[karlb]

In his book, “Playing to the Gallery,” the artist Grayson Perry attempts to answer this question. I'll summarize his definition because I found it interesting and challenging:

He begins by stating that it's now widely accepted that anything can be viewed as art. Seeing as that's an infinitely broad definition, he goes on to describe the following “scorecard” for what counts as art. A “yes” means it's more likely to be art:

* Is it in a gallery or an art context? * Is it a boring version of something else? Does it lack entertainment value? * Is it made by an artist? * Is it limited edition? * Is it admired by hipsters? * If you put it in a dumpster, would a passer-by wonder why an artwork had been thrown away? * Does it detain and suspend us in a state of frustration and ambivalence, making us pause and think rather than simply react? * If it's a photograph that's smaller than 2m and costs less than five-figures, then it scores negatively.

He says that the above tests aren't watertight, but if you put them together in a Venn diagram, the bit in the middle (the bit to which all the answers are yes) is pretty well guaranteed to be contemporary art.

I dislike the definition, but I wonder if it might be accurate. When I try to come up with a better definition, I wonder if the concept I'm trying to describe is something else—what art _should be_—not what art is.

[delluminatus]

I don't think there can really be a distinction between what art "should be" versus what art "is". You could maybe argue that a particular piece or style of art should be different, but does it really make sense to say that art should be something else?

More to the point, I think that definition is a little dissatisfying. By that metric, I have probably never created any art in my life -- because I'm not an artist with limited-edition work in a gallery. To me, that is unacceptable for a definition of art. Artistry is something more intrinsic to human nature than just being a thing made by an "artist" and put in an artistic context to be admired by hipsters and to confuse people.