JEFFREY T.
DEAN
The Nature of Concepts and the Definition of Art
I. INTRODUCTION
In his essay, “What Is a Work of Art?” Harold
Osborne distinguishes two senses of his title
question: “The question may be: What things in
the world around us are correctly designated
works of art? Or the words may be intended to
ask: What is meant by calling anything at all a
work of art? The former is a factual question
relating to the correct use of language. The lat-
ter is a philosophical question.”1 One common
route to answering this latter question is the
attempt to formulate a definition of art. There
are a variety of ways in which definitions can be
constructed but, typically, philosophers of art
have been concerned to offer essentialist defin-
itions by way of adducing a set of necessary and
sufficient conditions for an object’s being a
work of art. These efforts have relied on a par-
ticular (if implicit) view of concepts, namely,
one that assumes concepts are characterized by
a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for
their application, where these conditions define
the concept.
Concepts so characterized are said to possess
classical structure. Clive Bell appears to be
making use of this kind of concept of art when
he notes, “either all works of . . . art have some
common quality, or when we speak of ‘works
of art’ we gibber.”2 Osborne also seems to
have this sort of concept in mind when, against
W. E. Kennick’s claim that there is no single
property that is common to all works of art, he
suggests artifactuality plus aesthetic experience
as adequate criteria by which to differentiate
works of art from other things; that is, roughly,
“whatever among artifacts is capable of arous-
ing and sustaining aesthetic experience in suit-
ably prepared subjects we call a work of art.”3
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61:1 Winter 2003
Indeed, the attempt to delimit the necessary and
sufficient conditions for a thing’s being a work
of art run through definitional approaches from
Tolstoy to Beardsley.
However, a growing body of research in
cognitive psychology, linguistics, and the phil-
osophy of mind indicates that many concepts
lack classical structure.4 The aim of this paper
is to examine the ways in which these findings
might bear on our thinking about the concept
of art, and how certain sorts of approaches—
particularly historical narrative theories of art
identification—stand in a better position to
accommodate complex concept structures than
do traditional definitional approaches. This
paper is exploratory in nature and makes use of
recent literature that is not uncontested.5 My
purpose is to show that if certain recent views
on the nature of concept structure are correct,
then we have reason to suspect that traditional
definitional approaches to the question, “What
is an artwork?” are rather misguided, and that
there are good reasons for why an historical
narrative approach is to be preferred.6
II. CATEGORY CONCEPTS
While the history of the philosophy of art is lit-
tered with failed attempts to provide definitions
of art, this is not itself a good reason to suppose
that we will never succeed in this endeavor. It
may simply be that no one has yet been able to
articulate the necessary and sufficient condi-
tions that would constitute such a definition.
What is more, there are prima facie reasons for
expecting that such a definition, explicitly
reflecting the conceptual framework that guides
our classificatory and evaluative judgments,
30
will ultimately be forthcoming. For example,
while Osborne does not believe we need an
answer to our philosophical question about art
to correctly identify and evaluate art (since we
have certain innate skills and social conventions
that allow us to do so), he contends that we must
nonetheless have a definite, even if inarticulate,
concept of art. He writes,
Underlying these skills and social conventions,
including linguistic conventions, there is an inarticu-
late concept of what a work of art is, and it is this
concept which guides and controls our aesthetic
behavior. The presence of such a concept is guaran-
teed by the fact that we are to some extent rational
creatures, that we display a measure of consistency in
our attitudes and behavior. Without it the guidance of
the art world would be arbitrary and chaotic. It is this
latent concept which is the object of philosophical
search.7
To not recognize this would be “an act of ultim-
ate despair,” thinks Osborne, which would
“undermine the belief in the ultimate rationality
of humanity.”8 Osborne’s own approach to
articulating this “latent concept” indicates that
he believes it to be definable in terms of neces-
sary and sufficient conditions.
But what if there was a middle ground
between classically structured concepts and, as
Osborne puts it, “ultimate despair?” There is
reason to believe that concepts, rather than
being defined by sets of necessary and suffi-
cient conditions, are instead organized around
prototypes. A prototype, in the sense relevant
here, is not an instance of some member of a
category (a token of a type), nor is it a stereo-
type (a socially constructed image of a “typical”
particular member of a given category), but an
internal representation that is the product of
abstracting the statistically predominant fea-
tures of numerous tokens of a kind. Concrete
instances of a given kind—exemplars—act as
sources of data from which these prototypes are
constructed. Thus, a prototypical parent may
include features of both mothers and fathers,
and a prototypical cocktail may include features
of martinis, highballs, and manhattans. The same
can be said for category concepts such as pet,
nurse, lie, bird, and, as I will argue, art.
