What is art?

Everything, really

Art is something that most people spend a lot of time engaging with, and which brings value to most people’s lives. But like many concepts—perhaps more than most—it is extremely slippery and hard to pin down. That of course only makes it more fun for me to try to articulate what I consider it to be, which is what I’ll be doing here. While I have some experience as a practicing artist, I don’t really have much experience with aesthetics as a theoretical discipline, and so much of this may sound stupid to someone who has. But I don’t care! I think it’s a fun topic to think about anyways, so I’ll do it. Adding a qualification like this is probably not the best way to get people to read your stuff, but here we are…

What I find the most important feature of my conception of art is that it is dependent on individual observers in a significant way. I don’t think there is anything inherent in objects, or in their histories, that make them art. Instead, art “occurs”, if you will, in the relation between an observer, an agent, and the object. Object here should be taken in an extremely general sense, including not only physical objects, but also performances like music and dance, thoughts and ideas, etc. This gives me the rough form of my definition:

X is art to S IFF S considers the aesthetic properties of X in relation to an agent A (or a group of agents)

Before we get into fleshing out this account, I think we should first look at the motivation for taking an observer-relative account in the first place. I think this approach has several advantages. For one, when I really introspect, or really consider what it is about some object that makes me consider it art, it just seems like this is what it is. It is not anything inherent to the object—if you put a random rock on a pedestal in a gallery, with a little description besides it, it seems like it would be art. Instead what matter is that agents had certain intentions towards that object in placing it there. But more importantly, the complete picture doesn’t seem to be captured by the artist’s intentions towards the artwork. For example, it may be of artistic significance that a painting was painted on a piece of cardboard rather than on canvas, even if the artist had no thoughts about this decision, and only did so because it was the only thing they had lying around. This makes sense if art happens in the observer—even if the decision was not deliberate from the artist, it can still have artistic significance when the observer considers the artwork. Perhaps it tells us something about the artist that they didn’t intend, perhaps something about the culture the artist is from, perhaps something about ourselves, etc. This is best made sense of if the art happens in relation to the observer rather than being inherent in the object, or having to do only with the relation of the artist to the artwork.

We can also consider something like John Cage’s 4'33''. It makes us consider the ambient sounds around us as art, but John Cage had no intentions towards the specific sounds we are hearing right now. So the piece seems to go beyond merely the intentions of the artist (though you could perhaps say that for any performance of the piece, the listener actually is the artist). This work also highlights the agent-relativity of art. Suppose that you are listening to a performance of 4'33''—or maybe you are performing it for yourself in your bedroom—and you hear a siren outside. The sound of the siren is here part of the artwork, and so it is art to you (at least if you attend to it properly). But it would be very strange to say that someone walking on the street who also hears the siren would be mistaken if they thought that the sound of the siren was not art. It is not as if there is some objective property of artness that is transferred onto the sound by your considering it as art. Rather it seems like the art is happening in your relation to the sound of the siren, and someone who isn’t “creating” such a relation to the siren would not be mistaken in thinking that it isn’t art.

This sort of approach also seems to make sense of the history of artistic practice. For fear of beating a dead horse to death, I will bring up found object art like Duchamp’s Fountain:

Any account that links art to intrinsic features of an object will have a hard time making sense of this being art, but not calling it art seems like doing violence to the practice of art—the definition of art should follow the practice, not the other way around. In general, any sort of definition that you can come up with for art, which tries to point to some feature of objects that make them art, will quickly be proven wrong by artists.

Most of this has of course been against art being something inherent in objects. But once you accept that art is not about the object, you are only a small step away from an observer-relative conception of art (and besides, I think the example I raise with 4'33'' and the siren is pretty convincing).

Back to the actual account! If you have the memory of a goldfish, let me remind you that it was:

X is art to S IFF S considers the aesthetic properties of X in relation to an agent A (or a group of agents)

