Artwork is an object of creativity that we create and often use to communicate our feelings, thoughts or ideas. It can take on a variety of forms including painting, drawing, sculpture and photography. Art is often a great way to improve mental health by relaxing and stimulating the brain. Creating art also increases the production of dopamine which is a neurotransmitter that promotes learning and motivation. It can also help lower stress levels and relieve pain from depression and anxiety by distracting the brain from the things that are causing these issues.
Aesthetic properties are those that cause us to feel awe, wonder or pleasure when we encounter an artwork. Aesthetic properties are often based on the perception of an object’s shape, lines and colour, or the way it is presented. The awe or wonder we experience when we view an artwork can often be connected to the fact that it is not like anything else that we have experienced before.
Classical definitions of art – often referred to as institutional or canonical definitions – are based on the notion that there are certain ‘central’ art forms that share a common nature. These are usually listed as painting, music, sculpture, architecture and literature (although the list is sometimes extended to include film and dance). The problem with this approach is that it fails to provide any genuine insight into what makes a work of art ‘art’. It is often pointed out that the concept of ‘art’ in any culture is always evolving, and it is therefore impossible to provide a stable definiendum that can be used to identify works of art.
In response, some philosophers have proposed that we need a more robust understanding of what it is that makes something an art work. They argue that it is not just the idea of a thing’s having aesthetic properties that is important, but that we also need to know how a particular work of art creates these properties in the audience.
This approach is often called ‘ontological’ because it attempts to understand what an art work is in terms of its ontological properties. An alternative is to argue that there are some features that can be used as a basis for identifying artworks, regardless of whether they are regarded as central arts at any given time. Monroe Beardsley, for example, proposes that an artwork is a “system of conditions that is capable of affording an experience of marked aesthetic character” (Beardsley 1982, p. 299). This is an interpretation of the Deweyan notion of ‘aesthetic experiences’, which are unified, intense and self-controlled. However, this is not without its critics.