What Is Art?

During class last week the question of “what is art?” was asked.  Most people answered with expression of ones.  But art encompasses a lot of things that people would not consider to be art, like modern art that make some people say, “I could make that”, such as Jackson Pollack’s abstract expressionist paintings. 

What is an expression?

This must also be answered to determine what art is.

Expression, like art, encompasses large spectrum possibilities.  The first amendment of the constitution allows citizens of the Untied States of America to have right of speech, or expression, including expression of religion and of grievances in society or the government.  This allows us not only to criticize the government, but for art to flourish without control from the central government.

Many times “expression” is followed by “of emotion” in describing art.  Art does this, but I don’t think it is universal.  A sculpture, or modern sculpture that looks wacky and seems like a bunch of shapes, creates different emotions for different people because art is subjective to the viewer.   Even black and white pictures can create different emotions in different people. 

 But I can’t seem to simplify art in terms of expression of emotion.  My favorite type of art is music whose medium is sound.  In music emotions can be perplexed.  A song can have sad lyrics, but the music or chord progression might overwhelmingly happy sounding, or vice versa.   The fact that musical notes and rhythm can seem to express emotions to the human brain is interesting to me. Can dogs hear music? If they can what do they understand?  These are more scientific questions, but still of interest to me.