What is Art and What Makes Art an Art?

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29 11 2021
What is Art?
Understanding art in the context of expression and creativity is quite diverse that most scholars find themselves in a dilemma coming up with a singular, unified definition. A simple explanation of the term from Merriam-Webster dictionary is that art is the conscious usage of creative imagination and skill, mainly when producing aesthetic objects. To give the word a scholarly outlook, we discover that art is an expansively assorted range of human deeds involving the creation of auditory, visual, or performed artworks to communicate the artist's technical and imaginative capabilities. Hence, attracting appreciation for their emotional and aesthetic appeals from the intended audience. Ultimately, it expresses our desires, thoughts, intuitions, and emotions on appropriate media to communicate the intended message eternally.
Just like the term itself, art's history and evolution raise complex questions in equal measure. The word originated from the Latin ars, which initially meant craft or skill. Unsurprisingly, the meanings still dominate some English words like artifact and artisan, similarly derived from ars. However, a deeper understanding of art transcends its mere sense of skilled craftsmanship, thus distinguishing it from an artisan or artifact. What makes art unique and different from the other terms above is its inherent visual appeal. Understandably, right from Europe's renaissance era domination, beginning the 16th century through to the 20th century, art's history was predominantly based on analysis of its aesthetic qualities. During the period, Roman art (classical antiquity art) and the ancient Greek arts were considered the standard measure for timeless perfection. Most artists of this era strived to imitate these art types, and indeed art historians analyzed the fine arts` virtues. The fine arts included architecture, sculpture, and painting (Glass).
However, over the past one and a half centuries, art and its history have fundamentally evolved. During this period, artists have abandoned the classical traditions of expressing art and have embraced modern aesthetic ideals and media. Besides, art's history has evolved from formal beauty analysis to the understanding of its cultural context. Even though art is still predominantly visual and primarily depends on visual analysis, beauty by itself no longer acclaims a complete attribute of art as it did in the classical era (Glass).
The question "what makes art, art?" is more complex than its straightforward pronunciation. In Humanities, the spatial arts or fine arts like painting, sculpture, and architecture can be studied from diverse perspectives depending on the context, culture, or political influence. While exploring art and its history in the academic field, it often becomes engulfed in the la...