An Approach to Defining Art as What We Notice

Treating art as a natural phenomenon

Not to be confused with the Art Blakey anthology Theory of Fine art.

A theory of art is intended to contrast with a definition of art. Traditionally, definitions are composed of necessary and sufficient atmospheric condition and a single counterexample overthrows such a definition. Theorizing about art, on the other hand, is analogous to a theory of a natural phenomenon similar gravity. In fact, the intent behind a theory of fine art is to treat fine art every bit a natural phenomenon that should exist investigated like whatsoever other. The question of whether one can speak of a theory of art without employing a concept of art is too discussed below.

The motivation behind seeking a theory, rather than a definition, is that our best minds have not been able to detect definitions without counterexamples. The term 'definition' assumes in that location are concepts, in something along Platonic lines, and a definition is an attempt to reach in and pluck out the essence of the concept and also assumes that at least some of us humans have intellectual access to these concepts. In dissimilarity, a 'conception' is an individual attempt to grasp at the putative essence backside this common term while nobody has "access" to the concept.

A theory of art presumes each of us humans employs dissimilar conceptions of this unattainable art concept and as a result nosotros must resort to worldly human investigation.

Artful response [edit]

Theories of aesthetic response ^[ane] or functional theories of art ^[2] are in many ways the well-nigh intuitive theories of fine art. At its base, the term "aesthetic" refers to a blazon of phenomenal feel and aesthetic definitions identify artworks with artifacts intended to produce aesthetic experiences. Nature can be beautiful and it can produce aesthetic experiences, but nature does not possess the office of producing those experiences. For such a function, an intention is necessary, and thus agency – the creative person.

Monroe Beardsley is commonly associated with aesthetic definitions of art. In Beardsley'due south words, something is art just in example it is "either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording an experience with marked artful character or (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a course or blazon of arrangements that is typically intended to take this capacity" (The artful point of view: selected essays, 1982, 299). Painters arrange "atmospheric condition" in the paint/canvas medium, and dancers arrange the "conditions" of their bodily medium, for example. According to Beardsley's first disjunct, art has an intended aesthetic function, merely not all artworks succeed in producing aesthetic experiences. The second disjunct allows for artworks that were intended to have this capacity, just failed at it (bad art).

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is the paradigmatic counterexample to aesthetic definitions of art. Such works are said to be counterexamples because they are artworks that don't possess an intended aesthetic function. Beardsley replies that either such works are not fine art or they are "comments on art" (1983): "To classify them [Fountain and the like] as artworks merely considering they brand comments on art would be to allocate a lot of dull and sometimes unintelligible mag articles and newspaper reviews as artworks" (p. 25). This response has been widely considered inadequate (REF). It is either question-begging or it relies on an arbitrary distinction between artworks and commentaries on artworks. A groovy many art theorists today consider artful definitions of art to be extensionally inadequate, primarily because of artworks in the manner of Duchamp.^[3]

Formalist [edit]

The formalist theory of art asserts that we should focus merely on the formal backdrop of art—the "form", not the "content".^[4] Those formal properties might include, for the visual arts, color, shape, and line, and, for the musical arts, rhythm and harmony. Formalists practise not deny that works of art might take content, representation, or narrative-rather, they deny that those things are relevant in our appreciation or understanding of art.

Institutional [edit]

The institutional theory of art is a theory well-nigh the nature of fine art that holds that an object tin can only become art in the context of the institution known as "the artworld".

Addressing the issue of what makes, for case, Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" art, or why a pile of Brillo cartons in a supermarket is non art, whereas Andy Warhol'southward famous Brillo Boxes (a pile of Brillo carton replicas) is, the art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto wrote in his 1964 essay "The Artworld":

To run into something as art requires something the heart cannot decry—an atmosphere of creative theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.^[5]

According to Robert J. Yanal, Danto'southward essay, in which he coined the term artworld, outlined the first institutional theory of art.

Versions of the institutional theory were formulated more explicitly by George Dickie in his article "Defining Art" (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1969) and his books Aesthetics: An Introduction (1971) and Fine art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Assay (1974). An early version of Dickie'south institutional theory tin can be summed up in the following definition of work of art from Aesthetics: An Introduction:

A work of art in the classificatory sense is 1) an artifact 2) on which some person or persons interim on behalf of a sure social institution (the artworld) has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation.^[6]

Dickie has reformulated his theory in several books and articles. Other philosophers of fine art have criticized his definitions as being circular.^[7]

Historical [edit]

Historical theories of art hold that for something to be fine art, information technology must bear some relation to existing works of fine art.^[8] For new works to be fine art, they must be similar or relate to previously established artworks. Such a definition raises the question of where this inherited condition originated. That is why historical definitions of art must besides include a disjunct for first art: something is art if it possesses a historical relation to previous artworks, or is first art.

The philosopher primarily associated with the historical definition of art is Jerrold Levinson (1979). For Levinson, "a work of art is a thing intended for regard-as-a-work-of-art: regard in any of the ways works of art existing prior to information technology have been correctly regarded" (1979, p. 234). Levinson farther clarifies that by "intends for" he ways: "[M]akes, appropriates or conceives for the purpose of'" (1979, p. 236). Some of these manners for regard (at around the present time) are: to be regarded with full attention, to be regarded contemplatively, to exist regarded with special notice to advent, to exist regarded with "emotional openness" (1979, p. 237). If an object isn't intended for regard in whatsoever of the established ways, then it isn't fine art.

Anti-essentialist [edit]

Some art theorists have proposed that the attempt to define fine art must be abandoned and have instead urged an anti-essentialist theory of art.^[9] In 'The Office of Theory in Aesthetics' (1956), Morris Weitz famously argues that individually necessary and jointly sufficient weather condition volition never be forthcoming for the concept 'art' because it is an "open concept". Weitz describes open up concepts as those whose "weather of application are emendable and corrigible" (1956, p. 31). In the instance of deadline cases of art and prima facie counterexamples, open up concepts "call for some sort of decision on our part to extend the use of the concept to encompass this, or to close the concept and invent a new i to bargain with the new case and its new belongings" (p. 31 ital. in original). The question of whether a new artifact is art "is non factual, just rather a decision problem, where the verdict turns on whether or not we enlarge our set of conditions for applying the concept" (p. 32). For Weitz, it is "the very expansive, adventurous grapheme of art, its ever-nowadays changes and novel creations," which makes the concept impossible to capture in a classical definition (equally some static univocal essence).

While anti-essentialism was never formally defeated, information technology was challenged and the debate over anti-essentialist theories was later swept away by seemingly better essentialist definitions. Commenting later Weitz, Berys Gaut revived anti-essentialism in the philosophy of fine art with his paper '"Fine art" as a Cluster Concept' (2000). Cluster concepts are composed of criteria that contribute to fine art status but are non individually necessary for art status. At that place is one exception: Artworks are created by agents, and so beingness an antiquity is a necessary property for being an artwork. Gaut (2005) offers a set of ten criteria that contribute to art status:

(i) possessing positive aesthetic qualities (I utilise the notion of positive aesthetic qualities here in a narrow sense, comprising beauty and its subspecies);

(ii) being expressive of emotion;

(iii) being intellectually challenging;

(iv) existence formally circuitous and coherent;

(v) having a capacity to convey circuitous meanings;

(six) exhibiting an individual indicate of view;

(vii) being an exercise of artistic imagination;

(viii) beingness an artifact or operation that is the product of a high caste of skill;

(nine) belonging to an established artistic grade; and

(x) being the production of an intention to brand a work of art. (274)

Satisfying all ten criteria would be sufficient for art, as might any subset formed past nine criteria (this is a consequence of the fact that none of the ten properties is necessary). For case, consider two of Gaut's criteria: "possessing aesthetic merit" and "being expressive of emotion" (200, p. 28). Neither of these criteria is necessary for art status, but both are parts of subsets of these ten criteria that are sufficient for art status. Gaut's definition too allows for many subsets with less than ix criteria to be sufficient for art status, which leads to a highly pluralistic theory of art.

