How to Identify Art

Not everything that is created is art. So what are the criteria for determining what is a work of art?

Here are some questions that can be used to define what is a work of art.

1. Is it unique? A work of art is always unique and original. Artwork may borrow or appropriate pieces of other art works, but there is still enough of the artists' statement to make the work truly unique and one of a kind. This happens most often in hip-hop where sampling is de rigueur. For example, the Big Audio Dynamite song Rush samples Baba O'Reilly by The Who. Both songs stand alone as works of art, as does Rush which uses The Who sample to decorate the song and to pay tribute, more than using it as the foundation or starting point. The Beatles work is unique even though they borrowed from and were influenced by Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and Little Richard.

2. Does it transcend? A true work of art must possess enough impact and significance to make it commanding and memorable. There are certain works of art that are so transcendent that they even leak into popular culture, such as Michelangelo's David, Da Vinci's The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and Grant Wood's American Gothic. Clearly these works transcend, or rise above, more average works of art. A more difficult work to evaluate to evaluate for this criteria might be Andy Warhol's Brillo box arrangements from 1964. In this work, Warhol has copied Brillo boxes (onto painted plywood) and placed them into arrangements that are typically displayed on the floor of the museum. So what makes copied commercial packaging museum worthy and transcendent? Warhol makes a commentary on the separation of advertising and art. He also glorifies the everyday object, and in this way the Brillo boxes transcend their ordinariness to become re-presented by Warhol.

3. Is it influential? This is the one stipulation for identifying a work of art that takes time and hindsight to be able to determine. There are masterpieces of our contemporary time that are yet to be recognized for what they are simply because not enough time has passed. This is also the rule that disqualifies The Macarena as a work of art. The idea inherent in this rule is that art feeds art. Art is a living entity that is like an eternal flame kept burning through the work of artists since the beginning of human expression. The good stuff gets repeated and passed on, the bad stuff falls by the wayside.

There may be exceptions to the above rules or even more criteria, but these three questions can be applied when trying to determine whether an object, a play, a story, a song, or a work of art can truly be called Art.

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