A Love-Hate Sonnet

No man can loathe himself and love his son;
His smaller self alike he must despise—
Yea, though his love his lovely wife has won
And though his smaller self has mamma's eyes.
To wife's life-plan a man will lend his seed,
And for the sake of love risk twice the hate;
But thrice the hate the loving scheme will breed,
If son from father takes the hateful trait.
Then father's hate for father gains a friend,
For larger self son's hate will also rate.
Thus husband's love-choice spawns a loathsome end:
Four times his hate his love does propagate.
       So husband, loving, hopes for daughter sweet
       And that one child makes wife's joy complete.

Representation

In trying to define "art" it's tempting (for me at least) to rely on the notion of representation.  "All art is representational.  If it's not representational, it's not art."  It's clear.  It's concrete.  And it excludes many of the works we intuitively want to exclude.  Like this . . . 

Dan Peterman, 25 Years of Quality Control, 2015

And this . . .

Matt Mullican, Death Pulling the Soul From a Dead Man, 1976

There are two sticking points.  First, there are countless borderline cases—Picasso's Head, for example.

Pablo Picasso, Head, 1928

I could probably live with borderline cases.  More challenging is the fact that representation alone is not enough.  All art may be representational, but not all representational works are art.  (A stick figure drawing, for example, wouldn't count in my book.)  We need additional criteria to exclude works that are representational but aesthetically crude, or depraved, or objectionable on other grounds.  And if we include additional criteria, representation may be superfluous.  

Suppose for example we decide symmetry, originality, meaning, and decency are all components of art:  we could eliminate representation altogether as a criterion.  I think most qualifying works would in fact be representational (it's hard to imagine a meaningful nonrepresentational work), but maybe some wouldn't be.

Art With a Capital A

"There really is no such thing as Art.  There are only artists."—E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

An unfortunate start to an otherwise great book.  (And an ironic start to a book titled The Story of Art.)  Gombrich in his introduction claims "art" means different things in different times and places, and obsessing over "Art with a capital A" can undermine both the creation and the enjoyment of artistic works.  

Cave Paintings, Lascaux, France, 15,000 to 10,000 BC

"Art" may mean different things in different times and places, but it must share some element of meaning in all times and places.  If it didn't, we couldn't have a story of art—not one that spans millennia at any rate.  And the works themselves, from the earliest cave paintings to Picasso's Violin and Grapes, must have something in common.  If they didn't, how would Gombrich know what to include in his book? 

Pablo Picasso, Violin and Grapes, 1912

Given what passes for art today, it seems worthwhile to try to identify the common denominator, both in the word and the works.  And it shouldn't be that hard.  Art comprises manmade, physical stuff.  Defining "art" is not like trying to define "beauty" or some other transcendent idea.  Some things are art, other things are not.  And it's easy in most cases to tell which is which.   

Defining Art

"There really is no such thing as Art.  There are only artists."--E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

"In the twenty-first century, when art is so pluralistic that nobody tries to define "art" anymore, it may be hard to imagine a time when the definition was being contested across the entire world of art."--Larry Witham, Picasso and the Chess Player

Art (n) 1.a.: The conscious use of imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words.--The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

"What is art?  That question would have been answered differently in almost every epoch of history."--Fredrick Hartt, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture

  "'Art'--isn't that a man's name?"--Andy Warhol