In 2021, the philosopher Jason Josephson Storm defended anti-essentialist definitions of art as function of a broader assay of the part of macro-categories in the human sciences. Specifically, he argued that most essentialist attempts to answer Weitz's original argument fail every bit the criteria they propose to ascertain fine art are not themselves present or identical across cultures.^{[10] : 64} Storm went further and argued that Weitz'south appeal to family resemblance to define fine art without essentialism was ultimately circular, as information technology did non explain why similarities betwixt "art" beyond cultures were relevant to defining it even anti-substantially.^{[10] : 77–82} Instead, Storm practical a theory of social kinds to the category "art" that emphasized how different forms of art fulfill dissimilar "cultural niches."^{[10] : 124}

The theory of art is too impacted past a philosophical plow in thinking, non just exemplified by the aesthetics of Kant but is tied more closely to ontology and metaphysics in terms of the reflections of Heidegger on the essence of modern engineering science and the implications it has on all beings that are reduced to what he calls 'continuing reserve', and it is from this perspective on the question of being that he explored art across the history, theory, and criticism of artistic production as embodied for instance in his influential opus: The Origin of the Work of Art.^[11] This has had also an impact on architectural thinking in its philosophical roots.^[12]

Aesthetic creation [edit]

Zangwill describes the aesthetic-creation theory of art ^{[xiii] [14]} as a theory of "how fine art comes to be produced" (p. 167) and an "creative person-based" theory. Zangwill distinguishes iii phases in the production of a work of art:

[F]irst, there is the insight that by creating sure nonaesthetic backdrop, certain aesthetic backdrop volition be realized; 2d, there is the intention to realize the aesthetic properties in the nonaesthetic backdrop, as envisaged in the insight; and, tertiary, there is the more or less successful action of realizing the aesthetic properties in the nonaesthetic backdrop, an envisaged in the insight and intention. (45)

In the creation of an artwork, the insight plays a causal role in bringing about actions sufficient for realizing item aesthetic backdrop. Zangwill does not describe this relation in detail, only only says it is "because of" this insight that the aesthetic backdrop are created.

Aesthetic properties are instantiated past nonaesthetic properties that "include concrete properties, such every bit shape and size, and secondary qualities, such equally colours or sounds." (37) Zangwill says that aesthetic backdrop supervene on the nonaesthetic properties: it is considering of the particular nonaesthetic backdrop it has that the work possesses certain aesthetic properties (and non the other way around).

What is "fine art"? [edit]

How best to define the term "art" is a subject of abiding contention; many books and periodical manufactures have been published arguing over fifty-fifty the basics of what we mean by the term "art".^[15] Theodor Adorno claimed in his Aesthetic Theory 1969 "It is self-evident that zero concerning fine art is cocky-evident."^[sixteen] Artists, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists and programmers all utilize the notion of fine art in their respective fields, and give it operational definitions that vary considerably. Furthermore, information technology is articulate that fifty-fifty the basic pregnant of the term "art" has changed several times over the centuries, and has continued to evolve during the 20th century likewise.

The primary recent sense of the discussion "art" is roughly as an abbreviation for "fine art." Here we mean that skill is being used to express the creative person's creativity, or to appoint the audience'south aesthetic sensibilities, or to depict the audition towards consideration of the "finer" things. Oft, if the skill is being used in a functional object, people will consider it a craft instead of art, a proffer which is highly disputed by many Gimmicky Arts and crafts thinkers. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial manner it may be considered design instead of art, or contrariwise these may exist defended as art forms, perchance called applied art. Some thinkers, for case, have argued that the departure between art and applied art has more to exercise with the actual role of the object than whatsoever clear definitional difference.^[17] Art usually implies no function other than to convey or communicate an thought.^{[ citation needed ]}

Even as late as 1912 it was normal in the West to assume that all art aims at dazzler, and thus that anything that was not trying to be beautiful could not count as art. The cubists, dadaists, Stravinsky, and many later on art movements struggled against this conception that beauty was key to the definition of art, with such success that, according to Danto, "Beauty had disappeared non only from the advanced art of the 1960s only from the avant-garde philosophy of art of that decade as well."^[xvi] Perhaps some notion like "expression" (in Croce's theories) or "counter-environment" (in McLuhan's theory) tin supersede the previous role of dazzler. Brian Massumi brought back "dazzler" into consideration together with "expression".^[xviii] Some other view, as important to the philosophy of art as "beauty," is that of the "sublime," elaborated upon in the twentieth century by the postmodern philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. A further arroyo, elaborated by André Malraux in works such every bit The Voices of Silence, is that fine art is fundamentally a response to a metaphysical question ("Art", he writes, "is an 'anti-destiny'"). Malraux argues that, while art has sometimes been oriented towards beauty and the sublime (principally in post-Renaissance European art) these qualities, every bit the wider history of fine art demonstrates, are by no ways essential to it.^[19]

