The Conceptual Dimension in Art and the Modern Theory of Artistic Value

Author(s): Roger Seamon

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Spring, 2001, Vol. 59, No. 2
(Spring, 2001), pp. 139-151
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/432220

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 ROGER SEAMON
The Conceptual Dimension in Art
and the Modern Theory of Artistic Value
The impact of Marcel Duchamp's ready-
mades on the philosophy of art has been out
of all proportion to the interest of the objects
themselves-as indeed it should be for these
ur-instances of what has come to be called
conceptual art. These works and their prog-
eny inspired a radical questioning of tradi-
tional art theory, and the resulting revolution
consisted of three main theoretical events.
First, given that there was nothing especially
worth seeing in these art objects, the neces-
sity of the perceptual to the arts was elimi-
nated and its centrality challenged, thus
making the conventional term for art theory,
aesthetics, a serious misnomer:
Recent years have seen the rise ... of a "concep-
tual art," many of whose works were nothing
other than "things to think about" and owed
nothing to any mode of perception ... [whereas]
other aesthetic objects do depend on sensory
order.1
Timothy Binkley, among many others, sees
this as a liberation: "Art in the twentieth cen-
tury has ... freed itself of aesthetic parame-
ters and sometimes creates directly with
ideas unmediated by aesthetic [that is, per-
ceptual] qualities."2 The anti-aesthetic na-
ture of such "pieces" had a second influential
consequence, the institutional theory of the
arts, which "has been consciously worked
out with the practices of the artworld in
mind-especially developments of the last
seventy-five years, such as dadaism, pop art,
found art, and happenings."3 If a successful
work of art could be nonbeautiful, took no
skill to make, and might even be ephemeral,
it was not some fine perceptual quality that
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59:2 Spring 2001
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made an artifact into art, but that "some per-
son or persons acting on behalf of a certain
social institution (the artworld) has con-
ferred [upon these things or occurrences] the
status of candidate for appreciation."4
Thirdly, Arthur Danto proposed what we
might call the theory theory of art. Danto
claims that it is neither appearances worth
contemplating nor an institutional imprima-
tur that makes objects into art, but the con-
ceptual itself, i.e., theory: "What in the end
makes the difference between a Brillo box
and a work of art is a certain theory of art."5
The identity and value of works of art lie in
their meanings, and thus their status as art
objects depends upon interpretations, not
perceptual discrimination:
The sparkplug as an aesthetic object and the
sparkplug as an artwork would have very differ-
ent properties, and it is not clear that the beauty
of the sparkplug is even relevant to its apprecia-
tion as an artwork. That would be ambiguous
until it became interpreted, as in the parallel case
of Duchamp's Fountain.6
Danto's theory returns an identity to art, but
again minimizes the perceptual. Aesthetics is
now a misleading word for the theory of art.
Pretty good for a shovel, a urinal, and the
like. A skeptic might minimize the whole
business by means of Francis Sparshott's ob-
servation that "some aesthetic objects exist
to be thought about rather than to be per-
ceived,"7 but what we might call Sparshott's
paradox, the existence of unperceived aes-
thetic objects, calls for more than that-but
not a theoretical revolution. Conceptual art,
I shall argue, does not force us to rethink
140 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

completely the nature of art. It can, however,
help us to become self-conscious about the
presence of a conceptual dimension in tradi-
tional works of art,8 a dimension that some
of the most prominent modern visual art has
strikingly and innovatively cultivated, which,
in turn, has led to radical conclusions about
art generally. That has been an overreaction.
Conceptual art strongly emphasizes what
was already present in some art, and the con-
ceptual dimension should, therefore, be un-
derstood as a permanent possibility and an
addition, rather than a challenge, to a rough
consensus about the forms of artistic value
that has emerged over the last 250 years.
That is my deflationary proposal.
The process of overreaction and subse-
quent normalization has occurred before in
the history of modern art theory; indeed, it
seems to be its "logic." Very briefly and very
roughly speaking, mimetic art dominated
Renaissance theory as the artists pursued
what E. H. Gombrich calls the "discovery of
appearances."9
Next, the emphasis on feeling in romantic
art led to expressive theories, and, later,
nonrepresentational painting became the
basis and motive for a formalist theory of the (of the right sort) in the former entails a
arts. However, the mimetic, expressive, and
formal theories of art were eventually trans-
formed into what I have called "dimensions,"
that is, different kinds of aesthetic value
rather than competing essentialist concep-
tions of art. The conceptual, I want to argue, syntactic density, semantic density, and syn-
should be thought of in the same way. Thus,
my mildly inflationary proposal is that the
addition of expressive and formal dimen-
sions to the mimetic moved us toward a
plausible theory of value in art. Adding the
conceptual broadens and strengthens what I
shall call, adapting the well-known phrase of
Paul 0. Kristeller, the modern theory of ar-
tistic value. Although the path has, obviously, ceptual density "call[s] for maximum sensi-
not been nearly as simply sequential (Aris-
totle included a formal dimension in his ac-
count of tragedy, Kant is the formalist par
excellence, etc.) and conceptually tidy (there different, whereas poetry is what is lost in the
are very different mimetic and expressive
theories) as my summary account makes it,
there has, nonetheless, been progress toward
a consensus in the theory of art. That claim
may sound too simple, too neat, and too con-
venient, i.e., not "bad" enough to be true, yet
it is just what I think has happened. I shall
pursue this theme after showing that concep-
tual art intensely cultivates a dimension that
was present in earlier art, most familiarly, but
not exclusively, in allegory.
From the establishment of aesthetics as a
philosophical discipline in the eighteenth
century until quite recently, the fine arts
were identified with the judgment of the
beautiful, and the beautiful was found in per-
ception. Here is a typical statement:
We may decide in general whether a particular
judgment is genuinely aesthetic by seeing if an af-
firmative answer can be given to the question,
"Does tracing out the relation indicated by the
judgment in question contribute to the direct and
immediate sensory experience?" If it does not, if
it dissipates the aesthetic impact and corrodes its
wholeness by diverting attention from the imme-
diate givenness, it is not an aesthetic judgment.1
Given this assumption, the relation between
medium and meaning in art is that a change
change in the latter. That is just what it
means to grasp something aesthetically.11
The reason for this is that we expect art to be,
to use Nelson Goodman's term, dense:
"Three symptoms of the aesthetic may be
tactic repleteness," where density and re-
pleteness refer to a symbolic system that
"provides for infinitely many characters so
ordered that between each two there is a
third."112 This means, roughly, that we do not,
for example, treat the lines in a graph as we
do the identical lines if they signify a range of
hills in a drawing, and this emphasis on per-
tivity of discrimination."13 This view of the
arts is nicely expressed in the nontrans-
latability thesis-that concepts are media-in-
translation.
Untranslatability and the need for fine-
ness of discrimination are precisely what we
do not find in conceptual art, where what

