Status Updates From Get the Picture: A Mind-Ben...

Art is not solely the result of an artist’s behaviour. It depends on the viewer’s behaviour too. Art feels like a handshake between the creator & the audience. The artist puts forth something as art, and the viewer has to choose whether he/she can relate to it. If a work confuses you, or makes you feel uncomfortable, then one can call it art. Whether it is good art, that is a different matter.

One can make an analogy with language: learning to speak is a universal, innate predisposition for all children even though individual children learn the particular language of the people among whom they are nurtured. Similarly, art can be regarded as a natural, general proclivity that manifests itself in culturally learned specifics such as dances, songs, performances, visual display, and poetic speech.

DISSANAYAKE > 1995's Homo Aestheticus:

At first glance, the fact that the arts and related aesthetic attitudes vary so widely from one society to another would seem to suggest that they are wholly learned or 'cultural' in origin rather than, as I will show, also biological or 'natural.'