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Class 3: Properties of Art
Roy Lichtenstein,
Whaam!
(1963)
Source for
Whaam!
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Frank Sibley: “Aesthetic Concepts”
Thesis:
Aesthetic concepts are not positively rule-governed. You
can never conclude from a list of features that a work is
graceful, elegant, etc. There is no ‘enough-is-enough’
condition.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Aesthetic Terms and Concepts
We describe works of art in two kinds of ways:
• “A Clockwork Orange focuses on
a deviant teenager in a dystopian
future.”
• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is
primarily black and gray, but also
has blocks of yellow, red, and
blue.”
• William Carlos Williams’ poem,
“This is Just to Say,” is 28 words
long, three of which are “were.”
• “A Clockwork Orange is both
disturbing and revealing.”
• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is
balanced and has a certain repose,
but is generally lifeless.”
• William Carlos Williams’ poem,
“This is Just to Say,” is elegant,
delicate, and sentimental.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Aesthetic Terms and Concepts (cont’d)
• “A Clockwork Orange focuses on
a deviant teenager in a dystopian
future.”
• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is
primarily black and gray, but also
has blocks of yellow, red, and
blue.”
• William Carlos Williams’ poem,
“This is Just to Say,” is 28 words
long, three of which are “were.”
These are the sorts of things
that might be pointed out to
anyone with normal eyes,
ears, and intelligence.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Aesthetic Terms and Concepts (cont’d)
Aesthetic Terms
These require the exercise of
taste, perceptiveness,
sensitivity – of aesthetic
discrimination or perception.
• “A Clockwork Orange is both
disturbing and revealing.”
• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is
balanced and has a certain repose,
but is generally lifeless.”
• William Carlos Williams’ poem,
“This is Just to Say,” is elegant,
delicate, and sentimental.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Aesthetic Terms and Concepts (cont’d)
• Require an exercise of taste.
- Some words function only or predominantly as aesthetic
terms: graceful, delicate, dainty.
- Some terms are appropriated metaphorically for aesthetic
use: dynamic, balanced, melancholy, and are now
standard aesthetic terms (dead metaphors).
• Aesthetic qualities depend on the formal features of a work.
- We point out formal features of a work to justify our use
of aesthetic terms to describe it: “The poem is graceful
because of its use of rhythm, meter, and rhyme.”
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Sufficient and Necessary Conditions
• Some terms, like “intelligent,” have sufficient, but not
necessary conditions – eventually, after listing qualities an
individual has, “enough is enough,” and we consider that
individual intelligent.
- But there is no such sufficient (enough-is-enough)
condition for establishing aesthetic qualities.
• “[T]here are no non-aesthetic features which serve in any
circumstances as logically sufficient conditions for applying
aesthetic terms.” (424)
- In this respect, aesthetic concepts are not conditiongoverned at all.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)
• “Things may be described to us in non-aesthetic terms as
fully as we please but we are not thereby put in the position
of having to admit (or being unable to deny) that they are
delicate or graceful or garish or exquisitely balanced.”
(426)
• However, a list of the formal features of a work may, in
some cases, be enough to disqualify certain aesthetic terms:
- If I describe a work as a large block, painted in uniform
gray, and set upon the floor, we can reasonably disqualify
it as being graceful or dainty, for instance.
- In this sense, aesthetic terms might be governed
negatively by conditions.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)
• “Though on seeing the picture we might say, and rightly,
that it is delicate or serene or restful or sickly or insipid, no
description in non-aesthetic terms permits us to claim that
these or any other aesthetic terms must undeniably apply to
it.” (427)
• Some features will count for or against the application of a
given aesthetic term, but none will be definitive.
- Angular, large, and brightly colored are not usually
associated with grace or delicacy.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Alexander Calder, Steel Fish
(1934) 115 x 137 x 120 in.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)
- “[A]n object which is described very carefully, but
exclusively in terms of qualities characteristic of delicacy,
may turn out on inspection to be not delicate at all, but
anaemic or insipid.” (428)
• Some features will not count toward or against any
aesthetic features, necessarily.
