What is Art?

What is Art?
Understanding art in the context of expression and creativity is quite diverse that most scholars find it challenging to come up with a singular, unified definition. A simple explanation of "art" from Merriam-Webster dictionary is that art is the conscious usage of creative imagination and skill, mainly when producing aesthetic objects. To give the word an academic outlook, we discover that art is an expansively assorted range of human actions involving the creation of auditory, visual, or performed artworks to communicate the artist's technical and imaginative capabilities. Therefore, attracting appreciation for their emotional and aesthetic appeals from the intended audience. It also expresses our desires, thoughts, intuitions, and emotions on a physical level to communicate the intended message regardless of the passage of time, starting from the renaissance period to modern times. Hence, this essay will discuss the meaning of art through an evolutionary process and how the fundamental values of art have changed as time passes.
Numerous philosophers have tried to understand art through divergent perspectives. Most often, its meaning is fashioned by the artist's intentions and the ideas and feelings the artwork prompts from the viewer. Each artwork is usually meant for a particular cultural context to address individuals from a specific society who share values, ethics, and ethos. Targeting a particular community with artwork achieves its meaning by educating society on desired social behaviors. Art's purpose is often to address spiritual, economic, social, philosophical, or political ideas with aestheticism to explore nature, divergent opinions, bestow pleasure, and invoke emotions. However, its universal meaning is often elusive since art in one society might be an ordinary object in another culture.
Consequently, most philosophers have opined in different ways to reach a common understanding. For instance, renowned philosopher Richard Wollheim considers art as one of the most elusive human culture traditional problems. From such viewpoints, we come up with different definitions like equating it to a means of communicating or expressing ideas and emotions, or just a way of appreciating and exploring formal elements independently and not considering any historical context.
Through a simple understanding that art is an amalgamation of human activities, we discover that it has historically existed in different forms and on varying media. Its earliest recorded forms include sculpture, visual media, photography, visual arts, print art, et cetera. Although architecture is usually considered a form of visual arts, it entails objects creation where its practicality is most crucial compared to other visual art forms like painting. Hence, art is primarily classified in terms of its qualities like its reality representation, emotional appeal, or expression. As highlighted above, even though there has never been a consensus on art's definition, its general illustrations peg on human's technical or imaginative creative skills.
Art's history and evolution raise complex questions in equal measures like the term itself. The word originated from the Latin ars, which initially meant craft or skill. These meanings still dominate some English words like artifact and artisan, similarly derived from ars. However, a deeper understanding of art exceeds the sense of skilled craftsmanship, therefore distinguishing it from an artisan or artifact. What makes art unique and different from the other terms above is its visual appeal. From Europe's renaissance era, the 16th century to the 20th century, art's history was primarily based on analyzing its aesthetic qualities. During the period, Roman art and the ancient Greek arts, which were the classical antiquity arts, were considered the standard measure for timeless perfection.
Artists from that period strived to imitate their art styles. The Greeks and Romans together created the western classical culture and established the source of Western civilization. What Greece and Rome have in common is that they are democratic and scientific, but they also have their characteristics. Comparing the art styles of Greece and Rome, Greek art is more idealistic, and Roman art is more realistic. Greek art has an idealized color because its creation comes from the worship of gods and temples, sacrifices, and monuments. The Greeks created the most extraordinary sculpture art in the ancient world.
In contrast, the Romans had significant achievements in portrait carving art. Roman art is the direct development of Greek art. Most artists of this era strived to imitate these art types, and indeed art historians analyzed the fine arts' virtues. The fine arts included architecture, sculpture, and painting (Glass). 
However, art and its history have fundamentally evolved over the past one and a half centuries. During this period, artists have abandoned the classical traditions of expressing art and have embraced modern aesthetic ideals and media. Art's history has evolved from formal beauty analysis to understanding its cultural context. Even though art is still primarily visual and largely depends on visual analysis, beauty by itself no longer is the entire property of art as it did in the classical era (Glass). 
Understanding art dictates a better understanding of its historical and cultural context. For example, there is no set aesthetic standard for appreciating visual art. What might be pleasing and attractive to one individual might be disgusting through another person's eyes. Time also contributes to art's meaning. A piece of art that was relevant and educative during classical times might not have a meaningful connotation in contemporary times but might be considered a mere artifact representing a specific period's inventions. Still, scholars have agreed on specific standard rules for art's aesthetic analysis and judgment despite its lack of universal definition. For example, formalism is a concept used in art theory where a piece of art's worth is determined by how it is created or depending entirely on its form. It evaluates artwork solely on visual standards, emphasizing its compositional elements and medium, but not based on its context, content, or realistic connotation. Therefore, art is understood through its elements and principles comprising pattern, harmony, contrast, texture, form, color, space, et cetera. With a harmonious interaction between art's elements a...