Artwork (also artpiece, work of art, piece of art, or art object) is an individual creation in the visual arts. It may be a painting, sculpture, drawing, print, or digital image. The act of creating an artwork involves skill and imagination to express a creative vision. An artwork may be ephemeral, like a performance or installation, or it may be a lasting object such as a piece of furniture or a house.
The definition of art changes with time, as new artistic movements come and go. In the ancient and classical periods, it was common for artworks to have religious significance; artists were seen as craftsmen and a link between this world and God. The Renaissance and Baroque periods brought about a change in the perception of art; artists were no longer seen as mere craftsmen but rather as a link between reality and human imagination. The 19th century saw a further change; Impressionism and Realism ushered in a new view of art that made it acceptable for more realistic, less ornamental pieces to be considered as art. Modern times have ushered in new forms of art such as conceptual and performance works, bringing the focus back to the artist’s interpretation of life.
A second type of definition focuses on the concept of art as a ‘clade’, or a set of characteristics shared by all members of a particular group. This approach suggests that all artworks have a unique property: they are all aesthetically meaningful and can be classified in some way, such as by describing their style, medium, or subject matter. This theory is based on cognitive science, which finds that humans categorize things by their similarities to prototypes or exemplars (Dean 2003).
Alternatively, Monroe Beardsley (1982) proposes an empirical definition of art as “any arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording experiences with marked aesthetic character.” He uses the terms ‘artworks’ and ‘artistic experience’ interchangeably. His definition of a work of art is similar to Dewey’s, in that the experienced work of art is unified, intense, and self-contained.
A third view is based on the idea that an artwork can be identified only by experts. In this view, an artwork is something that has been conferred with the status of art by the experts in some way. This may be done by showing it to them in the right setting, or by announcing that it is art (e.g. by Marcel Duchamp with his Fontaine (Fountain), a readymade urinal). This view has the disadvantage of suggesting that just because an expert says something is an artwork, it will always be so (McFee 2011). In other words, it is not a sufficient condition for an artwork to have aesthetic value, as only the experts can detect this.