What is art? There is no authoritative answer, and there may never be one. The philosopher Noël Carroll examined the primary definitions of art—art as representation, art as expression, art as form, etc.—and found that most collapse once the category “art” must include twentieth-century avant-garde works such as Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made urinal sculpture, Fountain. A single, inclusive definition of art is especially difficult because artists push beyond the boundaries every time a definition is proposed.
