Arts Module_Lesson 1 pages 1 to 24.

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What Is Art?
You may wonder whether an item you own is a work of art, or if you take it for
granted that everything you see is art.
The question of "What is art?" is commonly asked when attempting to find
conditions, necessary or sufficient, that make an item an artwork. Several promising
approaches to answering this question do not meet this more stringent requirement.

Who Cares What Art Is?

Classificatory principles are philosophically interesting because avant-garde art
puzzles critics and viewers. Can something be put forward by an artist, placed in a
setting such as a gallery, but fail to be an artwork?
Avant-garde art of the past one hundred years has made the nature of art
increasingly puzzling by stripping works of the traditional traits by which we
recognize them as art, while expanding the category of objects capable of art status.
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Recent art history reflects underlying issues that have always been with us, such as
why some objects fall under the concept of art, while others do not.
There are many concepts of art, including the visual arts, and the word "art" is also
used to refer to skilled activity and its products.
The concept of fine art that came into use in the eighteenth century includes the five
major arts: poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture. It is less clear what
else it includes, and how it compares to the related but different category of
decorative art.
The art world recognizes items from Paleolithic cave paintings and artifacts as art,
and items from non-Western cultures as art. The eighteenth-century concept of fine
art is itself flexible enough to cover these items, but the concept is better defined
from a later vantage point. People attracted to this possibility disagree among
themselves whether the concept of art pre-dates the eighteenth-century conception,
but they agree that it applies widely to artifacts created in the distant past up to the
present day.
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Historical Background
The earliest definitions of art are not to be found in the writings of ancient
philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Instead, they emphasize the idea of poetry
as imitating various objects and features of the world, including human beings and
their actions.
The first definitions of art were cast in terms of representation, and Kant's definition
is the most influential. Kant described fine art as an "aesthetic art" that advances the
culture of the mental powers in the interest of social communication. Fine art makes
more demands on the intellect but offers deeper satisfactions.
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In the nineteenth century, the idea that art is representation was challenged by
artistic movements such as romanticism, impressionism, and art-for-art's-sake, and
by the invention of photography. New definitions of art appeared, including
expression theories, formalist theories, and aesthetic theories.
All these theories have in common that they identify a single valuable property or
function of art, and assert that this property qualifies something as art.

Art as Expression
Expression is the act of looking inward to convey moods, emotions, or attitudes. It is
often de-emphasized or absent in expressive art, and literature pursues expressivist
goals from the advent of romantic poetry through the invention of "stream of
consciousness" and other techniques to express interiority.
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The definition of art by Collingwood is too narrowly circumscribed, and rules out
many items normally accepted as artworks. It is also not clear why a work cannot
express an emotion not felt by the artist when creating the work.

Formalism
During high modernism, formalist theories of art developed alongside expression
theories of art. They emphasized form rather than representational content.
Modernist masterpieces can be found in many art forms, but Cezanne's paintings
were the paradigm and inspiration for many of the most influential formalist theories.
The formalist strategy for understanding the increasingly abstract works of twentieth-
century modernism was to take these formal features as the raison d'etre for the
paintings.
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A formalist attempt to define art faces several initial tasks, including identifying a
relevant sense of "form" and finding something special about the way artworks
possess such form.
Clive Bell defined art as having significant form, which imbues what possesses it with
a special sort of value. This value is a positive, pleasurable reaction to a perceptual
experience.
Bell's claims about significant form are not very illuminating until we know what he
means by form. Unfortunately, he is remarkably cavalier in answering this question,
and his examples of significant form are not adequately described.
Bell was interested in paintings, and the form of a painting includes the two-
dimensional array of lines and color patches that mark its surface, as well as the way
objects, abstractly conceived, are laid out in the represented three-dimensional
space of a work.
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Bell's definition hinges on his ability to identify form but also significant form, and
many have questioned whether he is able to do this in a non-circular fashion.
Even if Bell can successfully identify significant form, his definition of art is not
satisfactory because it rules out the possibility of bad art and ignores many important
properties at the cost of excluding not just bad works but many great works.
Perhaps there is a better way to deploy the notion of form in a definition of art than
the functionalist model.

