Books have been written on this subject, aesthetics, I will simplify my point of view. First my premises. • Something is either art or not art • Something can not be both art and not art The artist is someone that has selected themselves to say something to everyone. Not everything they produce is art, only when they declare something as art is it art. While we may adore their incomplete, unfinished, and prototypes, it seems improper to classify them as art. I read somewhere that Beethoven, after finishing an improvisation at the piano was told that what he did was so good that it was a shame he did not write it down. He immediately repeated it note for note and at the conclusion told his audience that ‘It was not good enough to write down’. It is not the artist’s responsibility that we understand them. Context is king. No one expects a novelist to publish in all possible languages, nor expects a translation to be able to fully convey. Everyone gets what they get from a work of art. To the question, if Paul Smith says that his work is art, I take him at his word. Conversely nothing a chimpanzee produces can be art, it has no effective way to communicate to us what it does as art or not art even if it had the distinction.