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 Seamon The Conceptual Dimension in Art 141

matters are ideas that are very loosely tied to What Bosanquet means by this is made clear
appearances:14 in a comment on The Divine Comedy:

Malevich's most famous painting remains The Dante is not a great poet because in speaking of a
Black Square-a square of uniform black within a she-wolf he signifies by it at once the temporal
border of white. The original version, first exhib- power of the Pope and the sin of avarice; but be-
ited in 1915, is now displayed in the Tretyakov cause in his intentness upon the issue and the
Gallery; carelessly painted over another painting, meaning, nothing that has a natural significance
its surface deteriorated and is now a cross-section escapes his ear and eye.20
of irregular white lines (a particularly ironic fate
for picture [sic] intended to be the last word in To which he adds the poetic authority of
stark simplicity), but it was always the concept of Robert Browning:
the painting, not its execution, that mattered.'5
If beauty indeed lies in symbolic meaning, and if
In the same vein, Binkley says of Duchamp's symbolic meaning is utterly arbitrary, then we ask
L. H. 0. 0. Q., "When you look at the art- with Fra Lippo Lippi:
work you learn nothing of artistic conse-
quence which you don't already know from "Why for this
the description Duchamp gives," and "the What need of art at all? A skull and bones,
difference [between this kind of art and that Two bits of wood nailed crosswise, or, what's best,
based on perception] can be elucidated by A bell to chime the hours with, does as well." 21
contrasting ideas and appearances."16
Binkley is, of course, arguing against the va- Those bits of wood and that bell are the sorts
lidity of the entire aesthetic tradition, in of things that we find in conceptual art, unin-
which "aesthetic qualities cannot be commu- teresting in themselves but valued for what
nicated except through direct experience of they signify. The question is why an object
them,"117 but one need not accept his conclu- that means is sometimes art, while at other
sions about that to accept his account of con- times it is not. In Danto's formulation, a real
ceptual art as an art that is not grounded in thing becomes art by virtue of interpretation,
appearances. Indeed, that is simply the re- but our interpretation of the cross as a Chris-
ceived view. tian symbol does not make it art, while
If the arbitrary nature of the relationship Duchamp's shovel is somehow transformed.
between concept and artifact is the distinc- The mere fact that an image stands for a con-
tive mark of conceptual art, we can take our cept does not suffice to make it into art. We
cue as to how to proceed from conceptual art are familiar with all sorts of symbolic images,
to the conceptual in art from a passage in from crosses to figures on bathroom doors,
Bernard Bosanquet's History of Aesthetic in that are not art, and Bosanquet assumes that
which he comments upon the arbitrariness Dante's symbolism is, although serious, just
of what he calls symbolism:'8 like those examples. I need, therefore, to
show that there is something about some
Imitation is only a rule of art, and prima facie can symbolism and conceptual art that makes
make nothing beautiful which is not given as them art-like, even though in both instances
beautiful. Symbolism is a mode of interpretation; we are dealing with what appears to be more
and with all its enormous risks of arbitrariness, like a graph than a painting, with something
has the one advantage of absolute universality. If that merely stands for something else. The
all that has a meaning may be beautiful, then there arbitrariness of the relationship between
is nothing in which we may not chance to detect an image and concept is, therefore, not what de-
element of beauty. It is easy to see how hopeful is fines conceptual art; that may be necessary
such an idea, and how rich a prospect it opens, in but it is not sufficient.
comparison with the notion of the beautiful as fi- In an earlier essay I argued that an impor-
nally and unalterably given to perception.19 tant way in which the arts engage us is by

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142 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

eliciting our capacity to make perceptual in-
ferences:
I shall call the process ... guided rapid uncon-
scious reconfiguration (GRUR for short). It is
guided, because poems, like all works of art, are
deliberately made [or found and offered], and our
pleasure lies in getting what the artist is up to. It
must be rapid, because art is for pleasure, and
rapid reconfiguration is pleasurable moment by
moment, which is very different from what occurs
as you read this essay. The activity is unconscious,
in a cognitive not psychoanalytic sense; when we
get a joke or hear a melody, we do so without
being aware of the steps in the process. We leap
the communicative gap opened by an author by
reconfiguring enough so as to accommodate the
apparently disconnected elements.22 An obvious,
if minor, example of this process, which I will call
imaginative inference, is a joke, where, through a
mysterious process, we simply "get it." A major
example would be what happens when we look at,
say, a Rembrandt self-portrait, where we infer the
state of the sitter's soul from the appearances, and
the more we look the more we see. What is crucial
in both cases is that it is the audience that must
make the inferences, as the artist does not fill in
the gaps, which means that we cannot say how we
got from here to there, from image to concept.
This should be contrasted with argument, where,
ideally, we are led by the thinker step by careful
step from concept to concept. In arguments a
bridge is built rather than a gap leaped. We can
see it go up every step of the way, and we try to
find error as we proceed. In art implication and
imaginative inference dominate.23 We have to get
it, and it has to be gettable in a certain way.24
This thesis is closely related to a traditional
and persistent view of value in art.
However we analyze the difference between the
regular and the irregular, we must ultimately be
able to account for the most basic fact of aesthetic but must infer it. The difference between
experience, the fact that delight lies somewhere
between boredom and confusion. If monotony
makes it difficult to attend, a surfeit of novelty
will overload the system and cause us to give up.25 nificance," and which I would call the mi-
If the gap is too narrow, as in a too obvious
pun or plot, we groan with disappointment; if Hamlet says, "Thrift, thrift, Horatio," and we
it is too wide we are stumped and feel either
inadequate, or critical of the artist's obscu-
rity. Along the same lines, Francis Sparshott
asserts that "beauty occupies the ground be-
tween cliche and chaos," with variety pro-
tecting against the former, and unity protect-
ing against the latter.26
Gap opening (by artists) and closing (by
audiences) takes various forms in the arts.
For example, in graphic arts and painting
there is a gap to be leaped between our
knowledge that we are looking at a surface
and our perception of a three-dimensional
object. We are pleased at making the leap
from surface configuration to object, al-
though such mere depiction no longer has
the magic it once did; we demand much more
sophisticated perceptual leaps. To see
Cezanne's color patches as very subtle
"props" for the making of a full illusion,
which is the form of make-believe that I
think Cezanne is often engaged in, is to leap
a wider gap than in traditional "realistic" art,
at least on a formal level.27 Cubism is the
classic form of this characteristically modern
preference. To feel the emotional intensity in
Hemingway's sparseness or James's circum-
locutions is to make an imaginative leap
from surface reticence to expressive depth. I
do not claim that this is all that goes on in art,
but that it is pervasive and an important
source of art's value to us.28 Our success at
having made the inference is marked by de-
light in having successfully gotten what the
artist was up to, which, unlike more straight-
forward forms of communication, demands
imaginative inference.29
This process is at work in both conceptual
art and the allegories and symbols of tradi-
tional art. The artists do not tell us what their
symbols mean, but rely on our making the
proper inference, and however straightfor-
ward that inference may be, it makes all the
difference that we are not told the meaning
conceptual art and traditional allegories is
that the images in the latter have, in the first
instance, what Bosanquet calls "natural sig-
metic and expressive implications that we in-
tuitively get when we engage with fictions.
infer that he is deeply upset but is also

