What is Art? Throughout time people have been trying to define the term art: this search for the meaning of art started with Plato and has not stopped. The complexity of the term has been causing controversy for centuries. As a matter of fact, art is so hard to define that some even claim the word is undefinable and that there is no point in finding an actual way to interpret the meaning behind it. The question “What is art?” always seemed to be important, but during the second half of the 20th century it became fundamental. This happened mainly because of the changes which took place in the artistic field during the early 20th century, which certainly made artistic practice evolve radically. The fact that movements such as the Dada appeared during the beginning of this century made people strongly question the meaning of art: now it was harder to see the distinction between what was actually art and what was not; because now even the most common object could be perceived a
T. S. Eliot T. S. Eliot was born in 1888, in Missouri, USA. He moved to England in 1914 and spent most of his life in Europe. Eliot considered himself an Englishman and became one officially in 1927. He was mostly known for his poetry and was seen as one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Moreover, Eliot also wrote several essays, plays, critiques, among others. Some of his work looks closely at the meaning of culture, like his essay Notes Towards The Definition of Culture (1943). T. S. Eliot Notes Towards The Definition of Culture In Notes Towards The Definition of Culture , more specifically in his chapter “The Three Senses of Culture”, Eliot looks at the main ways in which the term culture is used. Eliot starts his essay by saying that our definition of culture should vary greatly according to “whether we have in mind the development of an individual, of a group or class, or of a whole society.” (Eliot, 1998, p. 21). The author believes that w