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 3: Conceptual art and the aesthetic

‘But look at it: the artist hasn’t even tried to produce something beautiful!’

Reading:
Timothy Binkley, ‘Piece: Contra Aesthetics’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
35, 1977, pp. 265-77.
Frank Sibley, “Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic,” Philosophical Review 74, 1965: 135–59.
Reprinted in John Benson, Betty Redfern, and Jeremy Roxbee Cox (eds.)
Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics of Frank
Sibley, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, Section 1 of the ‘Critique of the Aesthetic
Power of Judgement’.

Conceptual artists often produce artworks that ‘seem designed to repel rather than
seduce one who approaches them with … an aesthetic intent’ (Davies 2004: 190).

Kant on the aesthetic:

In order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the
representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition, but rather relate
it by means of the imagination… to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or
displeasure. The judgment of [aesthetic] taste is therefore not a cognitive judgment…
but is rather aesthetic, by which is understood one whose determining ground cannot
be other than subjective.’ (C.P.J., §1, 5:203).

The relation between artistic properties and aesthetic properties, and between
artistic appreciation and aesthetic appreciation (‘Art need not be aesthetic’
Binkley 1977: 272)

‘Its preoccupation with perceptual entities leads aesthetics to extol and examine the
“work of art”, while averting its attention almost entirely from the myriad other
aspects of that complex cultural activity we call “art”’ (Binkley 1977: 271).

‘A great deal of art has chosen to articulate in the medium of an aesthetic space, but
there is no a priori reason why art must confine itself to the creation of aesthetic
objects. It might opt for articulation in a semantic space instead of an aesthetic one so
that artistic meaning is not embodied in a physical object or event according to the
conventions of a medium’ (Binkley 1977: 273).

‘…one can know the work LHOOQ without having any direct experience of it, and
instead by having it described’ (Binkley 1977: 272).
Questions:
 What is the aesthetic and what is aesthetic appreciation?
 Is aesthetic appreciation restricted to appreciation of what is beautiful?
o Is feeling disgust at a work a kind of aesthetic response, and could a
work’s being disgusting, a property intended by the artist, be an
aesthetic merit of the work?
o Can the appreciation of a mathematical proof be aesthetic – i.e. can
ideas have aesthetic properties?
 What else might art seek to do, other than to create aesthetic objects?
 Does aesthetic appreciation of a work require direct experience of it (see
Sibley quote last week)?
 And does artistic but non-aesthetic appreciation of a work not require direct
experience of it (see the last Binkley quote above)? What is the role of direct
experience and of perceptual imagination in the appreciation of LHOOQ and
of LHOOQ Shaved?