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Seamon The Conceptual Dimension in Art
deeply witty and uses his wit to keep his
"cool." We also infer that Shakespeare
would have us admire this stance, even as we
recognize that it cannot be Hamlet's final re-
sponse to the events in Elsinore. If Hamlet
was taken by the original audience as a sym-
bol of Elizabeth's courtiers who were re-
volted by her sexual shenanigans but pre-
tended to be above the battle and merely
made snide remarks, we would then have a
conceptual dimension added to the "natural
significance." The symbolic meaning needs
to be inferred no less than the mimetic and
expressive meanings, and it is, therefore, an
intrinsic dimension of the art.
We need to contrast this with the case
where we are not interested in the natural
significance and where the symbolic mean-
ing is not inferred but given, in other words,
where the allegory is merely illustrative, not
a stimulus to inference. For example, we can
safely presume that Plato's purpose in the
cave allegory is not to engage us in the activ-
ity of "making believe" or to get us to infer
the symbolic meaning, but to illustrate an
idea, which he explicitly spells out for us.
Therefore, we do not make inferences about
natural significance ("What is the mood of
the people in the cave?" is not a serious
question) or conceptual meaning, for the lat-
ter is given to us. There is, of course, art in
Plato's tale; we admire the aptness of his par-
able and the beauty of the language, and
there is, no doubt, some space for interpreta-
tion. It is not a pure graph, to go back to
Goodman's example. However, like the
graph it is in principle dispensable and not
merely replaceable, like Duchamp's shovel.
A corollary of what I have been arguing
about the nature of the conceptual dimen-
sion in art is that the game of drawing con-
ceptual implications contributes, when suc-
cessful of course, to the value of works of art.
Consider Orwell's Animal Farm. If we were
to find out that Orwell had not intended the
allegory (that it was just a children's story
about unfairness), we ought to say, "Well, he
damn well should have," for the story not
only becomes much more incisive and adult
as a political parable, but we now can, at each
moment, get the allegorical implications. It is
not that one simply misunderstands the work
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143
by dropping the allegory, for in the opinion
of Bosanquet and other romantic theorists
who excluded allegory from the aesthetic
that might just make it better as art. No,
dropping the allegory, as is done with chil-
dren's versions of Gulliver's Travels, prevents
us from making imaginative inferences, and
making such inferences is, on the theory ad-
vanced above, a distinctive reason for our
desire to encounter art.30
Contrary to Bosanquet, then, the relation-
ship between an image and a concept is as
art-like as his "natural significance." The
next step is to show that the process of imagi-
native inference we find in allegory is char-
acteristically found in conceptual art. Con-
ceptual art is, I claim, often a sort of
mini-allegory, a metaphor, although the im-
plied meanings are, relative to traditional
symbolism, indeterminate, though not
wholly so.31 This is nicely illustrated in the
following comment on what I take to be a
typical work of contemporary conceptual
art:
For all its assertive size it remains primly reticent
about just what it has in mind. Is the giant dress a
symbol of oppressive girlishness, the kind of
looming Memories of Mom that many a feminist
must feel when she contemplates what to wear to
her next soir6e? Or is it a kind of big-girl celebra-
tion of the power of the petticoat, insisting that,
with enough chutzpah, frills can be rescued from a
submissive past and turned into a power outfit for
the nineties?32
What makes this work conceptual is that, in
contrast to, for example, a nude sculpture,
where we are not puzzled by the choice of
object, it is not clear what the purpose of the
work is, and our "natural" impulse at that
point is to search for a conceptual meaning
that will make sense of its very existence.
The contemporary preference for openness
and uncertainty, which conceptual art first
helped to develop and now exploits, should
not obscure the fact that the same allegorical
process that we find in Dante and Orwell is
at work here, only more playfully and tenta-
tively. Today we like uncertainty and resist
closure, and it is the ability of conceptual art
144
to elicit that interpretive activity that consti-
tutes its main artistic value.33
Allegory is not the only way in which we
are encouraged to make imaginative infer-
ences, both in conceptual and traditional art.
Duchamp's shovel and Warhol's Brillo
Boxes are not so much (if at all) symbols as
gestures; i.e., they are understood to be say-
ing something by implication, although, once
again in contrast with traditional art, the im-
plications are much more open. Whereas
there is considerable freedom to draw one's
own moral from traditional narratives, as
long as one remains, so to speak, in the ball-
park, gestures in conceptual art are, initially,
much more enigmatic; i.e., the gap is greater
between image and meaning. Let me give an
example from early modern poetry, Ezra
Pound's "Papyrus," which is more conceptu-
ally puzzling than most traditional art but
less so than many postmodern works:
Spring ......
Too long ......
Gongula ......
We need, first, to make the leap between the
title and the ellipses by inferring that papy-
rus manuscripts are often in bad condition
and their contents therefore fragmentary. It
is clever of Pound to have presented us with
the problem of inferring why the poem is so
truncated. But we also need to make the leap
between what is obviously a very thin love
poem (so why publish it?) and Pound's the-
ory that fragments can be expressive, which
justifies it. We must infer that he is not set-
ting this work beside Sappho, Catullus,
Dante, Shakespeare, etc., but instead, if we
have the proper theory, we can infer that it is
an illustration of his thesis about the expres-
sive power of the fragment. The poem is a lit-
tle bit mimetic and expressive, but mostly
conceptual, not as allegory but as an illustra-
tion of a thesis. That Pound is successful
"proves" the thesis, but the poem is good not
because the thesis is true or deep, but be-
cause the words offer a challenge to the
imagination to make some plausible infer-
ences that will close the gap opened by its
puzzling nature.
A brief digression: I reject the idea that
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The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
conceptual art is, normally, very interesting
conceptually, that is, as a way of doing philos-
ophy by other means, just as the Pound poem
is not especially valuable as poetics. Harold
Rosenberg, for example, claims, "The func-
tion of art in our time is not to please the
senses but to provide a fundamental investi-
gation of art and reality."34 Although some
works of art, and not just conceptual ones,
may stimulate such investigations, they can-
not seriously develop an argument.35 Con-
ceptual art is, normally, more like wit than
"investigation." Thus, when Arthur Danto
says that when Andy Warhol exhibited a
"painting-by-numbers painting" he was
"making a statement about anyone being
able to be an artist," we do not take Warhol's
statement itself very seriously.36 Indeed, it is
either banal or false. If Warhol means that
most people can learn that putting paint on
canvas makes a work of art and are physi-
cally capable of doing so, then the statement
is banal. If he means that all such efforts are
equally good, it is false. He is, somewhat dis-
ingenuously, making a rhetorical thrust at
the notion of genius, but no argument or "in-
vestigation" is involved. The artistic element
in the Warhol gesture consists of him doing
something that elicits Danto's inferential ca-
pacities. Danto makes the leap from dumb
painting to the idea implied, and that is what
makes the transaction arty. Warhol is witty
and Danto gets it.
Conceptual art is, to pick up the main
thread, a member of the family of artistic cri-
teria-joining mimesis, expression, and
form-by virtue of its capacity to create op-
portunities for imaginative inference in a
symbolic mode. Thus when Arthur Danto
says that "the structure of artworks is, or is
very close to the structure of metaphors," he
defines all art in terms of the dimension of
artistic value that conceptual art cultivates,
i.e., the conceptual.37 Danto takes the
enthymeme as a model of what happens
when we understand a metaphor, and the
enthymeme "involves a complex interrela-
tion between the framer and the reader of
the enthymeme. The latter must himself fill
the gap deliberately left open by the for-
mer."38 Exactly, but the gaps exist in the mi-
metic, expressive, and formal dimensions, as
Seamon The Conceptual Dimension in Art
well as the conceptual, and so the conceptual
must take its place with them in the modern
theory of artistic value.
As I said earlier, what has happened is that
the dominance of mimesis as the definitive
purpose of art has been challenged by ex-
pressive, formalist, and now conceptual theo-
ries. In each case, the challenger tries to dom-
inate the field but ends up being (justifiably)
added to what has preceded.39 This means
that the conceptual, as I have understood it
here, should be added to the mimetic, the ex-
pressive, and the formal-the axiological
triad we already have-as a dimension of ar-
tistic value.40 Recognizing the conceptual as
an aspect of much art broadens and thus
strengthens our sense of what art is. By add-
ing the conceptual to the original triad we (i)
acknowledge what has usually been a
bastard child in the family of artistic values;
(ii) have our attention drawn to the common
process of imaginative inference; and (iii)
avoid the revenge of the once-rejected con-
ceptual sibling on the entire family.41 The
theoretical implications of conceptual art
should neither undermine nor colonize the
theory of artistic value, but help to take us
closer to a full account.
I cannot repeat the case for the centrality
of the mimetic, expressive, and formal in
both the appraisal and the theory of the arts,
but I do want to at least suggest how perva-
sive they are. Here is a passage from a recent
review of two books on Renaissance art:
In the center of the most beautiful painting by
Corregio in the Louvre there is a knot of flesh as
intricate and lively as a swimming octopus. It con-
sists of the left hand of the Virgin Mary delicately
supporting the slightly smaller right hand of Saint
Catherine, while the much smaller hand of the in-
fant Christ tenderly picks out the Saint's ring fin-
ger. This is a miniature example of an effect at
which Corregio excelled: actions inspired by a
sentiment of breathless intensity are somehow
endowed with angelic grace and with a formal
complexity which is delightfully difficult to disen-
tangle.42
The mimetic, expressive, and formal are not
easily disentangled in this description, but
the three dimensions are clearly present.
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145
Given the fact that works of art tend to be
stronger in one dimension than another, crit-
ical comments usually focus on just one or
two. Here are three examples that empha-
size, respectively, mimesis, expression, and
form:
He was an astonishing man, was Carle Vernet. His
collected works are a world, a little Comedie
Humaine of their own; for trivial prints, sketches
of the crowd and the street, and caricatures, often
constitute the most faithful mirror of life.... Each
pose and gesture has the accent of truth; each
head and physiognomy is endowed with an au-
thentic style for which many of us can vouch when
we think of the guests who used to enjoy our fa-
ther's hospitality in the days of our childhood.43
In Randall Jarrell's comment on some
poems of Robert Frost, expression is in the
foreground:
Many of these poems are extraordinarily subtle
and strange, poems which express an attitude that,
at its most extreme, makes pessimism seem a
hopeful evasion; they begin with a flat and terri-
ble reproduction of the evil in the world and end
by saying: It's so; and there's nothing you can do
about it; and if there were, would you ever do it?44
Finally, here is a comment of Henry James
on the formal incoherence of a painting:
Though an ambitious picture, this struck us as a
not especially felicitous one; it is a singular con-
gregation of pieces rapportees. One has a curious
sense of having seen the separate parts before, in
some happier association. The eagle and the flag
(which are rather awkwardly and heavily con-
trived) possess, indeed, the merit of originality;
but the other things have each an irritating air of
being a kind of disordered memory of something
else. The young woman's body, her arms, her head,
the landscape behind her, the sky, are very old
friends; but somehow, on this occasion they are
not looking their best. It describes Mr. Gray's pic-
ture not unjustly, we think, to say it is a superficial
pastiche of Titian.45
As I cannot quote critic after critic to prove
this point (how many would it take?), I can
only ask the reader to pick at random some
146 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

