"what is art?" good question.

Art is mankind trying to touch what is untouchable. To connect with the dream world of thought and feeling, perhaps a vain attempt to become god for a brief moment. It is creation.

There is no right or wrong in art, whether you tag someone as a GWC, a hack or a master artist they are, if the motives are in the right place all "artists".

Everyone is on a different path but I believe the goal is the same, to reach that perfect moment that we can never really touch. If you ask any aritst if they feel they've reached perfection and they are honest they will tell you no.

Art is action. Dance, painting etc. all involve the inner spirit  working towards the outer world. We all are artists, some are embraced by large numbers of people, some are hated but either way they (we) all strive to create.

So we strive, we fight a battle which can never truly be won. But the joy and the heartache is in that battle.

Now go make some art!

woof!

Whatever makes you stop, and feel something... and think about how much you liked it, at least for a little while.

and all this time i thought art was a guy with no arms, no legs and a hook on his back hanging on a wall.  when people walk by and say, "this is art.  i know because i'm an artist," he sticks his tongue out at them.

--face reality

Let me share with you a story told to me by one of my professors when I asked her what is art. She said art was fish cabinets. Here's why:
A king called his minister and said I want to have a picture of a fish for my bedroom. Not just any picture mind you but the best picture of a fish in all the land. So the minister went into the village to find an artist. When he inquired of the villagers they directed him to a small studio where he found a small man painting. The minister asked the man, “are you an artist.” And the man replied, “yes.” The minister went on, “ I have a commission for you, I need a picture of a fish for the kings bedroom. Not just any picture mind you but the best picture of a fish in all the land. Can you do it.” The artist replied that he could. The minister said, when you are finished come up to the castle and have the guards call for me, I will come and pay you for your work.
Six months went by, then a year and still the artist did not come. So the minister went down to the village to his shop to see what was going on. He confronted the artist and yelled, “Sir, it has been a year now and still you have not completed your commission, just how long does it take to paint a fish. The little artist sat down behind the easel and in 2 minutes painted a most magnificent image of a fish. The minister said, “that’s more like it, if you could do this in 2 minutes what have you been doing for the last year. The Artist walked over to a large cabinet. When he opened it thousands of pictures of fish tumbled out.

Art is a verb!

Whatever I say it is.




And for once I'm not joking around with that statement.  Over the past century, the meaning of the word "art" has become more and more abstract.  And today, it is anywhere and everywhere.  Anything a person can talk about in "art speak" is art.  Which I think is bullshit, but who am I compared to a mass of people that want art to progress until it's so damn abstract or conceptual, it's all in the head, rather than in any medium.

aesthetic and spiritual expression. StuART. Its part of my name, therefore I must create it!

According to William Rubin, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "there is no single definition of art." The art historian Robert Rosenblum believes that "the idea of defining art is so remote [today]" that he doesn't think "anyone would dare to do it."

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, states that there is "no consensus about anything today," and the art historian Thomas McEvilley agrees that today "more or less anything can be designated as art."

Arthur Danto, professor of philosophy at Columbia University and art critic of The Nation, believes that today "you can't say something's art or not art anymore. That's all finished." In his book, After the End of Art, Danto argues that after Andy Warhol exhibited simulacra of shipping cartons for Brillo boxes in 1964, anything could be art. Warhol made it no longer possible to distinguish something that is art from something that is not.

What has finished, however, is not artistic production, but a certain way of talking about art. Artists, whoever they are, continue to produce, but we, non-artists, are no longer able to say whether it is art or not. But at the same time, we are no longer comfortable with dismissing it as art because it fails to fit what we think art should be (whatever that is).

We struggle with this because we have been taught that art is important and we're unwilling to face up to the recently revealed insight that art in fact has no "essence." When all is said and done, "art" remains significant to human beings and the idea that now anything can be art, and that no form of art is truer than any other, strikes us as unacceptable. 

i picked that off google, thought it was excellent.

imo:

art is anything you do because you just can't sleep until you finish it.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.

This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies.

An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.

From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

END OF PREFACE

There yah go, Oscar wilde said it.

Here's a rather academic definition of art that I saved a long time ago (sorry, don't remember the source).  It was originally presented in columns, and I'm not sure how to do that on MM, but the pipes (|) signify the column divide here. Everything in the right hand column begins with IF.  Hope it comes out readable.  I would suggest reading just the left hand column first, then reading a second time going all the way across.

Also, just as a disclaimer, I don't entirely agree with this, but it does make me think a lot.

Well, that attempt a columns didn't work out so well. Let's see if this works better:

DEFINITION for "what is art" (i.e., it doesn't qualify if):
Something experiential in essence (IF it can be understood by explanation rather than experience)

constructed with intent by a human, (IF it's solely accidental or occurs without the awareness of the individual (e.g., discarded remnants from a manufacturing process which were not made to the purpose of being art))

the primacy of which isn't in the utilitarian, (IF it's function is more important than its artistry (e.g., a sharpened stick intended as a spear; most items labeled as crafts))

that communicates, through purposeful engagement of the senses,  (IF sensory perception is incidental to the communicative function (e.g., a technical manual))

a reflection of human consciousness (IF a gorilla paints a horse. (It's not art. Let them come up with their own term for their constructs.))

- conceptually / emotionally / intellectually - (IF only one of the three states is involved; two or more must be in play.)

which would not occur without the action of the artist. (IF the artist's involvement doesn't effect the outcome (e.g. displaying a rotting carcass)).

As for GREAT ART, the further removed from

the banal, the cliched, the obvious, (IF it is so commonplace practically everyone does it that way)

the uncrafted, (IF it requires minimal skill or technique)

the purely organic or geological, (IF nature's interdiction is more important than the artist's.)

while foregoing intrusive artifice/excessive sentiment, (IF the display of artistic craft, or attempt to affect emotions, detracts from the construct's ability to forge communication in its own right (e.g., a Fragonard idyll))

but referencing human development, (IF it fails to be relational in some manner to its culture of origin)

still, without need of extensive exegesis, (IF it cannot be understood or experienced in a significant manner without an extensive explanation or justification)

managing to captivate and inspire others, ( IF it serves merely to shock)

the more it qualifies.

If it invokes a reaction from you (either positive or negative) then it is art.  If it doesn't, then for you its just taking up space.

Book definition:

..."By its original and broadest definition, art (from the Latin ars, meaning "skill" or "craft") is the product or process of the effective application of a body of knowledge, most often using a set of skills; this meaning is preserved in such phrases as "liberal arts" and "martial arts". However, in the modern use of the word, which rose to prominence after 1750, “art” is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result (Hatcher, 1999). Britannica Online defines it as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others"[1]. By any of these definitions of the word, artistic works have existed for almost as long as humankind, from early pre-historic art to contemporary art."

In the "art" I produce I too have a main goal of generating a feeling---ANY feeling!!