Embarrassed, you look down to your feet. So, that wasn’t art? Just a few moments ago you were sure it was brilliant. Does it stop being art now that the ‘artist’ called it junk? Or is it still art because you made it so in your mind? Your friend shakes her head at you and walks inside. The question you want to yell after her chokes on your tongue: What makes art, ‘art’ anyway?
This is a question that philosophers have struggled to answer for a long time. As art has gone from the beauty of the renaissance to the emotion of impressionism, the abstraction of cubism, and the power of political propaganda, the idea of what art can be has changed along with it. But there has to be some fundamental characteristic that all art can rest upon. Doesn’t there? One person who seriously examined this question was the German philosopher and professor Martin Heidegger. In an essay called The Origin Of The Work Of Art, Heidegger explored the essence of where art comes from and what it means to us. Rather than take a more aesthetic view, made popular by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Heidegger chooses to expose how he believes a great work of art: