Sorry for the last minute post : )
I know we were asked "what is art?" many times in this class. But after attending more lectures and seeing the shows for the class, I have developed a better understanding of what art truly is. Back in the first week, we heard in lecture that art is exclusively a human quality. For example, a dog cannot create or appreciate art. I completely agree that it takes a highly advanced brain (like a human's) to recognize something as "art." However I've seen a painting done by an real elephant using its trunk. Obviously, the elephant did not do the painting because it wanted to paint or because it had an image it wanted to paint. It did it for food because it found that if it put paint on the paper, it would get rewarded. However, as humans, we recognized the elephant's paining as art, which actually sold for over a thousand dollars.
Therefore, I feel art is any unnatural object or display of skill that evokes any sort of human emotion. A waterfall may be beautiful but it is not art because it is a product of nature. But if the waterfall was artificially altered to look differently, then it can be considered art. The elephant would never paint a picture in nature. The elephant's painting is merely a product of random movements of its trunk. But in our eyes, it is art because we humans make it art.
Art is a very broad term with many interpretations. What is yours?