Aesthetic Definitions
The concept of the aesthetic is both ambiguous and contested, but for our purposes
we can stipulate that the aesthetic refers to experience valued for its own sake, to
aesthetic properties of objects, and to aesthetic interest. Aesthetic definitions are
attempts to define art in terms of such experiences, properties, or interest.
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Aesthetic definitions seem to be free of this problem, as form and representation can
both afford intrinsically valuable experience.
The notion of the aesthetic better serves the simple functionalist than the notions of
representation, expression, or form, but such definitions are still far from satisfactory.
Defenders of aesthetic definitions take two approaches to replying to this objection.
The first approach claims that any object has the potential to be of aesthetic interest,
while the second approach claims that the ready-mades do have aesthetic
properties.
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There are three ways to cope with the pervasiveness of the aesthetic outside of art
per se: redefine what counts as art as any artifact with aesthetic interest, rule out
nonart artifacts by claiming that artworks have a "significant" aesthetic interest, or
both. The last strategy is to claim that aesthetic experience is something that art
uniquely or primarily provides, but without making essential reference to the concept
of art.

Antiessentialism
Since the 1950s, the dominant trend in aesthetic definitions of art has been to reject
simple functionalism. This rejection began with the thought that all attempts to define
art are misguided because necessary and sufficient conditions do not exist capable
of supporting a real definition of art. Weitz and Ziff claimed that works are classified
as art in virtue of "family resemblances", while Gaut 2000 claimed that art is a cluster
concept.
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Each of these suggestions lays the ground for new approaches to defining art, and
while attempting to demonstrate that art cannot be defined, antiessentialism actually
resulted in a whole new crop of definitions.

Danto and Dickie

Maurice Mandelbaum (1965) pointed out that family resemblance does not preclude
definition, but rather invites it. He suggested that we may fill the gap left by the family
resemblance view by appealing to some non-exhibited relational property.
Arthur Danto and George Dickie were among the first to explore the possibility of
defining art in these terms, but their theories were quite different. Danto's theory was
historical and functional, while Dickie's theory was radically nonfunctional and
institutional. Every work of art expresses an attitude toward its subject, and further
expresses the artist's intention.
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Danto's most important work in the philosophy of art is The Transfiguration of the
Commonplace (1981), but the best statement of the essence of art is provided by
Noel Carroll (1993, 80).
To a considerable extent, Danto's definition follows the pattern of traditional simple
functionalist definitions of art, which puts it in the broad class of attempts to define art
in terms of expression. It is the last condition, however, that sets Danto's definition
apart from other simple functionalist proposals.
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George Dickie's art world is different from Danto's, in that it is an institution. Dickie
has proposed two distinct institutional definitions of art, the first of which is based on
his own rejection of the first.
Dickie's definition of art doesn't tell us who in the art world typically confers status,
but his commentary on the definition makes clear that he thinks artists are the
exclusive agents of status conferral.
Many people believe that being an artwork means having a status conferred on it by
someone with the authority to do so. Dickie rejected this idea.
An artist is a person who participates with understanding in making a work of art, and
a public is a set of persons who are prepared in some degree to understand an
object that is presented to them.
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The status of being art is not conferred by some agent's authority, but rather derives
from a work being properly situated in a system of relations with an art world public.
Dickie's two definitions of status share a common strategy that gives rise to a set of
common problems. The conferral of status occurs in many settings, including the "art
world". Dickie distinguishes art world conferrals from art-making conferrals only by
referring to the art world, and by naming the art world systems "art world systems"
without explaining what marks them off.
Dickie's definitions of the art world are circular, but he denies that this is a problem.
They are also incomplete because they do not mark off the extension of what they
are attempting to define.

Historical Approaches
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Dickie (1984, 76) has suggested that the art world is made up of a limited number of
proto-systems plus other systems that develop historically from these in a certain
manner. Walton (1977, 98) suggested that the art world might be defined historically.
A problem with this approach is that it does not account for all items classified as
artworks, especially those from non-western and earlier western cultures.
Stephen Davies believes that the art world is structured according to roles, and that
art status is conferred on works by artists in virtue of the authority of the role they
occupy. He believes that the earliest art is to be understood functionally, rather than
institutionally.
Philosophers have explored several forms of historical definition of art, including the
relation between artists' intentions and prior artworks, the relation between
historically evolving styles, and the definition of art in terms of historically evolving
functions.
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Levinson's proposal that an artwork is a thing that has been seriously intended for
regard-as-a-work-of-art is one of the best worked out and most carefully defended
theories. It is not as tightly circular as Dickie's because it allows for two relevant
types of intentions.
Levinson's main idea is that something is a work of art because of a relation it bears
to earlier artworks, and that the earliest artworks are called "first art". Davies now
gives an essentially functional account of first art, but this won't explain why all
artworks are art.
Levinson prefers to avoid a functionalist approach to first art, and instead argues that
first art is the ultimate causal source and intentional reference of later activities we
take as paradigmatically art.
Levinson's definition of art is not sufficient for all items, because Duchamp's attempt
to transform the Woolworth Building into a ready-made was not successful, and a
forger of a Rembrandt self-portrait may intend that his work be regarded in many
ways as the original is correctly regarded without thereby creating another artwork.
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Levinson has replied to all of these criticisms, but it is not clear that his replies are
completely satisfactory. It is plausible that a forger can muster a sufficiently robust
set of regards that correctly apply to his own work, which would imply that the forgery
is an artwork.
Even if the replies work, they add new conditions to Levinson's original definition,
which can kill a proposal by suffocation.

