Proper noun

Singular Art

Plural -

Art

1. A diminutive of the male given name Arthur.

German

Noun

Art f (plural Arten)

1. kind, sort, type
2. behaviour

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music and literature. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.

The definition and evaluation of art has become especially problematic since the early 20th century. Richard Wollheim distinguishes three approaches: the Realist, whereby aesthetic quality is an absolute value independent of any human view; the Objectivist, whereby it is also an absolute value, but is dependent on general human experience; and the Relativist position, whereby it is not an absolute value, but depends on, and varies with, the human experience of different humans. An object may be characterized by the intentions, or lack thereof, of its creator, regardless of its apparent purpose. A cup, which ostensibly can be used as a container, may be considered art if intended solely as an ornament, while a painting may be deemed craft if mass-produced.

Traditionally, the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery. This conception changed during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science". Generally, art is made with the intention of stimulating thoughts and emotions.

The nature of art has been described by Richard Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture". It has been defined as a vehicle for the expression or communication of emotions and ideas, a means for exploring and appreciating formal elements for their own sake, and as mimesis or representation. Leo Tolstoy identified art as a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another. Benedetto Croce and R.G. Collingwood advanced the idealist view that art expresses emotions, and that the work of art therefore essentially exists in the mind of the creator. The theory of art as form has its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and was developed in the early twentieth century by Roger Fry and Clive Bell. Art as mimesis or representation has deep roots in the philosophy of Aristotle. More recently, thinkers influenced by Martin Heidegger have interpreted art as the means by which a community develops for itself a medium for self-expression and interpretation.

Art is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result (Hatcher, 1999). Artistic works have existed for almost as long as humankind, from early pre-historic art to contemporary art.

Sourced

• "Buy old masters. They fetch a better price than old mistresses."
  • Aitken, Max, recalled on his death (9 June 1964)

• "Light is impressionism."
  • Aulenti, Gae, On positioning galleries for impressionist and post impressionist paintings at the top of her design for Paris's Musée d'Orsay, Time (8 December 1986)

• "This museum is a torpedo moving through time, its head the ever-advancing present, its tail the ever-receding past of 50 to 100 years ago."
  • Barr, Alfred, Newsweek (1 June 1964)

• "Art is made by the alone for the alone."
  • Barragán, Luis, Time (12 May 1980)

• "Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable."
  • Baskin, Leonard, Publishers Weekly (5 April 1965)

• "Any great work of art ... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world—the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air."
  • Bernstein, Leonard, "What Makes Opera Grand?" Vogue (December 1958)

• If the world were clear, art would not exist.
  • Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), "Absurd Creation" (Tr. Justin O'Brien, Vantage International, 1991, ISBN 0-679-73373-6, p. 98)

• "Art is the triumph over chaos."
  • Cheever, John, The Stories of John Cheever Knopf (1978)

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Mon Jul 6 00:04:21 2009