If prototype theory is correct, the “latent con-
cept” of art to which Osborne refers above will
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
unlikely be one characterized by a list of neces-
sary and sufficient conditions for its proper
application, but will instead exhibit character-
istics associated with prototypes. What are some
of these characteristics?
There is one feature of the prototype theory
of concepts that immediately distinguishes it
from the classical theory. On the classical view,
for any entity x, x either does or does not prop-
erly fall under the domain of a given concept.
So, with respect to the concept artwork (or
mammal, living thing, zebra, etc.), for any x,
x either is or is not an artwork (or a mammal,
a living thing, a zebra, etc.). As Mark Johnson
notes,
The classical theory of category structure is based on
the idea that categories or concepts are defined by
lists of features an entity must possess if it is to count
as a member of that category. Category membership
is regarded as an all-or-nothing matter—an entity is
either in the category or outside it—even though it is
recognized that there might be a few difficult border-
line cases. Since every member must possess all of
the features on the list that defines the category, there
is nothing in the structure of the category that could
differentiate one member from another. They are all
equally in the category.9
But according to proponents of prototype
theory, categories typically exhibit internal
structure; it is not the case that members of
a given category are, qua category members,
undifferentiated. Again, as Johnson puts it,
Not every member is equally central to our under-
standing of a given category. For a particular cat-
egory (e.g., bird) some members (e.g., robins) turn out
to be cognitively more central in our understanding
of the category. These cognitive prototypes are
important in defining our categories, but they do not
exhaust the structure of the category, nor do they give
us a list of necessary and sufficient conditions for
category membership. In the category “bird”, for
example, other members will be less central or proto-
typical, such as chickens, ostriches, emus, penguins,
and so forth. In most cases there will not be a single
defining set of features possessed by every member
of the category.10
It should be clear how prototype theory is
relevant to theories about the nature of art.
Dean The Nature of Concepts and the Definition of Art
Where such a theory makes use of a definitional
approach that assumes category concepts have
classical structure, and that category member-
ship is determined by a defining set of (neces-
sary and sufficient) features, it may be relying
on an inaccurate model of concept structure.
While I do not wish to deny that some concepts
may possess classical structure—perhaps those
that reflect natural kinds, or those that are used
in mathematical reasoning11—some recent
research indicates that such concepts are sur-
prisingly rare. Given that our concept of art
does not (even purport to) reflect a natural kind
or follow from a set of stipulated axioms, it is
not likely to stand as an exception to the proto-
type model of category concepts.
It may be, of course, that prototype effect (or
“typicality effect”—the fact that certain mem-
bers of a category are considered to be more
“central” to the category than others) is the
result of our having only an uncertain grasp of a
complex or subtle concept, or of our category
concepts not adequately demarcating the boun-
daries of the (natural?) categories themselves.
But our linguistic practices and cognitive
behavior do not appear to reflect classical
structure, and even with prolonged careful analy-
sis, most of our category concepts have not
yielded such a structure.12 What is more, there
are other explanations for prototype effect,
which, all things considered, give a more satis-
factory explanation of the phenomena with
which it is associated.13 Sometimes, for example,
prototype effect is an indication that the
category in question has a radial structure.14
Given the variety of purposes and practices
associated with the creation and appreciation
of artworks, and the incredibly diverse range
of objects and actions that are customarily
accorded artwork status, the “artworks” cat-
egory is a prime candidate for having such struc-
ture. I will defend this claim in a moment, but
turn first to a brief sketch of radial categories.
