What is Art?

Both the mimetic and the essentialist theories of art contain a kernel of truth. For although art necessarily deals with empirical phenomena, it is good art only to the extent that it elicits a certain response, namely the suspension of our deliberative, conscious rationality. In the damp and dusty cellar of reason, a motley army of concepts are called forth into regiments no less rough-and-ready than they are hard-and-fast. It is by partitioning reality, and imposing an order which does not belong to it, that reason proceeds; and it is my contention that it is only when we engage with a work of art that we return to the unity which inspirits everything. In short, art should not mean, but be. Works of art should be alive in the same way I am alive. They should be infused with the same elan vital. And they function by the collision of Being with Being: when we perceive a work of art we also perceive ourselves, not, to be sure, as a mirror held before us, but as something that reaches out and touches us. We become self-conscious, precisely in the way that the lap of the tide against our feet makes us more cosncious of our bodies.

I'm not sure how true it is, but I once thought...

"The perfection of Art is a Science, and the perfection of Science is an Art."

In addition, I think one of the main concepts in Art would be Creativity...
Not just random things, or permutations for the sake of difference, but perhaps a subtle code of imagery to convey a message of some sort.

You have just outlined a third theory of art, one that is tacitly assumed by most but which I believe to be wrong-headed. The view that art encodes a message which can be resolved salva veritate into everyday language is pernicious because it implies that you can detach the meassage from the art. What we would prefer to say is that, if indeed it makes sense to talk about art as "saying" something, it would be better to assume that that it cannot be said in any other way. After all, if it could be, why not come right out and say it?

I think that art is ones' peak focus in combination their true passion, which creates a object reflective of ones' believe and understanding of that which is.