WHAT IS ART? Introductory Discussions

What is art? How do we find ‘necessary conditions’ and ‘sufficient conditions’
for the truth of the statement that an item is an ‘art work’?

Art-work Vs. Mere real thing

Study the PDF below.

(to be used for educational purposes only)

Art PDF

In Indian Epistemology, when its complicated to name or define a thing or force, we don't say what it is. We instead say what it is not. Its expressed as neti neti (not this, not this).

Here too we look around us and see everything that exists. Everything that exists is broadly categorised into two.

1. Nature: those that are already there. They came about through the big bang or creation or evolution whichever. In other words they are naturally there.

That which is nature is not ART. Thus rivers, trees, pets, wild animals, human beings etc. etc. fall out of the umbrella of art.

2. Culture: Those that have come into being through human creation or intervention. Art is part of culture. though everything in culture is not art. This distinction is a difficult process.

Some works are fully intended to be a piece of art by its creators. There could be aesthetic differences, but the creator's intention and basic quality as art suffices.

A chair in itself is not a piece of art, its a mere object of use. Its mute. The same argument goes with automobiles etc.

But somebody can raise it be one. When someone positions it such way that the chair begins to speak. The chair begins to demand interpretation from the onlookers.

That is how the urinal of Marcel Duchamp, though he did not make it, became a work of Art.

The Fountain
Marcel Duchamp, 2017

In Conclusion,

Nothing in nature is art.

Not everything of culture too is art.

The Creator's primary purpose and the capacity of the work in question to demand interpretation make a thing a piece of art.

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