“Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.” –Amy Lowell
With the exception of the single-gender language, I think this is a pretty good analysis of what art should be. Nearly everything we experience is encompassed in this sentence, and the very nature of art-as-communication leads to me agree that the desire, and attempt, to record and present one's experience is the fundamental drive or the artist. This is because art is used to show the things that can't be described as easily through more concrete media.
An example of this is "The Day Lady Died" by Frank O'Hara. In this case, the poet could have drafted a paragraph explaining that when someone dies, even someone of importance, the world goes on and that's about it. However, this would fail to fully express the confusion that the speaker felt at the realization of the lack of impact of Lady's death. Only by displaying the actions and observations was he able to clearly express the feelings of that day, and in art alone he found a way to show the reactions of his personality.
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