What Is Art?

Abstract

What is art? Many philosophers throughout the history attempted to answer, but it is still without a definite answer. In this paper, I will be sharing my experience during a visit to the Getty Museum. Also, I will be discussing about “The Significant Form Theory” to show how it may be used effectively to distinguish an object as a true art or not while closely observing the aesthetical emotions the viewer receives. Two objects I selected for this paper, namely Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” and the King Louis XIV’s tapestries, from the Getty Museum, will be used to demonstrate what should be considered as art and what should not be considered as art.

Week Two Paper: What is Art?

I visited the J. Paul Getty Museum (a.k.a. Getty Center) in Los Angeles, California, with my wife and my sister-in-law visiting us from Korea. My wife and I love to visit the Getty Center occasionally for its art collections, special exhibitions as well as the beauty of its amazing architecture designed by Richard Meier and a fantastic view of the entire city of Los Angeles from the mountain top where the museum is located. At the time I visited, the museum was having several exhibitions, one exhibition that was especially interesting to me was called “Woven Gold: Tapestries of Louis XIV,” which is one of the topics I’m going to write about in this paper. The Getty Center is also famous for its wide range of art collections: antiquities, drawings, manuscripts, paintings, photographs, sculpture and decorative arts. As a fervent admirer of Vincent van Gogh, I chose Vincent van Gogh’s very well-known painting called “Irises” as the second topic of this paper. My intention is to write about the differences between Louis XIV’s tapestries and Vincent van Gogh’s painting in order to show what makes Vincent van Gogh’s painting an art, while Louis XIV’s tapestries not considered an art.

Understanding Art

How Do I Define Art?

The definition of art has been one of the most popular topics discussed by philosophers throughout the history of mankind. So can art be defined or have the philosophers been successful in answering this question? Warburton states that “some philosophers argue that art cannon be defined” (Page 158). The reasoning for his argument is that “it [art] is a complete mistake to look for a common denominator where there is too much variety among work” (Page 158). Defining art is not an easy task for philosophers as it covers a wide range of topics with a variety of forms.

I, too, agree that defining art is not an easy task at all; but based on the reading of Nigel Warburton’s Philosophy: The Basics, in which he describes different philosophical