III. RADIAL STRUCTURE AND PROTOTYPE EFFECTS
Categories have a radial structure when there
is a central case or cases (such cases could be
prototypes, but they could also be stereotypes,
ideals, exemplars, etc.) upon which convention-
alized variations are based, but that are not gen-
31
erated from, and cannot be predicted by, general
rules; variations on the central case must be
learned individually.15 The variations, or sub-
categories, are not understood on their own, but
rather in terms of their relation to the central
models. As a typical example of a radial struc-
ture, George Lakoff considers the category
mother:
The category mother . . . is structured radially with
respect to a number of its subcategories: there is a
central subcategory, defined by a cluster of conver-
ging cognitive models (the birth model, the nurturance
model, etc.); in addition, there are noncentral exten-
sions which are not specialized instances of the
central subcategory, but rather are variants of it
(adoptive mother, birth mother, foster mother, surro-
gate mother, etc.). These variants are not generated
from the central model by general rules; instead,
they are extended by convention and must be learned
one by one. But the extensions are by no means
random. The central model determines the possibili-
ties for extensions, together with the possible rela-
tions between the central model and the extension
models.16
Lakoff continues by noting that while the exten-
sions of central models are not generated by
rules, there are general principles that motivate
the extensions. These principles characterize the
class of possible connections between more and
less central subcategories. Such connections
typically take the form of metonymic models,
image schema, and metaphors, and are not
established by set rules of inference.17
It is my view that, like the category mother,
there are good reasons to suppose that the cat-
egory artwork has a radial structure:
1. There is a central subcategory (consisting of
canonical and generally uncontested works)
that is based on certain models (the expres-
sion model, the communication model, the
aesthetic intent or experience model, etc.; or
more broadly, whatever are understood to be
standard artistic aims and practices at a
given point in history), and there are noncen-
tral extensions of the central subcategory
(such as anti-aesthetic art, activist art, etc.).
The noncentral cases do not, in many cases,
share any (artistically relevant) features with
the central cases, and so the former are not
32
specialized cases of the latter; that is, non-
central cases are not related to central cases
in virtue of having certain shared features,
plus or minus additional features.
2. There is no rule or set of rules that deter-
mines these extensions, or which could be
used to predict the sorts of extensions that
will come about. Whether or not an object is
a work of art will, at least in some cases, be a
matter of convention—we will have to
decide, in such cases, whether or not a given
object will count as art, which will require
examination of the object and its particular
context.18
3. Finally, although there are no rules that
determine the extensions, they are thor-
oughly motivated; not just anything, for any
reason, can be a work of art (an examination
of the nature of these motivations will
occupy the remainder of this paper).
What needs to be determined is how, absent a
set of necessary and sufficient conditions for
something’s being an artwork, we are to identify
works of art, especially in those cases where we
are extending art status to contested actions and
objects. It is in these cases, where it is unclear
whether the artwork category should be
extended to include works that do not conform to
the contours of central, uncontested members,
in which we must offer some sort of justification
for such inclusion.19
IV. EXTENSION AND JUSTIFICATION
Fortunately, plausible accounts of the motiv-
ation for the extension of the artwork category
do not have to be cut from whole cloth, but are
already available to us in the form of various
sorts of effort to articulate definitions of art, or,
more accurately, theories of art identification.
The latter label is, I think, preferable, because it
is generally supposed that when one constructs
a definition of art, one is making explicit certain
features of artworks that have, so to speak,
“been there all along”; that a definition brings to
light features of artworks that have informed, as
Osborne puts it, our “latent” artwork concept. It
is my view that theories of art identification do
not play precisely this role. Instead, I take it that
such theories serve to motivate our inclusion of
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
certain objects within the artwork category, not
by revealing the shared features and relations of
a class of objects that compel us, on pain of
inconsistency, to admit that these objects are
artworks, but by giving us reasonable grounds
upon which to decide that they are. It is because
we identify reasons for supposing that some
things, and not others, are artworks that I prefer
to talk of theories of art identification. What
remains to be seen, of course, is just what sort
of reasons one can plausibly adduce for includ-
ing something in the artwork category.20
As indicated earlier, I think the most compel-
ling view of art identification, and the one that
sits most naturally with the (putative) radial
structure of the artwork category, is an histor-
ical narrative view. Noël Carroll presents such a
view as a sufficient (but not necessary) means
of determining the art status of contested works,
especially within the realm of the avant-garde.
