what is art?

“Art is an institution to which we turn when we want to feel a shock of surprise. We feel this want because we sense that it is good for us once in a while to receive a healthy jolt. Otherwise we would so easily get stuck in a rut and could no longer adapt to the new demands that life is apt to make on us. The biological function of art, in other w

“Where there is selection there is art.” —BH Liddell Hart.

“At the same time, art cannot be understood in terms of purpose. As the sculptor Charles Ray has said, art is “for absolutely nothing.” To make, or experience, art is to enter a kind of free zone; it slows us down, places us in some epistemological estuary, takes us into the wild. We make art from our flaws, fragilities, perversities, from our need

Tolstoy, in What is Art?

Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression… Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea o

“A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.”

-Elaine de Kooning

“I think that may be the highest purpose of any work of art, to inspire someone else to save themselves through art. Creating creates creators.”

― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back)

Love this definition of art, from Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

Art is anything you can do well, anything you can do with quality, anything where there are options for doing it well or poorly. And there are very few things in this world that don't have options for doing it well or poorly. So you can make an art

Art is the experience of what you’ve felt inside.