what is art?

in 2018 i had this course called Théorie de la traduction littéraire/Psychologie, écriture et traduction littéraire, where i thought i would learn about, like, how to do literary translation. instead, it ended up being more of an art philosophy course where we read texts by dead white men (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Freud, Heidegger...) asking the question, what is art? i enjoyed the course because the professor's enthusiasm was infectious, and it was the only class where i really got readings at the time, but there was always something that bothered me. i've tried to word what it was in different ways before—like framing the question "what is art?" ethnographically/sociologically rather than philosophically—but i think i've finally gotten the essence of it. i felt like the question "what is art?" (or "what is Art?", even) is unanswerable, and was much more interested in questions like "who gets to decide what is (and isn't) art?"

i still think the question "what is art?" doesn't have an answer, or doesn't have one answer. that is not to say that it is worthless, because even if you'll never reach the "destination", you'll learn a lot along the way. (there was a similar sentiment in the Heidegger reading, which is why that one was my favourite.) however, i can't help but feel that if you only ask (often aristocratic) white men, you'll get rather skewed answers to the question "what is art?", but you already gave a pretty clear answer to the question "who gets to decide what is art?"