As Wartenberg explains it, “Weitz argues that the very nature of art as a practice makes definition impossible.” Upon reading this and from our in-class discussions, I was lead to question the very definition of the word "definition" itself. According to Merriam-Webster "definition" is, "an act of determining"
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/definition)
(along with many other varying definitions of seemingly the similar meaning)
When it comes to art, certainly it is possible to determine if something is art; but, this can become a complicated, hazy area. As stated in class for example, some may consider cooking an art, but when it comes to frying up onion rings, is it considered art if even one fry cook the world over sees this as an art form? Who and how many people must see/determine something as art before it is actually accepted as such?
Since art is so open--it can range between anything from traditional painting and sculpture to one of the more modern forms of art like graphic design or contemporary dance--it is difficult, or to be more realistic, completely impossible to come up with a single concrete definition of art--at least, that is, without breaking it down into sub genres. As Weitz states, “art, as the logic of the concept shows, has no set of necessary and sufficient properties”—sure making drawings of many kinds requires a pencil or a paint brush, but creating a dance simply requires one’s own body and maybe musical accompaniment; certain types of art have sets of similarities in common, but never will there be even a single thing common across all forms of art.
How are we to expect to ever define something that is seemingly indefinable due to the fact that it is such a vast realm and is always being altered and added to? Will a single definition of art ever be possible?
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