What is ART?

The question "What is art?"

What would you answer?

It's not that easy to give a good answer to that.

This is one of the oldest and most difficult questions in the history of human ideas — precisely because there is no single correct answer. There are many definitions given from different perspectives.

This is a question that has occupied me for many years. It is an incredibly fascinating topic because it also reflects different people's need to control the narrative.

Art is not just about expression, emotion and aesthetics - it also touches on people's need to shape, protect or control the narrative of the world. This happens on multiple levels, both individual, relational and societal. Art can both confirm and challenge such narratives, and that is precisely why it is experienced as universal, open and free. The moment one tries to place art in a fixed box, it slips away - and thereby reveals the limitations of the narrative that tries to hold it in place.

That said, it is very enriching and interesting to delve a little deeper into the different definitions or explanations from different perspectives - such as these seven:

1. Art as a communication of emotion (One of the oldest understandings)

2. Art as interpretation of the world (Modernist tradition)

3. Art as rupture, criticism or investigation (Contemporary art)

4. Art as a space for experience (Newer phenomenological understanding)

5. Art as fragment - and as whole (Psychology and aesthetics)

6. Art as care and regulation (Neuro aesthetics, one of the most modern fields of research)

7. The Open Definition of Art (Today's Most Used Theoretical Framework)

I will go into more depth on these, one by one, in the next few posts....