How does one define art? It’s not safe to assume that everyone has the same concrete definition of something that is so expansive and subjective. According to dictionary.com, every English major’s best friend (alongside thesaurus.com), the definition of art is:
- the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
Looking it up might have been cheating, but while this definition holds intellectual substantiality and is transcendent, anyone can take a step back and criticize it. Dismay it even. My definition of art can differ drastically so from my neighbors definition. Who’s to say that art has to be beautiful, or hold a “more than ordinary significance”?
If I were to pigeonhole the definition of art, I would define it as a physical expression from the self. However, what this physical expression manifest’s itself into is the trickier (but best) part.
Art has always been a book in my lap and the touch of pen to paper, turning words into life. It is the only way I knew how to immerse myself in art at a young age, and the art that taught me that expression can be cathartic and inspirational. As I grew older, I learned that I could immerse myself in art through what I wore and how I decorated my spaces. Reading, writing and expressing who I am through clothing and surrounding myself with Monet and Klimt and Van Gogh paintings. Through these expressions of art, I find that I not only understand life better through the eye of others but that I learn to understand myself better as well.
What I hope to gain from this class is a new definition of art and to have more of an intellectual grasping of artistic terms that help me understand important underlying meanings of artwork that I might’ve missed otherwise.
