What is Art?

So, what is art? That is a difficult question. Let’s look at some examples I’ve gathered. Art is…

…according to a dictionary:

The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance

~dictionary.com 

…indefinable

You cannot define electricity. The same can be said of art. It is a kind of inner current in a human being, or something which needs no definition.

~Marcel Duchamp , French painter and sculptor

…imitation or creation

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers – and never succeeding.

~Marc Chagall, Russian-French artist

…creating beauty or harmony

Filling a space in a beautiful way. That’s what art means to me.

~Georgia O’Keefe, American painter

Art is harmony.

~Georges Seurat, French painter

…an expression of our innate desire to decorate

The intrinsic decorative urge should not be eradicated. It is one of humankinds deep-rooted primordial urges. Primitive people decorated their implements and cult objects with a desire to beautify and enhance… it is a sense emanating from the urge for perfection and creative accomplishment.

~Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Swiss multi-media, applied arts, performance artist, and textile designer

…something that reveals the essential or hidden truth

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

~Paul Klee, Swiss painter

…a blessed mistake, a misfiring

Art is like the feathers of a peacock; there is no ultimate reason for it. It is nothing more than a leftover impulse from our distant ancestors. It is a mere signal to potential mates that we have enough time, resources, and leisure to be able to waste time on extravagance.

~This seems to be the Darwinian view (cf. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 253)

…thought expressed

To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this—and only this—is to be an artist.

~Jacques-Louis David, French painter

…a source of calm in a chaotic world

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

~Henri Matisse, French artist   

Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.

~Saul Bellow, American novelist

…self-expression or autobiography

What is art? Art grows out of grief and joy, but mainly grief. It is born of people’s lives.

~Edvard Munch, Norwegian artist

 All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.

~Federico Fellini, Italian film director

…communication of feelings

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has experienced, and…then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling—this is the activity of art.

~Leo Tolstoy, Russian author

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus.

~David Hockney, British artist

 …labor

Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

~André Gide in Poétique

…philosophy

Above all, artists must not be only in art galleries or museums — they must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level.

~ Michelangelo Pistoletto in Art’s Responsibility

…according to my favorite definition:

“One individual personality has definite or special talent for expressing, in some medium, what other personalities can hear, see, smell, feel, taste, understand, enjoy, be stimulated by, be involved in, find refreshment in, find satisfaction in, find fulfillment in, experience reality in, be agonized by, be pleased by, enter into, but which they could not produce themselves…

Art in various forms expresses and gives opportunity to others to share in, and respond to, things which would otherwise remain vague, empty yearnings. Art satisfies and fulfills something in the person creating and in those responding…

One person’s expression of art stimulates another person and brings about growth in understanding, sensitivity and appreciation.

~ Edith Schaeffer in The Hidden Art of Homemaking