Historical Functionalism
Levinson's definition of art could have been simpler if he had appealed directly to
functions or regards rather than intentions. Historical functionalism assumes that art
forms and functions evolve over time, and that art at a given time can be identified
through an understanding of the central art forms of that time. However, not
everything that doesn't belong to a central art form is art.
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There are various problems with this definition, including the appearance of
circularity, the need to distinguish genuine functions of art from accidental functions
and extrinsic functions, and the lack of recognition of things that fulfill functions of art
with excellence.
A pill that mimicked an aesthetic experience would not actually create the real thing.
It might make us particularly receptive to such experiences, but that would not create
them.
What makes something a genuine art function? It is normally tied to the experience
of the work, and even works with minimal aesthetic payoffs have to be encountered
at least in photographs to be fully appreciated.
Common knowledge provides a great deal of information about art functions, and
when it becomes controversial whether something is an artistic function, we appeal
to historical connections between the pur- ported artistic function and recognized
ones.
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What makes something a central art form at a given time is institutional. This
involves being subject to certain modes of presentation to a public, to certain sorts of
critical appraisal and audience appreciation.
Unfortunately, this proposal for identifying central art forms invites an objection to
historical functionalism. We can get away with an emendation, though, by including
others recognizable as art forms through their derivation from the central ones.

Consensus and Skepticism

The historicist views discussed in the previous two sections suggest that a
consensus is developing about how art should be defined. These definitions are
disjunctive and do not form the kernel of a larger, normatively aimed theory of art.
The consensus on what constitutes art excludes two parties, those who are still
interested in pursuing a simple functionalist definition, and those who are skeptical of
the possibility of any definition of art.
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The skeptic claims that there is no essence to art, and therefore no definition at all.
However, there are three different motives underlying this skepticism, and one of
them is that there is no answer-no definition-will ever receive total acceptance.
A second motive to skepticism about a definition of art turns on a revisionist view
about concepts. According to this view, concepts are picked out by prototypes, and
then extended to non-prototypical members of the kind.
If concepts were prototypes, there would be far more fragmentation of concepts than
there is. Instead, people classify chickens, ostriches, and emus as birds, and do not
think that sparrows are really birds, but herons are only sort of birds.
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Prototype theory is not a definition because it does not pick out the whole class of
items falling under the relevant concept. However, if we add the "+", namely, the
method for extending the prototype, it's not clear that we don't have the materials
needed for a definition.
The last cause for skepticism is based on the idea that the concept of art has
become fragmented, and there is no one thing to define anymore.
Alan Goldman believes that there is no single concept of art because there is no
common core of agreement among experts and no common concept in ordinary use.
This argument is based on rough and ready impressions rather than painstaking
efforts to sort out where agreement exists and where it doesn't. It also assumes that
all judgments about candidate artworks are made to praise or disparage a given
artwork.
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Individual conceptions of art are probably not uniform across individuals, but this is
probably true of individual conceptions of most objects of thought. Individual
conceptions of art can be evaluated against various desiderata, and should be
revised to the extent that they fail to meet these. An adequate conception of art
ought to be well informed, unbiased, reflective, and able to cover the generally
agreed on extension of "art".
If there are different adequate conceptions of art, they will all be expressed using a
common core of ideas, so they will all roughly be in the same ballpark.
All this suggests that extreme pessimism and overly buoyant optimism are misplaced
for the project of defining art. Instead, we should suggest ways of making sense of a
practice that is neither uniform nor shot through with inconsistency.

Summary
In this chapter we have examined many proposals for classifying individual pieces as
artworks and distinguishing them from non artworks. The most plausible proposal is
based on similarity to various paradigms, but it struggles with two problems: it tends
to underspecify artistic practice. The relational definitions of art include the
institutional and historical views that dominated the last thirty years of the twentieth
century. The view recommended here - historical functionalism - comes from this
class.
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The concept of art came into use in the eighteenth century, and art has been made
as long as there have been human civilizations.

Further Reading
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A historical procedure for identifying art was proposed in 1994, and in 2000, a
collection of essays was published on contemporary attempts to define art. In 1964,
Arthur Danto published his most developed work on the nature of art.
Jerrold, Mandelbaum, and Dickie all defend different versions of the historical
definition of art, and Critique provides a wide ranging critique of alternatives.