I remember seeing a Rachel Whiteread exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts a few days ago and, while looking at bizarre figures and sketches around me, wondered, “How could this possibly be art?” There was a sloppily colored sketch that seemed as if it was drawn by an amateur and what seemed to be a door (or some other piece of furniture) hanging on the wall. What was most surprising was a chair sitting in the middle with a few boxes on top of it. Unless she actually constructed the chair, which I assume she did not since she’s not a carpenter, it baffles me how anyone can call it art.  

The question “What is art?” has stirred contention amongst thinkers ever since art was conceived. Indeed, the polymath (and artist in his own right) Theodor Adorno once said, “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident.” Turning to the dictionary isn’t going to help, for the Random House dictionary defines art as, “the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria.” This definition itself begs the question, what is the aesthetic criteria? Furthermore, the very word art has numerous different meanings. For instance, it can mean a particular skill harnessed over time – the art of war or the art of carpentry. It can also mean an academic field of study, the liberal arts, for instance. Usually, however, art is used to denote an object, or the creation of a object, made for aesthetic purposes. But, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an object. Drama, or music, can be considered art. Given the wide scope art encompasses, it is easier to focus on the visual arts, but that does not mean the same qualities cannot apply to other forms of art.

Aesthetics, the scholarly study and judgment of art, has a long history beginning with ancient Greece. Plato held that art is a representation of nature. Discussed in The Republic, there exist forms, which are perfect, universal, unchanging, and timeless representation of  objects or ideas. The form of a circle is one such example. Artists make imperfect imitations of such forms (since there is no perfect circle) and Plato promptly banished them from his Republic. His student Aristotle held a much more sympathetic view of art, but the idea of art being a representation of nature still held strong. It wasn’t until the advent of photography that art became more than just the depiction of reality. Art became a medium of expression, where form was elevated over content. Emphasis was placed on line, colour, and other formal qualities, and distortion was favored over realistic depictions. But, the contemporary view of art cannot be used as a definition of art, for it would leave out classics such as the Mona Lisa, which is very realistic in style. Nor can art be defined as a depiction of nature, for many pieces of contemporary art would not qualify. A good definition of art, therefore, would encompass both the experimental works of modern art and the lifelike works of past art.