MA Aesthetics Seminar Spring 2005

Philosophy and Conceptual Art

Peter Goldie: peter.goldie@kcl.ac.uk
Elisabeth Schellekens: elisabeth.schellekens@kcl.ac.uk
King’s College London

WEEK 1: Conceptual Art and definition

‘How dare they call that art!’

Reading:
Jerrold Levinson, ‘Defining art historically’, British Journal of Aesthetics 19, 1979, pp. 232-50.
Jerrold Levinson, ‘Refining art historically’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47, 1989, pp.
21-33.
Noel Carroll, ‘Art, Definition and Identification – Against Definition’, in his Philosophy of Art,
London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 206-224.

What is conceptual art?

Its elusiveness
Its origins (but it is still with us today)
Its central tenets:
1. Challenge to the limits of what is art and what an artist does.
2. Insistence on the role of the artist as art critic and as social critic.
3. Rejection of traditional artistic media (esp. painting and sculpture).
4. The idea idea.
5. Typical replacement of illustrative representation with semantic
representation.

Six examples of conceptual art:

1. Marcel Duchamp Bottle Rack (1961 replica of 1914 original)
2. Joseph Kosuth One and Three Chairs (1965)
3. Joseph Kosuth Titled (Art as Idea as Idea). [Universal] (1967)
4. Hannah Wilke What Does This Represent? What Do You
Represent (Reinhardt)? (1978-84)
5. Michael Craig-Martin An Oak Tree (1973)
6. Rosemarie Trockel Cogito, ergo sum (1988)

Why focus on conceptual art?

Not as a matter of art history, but because of the philosophical questions that it raises.

What are the philosophical questions that conceptual art raises? Definition (Week 1);
ontology (Week 2); the aesthetic (Week 3); interpretation (Week 4); and cognitive value
(Week 5).

Definition of conceptual art and of art

Generally, what is ‘definition’? What is conceptual analysis? How can answers to these
questions be applied to definitions of art and conceptual art?
Levinson (1989): ‘If one reflects on the varieties of art and art making in the past half century, one cannot
help but be struck by the fact that, intrinsically speaking, there are simply no holds barred. Anything, seen
from outside as it were, can be art. At the same time, that hardly means that everything now is art, that there
is no distinction worth capturing, and yet we would be profoundly dissatisfied to learn that all that remained
of arthood was a purely trivial marker such as the condition of having been called or dubbed “art”. Still, on
the other hand, the return to a traditional notion of aesthetic aim or aesthetic experience seems blocked by
the undeniable evolution of art beyond this sort of contemplative, perceptually based conception, as
evidenced by Conceptual Art, Minimal Art, Performance Art.’