Perhaps (equally in Kennick's theory) no definition of art is possible anymore. Perhaps art should be thought of as a cluster of related concepts in a Wittgensteinian fashion (as in Weitz or Beuys). Another approach is to say that "art" is basically a sociological category, that whatever art schools and museums and artists define as art is considered art regardless of formal definitions. This "institutional definition of art" (meet also Institutional Critique) has been championed by George Dickie. Most people did non consider the delineation of a store-bought urinal or Brillo Box to be art until Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol (respectively) placed them in the context of art (i.due east., the art gallery), which and then provided the association of these objects with the associations that define art.

Proceduralists ofttimes suggest that it is the process past which a work of art is created or viewed that makes it art, not any inherent feature of an object, or how well received it is by the institutions of the fine art earth afterwards its introduction to gild at large. If a poet writes downward several lines, intending them as a poem, the very procedure by which it is written makes it a poem. Whereas if a announcer writes exactly the aforementioned set of words, intending them equally shorthand notes to assist him write a longer article later, these would not exist a poem. Leo Tolstoy, on the other hand, claims in his What is art? (1897) that what decides whether something is art is how it is experienced by its audience, not by the intention of its creator. Functionalists like Monroe Beardsley argue that whether a piece counts as art depends on what function information technology plays in a particular context; the same Greek vase may play a non-artistic office in one context (conveying wine), and an creative part in another context (helping usa to appreciate the dazzler of the human being figure).

Marxist attempts to define art focus on its place in the mode of product, such as in Walter Benjamin's essay The Author as Producer,^[20] and/or its political role in class struggle.^[21] Revising some concepts of the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, Gary Tedman defines art in terms of social reproduction of the relations of production on the aesthetic level.^[22]

What should art be like? [edit]

Many goals have been argued for art, and aestheticians frequently argue that some goal or another is superior in some way. Clement Greenberg, for instance, argued in 1960 that each artistic medium should seek that which makes it unique among the possible mediums and then purify itself of annihilation other than expression of its ain uniqueness equally a course.^[23] The Dadaist Tristan Tzara on the other hand saw the role of art in 1918 equally the destruction of a mad social order. "Nosotros must sweep and clean. Assert the cleanliness of the individual after the state of madness, aggressive complete madness of a earth abandoned to the hands of bandits."^[24] Formal goals, creative goals, self-expression, political goals, spiritual goals, philosophical goals, and even more than perceptual or aesthetic goals have all been popular pictures of what art should be like.

The value of art [edit]

Tolstoy defined art every bit the following: "Art is a man activity consisting in this, that one homo consciously, by means of sure external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected past these feelings and besides experience them." Still, this definition is merely a starting point for his theory of fine art's value. To some extent, the value of art, for Tolstoy, is i with the value of empathy. Even so, sometimes empathy is non of value. In chapter xv of What Is Art?, Tolstoy says that some feelings are skilful, but others are bad, and then art is only valuable when it generates empathy or shared feeling for good feelings. For case, Tolstoy asserts that empathy for decadent members of the ruling class makes guild worse, rather than better. In chapter sixteen, he asserts that the all-time art is "universal art" that expresses elementary and accessible positive feeling.^[25]

An statement for the value of art, used in the fictional work The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, proceeds that, if some external force presenting imminent destruction of Earth asked humanity what its value was—what should humanity's response be? The argument continues that the merely justification humanity could give for its continued being would be the by creation and connected cosmos of things like a Shakespeare play, a Rembrandt painting or a Bach concerto. The suggestion is that these are the things of value which define humanity.^[26] Whatever one might recall of this claim — and it does seem to undervalue the many other achievements of which human beings take shown themselves capable, both individually and collectively — it is truthful that art appears to possess a special chapters to endure ("live on") beyond the moment of its birth, in many cases for centuries or millennia. This capacity of fine art to endure over time — what precisely it is and how it operates — has been widely neglected in mod aesthetics.^[27]

Ready theory of art [edit]

A set theory of art has been underlined in according to the notion that everything is art. Hither - higher than such states is proposed while lower than such states is adult for reference; thus showing that art theory is sprung up to guard against complacency.

