Audience/viewers/society/community/the human race has nothing to do with the deciding of what is and isnt Art. Since the Art exists in its making, the process, and NOT in the artifact or sustainable representation that may or may not get the attention of anyone, then the Art is singularly for the advancement of the INDIVIDUAL that is executing it. The "do-ing" is everything. Without this isolated and detached act there would be no intellectual development in us possessors of elevated awareness. This ACT of unrequired, uncommissioned, un-patroned and quite un-called-for creativity is exactly what bleeds out into the minds (incidentally) of masses of humanity...irrepairably improving them a little bit at a time.

I suppose that the best and "most-real"art occurs by a departure, a willful separation, a pursued entanglement with a stubborn, cantankerous and resisting medium. The "pleasantness" of the product of this brouhaha neednt be bothered-with til the dust settles; when there might (or might not) be a looker or a listener besides the artist himself.
All human consciousness has a taste for art (some folks are hungrier than others) so as artmaking gets experienced during those oddly-accessed ventures - language and communication, necessities for human survival, will allow a spreading or infection - albeit a slow one - that has always proven to allow a greater and greater amount of individuals access to his own elevated fulfilling. So fear and worry get replaced by self-determination. When one knows "where" to go to wrestle some wider wonder out of an ever unsuspecting yet ever formidable, inanimate yet far-from-lifeless "medium", there is purpose without meaning.
Meaning, solution, answers, resolutions are the required endings of "problems"...but in Art one begins with the limp "deadness" of the meaning and then raises it to a problem...that singularly serves that particular encounter and will not need any resolving...you know you're done when you're spent. And so you drag your sorry ass back home, and eat a dinner or something.

Right, sometimes it is very obvious when something is pretending to be art is NOT. And other times its not so obvious. But you certainly cant trust all of your galleries, curators, jurors, judges, critics and museums. They will celebrate any ol' thing...and for all the wrong reasons (though some of it might indeed still, accidentally, be Art) you just gotta experience yourself and decide. And one gets better and better at that deciding. Thats all.

Humans and art have never been apart (despite those lean 150 thousand or so years before the Cro-Magnon when the creative impulse was only in desperate servitude to survival). Art has always sustained, nourished and empowered the hairless apes. While the actions, noble, mundane and horrific, might get questioned against whatever current scrutiny, the art has always been (quite still is) the ONLY tool used to accomplish ANYTHING. I cant recall which scribbling modern Neanderthal labeled our entire lot "Homo Aestheticus"...but, damn, that sums it up pretty well.

The required "uselessness" of art is not reconcilable with the fact that art is also the most impactful thing possible. Function insidiously draws from art to try to become better; and the resulting fluff has clouded our perception of just what to call "art". So we must backtrack to purity...dismiss the art that is attached to tasks of ornamentation, embellishment and streamlining...call that stuff something else (rat, perhaps). Then we can once again proceed maximally forward by the authenticating identification and consideration of objects and events warranted by imagination; those detached human efforts that exist unmolested by being "put to use". We survive by the collective but we exist by the personality.

Too many things get called Art because they were merely skillfully executed. Those things are craft. And craft is NOT Art. In fact, as we make up a list of things that CANNOT be Art, things made with the intent of posessing a function - for instance, we will come to observe that MOST of the things that get called Art are not Art at all. So, our considerings over what IS and what ISNT should center upon all the things (culture-damaged devices and bric/brac) we wish to exclude, banish, and demote; saving the assignment of "Art" for only the rarest and most pertinent stuff created by the hands of a single laboriously noodling perciever.
A meaty lifetime of benefitting from true Art should not be thinned to broth 90% distracted by the mounatins of triflings that burst the seams of plain ol' "culture".

Very true. Another realm of stuff that gets referred-to as Art that is not Art is the works that draw their significance only from narrative or propoganda. The sculpture of David is only Art when it has actually overwhelmed the little story that set it (the ceative act) in motion. Michelangelo had no interest in merely duplicating for anyone the experience of observing an actual nude youth. SO, so many creative decisions were made in that great piece of work that have nothing at all to do with the mundane reality that is human anatomy, bible stories and youthfulness.

It is yet another thing to be excluded from what we should call Art, objects that resolve themselves in the comfort of mere illustration or narrative. And, of course, mere duplication of form, no matter how manually attentive, is only allowed to amaze a viewer at best...never fortify said viewer's intellect.