serious reviews (not interpretive essays) and anything), both literally and metaphorically, what
see if the critic does not focus, with varying it expresses, and what formal features it empha-
emphasis given the work, on the standard sizes.50
triad.
The triad is as pervasive in the philosophy Finally, in The Mirror and the Lamp, the de-
of art as it is in criticism. The case for the cen- finitive account of the shift from the classical
trality of and intimate relationship between to the romantic theory of the arts, Meyer
mimesis, expression, and form has been Abrams organizes art theory from antiquity
made very well and at length, explicitly by to the nineteenth century in terms of four
Iredell Jenkins in Art and the Human Enter- basic orientations: the mimetic, the expres-
prise, who notes that there have been many sive, the objective (my formal), and the prag-
contenders for the title of what art is, but matic.51 Abrams's typology is based on a dia-
gram, with the work of art at the center
in the course of these disputes, three concepts surrounded by artist, world, and audience,
have emerged as leading candidates for the role and these correspond to the objective (for-
of first principle, or basic category of aesthetic mal), the artist (expressive), the world (mi-
theory: these are the notions of imitation, expres- metic), and the audience (pragmatic).52 This
sion, and form. Each of these doctrines has served suggests that the theorists discussed by
as a theme on which numerous variations have Abrams, i.e., just about everyone from antiq-
been played ... but the categories of imitation, ex- uity to 1830, work unself-consciously within
pression, and form have maintained their pri- these fundamental categories.
macy.46 Perhaps the most persuasive evidence for
the significance of the triad is that when a
In Sparshott's The Theory of the Arts, which work is weak in one dimension, we often feel
is our summa aesthetica, the expressive and the need to fill in the dimension that is miss-
formal dimensions are derived from and ing. Faced with a work of art we expect cer-
based on a mimetic foundation. The triad is tain kinds of value and try to make up for
also common in introductions to aesthetics. perceived deficiencies. "Music alone," to use
When George Dickie outlines "Present-Day Peter Kivy's phrase, offers a good example.
Theories of Art" in Aesthetics: An Introduc- Composers often cite experiences that their
tion he begins with "A Modern Beauty The- music is about, listeners find metaphorical
ory of Art," which focuses on Clive Bell's meanings (often by analogy to contending
formalism, and then discusses imitation and and cooperating forces and voices), and the-
expression theories.47 Imitation, expression, orists work hard to find something mimed
and form are also the basis for Anne Shep- (usually feelings or emotions), thereby add-
herd's primer, Aesthetics: An Introduction to ing an (inner) mimetic dimension to a formal
the Philosophy of Art,48 and the triad makes and expressive art. A recent issue of The
an appearance in Robert Stecker's recent Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism con-
book Artworks: tains another such effort, James 0. Young's
"The Cognitive Value of Music."53
Sometimes we enjoy artworks for the expressive The same principle is at work in criticism
properties we perceive in them. Sometimes we of the decorative arts, where it is common to
enjoy artworks because they represent things in look for and "find" mimetic and conceptual
fascinating ways. Sometimes we enjoy artworks meaning. In a chapter entitled "Designs as
for the patterns we perceive in their organiza- Signs" in The Sense of Order, E. H. Gom-
tion.49 brich writes:

