Alright, just to be clear, despite all the praise this little stunt has been receiving, we’ve been here. Duchamp (R.Mutt) took us here in 1917 when he signed a urinal and put that chunk of porcelain in an art show. To which the question must now be asked what is art? Is art whatever Duchamp says it is? The entire motivation of modern art seems to push this notion that art is whatever we decide point at and label… wrong.
Art can only be “anything” if it is left undefined. Art is whatever you say it is if the Telos of art is left ambiguous. Telos is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of human art. Telos is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions. Does art have a purpose? If it does (spoiler – it does) and we can agree on what that purpose is, we can begin to judge art based on a shared set of criteria.
I wanted to post about this because I don’t think it’s something that get’s talked about among designers enough. Art (and this is my definition) has to deal with things that can’t be explained any other way. It is a vehicle to share the human experience one person has with others. The things expressed in the greatest of visual art, music, and literature could not be conveyed in any other way. A great example of this I commonly reference is Michalengelo’s Pieta. Directly translated Pieta means Pity. A concept/idea that would be hard do describe without art. Luckily the master decided to carve us an interpretation of the idea. 
You can call a urinal art if you’d like… but it aint the Pieta. In fact, a very large chasm separate the two. The part of us that reacts when we look up at the beauty of the night sky, or when we are “moved” by an experience, that same part of us gets stirred by great art. When we look at art – REAL ART it has the ability to move us deeply. It’s beautiful and it touches that part of us that is aiming upward, striving for something better.
