Art is a special kind of form-creative human activity, creating figurative and symbolic structures, which have aesthetic, cognitive and communicative functions. In this sense, art is understood as a creative activity aimed at the creation of artistic works, more broadly – aesthetic-expressive forms. The term “art” is also commonly used to denote not only artistic works, products of artistic activity, but also such notions as “artfulness”, “mastery”, “artistry” and the like, manifested in any other sphere of activity (craft, science, technology, etc.), often not directly related to art, but clearly indicating that the creative principle is clearly or implicitly present in them. In the course of the humankind’s development, the notion of “art” is connoted by historical changes (transformations) of cultural forms and types (see Culture), by their interactions, and, correspondingly, by the character of philosophical, art history and art reflexions.

Historically, art emerges when man goes beyond the satisfaction of his immediate physical needs, practical-utilitarian interests and goals and gains the opportunity to create. Thus, art is a special form of human exploration of the world, in which the world is presented in art through the forms of human activity, communication, self-realization. It gives a momentary reflection and unfolded projection of human existence (see Genesis), its spatial and temporal unity with the world. Art understood as a conventional whole can be interpreted as a picture of the world or a peculiar ontology focused on the dynamics of object and sensual existence of people. Being a special form of human activity, art combines in its images object, communicative, and individual aspects of activity, so it preserves the stimulating, transforming, and cognitive principles, as well as collective and personal representations. In different epochs and in different directions of art, the accents in the correlation of these principles differ considerably, yet they are always present, and their correlation remains a constant subject for discussion about the purpose of art, about its role in the development of society.

Consideration of the phenomenon of art presupposes a complex division of human activities, when each of them is quite clearly isolated and then established in technical means; accordingly, the specificity of art is revealed against the background of other types of activity: material and spiritual production, religion, morality, science. The problem, however, is that art preserves in itself the synthetic character of human activity, although at different stages of history and in different types of culture there are noticeable differences in the dominant images of art, the ways of their creation, the schemes of their functioning and translation. Solving the question of the specificity of art “in general terms” generates many difficulties. It would be more productive to examine the specificity of art on a particular social “background”, in particular systems of society, since each historical epoch has had its own understanding of the phenomenon of art, which is determined by the place and role of the artist in the system of social division of labour and his position in society. The question of the preservation of the specificity of art in the changing systems of division and cooperation of human activity is then essentially linked to the question of how art retains its specific position by shifting accents in the use of figurative means of human exploration of the world.

Contemporary art is a complex system of communicative forms and directions, often united by the so-called “postmodernist project. The peculiarity of various “modernist” artifacts has become the direct presence of the author-performer in the implementation of the artistic act, which is aimed at public provocation, which ends with the performance. As for the artistic (aesthetic) concept, it is realized in modernism in the form of a program, a manifesto and anthropological reflections. In general it can be stated that the phenomenon of “modern AND. – is rather a humanitarian-anthropological project, sharply, sometimes aggressively directed against the totally dominant systems of social self-reference – political and economic. Because of this, the communities that emerge in the process of the art act are marginal and temporary. However, “contemporary art” in its avant-garde forms is far from exhausting contemporary art culture, which is held by the classical paradigm formalized in the form of classical art education, the concept of the museum, academic institutions, which are included in the system of mass communication and in relation to which contemporary forms of artistic activity identify themselves in aesthetic and artistic terms.

The process of art’s awareness of its representational and expressive possibilities creates a significant number of concepts and terms related to the structure of art, such as “form” and “content”, “artistic image”, “symbol” and “allegory”, “artistic imagination”, “genius” and “talent” and others. These concepts are important for understanding the essence of art. Along with the study of artistic creativity, the study of the laws and principles of aesthetic perception plays a significant role. Along with aesthetics, such disciplines as art psychology, art theory and history, sociology of art, and culturology play an important role in understanding the essence of art and its social role. Modern cultural studies consider art in the system of other cultural phenomena and global changes of different types of cultures (“national – global”, “high – low”, “mass – elitist”, and the like).