In an essay on "Style and Significance in Art
History," Jenefer Robinson says,
As I use the phrase, the term "aesthetic signifi-
cance" encompasses what the work represents (if
From the observation that decorative motifs can
have a symbolic meaning, it was only too tempt-
ing a step to conclude that all motifs were origi-
nally conceived as symbols-though their mean-
ing had been lost in the course of history. If that

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Seamon The Conceptual Dimension in Art
conclusion was justified a rich harvest beckoned
to the historian who deciphered the symbolism of
far distant ages.54
To which we might add contemporary less
historically-minded interpreters who take
artworks as signs of the personal, political, or
collective unconscious. It is most often the
mimetic and conceptual that is added to for-
mal arts, but the New Critics found underly-
ing formal structures (often based on alle-
gorical readings of abstracted images) in
literary works whose obvious appeal is mi-
metic and expressive. Apropos of this point,
Northrop Frye shrewdly notes,
The commenting critic is often prejudiced against
allegory without knowing the real reason, which is
that continuous allegory prescribes the direction
of his commentary, and so restricts its freedom.55
Interpreters dislike the conceptual dimen-
sion, since they want to make their own (cre-
ative, not cooperative) contributions. Posit-
ing deep meanings makes gaps between
image and concept, and interpretation fills
them with "inferences" (really, in this case,
inventions).
Allegorical interpretation has been the
conceptual companion of narrative since an-
tiquity, but it is applicable to any art.56 The
academic version of the triumph of the con-
ceptual in our century is the proliferation of
interpretation, which adds a symbolic di-
mension to whatever it encounters, and the
relation of this to my main theme is sug-
gested by Frye's observation that "it is not
often realized that all commentary is allegor-
ical interpretation, an attaching of ideas to
the structure of poetic imagery."57 In other
words, interpreters normally attach a con-
ceptual dimension to works that are them-
selves aesthetic, i.e., perceptual, and whose
value has been independently established on
that ground, thus filling in a missing band in
the spectrum of artistic evaluation. Critics
thus acknowledge by implication the central-
ity of the mimetic, expressive, formal, and
conceptual dimensions of art. We should, I
conclude, join them.
Since my domestication of the conceptual
by integrating it into the modern theory of
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147
artistic value might seem complacent-a
word of the worldly wise to the innocently
astounded-and reductive of an obviously
significant change in the history and theory
of art, I shall end by saying why I think the
change is, in fact, very significant. The appeal
of conceptual art and its theory is part of a
major change in the world of art, and the
world generally. The change I have in mind is
the preference for meaning over value, or
the according of value to making meaning
rather than artifacts.58 The decline of con-
cern for artistic skill, however broadly con-
ceived, and the rise of theory and interpreta-
tion is a sign of this shift within the
philosophical community. We tend not to
ask, as people once did, "How is it done?" or
"Is it good?" but rather, "Is it art?" and
"What does it mean?" That last question,
often understood as an utterance of the un-
initiated, is emblematic of our general condi-
tion. We produce numerous handbooks on
how to interpret rather than how to make.
Speaking emblematically, Brooks's and War-
ren's handbook of interpretation, Under-
standing Poetry, replaces Aristotle's Poetics,
which is concerned with making not mean-
ing. When meaning overshadows making as
the source of value, the artists go "thinky"
and the interpreters become prominent
-which is just what has happened. Thus
Robert Stecker speaks of our emphasis on
"interpretation-centered value" and says
that "especially in our soon-to-be-concluded
century, literature has come to be valued
precisely in virtue of the fact that it invites,
indeed, requires interpretation."59 Gerald
Graff has made a related point about the im-
plications of interpretation as the goal of ac-
ademic criticism: "The very stockpiling of
competing explications came to seem a
prima facie proof of a work's complexity and
therefore its value."60 This, of course, applies
to conceptual art with appropriate ven-
geance, and for a large segment of the col-
lege-educated population works of art (and
not just, or perhaps now even primarily,
works of fine art) have displaced the Bible as
the main focus of hermeneutic attention.
Stecker follows the observation just quoted
with the statement that "this is puzzling" and
explains it by saying that such a view "invites
148 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

