All assertions using the word 'art' with little or no attempt to describe with some specificity what the writer has in mind with the word lead only to vacuity.
For openers. I suggested that one should convey if the "art" he has in mind is an activity, a collection of works, or some variety of "quality". The next step would be to apply specificity within each of those three categories. For example, if what one has in mind with the word 'art' is an activity, it's necessary to convey which activities one is calling "art" and which not. It will, say I, soon become apparent that one is talking solely of a personal, arbitrary decision about what to CALL an "art-activity". That is, the talker will not expose/discover what IS "art"; he will only be STIPULATING: "I assert that whatever gives me an aesthetic experience IS art!" Or, more modestly, "I shall use the word 'art' to label any work that gives me personally an aesthetic experience." This, of course, will not carry much weight within a sophisticated but varied forum. WAITING FOR GODOT does not give me an a.e.. But I believe it does give an a.e. to some people whom I otherwise respect. Let's momentarily assume my friend and I arrive at a mutual agreement of sorts about what constitues an "a.e." -- the way we might about what is an orgasm, or the special transported delight occasioned by hearing certain Mozart or Beethoven. Given that agreement, it would be silly for my friend to tell me that I am wrong, I DO get an a.e. from GODOT, or for me to tell him he does NOT get an a.e. from GODOT. Given all this, the best we can ever hope for in a search to justify the use of the word 'art' (as an activity, or collection, etc) would be to allow the usage of a new term, "me-art". An analogy would be a "me-meaning" -- as when people might say, "Let me tell you what 'the good life' means to me." "You may think me peculiar, but, for me, there are many moments in the movie EVITA that I'd call art -- well, okay, art for me, any way. Definitely me-art." I'm fully aware that many aestheticians would flatly reject that compromise. "If you can't see that Beethoven's Ninth/Rembrandt's NIGHT WATCH/Eliot's FOUR QUARTETS/Shakespeare's HAMLET/ is in point of absolute fact a great work of art, you're not worth talking to." Meantime the notin of applying
