"There really is no such thing as Art."

From a book I read some time back:

 "There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. ... ... For Art with a capital A has come to be something of a bogey and a fetish. ... ... 

They [art works] were made for a definite purpose which were in the artist's mind when he set to work. ... ... it is impossible to lay down rules of this kind [that determine what should be done or is good. E.g. English painter Sir Joshua Reynolds' rule that blue should not be put in the foreground of paintings but should be reserved for the distant backgrounds. His rival Gainsborough painted the famous 'Blue Boy' whose blue costume in the central foreground stands out triumphantly against the warm background, to prove that Reynold's academic rules were nonsense.]  because one can never know in advance what effect the artist may wish to achieve. ... ... 

As there are no rules to tell us when a picture or statue [or in my opinion, any form of art] is right it is usually impossible to explain in words exactly why we feel that it is a great work of art. But that does not mean that one work is just as good as any other, or that one cannot discuss matters of taste. If they do nothing else, such discussions make us look at pictures, and the more we look at them the more we notice points which have escaped us before. We begin to develop a feeling for the kind of harmony each generation of artists has tried to achieve. The greater our feeling for these harmonies the more we shall enjoy them, and that, after all, is what matters. ...

"Nothing , perhaps, is more important than just this: that to enjoy these works we must have a fresh mind, one which is ready to catch every hint and to respond to every hidden harmony: a mind, most of all, not cluttered up with long high-sounding words and ready-made phrases. It is infinitely better not to know anything about art than to have the kind of half-knowledge which makes for snobbishness. The danger is very real."

(Gombrich 1995)