us to be creative, to participate in creating fine art historically (Levinson) and historically-func-

tionally (Stecker), and to nondefine it narratively
(completing) a work."161 True, but that is not
(Carroll), are motivated by the challenge of conceptual
new. We often forget that students once art only insofar as each is meant to replace theories gen-
made poems, not interpretations, as part of erated by the avant-garde. See Jerrold Levinson, "De-
their education. Students who are asked to fining Art Historically," in Music, Arts, and Metaphysics:
interpret poems-rather than write imita- Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics (Cornell University
Press, 1990), Robert Stecker, "Historical Functional-
tions of them-are being silently inducted
ism," in Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Value (Pennsyl-
into the now-dominant view that art means vania State University Press, 1997), and Noel Carroll,
rather than that artists make.62 That, in turn, "Historical Narratives and the Philosophy of Art," The
strongly influences what artists then do; thus Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993):
313-326. Here, as so often in this paper, I must paint
we get the very intellectual fine art of our
with a very broad brush. Danto, like others I shall refer
day, in which the conceptual dimension is so to, is emblematic of what he is commonly taken to mean.
strongly emphasized. The relationship of the In fact Danto's theory is now mimetic (i.e., referential),
ascent of the conceptual to social reality bor- since he claims that works of art are about things, al-
ders on what is now a commonplace, that though not (necessarily) by means of representations.
This thesis was already implicit in The Transfiguration
knowledge and ideas are today the distinc-
of the Commonplace and is explicit in After the End of
tive and increasingly important forms of cap- Art. For commentary on this see Noel Carroll, "Danto's
ital. The radical implications for theory that New Definition of Art and the Problem of Art The-
derived from conceptual art were the ories," The British Journal of Aesthetics 37 (1997):
artworld expression of a tendency that per- 386-392.
6. Arthur Danto, "From Aesthetics to Art Criticism
vades our culture, and while I have ques-
and Back," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
tioned whether conceptual art ought to 54 (1996): 106.
make us rethink aesthetics, I do not underes-7. Sparshott, The Theory of the Arts, p. 199.
timate its import. I might also add that the 8. That art theory makes self-conscious what was im-
thread that I claim ties together the tetrad of plicit in earlier practices is one of the themes of Harold
Osborne's Aesthetics and Art Theory (New York: E. P.
mimesis, expression, form, and the concep- Dutton, 1970), p. 23 et passim. Osborne's candidate for
tual, the notion of imaginative inference, it- the aesthetic is formalism, but, as I point out below, the
self emphasizes-but only emphasizes-the thesis applies to mimesis and expression as well.
cognitive in art and so, like conceptual art 9. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1960), p. 299.
and its theory, bears the mark of its time.63
10. Lewis Beck White, "Judgments of Meaning in
Art," in Contemporary Aesthetics, ed. Matthew Lipman
ROGER SEAMON (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973), p. 184. Originally pub-
lished in The Journal of Philosophy 41 (1944): 169-178.
Department of English
11. It is sometimes claimed that poetry offers a
University of British Columbia counterexample to aesthetic, or perceptual, theories of
Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1W5 art. However, Sparshott makes the point that "it is as in-
Canada telligible structures that literary works exist; but, as
seemed not to be the case with the chess problem, the
exact order of the intelligible components as perceived
INTERNET: rseamon@interchange.ubc.ca is of the essence of the form" (The Theory of the Arts, p.
199). In other words, in contrast to poems, "chess prob-
1. Francis Sparshott, The Theory of the Arts (Prince- lems, like mathematical proofs, have an order that in no
ton University Press, 1982), p. 199. way depends on any sensory medium or any
2. Timothy Binkley, "Piece: Contra Aesthetics," in spatiotemporal order in which they may be set out"
Philosophy Looks at the Arts: Contemporary Readings (ibid.).
in Aesthetics, 3rd ed., ed. Joseph Margolis (Temple 12. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Ap-
Universiy Press, 1987), p. 81. The essay originally ap- proach to the Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis:
peared in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35 Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), pp. 252 and 136.
13. Ibid., p. 136.
(1977): 265-277.
3. George Dickie, Aesthetics: An Introduction (India- 14. I say "loosely" because not any appearances will
napolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), p. 105. do. For example, Duchamp's choice of a urinal turned
out to be unhappily ambiguous: "Even members of
4. Ibid., p. 101. This is an early formulation of a theory
that became much more sophisticated. Duchamp's immediate circle, like Walter Arensberg,
5. "The Artworld," in Art and Its Significance:An An- thought Duchamp was drawing attention to the white
thology of Aesthetic Theory, 3rd ed., ed. Stephen David gleaming beauty of the urinal. But in 1962 Duchamp
Ross (SUNY Press, 1994), p. 479. Recent efforts to de- wrote to Hans Richter: 'When I discovered ready-

