Can art be defined?

I noticed the other day an eminent art critic explained he could not define art at the end of a distinguished career. Perhaps the same question came up when a spat (now denied) arose between Hockney and Damien Hirst. Hirst apparently runs a production line, a factory, for his work, employing 100 people. He also claims to get bored watching them (a contemporary malaise referred to psychologically as perversion - various forms of the failure of empathy). Hockney in one post, said the poetry of art is taught but very little of the craft / craftsmanship is being handed down.

The absence of craftsmanship has been a 20th Century dilemma and it is fashionable to ignore painterly skill, draughtsmanship, and the technical qualities of various materials. Pollock's use of house paint is causing massive deterioration in his large canvasses already. Some questions arise concerning the permanency of his work and the philosophy of transience or living in the moment, 'panexperientialism' as Whitehead put it, is sometimes proposed as a philosophical parameter of justification here. This may or may not be relevant but perhaps the use of cheap paint began for good reason in his days of poverty before fame, and then simply continued as a habit.

A recent problem for this author, is the fact that Tracy Emin is now teaching drawing at the Royal College. If one looks at Tracy's draughtsmanship and gets out Lowenfeld's developmental scheme Tracy belongs to the 2-3 year level of developmental layers called the scribble or pre-schematic. In all honesty drawings by actual children at that age have more innocence, joy, spontaneity, and charm. Tracy is an adult a person with life's experiential history- tainted, as one commentator put it.

Around 32,000 years ago mankind was recording thoughts and experiences in drawing form in Chauvet, Altamira, and Lascaux. They were elegant, beautifully observed, rhythmical, poetic and profoundly meaningful, speaking to us about what life was like and what was sacred in that time. Yet these people are not so distant as to be complete strangers. They remain kinfolk in terms of an awakening element of consciousness which continues to develop towards modern sensibilities - at least some modern sensibilities. So what does Tracy bring to the Royal Academy? There seems to be little of the craft tradition and if Hockney is right, here's a dilemma in the modern record of creativity and in our experts claim to expertise too, who seek to define and dictate the processes of art and culture. The governing board of the Royal Academy, in this recent decision, might seem to some of us, more like 'the emperor in his new clothes,' rather than paragons of aesthetic mastery. Is this what Hockney was thinking about?