> > What is art? Art is when you challenge the assumptions that people make about a medium and use that conflict to help them change what they think about that

> > What is art? Art is when you challenge the assumptions that people make about a medium and use that conflict to help them change what they think about that medium. > I think the above definition, perhaps unwittingly, robs us of traditional value in art. By that above definition, a classical greco-roman statue that doesn't challenge anyone's ideas or perception cannot be art. When you see a medium normally used for creating functional pieces of buildings formed into a realistic visage of a human by carefully beating it with a hammer and a metal rod, that moment of realizing what material it's made out of and the tools used to make it transform what you see out of the stone around everywhere. Sculptors in the past have said that they are freeing the sculpture from the stone it is encased in. Using that kind of mindset, you can easily see classical greco-roman sculptures as the art they are. The sculpture isn't art on its own. It's the understanding of the sculpture, when it was made and what they managed to create that makes it art. > The definition for "object". I prefer the word "pattern" where any physical object is matter arranged in a certain pattern. Can emotions be art? Or is it the capturing of them that makes it art? What can art _not_ be? > What the writer has helpfully noticed is that art seems to be elusive; doesn't easily allow its definition to be pinned down, but it has a concrete existence in part of who we are. It cannot really exist without this thing we call "consciousness". Bingo :)