What is Art?

Art is to create.                                                                                            To create is to make something out of nothing.                                             Art is to express ideas with physical means.

All expressions of ideas are art, even the simplest and most trivial ones, because art in itself is not a badge of honor. Bad art is also art.

When you are confronted with a piece of art that in your opinion is utter rubbish, you should not exclaim “This is not art!” Yes, it could very well be art, but it may be bad art. The artist has probably expressed an idea even if it is a banal and boring one.

You see apparently formless colors on a canvas. Is that art? It depends if it expresses an idea. If the paint was splashed on the surface by a monkey or a cow’s tail, then it cannot be art even if it is strikingly similar to what an artist may have produced. Obviously the monkey had no idea and the cow’s tail left only arbitrary marks. If a human being also mixes colors in such a mechanical and thoughtless way, it is no more art.

But that says nothing about the value of the object. Chance and nature can make a lot of beauty and so can a human stroke of luck. By all means pay for it, but it is not art.