How do you know if something is art or not? The continuous change of what is called art has created increasing confusion for the public. Just as our society changes over time, art changes too.

To call this change strictly an evolution might not be entirely correct. An evolution would imply an improvement in the subject, but the comparison that would have to be made to reach the conclusion of an improvement requires that the objects of the comparison share both characteristics and objective, and in art this is not always the case. The characteristics that make up the Renaissance are very different from those that make up Impressionism and the purpose with which these works were created, too. It could be said that art is created with the intention of communicating, but that does not mean that artists communicate the same thing and in the same way throughout history. Hence the fact that you cannot make a comparison between artistic currents and say that this or that is better. In that case we would speak of a preference, a subjective judgment dictated by the viewer's taste based on what he considers beautiful and pleasant.

It is true that we expect art to be beautiful, however, the idea that art has to be beautiful would be not only a mistake, but also a limitation to the broad spectrum of expression that art has scope for. Beauty is the subject of study of aesthetics and a quality of art, but that does not mean that it is the only one. The interpretation, purpose and ways of making art have changed so much that it is normal to lose the rhythm, there are even styles and movements for all tastes. So how can we understand art? The interpretation of this will always be subjective, however, scholars from various disciplines have written texts that can help us a little to understand art from theory. Therefore, we recommend 4 texts to start that journey:

• Fundamental concepts of art history. Enrique Wölfflin. (1952)

This book explains the different aspects by which art is classified, since we have the need to compare in search of what we like, but making it clear that this does not define art. There is talk about how difficult it is to compare artistic styles even between artists who were contemporaries. Two Florentine Renaissance artists paint very differently from each other, in turn, they paint differently from some Roman or Venetian, not to mention any Italian from the Baroque era. This is how the concepts that separate them begin to be defined, be it the nationality of the artist, his personal style, his movement and his era, artists have always expressed their personality in one way or another in their works, and just as You can compare two completely different people, you cannot do it with artists, therefore, even less with art.

• The end of art. Arthur C. Danto. (1984)

A short, but highly enriching essay by Danto. The best thing about this author is that he talks about complex topics, with such simple language that makes these topics a little easier to digest. Is art dead? It's difficult to even define it, how do we know if something has come to an end, when we don't know what it consists of? It is not a simple task to be able to analyze with sufficient objectivity what is happening today, history can evaluate the progress of a phenomenon thanks to the factor of the temporal distance that its present has with the past, however, whoever has taken the task to carry out the study of history he remains a subject of his time and will make judgments influenced by its spirit, most likely. So from these premises, Danto talks to us throughout the essay about how art is subject to the artist and the artist to his time.

“Does art have a future?” he questions and it's really hard to tell. Throughout history, human beings have been nurturing their pictorial culture, improving painting techniques and exploring forms of expression in it, but is there a limit to innovation in the artistic field? In order to even understand the magnitude of this, we must first consider the fact that the human imagination cannot create something unknown, we always start from influences and forms that have been part of our experiences, in this way the future of art will be It begins to look like an unimaginable terrain and once again we find ourselves faced with the uncertainty that the concept of art creates for us and it is Danto who kindly but definitely opens our eyes to this reality.

• Ways of seeing. John Berger. (1972)

The phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” takes on much greater meaning when this text explains to us the fact that what we can express through words does not always fully encompass the sensations that invade us in a moment a visual experience. As it is said at the beginning of the text "vision comes before words" and in that simple phrase the fact that human beings are visual is already encompassed and the majority of what influences them around them is visual culture and everything it transmits. The immediacy that this sense gives us in terms of experiences makes it easier for us to ignore the levels of complexity that visual language can have.

This text suggests that we must not only know what we see, but also how we see. Once again, the viewer's interpretation of art is subject to the era to which it belongs, adding to the viewer's ability to express the sensation it provokes. Since at the end of the day art is a means of expression, how well can we interpret and convey its message? In order to give a structure to this, it must be clear to us that our interpretation of what is visible will always be influenced by our environment.

• What is the art? Arthur C. Danto. (2013)

Since we know how difficult it is to define art, we can receive a little help from Danto to understand a little more about it, now with the characteristics that make up the work of art. This is subject to meaning (the artist's intention), materialization (the existence of the work of art as such) and interpretation (the reading that the viewer gives to the work). The evolution of these concepts and the art samples they accompany have changed throughout the history of art.

In The End of Art (1984) Danto talks about how for scholars of art history, such as Giorgio Vasari and Ernst Gombrich, the evolution of art consists of the advance in pictorial technique and in making the visual content of the work not only more pleasant, but also more similar to reality, but that premise loses usefulness when art abandons the aesthetic sphere and imitative language to express philosophical meanings and enters the realm of the abstract, then beauty takes a backseat or Well, it is completely lost when the work is instead seen as composed of a discourse and a meaning to offer. This does not close the doors of the viewer's interpretation of the work of art, but sometimes it makes inevitable the need to be accompanied by the discourse with the artist's intentions. But this art that is a little more difficult to interpret is the one that Danto helps us learn to read in What is art?

It is advisable to read the works in the order presented since they complement each other as the reading progresses, however, this is only a suggestion for the reader.