"Art is what the artworld accepts as art." —George Dickie
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." —Everyone’s aunt at some point
For decades, the question “What is art?” has hovered like a fog over countless books, university lectures, and arguments at dinner parties. Some say art is about beauty. Others insist it’s about context. Some believe it’s a political act; others, a spiritual one. And of course, there’s always the fallback answer: it’s subjective.
But what if it’s not?
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What if art—what it is, what it does, and why it moves us—is not just a conceptual or cultural abstraction, but a physical phenomenon? What if every brushstroke, every note, every gasp in front of a sculpture is anchored not in mystery, but in biology?
I want to argue that art can and should be defined physically. That doesn't mean reducing art to chemicals or ignoring culture. It means embracing the idea that art is real in the same way a heartbeat is real: perceptible, measurable, and based in the physical world.
Art Is Made of Things
Start here: every work of art is made of stuff. A painting is pigments on canvas. A song is sound waves. A sculpture is chiseled matter in space.
You don’t need to believe in metaphysics to notice that these things exist. They reflect light, carry mass, emit vibration. And they interact with us—through our eyes, ears, skin, and ultimately, our brains.
This is not trivial. The physical nature of art is the very reason we can perceive it. Without pigments, frequencies, textures—there’s no art to talk about.
And It’s Felt in the Brain
If art is made of things, then its experience must be made of something too. That something is brain activity.
When you hear a violin or stare into a Rothko, your brain is lighting up—literally. Functional MRI studies have shown that visual art can activate reward centers (like the medial orbitofrontal cortex) and stir the visual cortex in specific patterns. Music can synchronize brain regions involved in emotion and prediction. Even discomforting art activates measurable neurological pathways.
This isn’t just science trivia. It means that art is not a ghost in the gallery. It’s a dialogue between a physical object and a physical brain. Your subjective experience feels mysterious, but it has a pattern. And those patterns can, increasingly, be tracked.
But Wait—Isn’t Art Subjective?
Yes. But subjectivity doesn’t mean non-physical.
You and I might look at the same painting and have different reactions. That’s not because the painting is unreal or undefined—it’s because our brains are different. Neural networks vary depending on genes, culture, memory, trauma, even what you had for breakfast. These differences shape how we decode art.
Here’s the key idea: subjective experience is still brain-based. That makes it physical. Just like how people see colors differently but light wavelengths remain constant, we can feel art differently while still admitting its physical structure.
The insistence on treating art as an unmeasurable mystery often reflects not the nature of art itself, but our discomfort with subjecting beauty to the same scrutiny we grant to machines. Ironically, it’s in the name of reverence that we deny ourselves the tools to actually understand what moves us.
What Does a Physical Definition Look Like?
Let’s try one:
Art is a physical artifact or event intentionally created to evoke perceptual and neurological responses in a receiver, and these responses—emotional, cognitive, or aesthetic—are rooted in brain activity and shaped by prior experience.
That’s it. No circular reference to “the artworld.” No hand-waving about “deep meaning.” Just biology, perception, and design.
Why This Matters
Why bother defining art this way? Because fuzzy answers lead to fuzzy thinking. Without clarity, we fall into lazy relativism (“everything is art”) or gatekeeping (“nothing outside the museum is art”).
A physicalist definition doesn’t kill meaning—it frees us to study it. It lets us ask better questions:
Why do some colors trigger calm, and others tension?
Can we design music that soothes PTSD?
Could AI generate art that predicts neurological responses with precision?
Also, it doesn’t erase culture. It explains culture. Cultural learning shapes our brains. The more we learn, the more our neurons wire. Meaning isn’t vapor—it’s memory, shaped into flesh.
Objections I Hear (and Why They Don’t Work)
❌ “You’re reducing art to brain scans!”
Not at all. I’m explaining that the awe, confusion, or delight you feel starts in physical processes. That doesn’t mean it’s small—it means it’s real.
❌ “But art is emotional, poetic, interpretive!”
Yes—and all those things happen in a body, in time, with chemistry and cells. It’s no less poetic for being embodied.
❌ “So only pleasurable art counts?”
No. Discomfort, shock, contemplation—all of it involves measurable neural engagement. That’s still physical.
The Bottom Line
Art isn’t just in your soul. It’s in your retina. In your amygdala. In the synapses that fire when rhythm syncs or color clashes. It’s physical—always has been.
You don’t have to stop loving mystery. But mystery doesn’t mean magic. It means complexity we haven’t finished explaining yet.
If we define art clearly, physically, we don’t cheapen it. We dignify it.
We bring it back to earth—where it’s made, where it’s seen, and where it truly lives.
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