Agreed, 'art' as something distinct from any other creative activity is a fairly recent western invention. If you take art at face value from it's basic definition it just means something like 'technique' and that meaning is good enough to make sense of it all imho.
It may be art from an artisan or craft used in a trade. It may be intellectual such as a mathematical proof. It may arguably be non-human art or bad art--but it is art.