[The following summary and excerpts are from What Art Is: The
Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand, by Louis Torres & Michelle Marder
Kamhi (Open Court, 2000). The full text of the chapter is
available as a PDF document]. What is art? Today's artworld
holds that virtually anything can be art. In the Introduction to
What Art Is we quoted as an example New York Times art critic
Roberta Smith's guiding dictum that "If an artist says it's art,
it's art." Grace Glueck, another Times critic writing on the
"visual arts"--which the artworld regards as encompassing not
only traditional and abstract painting and sculpture [more] but
also such postmodernist inventions [more] as installation,
video, and performance "art"--further explains that something is
a work of art if it is "intended as art, presented as such, and
. . . judged to be art by those qualified in such matters." The
notion that virtually anything can be art is embraced by critics
covering the other major art forms as well--namely, music,
theater, dance, and the li