Trying to describe art can be quite a daunting task, as so many things that are obviously different all fall into this same category. I attempted, for a while, to describe art by what it is not. If I could define the set of all things that are not art, I would know what falls into the set of things that are art, because I certainly know there is a set of all things. This venture was ultimately a failure because I found many things could go both ways. It seems like art is more about what went on before the actual construction of the piece. In order for the fruit of someone's labor to be art, the artist has to believe what he is making is art, not just making something that he believes will be perceived as art(he, she, it, whatever). It sort of reminded me of a paradox I once heard:
"A man tells you he will give you one million dollars if you intend on killing yourself by the end of the day. You do not need to actually kill yourself, but rather as soon as you have the intention to kill yourself, you will have earned your reward. Can one truly intend to do something, if they know that all they need to do in order to achieve the desired effect, is to intend to do something?"
With that thought, I figured that the "art"ness of anything could only be determined inside the singularity of the artist's mind. But that is not the end of the story, for then all discussions of art would be trivial and inconclusive, and any criteria to appreciate or scrutinize art would be arbitrary and unfounded. There exists another side of art, the effect it produces, the inspiration it serves as, the emotions it evokes. There is something unique about human perception, something that hides beyond comprehension, that somehow generates emotional responses to pieces of art. These rules are written in a forgotten language, stored in a forgotten library. It is in this place that signals from our sensory organs are translated into feelings. Again there is a singularity, where all our rules and reasons break down, right when that which existed in the physical world, suddenly existed also in the mental world. When we try to dissect a painting, breaking it down into quantized sections of visual space and describing them by the colors that compose them, we find no art. When we record a song, and chart the frequency of each song, graphing it with respect to time, we find no art. This thing that we so desperately seek, the definition of art, is never in front of us, it is somewhere behind our eyes, and between our ears.
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