Assorted theories of art

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Howard Becker: (by way of Tim O'Riley): Choices are adopted in the artwork that differentiate it from its surroundings and from other works but, to borrow Howard Becker’s phrase, it possesses a fundamental "indeterminancy" or "incompletedness".

Douglas Huebler: I would define art as an activity that extends human consciousness through constructs that transpose natural phenomena from that qualitatively undifferentiated condition that we call 'life' into objective and internally focused concepts… [Appearance is brought to the foreground and then suspended so that the visual functions as a document that exists to serve as a structural part of a conceptual system.] … Whatever is visual in the work exists arbitrarily and its real existence remains as itself – 'in life' along with everything else – and separate from art or the purposes of art. (as quoted by Tim O'Riley in "An inaudible dialogue"

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (by way of Katy Macleod and Lynn Holdridge): For Merleau-Ponty, true philosophical knowledge is perception. (The following quote references both Merleau-Ponty and Macleod and Holdridge) "It is this presence of absence for which the artist/researcher needs: …to find a language that could enable things to speak…what matters is not the actual meaning of each word and each image, but the cognate relationship and connections which are implied in their environment and exchanges. This is also the language of poetry, the language of the imagination which does not describe or define, but which unveils the truth of being of things…being is what requires form in creation so that we may experience it."