Everything is art.^[28]

A set example of this would be an eternal set up large enough to contain everything; with a piece of work of art-instance given as Ben Vautier's 'Universe'.

Everything and then some more is art (Everything+)

A set of this would be an eternal set incorporated in information technology a small circle; with a work of art-example given as Aronsson's 'Universe Orange' (which consists of a starmap of the universe bylining a natural-sized physical orange).

Everything that can be created (without practical use) is fine art (Everything-)

A set of this would exist a shadow set up (universe) much to the likelihood of a negative universe.

Everything that can be experienced is art (Everything--)

A set of this would be a finite set legally interacting with other sets without losing its position equally premier gear up (the whole); with a work of art-example given every bit a pic of the 'Orion Nebula' (Unknown Artist).

Everything that exists, accept been existing, and will e'er be is art (Everything++)^[29]

A set of this would exist an infinite prepare consisting of every parallel universe; with a work of fine art-example given as Marvels 'Omniverse'.

References [edit]

1. ^ Dominic Lopes, Aesthetics on the Border: Where Philosophy Meets the Human Sciences, Oxford Academy Printing, 2018, p. 85.
2. ^ Peter Lamarque, Stein Haugom Olsen (eds.), Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition, An Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, 2018, p. 50.
3. ^ Monroe Beardsley, "An Aesthetic Definition of Art," in Hugh Curtler (ed), What Is Fine art? (New York: Haven Publications, 1983), pp. fifteen-29
4. ^ Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art: A Gimmicky Introduction, Routledge, 2012, p. 148.
5. ^ Danto, Arthur (October 1964). "The Artworld". Journal of Philosophy. 61 (19): 571–584. doi:10.2307/2022937. JSTOR 2022937.
6. ^ Dickie, George (1971). Aesthetics, An Introduction. Pegasus. p. 101. ISBN978-0-672-63500-7.
7. ^ For example, Carroll, Noël (1994). "Identifying Fine art". In Robert J. Yanal (ed.). Institutions of Art: Reconsiderations of George Dickie'southward Philosophy. Pennsylvania Country University Press. p. 12. ISBN978-0-271-01078-vi.
8. ^ Arthur C. Danto, George W. South. Bailey, Theories of Fine art Today, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, p. 107.
9. ^ Elizabeth Millán (ed.), Afterward the Avant-Gardes, Open up Court, 2016, p. 56.
10. ^ ^{a b c} Tempest, Jason Josephson (2021). Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN978-0-226-78665-0.
11. ^ Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980)
12. ^ Nader El-Bizri, 'On Home: Heideggerian Allusions to Architectural Phenomenology', Studia UBB. Philosophia, Vol. threescore, No. i (2015): v-30
13. ^ Nick Zangwill, Aesthetic Cosmos, Oxford Academy Press, 2007.
14. ^ Greg Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin, Jon Robson (eds.), Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind, Oxford University Printing, 2014, p. 123 due north. iii.
15. ^ Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art, Cornell Academy Press, 1991.
16. ^ ^{a b} Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty, Open Courtroom Publishing, 2003, p. 17.
17. ^ David Novitz, The Boundaries of Art, Temple University Press, 1992.
18. ^ Brian Massumi, "Deleuze, Guattari and the Philosophy of Expression," CRCL, 24:3, 1997.
19. ^ Derek Allan. Art and the Human Adventure. André Malraux's Theory of Art. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009)
20. ^ Benjamin, Walter, Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna Bostock, Verso Books, 2003, ISBN 978-1-85984-418-2.
21. ^ Hadjinicolaou, Nicos, Fine art History and Class Struggle, Pluto Press; 1978. ISBN 978-0-904383-27-0
22. ^ Tedman, Gary, Aesthetics & Alienation, Zero Books, 2012.
23. ^ Clement Greenberg, "On Modernist Painting".
24. ^ Tristan Tzara, Sept Manifestes Dada, 1963.
25. ^ Theodore Gracyk, "Outline of Tolstoy's What Is Art?", form web page.
26. ^ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker'south Guide to the Galaxy.
27. ^ Derek Allan, Art and Time Archived 18 March 2013 at the Wayback Motorcar Cambridge Scholars, 2013.
28. ^ Theories of Fine art Today By Noël Carroll Arthur C. Danto folio 11
29. ^ The Official Handbook of the Curiosity Universe A-Z Vol. 2 Omniverse: A Glossary of Terms

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