It's been a while, and I'm glad for it.

The question has been hovering over us for a long time, hasn't it? What is art?

It's a pretty stupid question in my opinion, comparable to asking what "red" is. Sure, you can define red in scientific terms, but that eventually leads to an infinite regress of definitions. This is so because all definitions contain words which are themselves defined in by more words. I don't think that we can define such a very basic term.

Bryan Magee offers an explanation in "Confessions of a Philosopher" that fits rather well with my experience of the stuff. In short, he believes that art is that which expresses something beyond what it's actually about, something which "can be shown, but not said". Perhaps it's even something that "represents" some aspect of the noumenal realm. Fascinating stuff, go read it for yourself.

Note that I don't mean for the above mentioned to be a definition, to exclude or include something in a gallery. It should be merely indicative, to create some vague picture in your mind corresponding more or less to the one in mine.

Regardless, if this viewpoint is accurate, it bodes rather ill for our little comments and analyses. Yet, without people geniunely taking interest in their work and showing they understand at least in some way, there is no reason for artists to do anything at all. Art is mostly communicative and expressive in my view, but there's no reason to produce a signal if no one will receive it.

If you see a pretty flower, and there's no one else around, will you still paint it? Of course not, since you already have the picture you wanted to paint in your head. You know directly of the experience that would've been meaningful to communicate.

So here we have a thesis and an antithesis, what could we offer as a synthesis? Some way of offering communication and understanding (receptivity), whilst at the same time remaining true to the unsayable nature of the work?

Perhaps the only way to answer art is in kind? Wouldn't this create something that's very tough to understand? I think this will lead to a situation where one would have to have experience of something close to what inspired a work of art to appreciate it in a non-superficial manner. It would mean that the meaning of an art work can never be taught, just shared. Perhaps this would widen the gap of understanding, instead of closing it. At the very least, it would rob us of different perspectives since the "metacommunicative" element is removed.

For these reasons, I think an explanatory quality is definitely required in any artistic critique or discussion. Yet, the explanations can never touch the exact feeling the artist tried to conjure.

So I'll alter the sentence above and make it more nuanced. We can only come close to what an artwork means for us. In doing so, we can share one of the most important features of human life. Ultimately though, the work itself must be used as a symbol for the parts that we cannot sufficiently express. Our explanations, therefore, must always be guiding and hinting.

The best critics are like tour guides who take us through the features of a work, telling where they come from and who created them, but ultimately imploring the audience to look to their left and see.