What is Art?
What is art? How can you define it? Some would say there is no need to define art. I choose to disagree. If we are to discuss a subject we must know what that subject is. If we are to talk about art, we need to know what we are talking about and what we are not talking about. The same goes for religion. We need to be able to say "That is not art, that is not relevant to our discussion." Otherwise, we will be trapped in an endlessly tangential discussion about everything under the sun, a sort of ultimate .misc newsgroup.
An Ancient Definition
Way back in the history of Western civilization, it was proposed (by Plato and Aristotle) that art be defined as the imitation of nature. I believe this to be a valid definition. Art is the attempt by man to reproduce, and perhaps embelish upon, the world we see, hear, feel, and experience. Paintings imitate what we see, music imitates what we hear, and plays imitate what we experience.
The Music Objection
Some say that music does not fit this definition. That music is not an imitation of the sound of the birds in the morning, or the rain at night. 18th century philosophers argued that even if they did, it did not explain why we prefer music to natural sounds. I am willing to grant that music is not an imitation of those things. However, it is an imitation of nature.
If you take various strings of notes, and play them for people, they can make judgements as to which sequences are "musical" and which are not. These judgements are practically the same from person to person, even across cultural boundaries. This is because all music shares certain mathematical properties. The spectral density of the fluctuating notes is called 1/f (one-over-f, or sometimes flicker noise), and is approximately halfway between white and brown noise.
Music is not alone in having a spectral density of 1/f. The fluctuations of the Nile, variations in sunspots, the wobling of the earth's axis, undersea currents, membrane currents in the nervous system of animals, the flow of traffic on Japanese expressways. All of these have the same 1/f spectral density. Music is imitating, perhaps unconciously, the rhythms of nature.
The Message Objection
Some say that imitation is not enough to define art. There must also be a message that the artist is trying to communicate. My intuition as an artist is that this is just silly. I have certainly made pieces of art that had no message, and I have certainly enjoyed such pieces made by others.
Of course, calling an objection silly is no way to have a rational discussion, despite the apparent popular wisdom of the internet today. But the definition of a word must fit usage. Not perfectly, since usage is so varied. We could never hope to have a single definition that fit all usages. However, if our definition is so far off from usage that one quarter of what people think is art is not covered, then there is cause to revise. I would argue that one-quarter of what most people think of as art does not have a message. I cannot back this up, not having the resources for an empirical study. Until such a study can show the scope of loss from requiring a message, I think it is better to err on the side of inclusion, and use Plato's definition.
Last Modified 6/7/99
Created 5/6/98