- “[O]ne poem has strength and power because of the
regularity of its meter and rhyme; another is monotonous
and lacks drive and strength because of its regular meter
and rhyme.” (429)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)
• Some concepts are defeasible – for any set of non-aesthetic
terms, there is always an open list of defeating conditions,
any of which might rule out the application of the concept.
• But, with aesthetic concepts, there are no sufficient
conditions: these concepts are not, except negatively,
governed by conditions at all.
• Sufficient conditions cannot be derived from past
examples: “No such features logically clinch the matter.”
(431)
- A work is not delicate because it has pale colors, nor
graceful because it has a curved outline, but because it
has those colors, or that outline.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)
- The same features that help make one work may spoil
another entirely – “the aesthetic quality depends upon
exactly this individual or unique combination of just these
specific colors and shapes so that even a slight change
might make all the difference.” (434-5)
Relationship Between Formal & Aesthetic Qualities
• The formal qualities of a work seem to be responsible for
the aesthetic qualities.
- The lines and colors of a work seem to make it graceful or
bold, where the qualities of an individual do not make
him intelligent.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Relationship Between Formal & Aesthetic Qualities (cont’d)
- Supervenience: aesthetic qualities supervene on nonaesthetic qualities (every aesthetic difference in the work
must indicate a non-aesthetic difference).
“Seeing” Aesthetic Qualities
• Our ability to discern aesthetic features depends on our
possession of good senses, but people with good eyesight,
hearing, etc., may still fail to see them.
• We attempt to justify our use of aesthetic terms by pointing
out elements of the work: “When someone is unable to see
that the book on the table is brown, we cannot get him to
see that it is by talking; consequently it seems puzzling that
we might get someone to see that the vase is graceful by
talking.” (439)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
“Seeing” Aesthetic Qualities (cont’d)
• Methods of the critic for getting us to “see” aesthetic
qualities:
(1) Pointing out non-aesthetic features.
(2) Mentioning aesthetic qualities.
(3) Explicit linking of aesthetic and non-aesthetic features.
(4) Similes and metaphors.
(5) Contrasts, comparisons, and reminiscences.
(6) Repetition and reiteration.
(7) Accompanying verbal discussion with gestures, tone, etc.
• We tend to learn how to “see” aesthetic qualities through
the same methods that the critic uses.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Questions & Problems
(1) Does literature provide problems for Sibley’s account?
Can one point to the character or plot of a novel?
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Kendall Walton: “Categories of Art”
Thesis:
The aesthetic properties that a work actually possesses are
those that are found in it when it is perceived correctly.
Background:
• Walton is responding to views like Sibley’s, where the
properties of a work of art are “perceptual”.
- Despite the persuasiveness of such views, critics tend to
discuss the histories of works in justifying their aesthetic
judgments – some elements of a work’s history seem
crucial to the merit of a work.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties
• [A] work’s aesthetic properties depend not only on its
nonaesthetic ones, but also on which of its nonaesthetic
properties are “standard,” which “variable,” and which
“contra-standard”.” (338)
• Works of art can be placed in categories, which are
perceptually distinguishable by the audience, and determined
solely by features that can be perceived in a work when it is
experienced in the normal manner.
- Categories include media, genre, styles, forms, etc.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
• Features of a work are standard, variable, or contra-standard
with respect to a given category:
- Standard: Determinate feature of category membership
(e.g., ‘painterly’ qualities tend to be standard to members of
the painting category)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait detail
(1889)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
• Features of a work are standard, variable, or contra-standard
with respect to a given category:
- Standard: Determinate feature of category membership
(e.g., ‘painterly’ qualities tend to be standard to members of
the painting category)
- Variable: Feature irrelevant to category membership (e.g.,
shapes and colors don’t tend to point to any given category)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Alexander Calder, Six Dots
over a Mountain (1956)
Pablo Picasso, La Celestina
(1904)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
• Features of a work are standard, variable, or contra-standard
with respect to a given category:
- Standard: Determinate feature of category membership
(e.g., ‘painterly’ qualities tend to be standard to members of
the painting category)
- Variable: Feature irrelevant to category membership (e.g.,
shapes and colors don’t tend to point to any given category)
- Contra-Standard: Features which tend to negate category
membership (e.g. kinetic elements tend not to be found in
sculptures)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Arthur Ganson, kinetic sculptures
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
• “To perceive a work in a certain category is to perceive the
“Gestalt” of that category in the work.” (340) This involves
more than momentary recognition of the Gestalt quality (the
“ah-ha!” moment) – it is a continuous state.
