coolly. The next you are
seeing the paintings as if all other art—all civilization—has yet to exist...creating a simple shape
that stands for something else—a symbol, made by one mind, that can be shared with others—
is obvious only after the fact. Even more than the cave art, these first concrete expressions of
consciousness represent a leap from our animal past toward what we are today—a species
awash in symbols, from the signs that guide your progress down the highway to the wedding
ring on your finger and the icons on your iPhone.”

Archaeologist Nicholas Conard posited that the people who created these images “possessed
minds as fully modern as ours and, like us, sought in ritual and myth answers to life’s mysteries,
especially in the face of an uncertain world. Who governs the migration of the herds, grows the
trees, shapes the moon, turns on the stars? Why must we die, and where do we go afterward?
They wanted answers but they didn’t have any science-based explanations for the world
around them.”

Art can be thought of as a symbol of what it means to be human, manifested in physical form
for others to see and interpret. It can serve as a symbol for something that is tangible, or for a
thought, an emotion, a feeling, or a concept. Through peaceful means, it can convey the full
spectrum of the human experience. Perhaps that is why it is so important.

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-definition-of-art-182707

1. Leonardo da Vinci

The original Renaissance Man, Leonardo is identified with genius, not only for masterpieces
such as the Mona Lisa (the title for which has entered the language as a superlative), The Last
Supper and The Lady with an Ermine, but also for his drawings of technologies (aircraft, tanks,
automobile) that were five hundred years in the future.

2. Michelangelo

Michelangelo was a triple threat: A painter (the Sistine Ceiling), a sculptor (the David and Pietà)
and architect (St. Peter's Basilica in Rome). Make that a quadruple threat since he also wrote
poetry. Though he bounced between Florence, Bologna and Venice, his greatest commissions
were for the Medici Popes (including Julian II and Leo X, among others) in Rome. Aside from
the aforementioned Sistine Ceiling, St. Peter's Basilica and Pietà, there was his tomb for Pope
Julian II (which includes his iconic carving of Moses) and the design for the Laurentian Library
at San Lorenzo's Church. Twenty years after painting the Sistine Ceiling, he returned to the
Chapel to create one of the greatest frescoes of the Renaissance: The Last Judgment.
3. Rembrandt

One the greatest artists in history, this Dutch Master is responsible for masterworks such as
The Night Watch and Doctor Nicolaes Tulp's Demonstration of the Anatomy of the Arm. But he
is particularly known for portraits in which he demonstrated an uncanny ability to evoke the
innermost thoughts of his subjects (including himself through the play of facial expression and
the fall of light across the sitter’s features.

4. Vermeer

Remarkably, Vermeer was largely forgotten for two centuries before his rediscovery in the 19th
century. Since then, he’s been recognized as one of art history’s most important figures, an
artist capable of rendering works of uncanny beauty. Many have argued the Vermeer used a
camera obscura—an early form of projector—and certainly the soft blur he employs appears to
foreshadow photorealism. But the most important aspect of his work is how it represents light
as a tangible substance.

5. Jean-Antoine Watteau

Watteau (1684–1721) was arguably the greatest French painter of the 18th-century, a
transitional figure between Baroque art and the Roccoco style that followed. He emphasized
colour and movement, structuring his compositions so that they almost resembled theatre
scenes, but it was the atmospheric quality of his work that would become highly influential for
artists like J.M.W Turner and the Impressionists.

6. Eugene Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was one of towering figures of 19th-century art. A leading figure
of Romanticism—which privileged emotions over rationalism—Delacroix’s expressive paint
handling and use of colour laid the foundation for successive avant-garde movements of the
1800s and beyond.

7. Claude Monet

Perhaps the best know artist among the Impressionists, Monet captured the changeable
effects of light on the landscape through prismatic shards of colour delivered as rapidly painted
strokes. Moreover, his multiple studies of haystacks and other subjects anticipated the use of
serial imagery in Pop Art and Minimalism. But the same token, his magisterial, late-career lily
pond paintings foreshadowed Abstract Expressionism and Colour-Field Abstraction.

8. Georges Seurat

Most people know Georges Seurat (1859–1891) as the inventor of pointillism (which he
actually developed with the artist Paul Signac), a radical painting technique in which small
daubs of colour where applied to the canvas, leaving it to the viewer’s eye to resolve those
dots and dashes into images. Just as importantly, Seurat broke with the capture-the-moment
approach of other Impressionists, going instead for ordered compositional style that recalled
the stillness of classical art.

9. Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh is legendary for being mentally unstable (he did, after all, cut of part of his ear after
an argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin), but his paintings are among the most famous
and beloved of all time. (His painting, The Starry Night, inspired a treacly Top 40 hit by Don
McClean.) Van Gogh’s technique of painting with flurries of thick brushstrokes made up of
bright colours squeezed straight from the tube would inspire subsequent generations of artists.

10. Edvard Munch

I scream, you scream we all scream for Munch’s The Scream, the Mona Lisa of anxiety. In 2012,
a pastel version of Edvard Munch’s iconic evocation of modern angst fetched a then-
astronomical price of $120 million at auction (a benchmark which has since been bested
several times). Munch’s career was more than just a single painting. He’s generally
acknowledged as the precursor to Expressionism, influencing artists such 20th-century artists
as Egon Schiele, Erich Heckel and Max Beckmann.

