Art is art context. That is to say the classification of anything as art comes largely (if not entirely) from outside forces, such as price, venue, and exclusivity - those factors that we inherently feel go into art, but seldom admit to as we hold "art" in such a higher regard.
Consider, for example, how many times you have gone to an art museum and hated a painting, but at the same time called it art? Now, ask yourself: Did you call it art simply because it was in an art museum?
Now you may be thinking, "But what about those things that are aesthetically profound? Didn't you leave that out of the defintion above, as surely aesthetics comes from the materiality of the piece in question?" Simply put: no. I would argue that even aesthetics are largely defined by outside forces, such as the trajectory of art history, the intent of the artist, and so on and so forth. For instance, how could we come to love a painting by Pollock if we hadn't already been incrementally preconditioned to accept abstraction as aesthetically pleasing by the artists before him?
Still not convinced? Watch a recent TED talk by Paul Bloom wherein he argues that human beings are essentialists - that our beliefs about the history (or what I am calling the context) of an object change how we experience it.
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