Susan Sontag wrote:

“Art is the grand condition of the past in the present. To become “past” is to become “art”.

Works of art have a certain pathos.

Their historicity? Their decay? Their veiled, mysterious, partly inaccessible aspect?

The fact that no one would (could) ever do that again?

Perhaps, then, works only become art—they are not art.

They become art when they are a part of the past.”

This concept fits nicely with my own that a person cannot self-identify as an artist. Art comes into existence when an object is viewed as art by another. All we can hope to be are art-attempters.