The word “art” is derived from the Latin ars, which originally meant “skill” or “craft.” These meanings are still primary in other Englishwords derived from ars, such as “artifact” (a thing made by human skill) and “artisan” (a person skilled at making things). The meanings of “art” and “artist,” however, are not so straightforward. We understand art as involving more than just skilled craftsmanship. What exactly distinguishes a work of art from an artifact, or an artist from an artisan?

Art has the potential to move us - emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise.

The greatest examples attest to the extremes of human ambition, skill, imagination, perception, and feeling. As such, art prompts us to reflect on fundamental aspects of what it is to be human.

Any artifact, as a product of human skill, might provide insight into the human condition. But art, in moving beyond the commonplace, has the potential to do so in more profound ways. Art, then, is perhaps best understood as a special class of artifact, exceptional in its ability to make us think and feel through visual experience.

“What’s visible becomes thinkable, and what’s thinkable becomes doable.”

— Timothy Snyder

Images communicate ideas and influence people’s attitudes in consequential ways. Interpreting, contextualizing, and thinking critically about visual culture, and teaching others how to do so—really matters: not just for those involved directly with the art world, but for society at large.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. English speaking psychologists in the early 1900s were trying to translate the German term einfühlung. This term directly translates to “feeling into,” which is describing the capacity to project one’s own feelings into an object, thereby inliving it.

The word empathy was coined by using the Greek em-, meaning “in,” and the Greek páthos, which means “experience, misfortune, emotion, condition.” Páthos comes from the Greek path-, meaning “experience, undergo, suffer.” In English, pathos usually refers to the element in an experience or in an artistic work that makes us feel compassion, pity, or sympathy.

Empathy can also include feelings of other emotions, such as passion, joy, or compassion.

When we’re actively engaging with art, we almost have to be empathetic to derive something from our experience. We imagine who might have made it, where they made it, and what compelled them to represent their ideas in this particular way. This process of questioning leads us to complex understandings of other people.