Definitions

One of the easiest ways to start an argument is to attempt to define art. Never has it been done to the satisfaction of any considerable number of people, although the production of such definitions is so constant, competitive and exciting among artists and critics that it amounts to a perpetual esthetic parlor game. Defined John Ruskin: "Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart go together." "Art," hazards John Galsworthy, "is that imaginative expression of human energy, which through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion." Ralph Waldo Emerson declared: "The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art."

Last week marked the end of a contest for a new definition of art. Sponsor: the Halton Endowment for Girls, Inc. (hospital beds for working girls) of Manhattan. Judges: Funnyman Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb, Editor Mary Fanton Roberts of Arts & Decoration, Artist Randall Davey. Prize: ($100). Winner: Mrs. John Sloan, plump wife of famed Painter-Teacher John Sloan of Manhattan, President of the Society of Independent Artists. Mrs. Sloan's definition was publicly pronounced during the fifth annual "Carnival of Imagination," a benefit ball and pageant for the Halton Endowment. Clad in ruffles and a Spanish mantilla, Mrs. Sloan appeared as "The Art of Emotion," while her husband represented "The Art of Imagination" and others joined the ceremonies as "The Art of Parenthood," "The Art of Chicken Love." Mrs. Sloan's winning definition: "Art is that beauty which the imagination has created and which awakes in the observer an emotion of pleasure similar to that of the creator."

Other definitions:

John Sloan: "Art is the creative urge of life's consciousness."

Boardman Robinson, painter, muralist (TIME Nov. 25): "Art is the interpretation of some universal order."

Arthur Davison Ficke, poet, essayist: Art is the revolt of the heart against the tyranny of the brain."

Witter Bynner, poet: "Art is man trying to find something better than the image he was made in."

Hugh Ferriss, famed architectural renderer and visionary: "Art is to science and business as one's feelings are to his thoughts and his deeds, i. e., crucified between the two thieves."

Phelps Phelps, onetime N Y State Assemblyman: "Art is the perfection of expression."

Louis C. M. Reed, artist: "Art is yearning done in matter."

Rex Stout, novelist: "Art is man's attempt to conquer nature, either by improving upon her or by condemning her "

Carl Brandt, artist: "Art is that subject of conversation which was made demode first by the advent of Prohibition and second by the unpleasantness in Wall Street."

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