Defining art
How best to define the term “art” is a subject of much contention;
many books and journal articles have been published arguing over even
the basics of what we mean by the term “art” (Davies, 1991 and Carroll,
2000). Theodor Adorno claimed in 1969 “It is self-evident that nothing
concerning art is self-evident any more.” (Danto, 2003). Indeed, it is
not even clear anymore who has the right to define art. Artists,
philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists all use the notion of
art in their respective fields, and give it operational definitions
that are not very similar to each others.
Nonetheless we can make some progress towards defining art in its
most everyday senses. The first broadest sense of “art” is the one that
has stayed 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, more narrow, more recent sense of the word “art” is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or “fine art.”
Here we mean that 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 lowbrow 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 design instead of art. On the other hand, crafts and design are sometimes considered applied art.
Some thinkers 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 (Novitz, 1992). However, even fine
art often has goals beyond just 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.
The ultimate derivation of 'fine' in 'fine art' comes from the ancient Greek 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 so is not a means to another end, but is
an end in itself.
Art can describe several kinds of things: a study of creative skill,
a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill,
or the audience’s experiencing of the creative skill. The creative arts
(“art”’ as discipline) are a collection of disciplines (“arts”) which
produce artworks (“art” as objects) that is compelled by
a personal drive (“art” as activity) and echoes or reflects a message,
mood, or symbolism for the viewer to interpret (“art” as experience).