11. Egon Schiele

Vienna at the turn of the 20th century was a hothouse of psychologically and sexually charged
tension and repression, and no figure channelled the milieu better than Egon Schiele (1890–
1918), whose fevered sensibility found expression in drawings and paintings of subjects that
were as explicit as they were jittery.

12. Gustav Klimt

The fin de siècle Viennese Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt is known for using gold leaf,
something he picked up on while visiting the famous Byzantine frescoes in Ravenna Italy. He
most famously put the idea to use in his masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I—also
known as Austria’s Mona Lisa—a painting looted by the Nazis during World War II. The story of
its eventual return to its rightful owner served as the basis of the film, Woman in Gold, starring
Helen Mirren. Another Klimt painting, The Kiss, is equally iconic.

13. Pablo Picasso

Born in Málaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists ever. His
name is virtually synonymous with modern art, and it doesn’t hurt that he fits the commonly
held image of the outlaw genius whose ambitions are matched by an appetite for living large.
He changed the course of art history with revolutionary innovations that include collage and, of
course, Cubism, which broke the stranglehold of representational subject matter on art, and
set the tempo for other 20th-century artists. He utterly transformed multiple mediums, making
so many works that it’s hard to grasp his achievement.

14. Henri Matisse

No artist is as closely tied to the sensual pleasures of colour as Henri Matisse. His work was all
about sinuous curves rooted in the traditions of figurative art, and was always focused on the
beguiling pleasures of pigment and hue. “I am not a revolutionary by principle,” he once said.
“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing
subject matter…a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair.”

15. Rene Magritte

The name René Magritte is widely recognized by art lovers and agnostics alike, and for good
reason: He utterly transformed our expectations of what is real and what is not. When
someone describes something as “surreal,” the chances are good that an image by Magritte
pops into his or her head.
16. Salvador Dalí

Dalí was effectively Warhol before there was a Warhol. Like Andy, Dalí courted celebrity almost
as an adjunct to his work. With their melting watches and eerie blasted landscapes, Dalí’s
paintings were the epitome of Surrealism, and he cultivated an equally outlandish appearance,
wearing a long waxed mustache that resembled cat whiskers. Ever the consummate showman,
Dalí once declared, “I am not strange. I am just not normal.”

17. Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe’s reputation rests in part on the idea that many of her paintings evoke a
certain part of the female anatomy. O'Keeffe herself angrily rejected the notion that her
compositions—especially her floral studies—were symbolic representations of vaginas, but the
idea has stuck. Nevertheless, there so much more to the artist’s work, which could be
described as a blend of symbolism, precisionism and abstraction.

18. Edward Hopper

Hopper’s enigmatic paintings look into the hollow core of the American experience—the
alienation and loneliness that represents the flip side of to our religious devotion to
individualism and the pursuit of an often-elusive happiness. In compositions such as
Nighthawks, Automat and Office in a Small City, he captures stillness weighed down by despair,
his subjects trapped in the limbo between aspiration and reality. His landscapes are similarly
suffused with a sense that America’s open spaces are as purgatorial as they are limitless.

19. Frida Kahlo

The Mexican artist and feminist icon was a performance artist of paint, using the medium to lay
bare her vulnerabilities while also constructing a persona of herself as an embodiment of
Mexico’s cultural heritage. Her most famous works are the many surrealistic self-portraits in
which she maintains a regal bearing even as she casts herself as a martyr to personal and
physical suffering—anguishes rooted in a life of misfortunes that included contracting polio as a
child, suffering a catastrophic injury as a teenager, and enduring a tumultuous marriage to
fellow artist Diego Rivera.

20. Jackson Pollock

Hampered by alcoholism, self-doubt and clumsiness as a conventional painter, Pollock

transcended his limitations in a brief but incandescent period between 1947 and 1950 when he
produced the drip abstractions that cemented his renown. Eschewing the easel to lay his
canvases fait on the floor, he used house paint straight from the can, flinging and dribbling thin
skeins of pigment that left behind a concrete record of his movements—a technique that
would become known as action painting.

21. Andy Warhol

Technically, Warhol didn’t invent Pop Art, but he became the Pope of Pop by taking the style
out of the art world and bringing it into the world of fashion and celebrity. Starting out as a
commercial artist, he brought the ethos of advertising into fine art, even going so far as to say,
“Making money is art.” Such sentiments blew away the existential pretensions of Abstract
Expressionism. Although he’s famous for subjects such as Campbell’s Soup, Marilyn Monroe
and Elvis Presley, his greatest creation was himself.
22. Yayoi Kusama

Kusama (born 1929) is one of the most famous artists working today. Her huge popularity
stems from her mirrored “Infinity Rooms” that have proved irresistible for Instagram users, but
her career stretches back over six decades. Starting as a child, the Japanese artist began to
suffer from hallucinations that manifested as flashes of light or auras, as well as fields of dots
and flowers that talked to her. These experiences have provided the inspiration for her work,
including the aforementioned rooms along with paintings, sculptures and installations that
employ vivid, phantasmagorical patterns of polka dots and other motifs. Between 1957 and
1972, she lived in NYC, where she gained notoriety for chairs upholstered with stuffed-fabric
phalluses, as well as outdoor happenings that involved public nudity. Her psychological
afflictions, though, have continued to plague her, and in 1977, she committed herself to mental
hospital in Japan where she’s lived ever since.

Source: https://www.timeout.com/newyork/art/most-famous-artists-of-all-time