It was Marcel Duchamp who invented the notion ‘art can be anything.’ By looking at the influences through a time shift starting from the Renaissance through to contemporary times examine exactly how true this revolutionary statement is or whether it is a matter of shock value that the Artist of today wants to put across, whereby the skill in drawing and painting has undoubtedly been lost. My aim is to explore the notion ‘art can be anything’ through three different time periods Renaissance, Baroque and Contemporary. The first will be the Renaissance (the early fifteenth century) which focuses on the issues of function and purpose of art. A major criticism with the youth of contemporary art today is the lack of knowledge towards the primitive foundations of art. This knowledge has been replaced with abstract ideas and theories about what art should and should not be. I used various influential names in my introduction to sketch an overall outline to the subject of art. Plato emphasises the ‘capacity of art to perfect nature, to correct in the mind of man the deficiencies of nature.’1 Wollheim and Panofsky said that only humans make art whereas Sir Philip Sidney said ‘The artist often creates things such as never were in nature.’ As a result, given the differing attitudes towards this particular subject the point is made that art is a matter of personal opinion. Using the theory of Utilitarianism I tried to use a system where the individual could categorise high and low art. It was Mill who said that a higher pleasure was one that stimulated the mind. Was it then possible to use this Utilitarian system within art? The higher pleasures of the mind are without doubt more desirable and valuable than those of lower pleasure of the body. Taking this approach the appearance or aesthetic value of a modern piece of art becomes worthless and what becomes important are the effects on the viewer. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory where the consequences are important. In some cases within modern art i.e. conceptualism, the effect can be sublime. Looking at the intention of the artist using Kant’s system of ‘means ends reasoning’ I wanted to look at what makes the moral motive a ‘pure’ motive. This is a disinterested one and it is solely based on the fact that we are motivated to act on the moral law by the moral law itself and not by some self-interested end. The idea of universality is used by Kant to support a theory of moral reasoning. Thus, we are to ask whether our maxim is one we can expect all rational agents to adopt in relatively similar circumstances. Using this Kantian system, the intentions of modern day artists like David Blaine and Damien Hurst were closely examined. I stated that it was the intention of Damien Hurst to shock his audience rather than to please. Consequently, Hurst’s works like the ‘shark’ was viewed as aesthetically poor but led to fame and fortune due to him gaining recognition by the public eye. However, is unlike Caravaggio (from the Baroque era) who had similar intentions in depicting truth within reality and whose skill and technique is certainly not limited. The key difference between the two artists (Caravaggio and Hirst) is not the obvious answer of ‘time’. Instead, it is how Hirst seems to have a good sense of the media and understands how that mindset works, which results in his intention being primarily concerned with a self-interested end. I argued that due to the influence of time and the drastic changes in fashion and philosophical thinking that have taken place since the early 15th century, it is time that dictates what art is considered acceptable and where art is going. The shock value of some artists today has lead to skill being undermined because they are reacting to a demand from society. Consequently, I believe that art can be anything, but that it has become a response to commodification and the need to make money as opposed to conveying personal expression. I feel that Kant’s philosophy of morality is key to my argument because it deals with the reasoning of the validity of art and the intentions of artists in order to determine whether their motivation is pure.