He outlines what he calls an “identifying
narrative”—which is his characterization of
a specific means of identifying artworks—as
follows:
X is an identifying narrative only if it is 1) an accur-
ate 2) time-ordered report of a sequence of events
and states of affairs 3) which has a beginning, a com-
plication and an end, where 4) the end is explained as
the outcome of the beginning and the complication,
where 5) the beginning involves the description of an
initiating, acknowledged art historical context and
where 6) the complication involves tracking the
adoption of a series of actions and alternatives as
appropriate means to an end on the part of a person
who arrived at an intelligible assessment of the art
historical context in such a way that she is resolved to
change it in accordance with recognizable and live
purposes of the practice.21
While I think that some of the conditions, as
described by Carroll, are excessively demand-
ing (not all artists wish to change a given art
historical context—some are content merely to
make a contribution),22 the view he sets forth
here is a model of the kind of motivation one
would expect to find in making (and making
explicit) the connections between central sub-
categories and their less central counterparts. It
is not particularly important, for my purposes,
that the identifying narratives have precisely the
structure Carroll assigns them; it might not
Dean The Nature of Concepts and the Definition of Art
matter, for example, that the narrative is time-
ordered (a feature that presumably reflects the
causal history of the process of the work’s
production), or that the complication have just
the sort of motives adduced by Carroll. What is
important is that identifying narratives (i) serve
to explain, by reference to a given etiology, why
certain things are artworks and (ii) do so in a
way that is not only consistent with, but actually
supports the contention that our concept of
artworks has a radial structure. The use of
identifying narratives reflects the fact that we
make sense of less central or novel subcategories
(or instances) of art by reference to more central
and familiar ones, and to the relevant historical
context of production. What is more, the connec-
tion is not described in terms of necessary and
jointly sufficient features shared by the central
and acentral subcategories or instances (though
we do make use of general principles, such as
those embodied in identifying narratives), and this
maps nicely onto a radial category structure.
I do not mean to suggest that reference to his-
torical narratives is the only means with which
to determine the status of possible artworks
(and as noted, Carroll himself does not take
his view to be exhaustive or exclusive). There
certainly may be cases where there were no
intentions on the part of the artist to reflect, alter,
or improve a given historical practice, but where
what is produced demands art status. There may
be cases, for example, similar to those described
by Dickie in his discussion of (the impossibility
of) the “romantic artist,” one who produces her
or his work outside the domain of any art insti-
tutional or historical context, either from isol-
ation or some other cause of ignorance, but who
nonetheless produces objects that are recogniz-
ably artworks (she or he sketches self-portraits,
perhaps, or sculpts figures from clay, etc.).23 In
such a case, one will probably want to refer to
the intentions with which the works were made,
or the function the works play in the lives of
those who create and admire them, and where
these intentions or functions are sufficiently
similar to the intentions productive of, or func-
tions served by, familiar works of art, we will
want to call them artworks.24
This, too, may reflect the radial structure of
our artwork concept. In this case, instead of
determining the status of an object by connect-
ing it to central subcategories of art via an iden-
33
tifying narrative, we do so via reference to the
object’s formal features and its function. We
want to call this bust of a sorrowful youth a
work of art because it looks like, and serves the
same function as, other such busts that we
already call works of art.25 There is thus a well-
motivated connection between these works and
others. It might even be the case that these are
merely instances of a central subcategory of art
(perhaps the “aesthetic interest” subcategory).
What is important is that such works, while
gaining their art status for reasons different
from those advanced for contested avant-garde
pieces, are nonetheless works of art—in virtue
of their connection to (or membership in) cen-
tral subcategories of art.
What I have just said should make it clear
that nothing about our concept of “artwork”
having a radial structure is inconsistent with
other theories of art identification, such as func-
tional, procedural, or aesthetic theories, so long
as the questions posed by these analyses—Is the
object in question the sort of thing capable of
producing an aesthetic experience, or has it
been subject to the sorts of procedures normally
associated with works of art?—are understood,
like Carroll’s historical narratives, to be means
of identifying artworks rather than the compre-
hensive articulation of the conditions under
which something properly counts as art. That
is, it may well be that many works of art have
their artwork status because of certain functional
features, and that others have attained their
status as a matter of procedure. But while it is
plausible, I think, to maintain that in either case
the objects in question have met sufficient
conditions for the art status of these works, in
neither case do we have reason to suppose these
conditions are necessary.26
IV. CONCLUSION
Based on some recent work in cognitive
psychology, linguistics, and the philosophy of
mind, I have tried to make a case for the pos-
sibility that the search for definitions of art is
misguided. If the prototype theory of concepts
is close to accurate, then human cognition
does not work the way it has historically been
supposed to, and our category concepts do not
possess the classical structure most amenable to
34
the sorts of definitions sought in the philosophy
of art. It may turn out that prototype theory is
mistaken, or that there are special reasons, which
I have not considered, to believe that our concept
of art possesses classical structure. In this case,
the quest for a definition of art may yet yield the
relevant set of necessary and sufficient condi-
tions. Barring this, however, I think that we would
lose little—and gain much in transparency of
methodology, in becoming clearer about the
nature of our task in developing theories of
art identification—in abandoning traditional
definitional approaches to the question, “What
is an artwork?” in favor of pluralistic methods
of art identification.27
JEFFREY T. DEAN
Independent Scholar
111 Woodstock St.
Somerville, MA 02144
INTERNET: jtdean67@yahoo.com
1. Harold Osborne, “What Is a Work of Art,” The British
Journal of Aesthetics 21 (1981): 3. And it is, of course, this
latter question that Osborne takes to be the proper focus of
philosophical attention.
