In a previous post, What is art?, I discuss at some length what sort of things don’t disqualify a work from being art. I didn’t, however, give much detail as to what I thought qualified something as being considered art. The closest I came was this statement: “art is good because it touches our minds in a particular way which we enjoy,” which some found understandably lacking.
I don’t think it’s lacking because it’s too vague or subjective—art is, by necessity, a subjective thing. I certainly don’t have a magic formula or objective criteria whereby one can run down an explicitly-defined checklist to determine whether a particular something qualifies as art or not. Rather, I think it’s lacking because there are things, I believe, that “touch our minds in a particular way which we enjoy” (or, to say it less poetically, “are aesthetically pleasing”) yet I would not qualify as art.
What, then, of the set of things that are “aesthetically pleasing” are not art? Google (the new dictionary) defines art in many different ways. Apart from all the entries about assisted reproductive technology, the definitions have a common thread of “human creativity”. I would say this is accurate—a mountain or a sunset might be aesthetically pleasing (or even stunningly awe-inspiring), but most would hesitate to call it intrinsically “art”. Certainly if a person takes a photograph of the scene, or paints the image, or writes about the experience—that, then, can qualify as art, having been mingled with human intentionality. But not before.
What about the opposite direction? Is there anything that qualifies as art that is not aesthetically pleasing? Given a definition of “aesthetically pleasing” that is close to “touches our minds in a particular way which we enjoy,” I don’t think so. I would say that these two criteria—creativity and aesthetics—are sufficient for encompassing the entire set of what is called “art”. I can’t imagine a work that embodies human creativity and some sort of vaguely enjoyable aesthetic nature that I would disdain labeling as “art”.
All this doesn’t touch on the more debatable topic, however, of determining what art is good art. It was to this end that I began with the questions in my previous post of, “What do we find good, what is high quality, and what is not?” Tomorrow I’ll discuss some of the possibilities.
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March 2nd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
What about things which we find impressive or important, but not pleasant? (I have in mind Atlas Shrugged, a book which I didn’t “enjoy” in the ordinary sense, but which inspired a number of interesting lines of thought.)
Or something with bad and therefore non-enjoyable aesthetics, but which was intended to be decorative? If I draw a picture (and, for the most part, I draw quite badly) is the result art even if no-one, including me, finds the product enjoyable? If not, is it failed art or non-art?