We’ve been discussing art this week, but have not yet considered what, exactly, art is in the first place.

In many ways, art defies definition.  Philosophers, men of letters, academics, artists themselves, have attempted to clarify what makes something art.  But even if some answers are better than others, there is certainly no consensus.  It is a bit like asking what is justice, or what is beauty?

So, for many today, that leaves the door wide open.  An arguably blasphemous, 1987 photograph of a crucifix submerged in bodily waste won an art award from an art center sponsored by the U.S. government and later sold in 2022 for nearly $150,000; in 1995, a piece of white paper crumpled into a ball was put under a glass case and was labeled “Work No. 88”—it is currently on display in the Manchester Art Gallery in England; and a banana duct taped to the wall is displayed in the Guggenheim, with an edition of the same piece having sold last year for $6.2 million.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: These are not art—not any more than running your fingernails down a chalkboard counts as music, or randomly hitting keys on a keyboard counts as a poem, or putting an innocent person in prison counts as justice. 

Don’t fall for the trick—these things may not be precisely definable, but that doesn’t mean they have no meaning.  As Chesterton said, “[a]rt, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.” 

The world needs people who are still willing to draw—and to hold—that line.  Will you?

Have a wonderful day.