Definition of "art"

art¹

/ɑːt/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural arts
1. (uncountable) The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the senses and emotions, usually specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
  Quotations
  B.W. Wooster: If you ask me, art is responsible for most of the trouble in the world.R. Jeeves: An interesting theory, sir. Would you care to expatiate upon it?B.W. Wooster: As a matter of fact, no, Jeeves. The thought just occurred to me, as thoughts do.R. Jeeves: Very good, sir.
  1992 May 3, “Comrade Bingo”, in Jeeves and Wooster, Series 3, Episode 6
  "I tell her what Donald Hall says: that the problem with workshops is that they trivialize art by minimizing the terror."
  2005 July, Lynn Freed, Harper's
  Visual art is a subjective understanding or perception of the viewer as well as a deliberate/conscious arrangement or creation of elements like colours, forms, movements, sounds, objects or other elements that produce a graphic or plastic whole that expresses thoughts, ideas or visions of the artist.
  2009, Alexander Brouwer, (Please provide the book title or journal name)
2. (uncountable) The creative and emotional expression of mental imagery, such as visual, auditory, social, etc.
3. (countable) Skillful creative activity, usually with an aesthetic focus.
4. (uncountable) The study and the product of these processes.
5. (uncountable) Aesthetic value.
6. (uncountable) Artwork.
7. (countable) A field or category of art, such as painting, sculpture, music, ballet, or literature.
8. (countable) A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
  Quotations
  Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.
  2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
9. (countable) Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation.
  Quotations
  A physician was immediately sent for; but on the first moment of beholding the corpse, he declared that Elvira's recovery was beyond the power of art.
  1796, Matthew Lewis, The Monk, Folio Society, published 1985, page 217
  The relation of science to art may be summed up in a brief expression: From Science comes Prevision: from Prevision comes Action.
  1855, Harriet Martineau's translation, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte Vol. 1, Introduction, Ch. 2, page 21, from Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive (1830–1842)
  The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.
  1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., page 58
10. (uncountable, dated) Contrivance, scheming, manipulation.
  Quotations
  it was not art,Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke—When ’mid soft looks of pity, there would dartA glance as keen as is the lightning’s strokeWhen it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.
  1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, page 222
  [...] and Mrs. Earnshaw undertook to keep her sister-in-law in due restraint, when she returned home employing art, not force—with force she would have found it impossible.
  1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter VI, in Wuthering Heights, volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], page 112

art²

/ɑːt/

verb
1. (archaic) second-person singular simple present indicative of be