We already covered that X should be taken to be an object in a very broad sense, and S is of course just a subject/observer. So what does it mean to consider the aesthetic properties of something? Well, I am not completely sure, as I am also not completely sure what “aesthetic” is. It may be something sui generis, or it may be reducible to other sorts of things, but I am not sure. Rather, I will just give a copout answer and say that whatever “aesthetic” means, I am talking about the properties picked out by that. In terms of considering, I think this can be non-cognitive/non-propositional, i.e., when looking at the Mona Lisa, I don’t have to consciously think “wow, that combination of brown and brown is really beautiful!”, I can just have non-cognitive consideration of/attitudes towards those properties, maybe manifesting feelings or a general “aesthetic sense”. The part about it being in a relation to an agent is also hard to put into words—the best way to explain it may be with an example: there seems to be a difference between considering the aesthetic properties of a sunset and considering the aesthetic properties of the Veiled Christ as an artwork. The difference seems to me to be that in the latter case you don’t just consider the aesthetic properties, but also consider them in relation to an agent (namely the artist (Giuseppe Sanmartino)). As explained earlier, this doesn’t just have to be the artist’s intentions, but can also include how the artist was influenced by their culture, how the artist relates to you, etc. I know this is really just restating the definition, but I still hope the example can help you identify the difference in yourself as being one of relating to an artist. I think it is sort of ineffable what exactly it consists in (or maybe I am just not good enough with words to explain it), so the best I can do is point you to examples that make the distinction clearer in my mind.

I find the question of who or what can be the agent A (i.e. the artist) interesting. It seems to me that the artist doesn’t need to intentionally have created the artwork. For example, a thing I sometimes like to do is to look at objects (such as tables, or books or whatever) scattered after a person (or a group) has used them, having been left without any regard for their arrangement. I then consider their aesthetic properties, the composition of their arrangement, and the information they hold about the moment they were left, and the moments leading up to, the people who left them, etc. In doing so, it feels very strongly to me as if these objects become a work of art, even though none of the people responsible for the arrangement had any intention of creating an artwork. An alternative interpretation here may be that I am the artist in this case.

The person can of course also be the subject who is considering the object as art. This is most apparent with a case like a conventional artist, who has just created, say, a sculpture made of shit (it’s a commentary on the human digestive system). They can certainly consider that sculpture as art, even though they are the artist. But this carries to more abstract or niche examples. I think this is illustrated by the somewhat famous story of John Cage and his breadcrumbs. Essentially, if I look at some breadcrumbs on a table, I can turn them into an artwork (for me) by putting a (mental) frame around them. This is very plausible I think, and in general it looks like we can make anything art by considering it in the right way. But here it looks like I am both the artist and observer. This also appears to capture the phenomenology I have in these sorts of cases very well: the difference between considering the aesthetic properties of the soda can in front of me vs. considering the soda can as art seems to be a question of whether I consider it in itself or with reference to the artist (me). In the first case, I look at the can, consider its shape, its colors, etc. In the second case I go a step further; I consider why I decided to consider in it this way, my motivations for it, the role I play in my coming to consider this soda can, how the soda can affects me, etc. I think this little experiment both tells me that I can create art as an observer of art and that what distinguishes art from other sorts of aesthetic objects/experiences is its relation to certain agents—those that in some sense are the originators of the object qua art.

We here arrive at a crossroads in the definition: does the artist have to exist? Suppose that God doesn’t exist and a Christian looks at a tree, considering it to be art and God to be the artist. Is this tree then art to that person? I think how we answer this is merely a matter of temperament, and I am not sure one answer is better than another. I tend to think that something can be art even if the artist doesn’t exist, and it only stops being art once (or if) the observer realizes that the artist doesn’t exist. This will also allow AI art and animal-made art to be art, regardless of questions of agency and so on, which I think makes a lot of sense (though there are probably many who won’t have as permissive dispositions as I have). I am not wedded to this view, though. A closely related question to this is whether the agent has to be connected to the object in the right sort of way, or whether it can just be any agent. For example, you can imagine mistakenly thinking that something is a painting by Alex Colville when it is actually just a screenshot from RuneScape. Would that still make it art to you? Again, I don’t think there is a clear answer, though I would tend slightly towards saying yes. Answering in the way I suggest here especially has the virtue of making sense of cases where you infer that there is an artist, but don’t know who. For example, if I look at a painting at a thrift store, I certainly seem able to consider it art, even though I have no idea who painted it—or even whether it just arranged itself by paint randomly falling on the canvas, without any agent involved.

One thing that my account may have a hard time accounting for are cases like these, where someone tricks someone else into thinking something is art. What makes this funny is that someone mistakenly thinks that something is art. But if art is observer-relative in the way I have argued, they are actually not mistaken, so my account has a very hard time making sense of this.

