Brian Eno answers question: What is art?

I agree with Eno's embrace of all crafts as "art," and I love his characterization:

ART IS SOMETHING WE DO TO CHANGE OUR MIND.

I don't completely agree with his description of art-making as "grown-up play." I think art is often driven by artists' need to FIX their minds. Something in their life is unsatisfactory, and they create to complete the world.

Here's an excerpt from his interview by Ezra Klein , which is excellent:

"I’ve always thought that art is actually one of the most important things that humans do with their time. In my book, there’s a long list of things that I consider could come under the headline of art.

"It includes, of course, obvious things like symphonies and photographs and paintings, but it also includes cardigans and jewelry and makeup and tattoos and all the things that humans do that they don’t have to do.

"None of those things have survival benefits in the obvious sense. They’re things we do to do something in our mind, to change our mind in some way.

"So what does art do? Why do we like it? I have this phrase in the book that children learn through play and adults play through art, and I think that’s really what it does....

"Art is grown-up play. It’s a way of imagining things and imagining what they would feel like and imagining how they connect to other things that we know about and then feeding that knowledge back into our lives and into our relationships."