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 Seamon The Conceptual Dimension in Art 149
mades I thought to discourage aesthetics.... I threw the
bottle rack and the urinal in their faces as a challenge
and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty."'
(The passage is from Danto, "From Aesthetics to Art
Criticism and Back," pp. 106-107.) But is it not the case
that the appearance of artworks can change quite drasti-
cally without seriously impairing our sense of their na-
ture and value? I cannot go into detail on this issue. The
main point here is that even when the appearance
changes, as for example in the case of the Parthenon, we
are still interested in the appearances, not the relation-
ship between some object and a concept. They loved the
color and formal perfection, we appreciate the stark
fragments.
15. Richard M. Price. Review of Kazimir Malevich
and the Art of Geometry (museum exhibit), The British
Journal of Aesthetics 38 (October 1998): 430.
16. Binkley, "Piece Contra Ethics," p. 82.
17. Ibid., p. 86.
18. I shall adopt this term to refer very broadly to all
cases in which there is on one side an image and on the
other a concept. Allegory is a form of symbolism, and
critics often use the term metaphor as the equivalent of
symbol; thus, "the sea in Hart Crane's poetry is a meta-
phor for eternity."
19. Bernard Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic (New
York: Meridian Books, 1957), p. 143 (emphasis added).
First edition published 1932. Bosanquet does not mean
that the motif must be beautiful, but that the work must
be judged on the basis of appearances. Art is less than
skin deep.
20. Ibid., p. 159. The current prejudice in favor of
meaning and against "mere" naturalism is clearly ex-
pressed by David Carrier in his essay on "Naturalism
and Allegory in Flemish Painting," The Journal of Aes-
thetics and Art Criticism 45 (1987): 239: "Allegorical in-
terpretations make paintings seem more deeply mean-
ingful than do earlier naturalistic descriptions." They do
not, however, make paintings seem more meaningful to
Bosanquet and Browning.
21. Ibid., p. 158.
22. Roger Seamon, "Guided Rapid Unconscious Re-
configuration in Poetry and Art," Philosophy and Liter-
ature 20 (1996): 415. I might want to drop the "rapid,"
but that does not alter the basic point. In fact, the notion
of rapidity connects such gap-leaping to the idea of
'seeing as," which also seems to involve pace; if one
needs to have something explained, the zest is more or
less gone. But I do want to emphasize here that in the
encounter with any even mildly complex work, one will
not get it all at once. The term inference puts the whole
thing into slow motion.
23. The distinction is clearly not absolute; imaginative
inference occurs in outside art, and logic can play a part
in works of art, especially poetry. There is, of course, an
indefinite number of ways in which an artwork can be
valued, and it is not only in art that imaginative infer-
ence is elicited. The most common form is perhaps
irony, and that obviously is a pervasive part of commu-
nication. My argument is only that imaginative infer-
ence seems to be concentrated in the arts.
24. Anyone who has read the complexly metaphori-
cal arguments that young poets often write will recog-
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nize the distinction between poems and arguments con-
ducted in images. The latter are amazingly
opaque-until explained, at which point the images dis-
appear and the ideas remain. It is disheartening to tell
the writer that this is not poetry at all. Contrast that with
the student who plays with sounds and meanings and
has a rhythmic knack.
25. E. H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in
the Psychology of Decorative Art (Cornell University
Press, 1979), p. 9.
26. Sparshott, The Theory of the Arts, p. 122. George
Steiner says in Errata (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1997), p. 20, that "any motion of meaning in
human utterance or expression will occur ... between
convention and anarchy, between cliche and creation,"
which would mean that the unity in variety formula, of
which these notions are a variation, is not special to art.
The difference might be that in philosophy, for example,
one must be original, but not too original, in relationship
to what went before. Philosophers are engaged in a dia-
logue or conversation. In most art, however, the unity
and variety is largely internal to the work, for while
some artworks are explicitly responses to earlier ones
(the most common example would be parody), most are
not.
27. See Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe:
On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Har-
vard University Press, 1990) for this modern version of
the play theory of art. As Walton's theory is primarily
cognitive, it fits well with my notion of imaginative in-
ference. Here is another example of the leap, although
now it is from illusion to the "reality" of which the illu-
sion is made: "Not only is nothing in her [Cindy
Sherman's] pictures what it seems to be at an overex-
cited first glance; it is always patently something else. In
her Old Master portraits, initially ravishing 'lace,' 'silk,'
'brocade,' and other sumptuous materials quickly con-
fess to being so many shoddy, Fourteenth Street
schmattes. They could not fool anyone. And yet at the
outset they gull us all. Such is the might of fully imag-
ined fiction. We seize upon the illusion, however attenu-
ated. Then comes the echt Sherman moment, when the
illusion collapses. We are left foundering in the back-
wash of our suddenly absurd credulity. Now what?"
(Peter Schjeldahl, "Valley of the Dolls: Cindy
Sherman's Return to Form," The New Yorker [June 7,
1999], p. 95.)
28. What are other sources? For example, we want
the content in mimetic works to be about what concerns
us, and we want the artist's attitude to that to be appro-
priate-if that is not too pale a word for what is often
crucial to our appraisal. The artist who writes about
death seriously takes a big chance for correspondingly
big returns. There is, however, always something happily
imaginative in good art, which is why the Holocaust is
problematic as a subject. Tragedy is, one might say, one
solution to the problem of how to make art out of what
is terrible. As an admirer of the recent movie Life Is
Beautiful, I would say that in it Roberto Benigni does
for the Holocaust what "Cinderella" does for stepmoth-
ers, i.e., uses fantasy to acknowledge the terrors through
imagined overcoming. Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of
Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of
 150 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Fairy-Tales develops this theme, and Norman Holland
generalizes it to all literature in The Dynamics of Liter-
ary Response, still, in my view, one of the best theories of
literature, although Holland himself has since rejected
it.
29. That expresses a strong prejudice. Some people
seem quite happily indifferent to getting what was in-
tended, as long as they get something. I would argue that
they are not on intimate terms with the art. But that is
another issue.
30. To use the fashionable term, there is a synergy be-
tween natural significance and allegorical meaning. The
former "thickens" the latter, and the latter connects the
former to reality and thus gives it the "weight" of refer-
ence.
31. I discuss below other ways that conceptual art
leads to imaginative inference.
32. Blake Gopnik, "Clothes Come out of the Closet"
[review of Giant Pink Party Frock], The Globe and Mail
(September 27, 1998): C7.
33. A wonderful passage from Rabelais reminds us
that without serious content the game of allegorical in-
terpretation will not work. At the very end of Book I, "A
Prophetic Riddle" is found inscribed in the foundations
of an abbey, and Gargantua offers a serious interpreta-