Perhaps we should choose to consider Art (or the advantaging of the creative impulse) as the original detachment, as the ONLY UN-natural thing a human consciousness has ever manifested, and as the sole artificial and unprovoked act in a drudgerous and repetitive existence of responsing-to-stimuli. Then we have, by an imaginative and uniquely nourishing brand of cunning, done the work of evolution; Instead of bending to nature we have BENT IT . Lets not get it flip-flopped. An ever unaware and ever plodding "Nature" can quite succumb to the seemingly ant-like will of we humans who are, most of us, in posession of an atomless essential that allows for the true determination of "beauty". The ability to consider the possibilities of significant form...and then DO something about it, something magnificently useless, is a more potent than surges of disease, hurricanes, and planet-gobbling black holes.

No the main idea of Art is NOT to transfer anything at all to anyone. Art is a singular experience between essence and real-ness. It is the reconciliation of the ghostly with the plastic. Art has been hijacked by civilization to "perform" for it. And so-called artists have been deceived by the notion that they must "communicate" something. The experience and action of asserting a creative impulse that is NOT tainted by application nor function is Art at 100 proof. We have all been accepting watered-down variations. And it neednt be so.

A trick. Evreytime you look at a thing that "they" are calling art, place yourself, best-you-can, in the shoes of the maker; imagine the process. If there is anything worth getting - it will be there. NOT in any narrative or illustrative characterizations ( or titles, texts or newsworthies).

It shouldnt ever be the goal to "define" Art. god forbid it would ever happen. Because the very CONSIDERING of it is life and the "not-any-longer-considering-of-it-by-virtue-of-an-accepted-definition" is death (if we must also speculate over life and death...as we must). Definitions should be reserved for less vital matters that have to do with survival, civilization and culture...all stuff that wouldnt be much different without any definitions or considering. But as the body recovers from another episode of labor against nature the mind can yet still make great progress by worrying over Art (and philosophy). So a perpetually "wrong" intellectual venture here is most desirable.

The task of art is not to explore logic, but to explore the experience that man has of the world and of himself/herself.

Art is (the) experience (of describing the experience), and you cannot explain art more than you can describe and explain a taste or a scent.[/quote]

Very nice, Intz. That notion is reduced, encompassing and quite serviceable regarding this challenging topic. And its true that we are forced to attempt definitions insofar as we are communicating creatures. Language does the best it can...but it is VERY far from actually being able to relate the goings-on within an individual's consciousness. It will be Art that makes the more significant exchanges between humans (the ones that do not determine survival). And the senses...well they appeal to "reality" which has everything to do with assessing "experience". Art is the bridge between matter and essence. We can be a deluded ghost or a lumbering blob; or the two can arrange an alliance and be niether.

Big mistake. The sooner one realizes that survival is NOT significant the sooner one will be permitting significance. Survival is nature-based; in line with nothing more than whatever any animal or bug possesses. As humans we are MUCH more. So an honoring of everything that is POST-survival is what will be yielding. Art and philosophy are post survival, extra, excessive, post-functional etc, (not science, psychology, mathematics, physics nor any other resolution-sniffing practice).

Yep Mel, it hinges on the "detachment". With labor asnd fortitude we can overcome the tyrant that is "Survival" for all-too-brief episodes. And this is the reward for existing. Not other things.

it seems less likely that even the artist knows what his art is for and what it means, and the manifestation thus indefinable.

Right on. (all well-said Stirling)

And it is not necessarily even important that the artist bother with knowing the "meaning"-of or what his work is "about". This is because the product of artmaking is less important than the event that brought it into being. The artifact pales in comparison to the experience. And by this virtue it is subjective and personal enough that only a faint resonance is available in that artifact for the benefit of lookers, readers or listeners. Art is the thing that is least likely to exist and when it does is least likely to be shared. It will require almost as heightened an effort to reap anything from art as it was to have made it.

I quite do suppose that the artmaking experience trumps other experiences. But we must first identify the "actual" experience as it exists separate and detached from all other experiences. Communication, language and human interaction has come to call many things Art. Most of which is not art at all. So...it is perhaps the case that an individual is most immersed in his "being" when reality is being addressed OUTSIDE of function. There is an inherent "uselessness" to the artifacts or product of the anti-functional task. This uselessness, though, is exactly the thing that makes art the most impactful thing possible. Art communicates, yes, but it is not "for" communication. There is a resounding in the genuinely created object (or event) that unintentionally gives a smidgen of its pertinence to the "audience" or regarder.

As much consuming consideration over what is and what isnt art possible will advance an individual...and perhaps provide him with the motivation to detach himself...and create himself...somehow.

because everything else undertaken is in servitude to necessity, survival, recovery, pass-time and function...all just regular stuff that doesnt improve the lonliness of the consciousness