what is art?

Love this from Yancey Strickler:

An artist is a self-employed self-expressor.

A creator is a self-employed commercial expressor.

“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

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