Definition Essay - Art and Excellence :: Expository Definition Essays

Definition Essay - Art and Excellence Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there, ya know, it doesn’t seem fair that I’m living for something I can’t even define, and there you are right there in the meantime. –Ani DiFranco, â€Å"Out of Habit,† Living in Clip Art seems to be such an all-encompassing word it defies definition. The artist Ani DiFranco blatantly says in her music that she cannot define art although it is intimately and passionately tied into her life and interpersonal relationships. Ani Difranco is an artist, but why is she an artist? What about her and her music make her an artist? What makes her music art? What is the difference between this enterprise and that of being a world-class physicist? Was Einstein not a true artist? Is physics not an art? If it is an art, is it art? When one attempts to analyze and define art, these sorts of questions inevitably arise, making any objective notion of what art is exceedingly difficult to determine. In fact, we find that nearly everybody has his or her own unique conception of art. Of course, it may be argued that everybody also has his or her own unique conception of a spoon or any other idea, but art seems something over and above this. The incredible depth , richness, and complexity of art do not merely allow for, but seem to necessitate the myriad conceptions of art we find in the world around us. I believe the level to which anything can be considered art depends on the level of originality, skillfulness, effectiveness, and other such relative characteristics providing opportunities for the excellent performance or unbelievable creativity we typically associate with art. To begin explaining what is meant by art’s reliance on relative characteristics, let us analyze the word deep. How do we know when something is deep? Should we consider any body of water greater than four inches in depth deep and anything less deep shallow? It seems fairly obvious that the word depth refers solely to relative phenomena. Deep is a fairly simple property to which we make the switch from shallow at some arbitrarily and relatively defined level on the gradient of depth.