2. Clive Bell, Art (New York: Capricorn, 1958), p. 79.
3. Osborne, “What Is a Work of Art,” p. 10. See W. E.
Kennick, “Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?”
Mind 67 (1958).
4. See E. Rosch, “Natural Categories,” Cognitive Psy-
chology 4 (1973): 324–350 and E. Smith and D. Medin,
Categories and Concepts (Harvard University Press, 1981)
for some of the earliest and most influential work in this
area. Research of this nature is also discussed in George
Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Cat-
egories Reveal about the Mind (University of Chicago Press,
1987), and in Mark Johnson, Body in the Mind (University
of Chicago Press, 1987). See also Johnson’s Moral Imagin-
ation: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1993) and Mind and Morals, ed. Larry
May, Marilyn Friedman, and Andy Clark (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1996) for applications of prototype theory to areas
outside of cognitive science.
5. See, for example, Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore, “The
Red Herring and the Pet Fish: Why Concepts Still Can’t Be
Prototypes,” Cognition 58 (1996): 253–270. The authors
argue that because concepts are productive (that is, from
a finite basis of simple concepts, there can be generated an
infinity of complex concepts), they must be compositional
(that is, infinitely many complex concepts are composed
of—have as their constituents—simple or complex concepts
(e.g., the concept brown is a constituent of the concept
brown cow); but prototypes are not compositional (they are
statistical); so concepts cannot be prototypes. There is
a general consensus that concepts are productive (with the
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
exception, on Fodor and Lepore’s account, of some connec-
tionists), but with respect to the mechanisms that explain
this fact there is much less agreement, so the case is far from
closed.
6. For another recent attempt to offer an account of the
way in which “art” is not a classical concept, see Berys Gaut,
“‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept” in Theories of Art Today,
ed. Noël Carroll (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000).
Gaut’s account, while certainly not incompatible with my
own, is quite different in approach.
7. Osborne, “What Is a Work of Art?” p. 6.
8. Ibid., p. 10.
9. Johnson, Body in the Mind, p. 78.
10. Ibid., pp. 78–79.
11. Lakoff argues that even these concepts often do not have
classical structure. See Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things,
especially chap. 8 (which includes a discussion of taxonomy
and natural kinds) and chap. 20 (on mathematics).
12. Again, see Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous
Things, for discussion of this research. Prototype theory is
about the nature of concepts themselves, and is thus a meta-
physical, rather than an epistemological view, though some
of the literature is not always clear on this point.
13. Evidence for the nature of our category concepts is
always indirect and, like physicists searching for black holes,
we must refer to the linguistic practices and behavioral
tendencies that are putatively generated by our conceptual
repertoire as indirect indicators of the nature of those concepts
themselves.
14. Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Lakoff
discusses other sources of prototype effect as well, such as
metaphor and metonymy.
15. Ibid., p. 84.
16. Ibid., p. 91.
17. See especially chaps. 5–8 of Lakoff for discussion of
these connections. The nature of the motivation for extend-
ing the artwork category is discussed at length below, in
relation to “historical narrative” approaches to art identifi-
cation.
18. In his well-known essay, “The Role of Theory in Aes-
thetics,” Morris Weitz argued that the concept of art is an
“open concept,” and, as such, cannot be delimited in terms
of necessary and sufficient conditions. Weitz’s arguments
for his view have been subject to numerous objections,
many of which he has responded to in later essays. In one
sense, this paper may be seen a defense of Weitz’s central
claim, namely, “that all theories of art—past, present, and
future—fail and are doomed to fail in their putative real def-
initions of art because they misconceive the concept of art.”
See Morris Weitz, “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,” The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1956): 27–35; the
quotation is from “Art As an Open Concept,” in The Open-
ing Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1977), reprinted in
Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, ed. G. Dickie, R. Sclafani,
and R. Roblin (New York: Saint Martin’s, 1989), p. 152.