tion, to which a monk replies: "You can read all the alle-
gorical and serious meanings into it that you like, and
dream on about it, you and all the world, as much as
ever you will. For my part, I don't think there is any
other sense concealed in it than the description of a
game of tennis wrapped up in strange language," which
he proceeds, hilariously, to set forth. (The Histories of
Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. J. M. Cohen
[Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955], p. 163.)
34. Harold Rosenberg, The De-Definition of Art
(New York: Collier, 1972), p. 35.
35. There are, of course, works like Tom Stoppard's
Professional Foul, which are primarily arguments in the
usual sense, but they are quite rare.
36. Danto, "From Aesthetics to Art Criticism and
Back," pp. 110-111. There is a parallel between the ba-
nality or falsity of Warhol's thesis and the commonplace
themes that are implied in literary works and even,
many argue, in music. (See, for example, Graham
McFee, "Meaning and the Art-Status of 'Music Alone',"
The British Journal of Aesthetics 37 [1997]: 31-46.)
These themes are, in themselves, of little interest. What
is important is the leap the audience makes between ob-
ject and theme. That death takes us all is about as banal
as a thought can be, but to make the inference, seem-
ingly for the first time, drives the point home anew.
37. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,
p. 173.
38. Ibid., p. 170.
39. Something like this story is found in the opening
paragraphs of Carroll's "Historical Narratives and the
Philosophy of Art."
40. I need to distinguish my effort to add the concep-
tual to the set of values in art from Thomas Kulka's ad-
dition of what he calls the "artistic" to the "aesthetic."
Kulka argues that "aesthetic value can be considered as
something which pertains to the visual qualities of the
picture" (338), whereas "the artistic, or art-historical
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value, on the other hand, is not assessed solely on the
basis of the visual, internal properties of the picture"
("The Artistic and the Aesthetic Value of Art," The
British Journal of Aesthetics 21 [1981]: 338). While cer-
tain works of conceptual art were innovative, and thus
have Kulka's "artistic" value, almost all do not. They are
simply new occasions for imaginative inference in the
conceptual dimension, and thus take their place beside
other "normal" works that do not possess Kulka's artis-
tic value. Conceptual art is now a form of normal art.
The problem for artists and the source of confusion for
theorists is that conceptual art is-or seems to
be-avant-garde art, and such art ought to be radically
innovative each time, an impossible imperative. Varia-
tion within a convention is all that can be expected, even
when greater claims are made, but of course there is al-
ways the unexpected.
41. Pursuing the metaphor, I would say that mimesis
is the parthenogenetic parent that now must accept its
place alongside its progeny, although they should ac-
knowledge who came first and gave birth.
42. Nicholas Penny, "Why is Christ Playing with the
Magdalene's Hair?" London Review of Books (1998):
18.
43. Charles Baudelaire, The Mirror of Art: Critical
Studies by Charles Baudelaire, ed. and trans. Jonathan
Mayne (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Anchor Books,
1956), p. 154.
44. Randall Jarrell, Poetry and the Age (New York:
Vintage Books, 1959), pp. 27-28.
45. Henry James, The Painter's Eye: Notes and Essays
on the Pictorial Arts, ed. John L. Sweeney (London:
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956), p. 94.
46. Iredell Jenkins, "Aesthetic Education and Moral
Refinement," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 2
(1968): 23.
47. Dickie, Aesthetics: An Introduction, pp. 69-94.
48. Anne Shepherd, Aesthetics: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Art (New York: Oxford University Press,
1987).
49. Stecker, Artworks, p. 36.
50. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40
(1981). Note also that Robinson's "metaphorically" is at
the least very close to what I am calling the conceptual
dimension of works of art, i.e., a conceptual meaning
that we must infer.
51. The pragmatic refers to the effects of art, and that
mostly includes what is often placed under the expres-
sive. It does not refer primarily to art with a social pur-
pose.
52. The triad has recently made three more appear-
ances, first in James W. Manns's Aesthetics (London:
Sharpe, 1998), which was reviewed by Rende Lorraine
in the winter 1999 issue of the ASA Newsletter 18 (no.3).
Lorraine writes: "Aesthetics is composed of chapters on
ontology, representation,form, expression, intention, and
taste" (p. 4, emphasis added). The other topics are not
sources of value in art but philosophical issues raised by
the arts. The triad comes up again in a review of Alan
Goldman's Aesthetic Value: "Our ordinary concept of
art, we are reminded, is evaluative. To call something a
work of art is to suggest it is worth contemplation. Re-
cent institutional and historical theories of art ignore
 Seamon The Conceptual Dimension in Art 151
this value component. The author is surely right about
this. Traditional theories, e.g., representation, expression,
and formalism, defined art in terms of aesthetic value,
but did not always explain why their defining features
were valuable" (B. H. Tilghman, The Journal of Aesthet-
ics and Art Criticism 57 [1999]: 81, emphasis added).
And in a review of another recent introduction, M. E.
Sharpe's Aesthetics, Gordon Graham writes: "The book
begins with a short discussion of the difficulties attend-
ing the definition of art ... and then proceeds to an in-
formed and thoughtful examination of three large and
recurrent themes-representation, form, and expres-
sion" (The British Journal of Aesthetics 39 [1999]:
204-205, emphasis added).
53. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57
(1999): 41-54.
54. The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of
Decorative Art (Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 218.
Note the similarity between Gombrich's and
Bosanquet's skeptical attitudes to the "richness" of
symbolism. Gombrich, however, is talking about aca-
demic extravagances, whereas Bosanquet is missing a
pleasure.
55. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays
(Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 90.
56. For an egregious contemporary example of sym-
bolic reading, see Mieke Bal, Reading Rembrandt: Be-
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yond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991). The practice was
ubiquitous, although always contested, in antiquity,
where the Greek term for it was allegoresis.
57. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 89.
58. Philip Roth's recent novel American Pastoral is, in
part, a requiem for a culture of making. The hero and
the hero's father, admirable types, are glove manufac-
turers, and the making and appreciation of gloves is lov-
ingly described. The rebellious daughter is, in contrast,
caught up in meanings, many meanings and not nice
ones.
59. Stecker, Artworks, p. 302.
60. Professing Literature: An Institutional History
(University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 228.
61. Ibid., p. 303.
62. MacLeish's "A poem should not mean but be" is
very confusing. For the idea that poems just "are," and
do not wear their meaning (their purpose) on their face,
is precisely what leads to the need for interpretation.
63. I would like to thank those who commented on
earlier versions of this essay at meetings of the Cana-
dian Society for Aesthetics and the Pacific Division of
the American Society for Aesthetics. I am especially
grateful to the reviewer for this journal, whose criticisms
were right on the mark.