What Is Art? | Becca Rothfeld

What Is X?

How is the aesthetic experience of art different from how we appreciate wonders of nature—a pretty flower, or a mountain vista, or a peacock's beautiful feather? In this brisk and bracing 40-minute discussion, Justin E.H. Smith is joined by critic and self-declared lover-of-art Becca Rothfeld to spar over what makes art art. They ask: Does it have to be something made by humans and for humans, or could one consider an animal or a machine an artist? Is there a stable, transhistorical definition of the term, or would what is considered “art” in one era be unrecognizable as such to those from another time? (That is: can we say that Paleolithic cave paintings are art in the same way a Basquiat painting is art?) And together they settle the matter once and for all: Are Marvel movies art?