2 Abstract: From the perspective of the development and origin of art, there are several arguments such as "imitation theory", "game theory" and "labor theory". Art is

for the real world. imitation; art is the expression of emotion, interest, and self-awareness; art is a meaningful form; art is the manifestation of ideas,

ideas or absolute spirit; art is "the use of images to reflect reality, but Social ideology is more typical than objective. "The essence of art can be summarized as "universe spiritual theory", "subjective spiritual theory", "imitation theory" or "reproduction theory", etc.

Keywords: The origin of art, the history of art development, the definition of art, the essence of art, the classification of art

Art, what a noble and beautiful word! The great French writer Hugo said: "Without art, human life will be eclipsed." The German artist Schiller once called affectionately: "Man, only you have art!" Indeed, humans have created art, and art accompanies humans. . Everyone is fascinated by art, so what exactly is art? This is a controversial problem. For thousands of years, people have been diligently seeking and thinking hard, but it is always difficult to lift its mysterious veil.

We might as well start with the origin and historical development of the concept of art. From the perspective of the development and origin of art, there are several arguments such as "imitation theory", "game theory" and "labor theory". Art is diverse because art is free creation. No matter where art originates from, there is one thing in common, that is, art originates from human activities itself and is inseparable from people’s labor production, life, entertainment and leisure, and emotional expression. It is human beings who create art. Therefore, only today have a rich and colorful artistic activities and forms in human society been formed.

The historical development of the concept of art in China:

The concept of "art" existed in China during the pre-Qin period. From the perspective of etymology, the word "art" for art was first seen in oracle bone inscriptions. The glyph is as follows: This is a pictographic character, which is a person holding a seedling and planting it on the land. This is the original form of the word "Yi", and its original meaning is "planting" as explained in "Shuowen Jiezi". There is a saying in "Mozi Fei Yue": "Farmers come in and out at dusk, cultivate crops and trees, gather uncles and li in many places, and this is how they divide their work." The word "art" here is used in its original meaning. Planting requires skills, so the word "art" derives a new meaning: talent. Therefore, talented people are called "artists", and various skills are called "arts". Although the Chinese word "art" has appeared in "Book of the Later Han Dynasty", it is a compound word for "art" plus "shu", rather than a single word, and its meaning still refers to various skills. Art in the modern sense is the translation of the English "art".

The historical development of artistic concepts in the West:

The situation in the West is almost exactly the same as in China. Ancient Westerners also classified art into general skills. According to the Polish esthetician Tartakovich in the book "Ancient Aesthetics", the Greeks gave the term techne - which we translate as "art". This word has three meanings: 1. Human purposeful activities. 2. Science. 3. Art in the modern sense. In the 17th century, the term art had the meaning we understand today, that is, the "aesthetic" meaning. In the 18th century, in the encyclopedia edited by the famous French Enlightenment scholar Diderot, art included painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry and music. In 1747, the French esthetician Charbato further divided art in a broad sense into three categories: the first category is art that aims to meet people's needs, such as agriculture, textiles, etc.; the second category is art that aims to cause pleasure. Arts are "beautiful arts", which combine music, poetry, painting, sculpture and dance; the third category is arts that are both useful and pleasurable, such as eloquence and architecture. Only then did art separate from traditional skills and have a meaning close to what we understand today.

In the history of art, people are often keen to explore unified rules about art, to define art, and to clarify the essential attributes of art in theory. To sum up, there are roughly four well-known definitions of art:

One: Art is an imitation of the real world. This view has a long history. As early as the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's "Poetics", there is such a discussion: "Epic and tragedy, comedy and Dionysus, as well as most double-barreled music and harp music-this actually It's imitation."

There is no doubt about the groundbreaking and rationality of this view. However, after the emergence of the postmodern art trend, the theory of imitation has encountered an insurmountable challenge: it cannot explain all, especially many of the current common artistic phenomena. It should be said that the correctness of the theory of imitation still exists, but its scope of application is gradually narrowing. In other words, it is only correct in certain areas and aspects.

Two: Art is the expression of emotions, interests, and self-awareness. Because human beings are born with the desire to express emotions and express themselves, and moreover

3 Due to the fueling of artistic trends such as romanticism, expressionism, and Sturm und Drang, the view that art is the expression of emotions, interests, and self-awareness has become increasingly popular in academic circles. The popularity and support rate have always been quite high. But there is also the shortcoming of insufficient exclusivity. If art is the expression of human emotions, then if someone slaps someone else in a fit of anger, and the fingerprints left on someone else's face are works of art? Clearly, this view "does not make a proper distinction between art and anything else human."

Three: Art is a meaningful form. Focusing on the external form of art and exploring the inner essence of art is also a tradition in the art theory community.

Four: Art is the manifestation of ideas, principles or absolute spirit. The answer that identifies the essence of art as the manifestation of ideas, principles, or absolute spirit is undoubtedly smart, profound, and vast in coverage. The greatest value of this perspective is that it points out an original way to solve the problem. When people find that this view is far away from practical activities such as artistic creation, art appreciation, and art criticism and is not operable, people lose patience and confidence, and even lose interest in inheriting and carrying forward it.

There are other opinions about what art is. "Modern Chinese Dictionary" says: Art is "a social ideology that uses images to reflect reality, but is more typical than objective." The original meaning of "art" (ART) in Spanish is "artificial creation." Epistemology believes that art is the "reflection" of nature in the human mind and is an ideology; practice theory believes that art is man's processing and transformation of nature and is a kind of labor production, so art has the title of "second nature" say. Art is inseparable from both people and objects. Like beauty, it is also a unity of subjectivity and objectivity.

The 1999 edition of "Cihai" explained the connotation and extension of art: "A special way for human beings to grasp the world with emotions and imagination as characteristics, that is, to reproduce reality and express emotional ideals through aesthetic creation activities. , realizing the mutual objectification of aesthetic subjects and aesthetic objects in imagination. Specifically, they are image reflections of people's real life and spiritual world, and are also organic products of the artist's comprehensive psychological activities of perception, emotion, ideals, and ideas. Ideology, art mainly meets people's various aesthetic needs, and thus plays a subtle role in social life, especially in the field of human spirituality. According to different means and methods of expression, it can be divided into performing arts (music, dance) and modeling. Art (painting, sculpture, architecture), language art (literature), comprehensive art (drama, film and television), can be divided into time art (music), space art (painting, sculpture, architecture), and Time and Space Parallel Art (Literature, Drama, Film and Television)"

As for the nature of art, there are generally "cosmic spirit theory", "subjective spirit theory", "imitation theory" or "reproduction theory". . The first is the "universe spiritual theory". The ancient Greek philosopher Plato was an early scholar who conducted philosophical discussions on the nature of art. Plato believed that the rational world is primary, the perceptual world is secondary, and the artistic world is only third. The second type is the "subjective spirit theory". He believes that art is "the expression of self-awareness" and "the impulse of life itself". Kant, the founder of German classical aesthetics, believed that art is purely the genius creation of writers and artists. This "free art" does not involve any interests or purposes at all. He emphasized that in artistic creation, genius' imagination and originality can make art reach the realm of beauty. Kant's theory of freedom of will became one of the sources of later voluntarism. The third type is "imitation theory" or "reproduction theory". In the history of Western literary and artistic thought, the "imitation theory" has been a very influential view since ancient Greece. This view believes that art is an "imitation" of reality. Later, it was even believed that art is a "reproduction of social life."

These statements, exploring the nature of art from different angles and different paths, should be said to have a certain degree of rationality.