What is Art assignment
From Leo Tolstoy, 1897:
• The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most various - very strong or very weak, very important or very insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love for one's own country, self-devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed in a drama, raptures of lovers described in a novel, feelings of voluptuousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a triumphal march, merriment evoked by a dance, humor evoked by a funny story, the feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening landscape or by a lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful arabesque - it is all art.
• Art must create a specific emotional link between artist and audience, one that "infects" the viewer.
This is what John Fowles has to say about the artist:
• "To be an artist is not to be a member of a secret society; it is not an activity inscrutably forbidden to the majority of mankind. Even the clumsiest, ugliest and most ignorant lovers make love; and what is important is the oneness of man in making artifacts, not the abyss said to exist between a Leonardo and the average of mankind. We are not all to be Leonardos; but of the same kind as Leonardo, for genius is only one end of the scale. I climbed Parnassus once, and between the mundane village of Arachova at the foot and the lonely summit, quite as lovely as the poets have always had it to be, there is nothing but a slope; no abyss, no gulf, no place where wings are necessary
This is what Sir Ernst Gombrich writes in the very first sentences of his immensely popular The Story of Art, the million-selling handbook which went through sixteen editions since its first appearance in 1950:
• "There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. Once these were men who took colored earth and roughed out the forms of a bison on the wall of a cave; today some buy their paints, and design posters for the hoardings; they did and do many other things. There is no harm in calling all these activities art as long as we keep in mind that such a word may mean very different things in different times and places, and as long as we realize that Art with a capital A has no existence. For Art with a capital A has come to be something of a bogey and a fetish."
A long quote from Nancy Aiken's The Biological Origins of Art where Aiken refers to Dissanayake's Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why:
• "Art is not icing on the cake of culture. Art is an intrinsic part of human behavior; we can call human kind not only Homo sapiens but, as Ellen Dissanayake has it, Homo aestheticus. Probably quite by accident and without understanding what they had done, our remote ancestors co-opted some adaptive behaviors to add to their elaboration of ordinary things. These behaviors, such as fear at the sight of predator eyes and teeth, turned a previously ordinary thing, such as a covering for the head, into a
frightful mask.
Art can be made by any of us. It need not result in museum-quality work; it can be only an elaboration of an ordinary object: a hair style rather than plain hair, fashion rather than a simple covering to keep warm, decorating rather than a room with furniture. We can all dance, sing, and doodle; some just do these better than others.
Art is appreciated by all of us. We need no special knowledge or sensory apparatus or experience to respond to a rhythm, a tune, a series of bright colors, a monumental building, or a parade. We can all be thrilled and soothed by art.
Art is a species-specific behavior which can be used for social manipulation. All of us are subject to art's whim. Art can direct thinking, beliefs, and behavior. Art is a means to educate, subjugate, subvert, and convert. Art has this power because it can tap into and use our reflexive responses to natural, biologically relevant stimuli. We are unable to control these responses. We do not even realize what is happening."
I personally believe art is any form that shows the emotion of the artist.