Depending on how you answered the earlier questions about whether the artist has to exist/have the right relation to the object, you may have an easy way out here: the artist that the people in the pranks are considering the artwork in relation to either doesn’t exist, or at least doesn’t have the right sort of relation to the object in question. But while this does provide a way out, I don’t think it is necessary to account for why these sorts of pranks are funny. To explain, consider instead these sorts of pranks, where you tell someone a nonsensical joke, make them laugh, and then ask them to explain it. What makes these funny (or toe-curling, depending on your level of empathy) doesn’t seem to be that people actually think the jokes are funny—they clearly don’t, as they don’t even get them. Rather, what makes it funny is that the person being pranked thinks other people think the joke is funny, and are just acting to fit in (and of course being caught red-handed). This also appears to make sense of the gallery-prank: what makes it funny is that those people think that other people consider the object to be art, but we are in the know. Enough frog-dissection for now!

A problem that Kane B raises in his video on art-anti-realism against an account very similar to mine is something like this:

Consider the artwork 3'44''. This artwork consists of all the sounds heard by S in a 3 minute and 44 second timeframe that are not considered in the way my account describes as necessary and sufficient for constituting art for S, i.e. all the sounds whose aesthetic properties are not considered in relation to an agent A by S. This seems to be an artwork, but it cannot under my definition, since no one can ever consider it in the right way!

My answer to this would simply be: 3'44'' is not art, since it by definition cannot be observed/considered as a piece of art. It simply escapes the realm of the artistic. But this seems strange! There is certainly something very artistic about 3'44''! I think there is a confusion here between 3'44'' and the idea of 3'44''. I think the idea of 3'44'' can be an artwork—and a pretty interesting one at that. There is something aesthetically challenging and interesting about the idea, and its relation to me as a listener in being completely ungraspable as a piece of art, as well as its inception as a non-artistic artwork from Kane (I don’t know if anyone else has thought of it before). But 3'44'' itself can never be considered artistically, and so I have no qualms with saying that it isn’t art.

Finally, you might have an unstoppable drive to make being art into an objective property. If you really cannot accept that art is observer-relative, I think my definition can be modified to be observer-neutral:

X is art IFF someone considers the aesthetic properties of X in relation to an agent A (or a group of agents)

Or even:

X is art IFF someone has ever considered the aesthetic properties of X in relation to an agent A (or a group of agents)

Or perhaps some other modification in this vein. There is a sort of appeal to this. For example, it seems like even if the Louvre is closed and no one is thinking about the Mona Lisa, it is still art—or if we find an ancient sculpture, it seems like it has been art the entire time it was buried. Likewise, it seems like the Mona Lisa is still art, even if I am not thinking about it.

The second sort of account runs into some issues in my opinion, though. Firstly, it requires some sort of continuity of objects over time, which I am skeptical of. Furthermore, it would mean that anything that is ever considered art stays so for all eternity (or however long it persists). Do we really want to say that the soda can from before is a bona fide piece of art until it meets its maker, simply because I considered it so for a couple of seconds? That seems a bit excessive to me.

As for the first modification, I think it is acceptable, though perhaps unnecessary. It also conflicts with my intuitions on a few points, like the 4'33'' siren case from before. Similarly, it feels strange to me to say that someone is really mistaken if they think the soda can in front of me isn’t art. They can perhaps be mistaken as to whether someone considers it to be art, but that they are mistaken as to whether it is art feels off. I won’t yell at you or be angry if you like this definition more, though; it still captures the spirit of the account, which is the way art comes about and what makes it art, regardless of whether we cash it out in observer-relative or observer-neutral terms. But seeing as the way art comes about has very much to do with individual observes, I am pretty inclined to keeping it observer-relative. In any case, I don't really think there is a substantive difference here though, and I again take it to be a matter of temperament which version you go with—it doesn’t really do anything to affect our conception or practice of art, and is really just “fly-fuckery”, to use a wonderful calque from Danish.

I don’t believe there is a right answer to conceptual-analytical questions (including the one I have just spent around 15 minutes of your life making you think about), as I explain here. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun to do this sort of exercise regardless. And besides, even if there is no real answer, we can still try to engineer a concept of art that makes sense of our practice and perhaps even furthers what we consider possible in it. This is also the reason why I am not very worried about quibbles concerning the details of the definition, like whether the artist has to exist, or whether the definition should be formulated observer-relatively or observer-neutrally, as those things aren’t really important in any relevant case—though they may be fun themes to explore in an artwork.