"A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line," wrote Joseph Conrad.
Understanding that art requires "justification" in the words of Conrad – deeming a piece of work as an acceptable art – it is that which pleases the senses, which satisfies individual opinions and emotions: as a subjective understanding as to what constitutes what… in this case, what constitutes art.
Adapting from the conception of "justification in every line," the emotional paradigm or "art" can stretch out into many different forms, all of which reference human emotions and perceptions: to that of drawing and painting, writing and playing music, watching and experiencing things as they unravel a certain "truth" which no other "justification" allows.
The subjective side of this "truth," – permitting a "real" aside from the illusive shape of the less abstract – and to the opposite side, objectivity, the question still lies as to what art is and why it is art. Does art require an artist; does the work have intrinsic qualities?
In the subjective view, a person sees or hears an art and makes mental judgments about it that are neither true nor false, but only grasp a feeling in a way that outfits his or her own opinions, or individual desires.
These judgments are independently true or false to what the individual person believes, wants, or hopes.
Benedetto Croce, a more or less Hegelian philosopher, wrote extensively about aesthetics: the philosophy of art and beauty.
He strongly believed that the understanding of art comes from either "vision or intuition:" vision, as he explains further, comes from intuition; vision, further, is the dream, the imagination by way of the intuition.
Art comes from the "intuitive" mind, wrote Croce. The intuitive mind is where imagination forms its creative interpretations of what it understands to be "real," to be "true;" through imagination, intuition, art is discernible, and plainly subjective. Intuition, as the "birth place" of imagination through its interpretation of the physical world, is indistinguishable from "expression."
Friedrich Nietzsche in "The Will to Power" believed that art comes from "dream and intoxication." The dream is "vision," "association," and "poetry." The intoxication is "gesture," "passion," song and dance."
(Further, in Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy," he believed that there were two opposing impulses which are the developing qualities of an artist to create art: the Apollonian, which is the impulse or force or rational and civilized behavior; and the Dionysian, which represents the unrestrained, wild, impulsive side of the artist in the creation of his art.)
By way of Nietzsche's illustrious thought, and the prowess of Croce, and my own opinions: art is dream and intoxication, understood by the dreamer, by his own visions of life; dreams dreamt as abstract, individual interpretations of life through the imagination; dreams as "abstract truth."
The dream, as imagination/creativity, thrust into the physical world as representing the abstract of the dreamer through the intellectual mind's process of creating: what was art in the mental abstract is then a physical abstractness.
Croce wrote, "The artist produces an image or a phantasm; and he who enjoys art turns his gaze upon the point to which the artist has pointed, looks through the chink which the artist has opened, and reproduces that image in himself."
From the artist, his art is interpreted by a subsequent viewer or listener – art as a construct of initial interpretation, made physical, and is then interpreted by other individual subjects.
The interpretation is both reflective of the emotions expressed by the artist, with at least some influence, and the emotions within the viewer or listener which were "created" in him or her preceding the event of the viewing – making a unique understanding, a new "truth."
Because art, according to Croce, is a mental, subjective occurrence, what is considered art in the physical world is determined by individual interpretations. If you see an object, a "thing" in general as a piece of art, it is then a piece of art.
By that, does a piece of art require an artist? For the subjective view, it's not neccesary.The "art," the beauty in anything lies with subject intuition. Just as "Starry Night" by van Gogh is or can be considered art, so is/can Mount Rainier, simply by its aesthetic qualities, as interpreted by the viewer or listener.
As a matter of subjectivity, art is everywhere. Within every object, every wave of sound, even within every subject, there are qualities which allow every one person to see things in the world as either beautiful or ugly. There is also the transcendent moment when they see or hear something that is both beautiful and ugly.
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