How would you define art?

Works of Art have the ability of springing surprises on our and from our senses in our emotional reaction. It can compel or repel and induce tears or induce joy. It touches the soul by communicating its soul. Art is studied under Aesthetics in philosophy. It can be a visionary experience a book unread which communicates its story without a single word being exchanged. It’s the whisper of something we know we just can`t recall, it is the nearest thing to being alive and it invokes a lively response from us. It invigorates captivates and can enslave us. Art is life in creative action. It never ages, it is the timeless record of our spirited quests. Art is the avaricious mans desires which are inextinguishable , Art isn`t satisfied until it completely exhausts its concubine the artist. Art isn`t the artist, art is the artists muse.

Well, art isn't something that really needs to be "satisfied," is it? Art isn't a conscious existence. However, people are. And depending on the scale and ability of one's consciousness may determine how something is considered art as such. And, aforesaid, what it is to be art is something without consideration of the human perception; rather what it is to be art is a matter of the qualities and characteristics of the object in question.

The problem we have in aesthetics, as far as I know, is that there has been no definite discovery defining the main qualities and characteristics which might find an object as art as such. So the simplest, and least deserving, solution is often to consider that all is art, and all isn't art - such is the nature of the contradictory force of subjectivity.

Anything applied to one's creativity may tell a story; some things are more vividly relatable than others. But the ability of an object to tell a story is, I don't think, a qualifier for discerning what objects are "art." I could imagine a paper-clip: it reminds of that time I had to sit at a table and paper-clip 400 pamphlets - it brings back a memory; or perhaps I am bored and look at a paper-clip and think of a whole world of paper-clip people - the Paper-Cliperans. Thus, in two different scenarios this paper-clip has been "telling" me a story. But I would hardly consider a paper-clip a piece of legitimate art; rather it is an object like any other which, under the right circumstances, induces levels of creativity which permit such mental whimsies as creating worlds which no other person perfectly relate to. (I would imagine this as being a rudimentary cause of the individuating feeling one may get from art, and the subjective state of mind which may follow.) And by this one may reject the qualifier that an object must induce creative thoughts in order to be art.

Love and Affection
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTIs-TBwcbk

Hi Kasper Art as a whole is indefinable and inspired. Art the expressional alchemy of the known and the unknown.

♫♪х₣∑эЖ♪₧Á♫

Kapra if you like Love and Affection by Joan Armatrading, you will love Tracey Chapmans "Fast Car" creative artists don`t come much better than from a place called suffering to hope.

@OP Kasper defining art is a sad second to experiencing it.

Sherlock yeah I have heard Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, she is the soul to artistic expression.

Art as a whole is indefinable and inspired. Art the expressional alchemy of the known and the unknown.

♫♪х₣∑эЖ♪₧Á♫

I like that description

Art is just the simple expression of human emotion. Every person is an artist in some way or another because we all think and have emotions. This need to express oneself can never be satisfied because we live in a world filled with comedy and tragedy. Why does some art look good to you and some art doesnt? because some art is better.
This might seem like a broad statement but what decides if that art is better is you.
A true artist devotes his life to that expression

Tracey Chapmans "Fast Car" creative artists don`t come much better than from a place called suffering to hope.

I agree and I love her track "For My Lover"

Talking about songs one of many favs is Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones, I watched a recent documentary with Keith Richard on, I really like all of the Stones hits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVor2Xm8 ... re=related

Art is an object (picture, sculpture, poem, novel, short story, musical composition, etc.) which is created by one or more human beings. Art is a subjective(personal)expression of the world.

Art, together with religion, integrates individuals into their cultures. Individuals dont live only by their biological needs and the instruments by which they get their biological needs, i.e. science, education and technology. No, individuals are, besides hungry and procreating, also social and so have evolved to include art and religion in each of their cultures.

(after Malinowski)

That doesn't at all say what art is - that goes for many of the recent posts in this thread. The proper question to ask here is: What is the nature of an object that we may call it art? What are its characteristics? To say that art is a picture, for instance, tells me nothing of what makes the picture - or a picture - art. If art is subjective, why is it subjective? What logical conclusions can we make thinking that art is merely subjective? And are these reasonable conclusions to come to?

Stirling, then you want answers to the question
'what constitutes a work of art?'

That is a really interesting question. It focuses on the intention of the transmitter and also the interpretation of the receiver.I think both transmitter(the artist) and the receiver(the interpreter) are points of view that need consideration before something is a work of art.

(I know that we sometimes say 'that's a true work of art' when all that we mean is that it is cleverly made or that we find it beautiful, but what we are trying to find here is a definition of a work of art.)