In a similar vein, it has been argued by some in relation to
the abortion debate, that whether or not a fetus is (to be
counted as) a person is itself a moral matter; that while
some things are clearly not persons—rocks, daffodils,
aphids, and perhaps even zygotes—whether or not a second,
early third, or late third trimester fetus (or even a neonate)
and so forth, is a person is not a simple matter of fact, to be
discovered by careful observation and analysis, but to some
Dean The Nature of Concepts and the Definition of Art
extent a matter of decision. Such a decision cannot be arbi-
trary, and, indeed, can be well or ill motivated. The point is that
one cannot simply “look and see” whether a fetus is a person;
calling something a person has normative force, and is itself,
on this kind of view, a normative claim. For a discussion
of this sort of claim see, for example, Roger Wertheimer,
“Understanding the Abortion Argument,” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 1 (1971): 67–95.
19. This justification will of course be available for non-
controversial cases, but will generally be either implicit or
idle.
20. This is not to deny that in many cases, the reason we
attribute art status to one object is because it shares some set
of relevant features with other objects we have already
decided to include in the artwork category, such that con-
sistency is the (or the primary) motivating force behind such
attributions.
21. Noël Carroll, Theories of Art Today, p. 322.
22. One might argue that, at least in some minimal sense,
to contribute to an art historical context is to thereby change
it. However, Carroll has something more in mind. His view
is meant to address contested cases that emerge from the
avant-garde, and that are unfamiliar precisely because they
are predicated on dissatisfaction with—and thereby a desire
to change—the artistic practices of the time. While it is in
such circumstances that identifying narratives might be
most needed, I think they can also serve in explaining even
rather less ambitious or contentious artworks to those who
are unfamiliar with them (even if, that is, they are familiar
to the artworld generally, or to those who have an extended
knowledge of art history and practices).
23. George Dickie, The Art Circle (New York: Haven
Publications, 1984), p. 55. While Dickie argues that there
cannot be a “romantic artist,” I must agree with Robert
Stecker, who finds Dickie’s argument unpersuasive. Dickie
claims that the creator of “romantic art” could not recognize
her creation as art, and so the object in question could not be
art. But, as Stecker points out, unless we already suppose
the Institutional Theory of art to be true, Dickie gives us no
reason to think that individuals cannot unwittingly create
works of art (though one might reasonably require that such
individuals have intentions that are recognizably linked to
those acknowledged as artistic, as in my example below; in
35
this case the person will be doing what the standard artist
does, and for the same sorts of reasons, but under a different
description). See Stecker, “The End of an Institutional Theory
of Art,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 26 (1986):
124–132. Noël Carroll (in conversation) suggests that puta-
tive cases of “romantic art” generally turn out to have fea-
tures that can be causally traced to an established artistic
practice of some sort, such that an identifying narrative
could be constructed. It seems to me that whether or not
there have existed any actual “romantic artists,” one can
imagine a scenario (one that is not merely logically pos-
sible, but psychologically possible as well) in which someone
grew up in relative isolation but managed to construct, for the
sorts of purposes that would be recognizably artistic (a desire
for mimesis, expression, or simply to make something
aesthetically interesting), self-portraits, or representations of
objects or other people, and so on.
24. If, on the other hand, it turns out that the busts were
made for the sole purpose of capturing the souls of those
sculpted, or the self-portraits were meant only to reduce aging
à la Dorian Gray, we might justifiably deny these objects,
which would be perceptually similar to many artworks, art
status.
25. When I say “other such busts that we already call
works of art,” I mean to refer to those objects created in our
cultural history, a history, by hypothesis, not shared by the
“romantic artist.”
26. I also do not mean to imply that it is impossible to
pick out necessary conditions for something’s being an art-
work, on the one hand (most theorists agree on some kind of
an artifactuality or intentionality condition, for example), or
sufficient conditions (such as a work being susceptible to an
identifying narrative) on the other; rather, it is my claim that
given the nature of artwork concepts, we are unlikely to find
a set of necessary conditions that are jointly sufficient.
27. A draft of this paper was presented at the American
Society for Aesthetics, Rocky Mountain Division Annual
Meeting, 1998, and at the American Society for Aesthetics
Conference, Eastern Division, 1999. My thanks to partici-
pants at those conferences, and to James Anderson and Noël
Carroll for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this
paper. Thanks are also due to an anonymous referee for the
JAAC.