• There may be several causes for perceiving works in a certain
category:
- Familiarity with members of that category.
- What others have said regarding works we have
experienced.
- How we are introduced to a given work.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
• Representation:
- Standard properties are normally irrelevant in
representation. “The properties of a portrait which make it
so different from, so easily distinguishable from a person –
such as its flatness and its painted look – are standard for
us.” (344) The same is true of sculptures, film, and so on.
- What makes a portrait representative of the sitter are the
variable properties – color, shape, etc.
- A photograph of an athlete appears to be in action, and may
depict a “frenzy of activity,” but if such a static picture
appears in a film, the person depicted does not appear to be
in motion.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
- Properties that are standard for one category will be variable
or contra-standard for another.
Guernicas
• “Imagine a society which does not have an established
medium of painting, but does produce a kind of work of art
called guernicas. Guernicas are like versions of Picasso’s
“Guernica” done in various bas-relief dimensions. All of
them are surfaces with the colors and shapes of Picasso’s
“Guernica,” but the surfaces are molded to protrude from the
wall like relief maps of different kinds of terrain.” (347)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Pablo Picasso, Guernica
(1937)
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Class 3: Properties of Art
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Guernicas (cont’d)
• “Picasso’s “Guernica” would be counted as a guernica in this
society – a perfectly flat one – rather than as a painting. Its
flatness is variable and the figures on its surface are standard
relative to the category of guernicas.” (347)
• As a guernica, “Guernica” will strike the society as cold,
stark, lifeless… but certainly not violent, dynamic, vital, or
disturbing, as “Guernica” does to us.
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
- Some characteristics will be variable as regards a particular
category (tempo, size, etc.), but a certain range will be
standard.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
- Some standard characteristics are not the result of
limitations of a given medium, but of “rules” for producing
works in a given category.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
perspective
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Class 3: Properties of Art
counterpoint
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)
- Contra-standard features often appear shocking, upsetting,
and controversial: sculpted paintings, black-and-white
paintings, films without movement, etc.
- When features are no longer controversial, they become
standard, extending the category or creating a new one.
- When a work differs too much from standard works, we
don’t perceive it as belonging to the purported category.
- Contra-standard features are not merely rare, but are misfits,
threatening the category, itself.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Correctly Perceiving a Work
• In at least some cases it is correct to perceive a work in a certain
category, and incorrect to perceive it in other categories: our
judgments of it when it is perceived in one category are likely to
be true, and in others false.
• The following conditions count toward its being correct to
perceive a work in a given category:
(i) The category with regard to which the work has the most
standard, and the fewest contra-standard, features.
(ii) The category in which the work comes off best.
(iii) The category in which the artist intended the work to be
perceived.
(iv) The category in which the artist’s contemporaries
perceived the work.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Correctly Perceiving a Work (cont’d)
- In almost all cases, at least one of the historical conditions,
(iii) or (iv), will trump the others: it cannot be right to say
that a work falls into a category with which the artist was
utterly unfamiliar, even if it comes off better in that
category.
- Simply because a work would come off better when
perceived in some hitherto unknown (ad hoc) category, it
does not make sense to assign it to that category.
- Many works fall between well-established categories.
• The aesthetic properties that a work actually possesses are
those that are found in it when it is perceived correctly.
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Class 3: Properties of Art
Questions & Problems
(1) What are these categories? Is “paintings” a category?
What about “cubist paintings”? What about “cubist
paintings by Picasso” or “cubist paintings by Picasso
in 1907”?
(2) Can we ever ignore an artist’s intentions? That is, can
condition (ii) ever trump condition (iii)?
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Class 3: Properties of Art