[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>    Betty:
>
>    The questions that your are asking (so nicely and modestly) are the
>    questions that intellectuals of one sort or another--philosophers,
>    critics, aestheticians, historians, and even artists--have been
>    asking themselves and eachother for centuries (millenia?) They are
>    hard to answer to anyone's (let alone everyone's) satisfaction.  But I
>    do think that raising the questions out loud and in your own mind as
>    serious ones, and worth engaging with, is in itself a pretty good
>    answer.
>
>    Eric Siegel
>    [log in to unmask]


Yes, I agree there is no answer that we would all agree on.  However,
Mr. Webster went out on a limb and defined art.

art:  1. skill acquired by experience or study: knack 2. a branch of
learning:  one of the humanities  3.  systematic use of knowledge or
skill in making or doing things  4.  the use of skill and imagination
in the production of things of beauty; also:  works so produced 5.
artfulness

From that point of view it is something that is produced via a
technical skill.

Betty Brennan