The attributes of a work of art are the maker's skill in the particular idiom whatever that is. Also that the work of art contains truth and honesty and is not merely entertaining or useful as is the intention of the paper clpi maker in the OP.***Skill can be objectively estimated by comparison with other works in the same field. But when I say 'contains' I have to say whether or not the work contains truth and honesty on the part of the maker, or on the part of the interpreters, or both maker and interpreters together.

If there is no possibility that the work's truth and honesty can ever be interpreted in any way by anyone, then the work is not art , it is madness. The avant garde is not madness because it can be interpreted by a few persons and in the cases of some works the numbers of people who can interpret them will grow and those people will grow in moral stature the more they interpret the works.

A work of art makes people better people.If it does not make people better people then it's not a work of art.

*** The paper clip can be made into a work of art but not by the intention of the inventor or technologist of the paper clip. Stirling's story about paper clip people may be a work of art because Stirling then becomes the artist whose mental raw material largely includes paper clips. But in addition to Stirling's creativity for the paper clip people story to be a work of art it needs a theme that is honest to the human condition (this does not rule out humour)on the parts of both Stirling and his readers.

You don't say why art requires "truth and honesty." I'm curious what led you to suggest it. And why does art necessarily need to be associated with the human condition?

Also, what would you say madness is; why can't it be interpreted?

Can't art make people bad as well? Consider a man who sees a painting that highlights the virtues of murder (supposing that there are): can he not conceptualize from that a negative and so find in himself a darkness which would in effect make him a "worse" person?

And, again, I have to disagree with this mode of thought - it commits the subjective to attain a definition, which I think it can't do. The subjective approach has care to only concern itself with an individual's feelings, beliefs, desires and perspectives pertaining to a thing in question rather than submitting oneself to analyzing the thing in question; relying on the individual to attribute his own beliefs to the question than the nature of the object as such seems a load of folly to me. One can way that something is a work of art and it very well might not be, just as someone can claim that an octopus is a cat and it most certainly isn't, or that 2+2=22 and doesn't; but that art is such a vague and uncertain term to attribute to anything as it relies on one's understanding of of what is aesthetic outside his immediate self, his perspective and all that pertains to it. We need to take a step back and look at this term and things without making preconceived notions of what they are.

The PaperClipperans story isn't necessarily a work of art, though a manifestation of a low level of creativity. Given that we haven't really discerned what art is I'm not yet willing to decide what objects are and aren't art.

Anyone can call anything a 'work of art', ther is no law against this.I am trying to define 'work of art'. I choose the criterion of truth and honesty in portraying the human condition because a work of art is a great thing that influences people to be compassionate and reasoning.

For instance, take Nazi works of art that were inspired by the Nazi party and often had their themes and styles dictated by the Nazi party. These are skilled works. But they tell lies. The lies that they tell are that the German race is superior, heroic, beautiful and prosperous to the exclusion of other, lesser races. These are lies because Nazi ideology is not true to the human condition. The human condition is, as a matter of fact, that individuals of all 'races' have biological and affiliative needs and individuals of all 'races' can contribute to any and all nations' prosperity, bar none.

We understand why Nazism arose. But free peoples won and free people can see that racism is not true, and therefore it's bad if not dishonest.

Some great works of art cross cultural boundaries because they are true of the human condition universally;such as those make us feel for and understand intellectually. Other, ethnic, works of art are true only of the isolated rather sequestered societies in which they originate, but even these can reveal how certain themes such as the human needs for food and societal integration are universal and not just ethnic needs.

I don't deny that people can say something is a work of art. But I wouldn't submit that a proposition based on interpretation and emotion is necessarily a truth-bearing proposition, or more simply that something is true because someone says it is. These "truths" are personal. What merit do they have outside one's own abstract ideal world?

Choosing criteria, I think, shouldn't be based on one's individual conception of an object, correlated with one's interpretation of an concept. Neither would I suppose that because a large majority of people consider art that it is indeed just that; as I recall there is fallacy concerning just this - fallacy from popularity: just because a group consider the work something doesn't mean it is. Rather, as I have previously said considering the objective approach, that propositions need to be based off the nature of the object than one's feelings about the it. How it is that we may relate our idea of the human condition and goodness to objects - as I presume we're considering - which have no inherent interest in these two things, is beyond me. I posit that we cannot rest with our ideas; rather observe the object for what it is - observing what properties, what characteristics it has - and then delineate what makes it what it is.

I would ask this question: What constitutes a work of art, solely considering the properties of an object aside from its wonted definition or consideration?