Art is the undefiniable defined.

wanabe wrote:In reply to the title of the op and the thread:

I apologize if this witty remark has been used already, I checked to make sure, but maybe I missed it:

I wouldn't.

That is, I would not define art. A definition is some thing that is not proven necessarily, a definition is simply agreed upon, regardless of its accuracy.

In essence, art is in the eye of the beholder.

I think that if man can produce art, he can also give a definition of it. After all, I don't know of any artist who refused to give a definition of his/her art. And I think that talking about art can be extremely productive and fascinating.

Of course when I say that we can try to give a definition o art it doesn't mean we will succeed. But then again, it has to be like that, because if the concept of art could be grasped entirely, than it would be logic, not art. 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.

I was wondering: have you ever noticed how artists usually provide no feedback at all when critics try to judge their work, to grasp their meaning and so on. They could say: "yes you are right", or "No you missed the point: the idea I wanted to express here is...". Nothing. I think the "meaning" of art is more a critics' thing. Artists tolerate those blabbermouths because they are important in the establishment, when it comes to determining one's success. The artist is far more interested in the process of creating art than in the result. It is the "sacred fire" (a strong state of excitement, not sexual of course) that inebriates them when they have an intuition and create around it. They don't begin their work by having something in mind, except for a general subject. Most of the times, the work leads the artist, not the other way around.

Alethia wrote:Art is the creative spirit of humans expressed consciously and externally in reality.

Isn't it a tautology to explain art through creativity? It would be like saying that the definition of "paper" is: an object made of paper.

Art is indeed creativity (or one of its form), but what is creativity (in art)? That is the question.

Alethia,

I understand your point. However, the problem of WHAT are we expressing and externalizing remains. Otherwise, would a stock anaylst creating a formula that is meant to explain some cyclical movements in the stock market be an artist as well?
What is the nature of the creativity taking place in art? My explanation of what creativity in art might be is ultimately that there is no REAL creativity in art. From nothing derives nothing. The artist simply elaborates his internal world or the external world filtered through his internal world. The matter is already given. Art is process much more than content. This explains why Van Gogh's landscapes are so different than those of any other artist, for example. "Process" refers less to one's technical ability than to one own's history, personality and attitude as the determining factors.
It may be that THERE IS NO CREATION IN ART, ONLY GENERATION, in the philosophical acceptation: God creates (=from nothing)/man generates (=from something already existing, like his/her semen/ovule).