I got about three pages into writing a delineation of aesthetic and artistic theory, both historic and modern, in the hopes of maybe enlightening the discussions of art on this board, but what's the use? I can see all the tl;dr's now. I'm tired of always seeing these inane discussions on art from people who haven't taken the first second of their time to research the subject even slightly. And no, skimming the Wikipedia entry for "Art" doesn't count.
Everyone assumes that, because they like some painting or some book or they cried at the end of Bioshock, they know what art is. You might as well think you can argue quantum mechanics because you laughed at a Schrödinger's cat joke. So far all I've seen is baseless conclusions about the nature of art and beauty.
Sure, you may appreciate art. You may be able to tell the difference between what is and isn't art. But that doesn't mean you know what art is. That doesn't make you qualified to define it, unless you can provide at least some basic premises for your claims.
So, to discuss. How many people here have actually researched this? How many people here have read Hume, Kant, Danto, Beardsley, Bell, Greenberg, someone? Who here doesn't care about basic logic and wants to just throw whatever they feel like at artistic discussions?
Also note: I don't want to hear about how you think art is all subjective so there's no way or reason to define it. That is completely useless to a real discussion on the topic. Even if art is subjective, it is at least intersubjective, and there is therefore some basis for that, something we can examine.
EDIT: I don't pretend to know anything for sure. And yes, I may sound a little haughty because I've done research, but that's because I've done research. I'm sure you musicians would get upset if the majority of the world thought that all you had to do was wail away on some strings to make music. Even if people don't go out and pick up an Aesthetics journal, at least think about where you're getting your opinions from, try to approach them with some reason.