Beyond Art
Dominic McIver Lopes
DRAFT .
April , 
Chapter  added February , 
NOT FOR CITATION WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN
PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction





Part I
Beyond Art
After the Beginning of Art
Passing the Buck on Art
Art in Culture
The Myth of Artistic Value





Part II
Beyond Bricolage
Appreciative Kinds and Media
Appreciative Practices
Aesthetic Appreciation
Much Ado about Art
Works Cited
Whatever I think about I at the same time learn something about it
and about thought, so that the structures of its objects as revealed
by thought are revelations about the structure of thought itself.
– Arthur Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace
It is far easier to throw out the baby with the bathwater than to
perceive that you were mistaken about which was which.
– Peter Kivy, Philosophies of Arts
Introduction
What is art? This is one of the great, sticky questions of the last
hundred years. It has inspired heaps of books, some of which
focus so fiercely on the question that they take it for their titles,
either straight up or in some playful variation. Tolstoy’s 
What Is Art? begat Clive Bell’s more emphatically named Art of
, and some recent aesthetics best sellers are Matthew Kieran’s
Revealing Art and Cynthia Freeland’s But Is It Art? The pattern
seems to be this: put the question, give an answer, reject the
answer, put the question again….
Equating this circling with a lack of progress, the weary and
impatient have wished to dismiss the whole business as doomed…
but that would be a mistake. Works of art are usually meant to
put our minds in gear, some are very much worth thinking about,
and one profitable way to think about them is via the question,
what is art? While the question seems inevitable in confronting
certain avant-garde works, even quite traditional art works
freshen up when we step far enough back from our assumptions
that we begin to wonder what art is.
Tucked away in a corner of the Louvre, remote from the
throngs there to visit the Mona Lisa, are some still lifes by
Chardin; and these small paintings of kitchen utensils and bowls
of fruit have dedicated admirers. From the alien perspective of
someone totally unfamiliar with what happens in galleries like the
Louvre, this is extremely puzzling. The Chardins carry no
interesting messages or strong charges of emotion: their subject
matter is simply prosaic. To concede they cause pleasure makes a
mockery of the dedication they inspire, if the pleasure is like that
of consuming the fruit and water they depict. If the pleasure is
some je ne sais quoi, then the puzzle repeats itself. The point is not
that the puzzle is impossible to solve. On the contrary, there is a
great deal to think about before we reach that pessimistic
conclusion, and this thinking may shed light on what is so
compelling in the Chardins. Rather, the point is that the
philosophical stance the puzzle asks us to take, in company with
Tolstoy and Bell, Kieran and Freeland, is one from which we might
profitably come to appreciate the Chardins.
5
So the question ‘what is art?’ makes a serviceable heuristic for
any of us to use as we engage with and appreciate our favourite
works of art (see Kennick ). The heuristic is common in
professional and academic criticism, notably in the tradition of
Clive Bell and Clement Greenberg. Cynics of the sociological
debunking variety might speculate that criticism in this tradition
dresses itself up in philosophical questions in a bid to establish its
intellectual seriousness. However, even were this cynical
indictment true, it would not diminish the contributions, actual
and potential, that reflections about the nature of art can make to
the task of art appreciation. Asking ‘what is art?’ is a stratagem of
art criticism that sometimes pays off. For that reason alone, the
question is a good question. Nothing in this book should put us
beyond asking ‘what is art?’ in this spirit.
But although it is sometimes an option to ask what art is, that
question is great and sticky partly because it is thought to be
mandatory, not merely heuristic. This book argues that it is a
mistake to think it mandatory to pose the ‘what is art?’ question as
motivating a philosophical inquiry into art. Put bluntly, the ‘what
is art question?’ is the wrong question for philosophy.
Philosophical discussions of the nature of art often start out by
declaring the topic’s central and foundational role in aesthetics.
The first word in contemporary aesthetics is Monroe Beardsley’s
 book, Aesthetics, which opens by declaring that ‘there would
be no problems of aesthetics… if no one ever talked about works
of art’ ([], ). A similar sentiment kicks off Richard
Wollheim’s classic Art and Its Objects, where he ventures that ‘the
nature of art… is one of the most elusive of the traditional
problems of human culture’ ([], ). Twenty years later he
called it ‘the core of aesthetics’ (, ). Peter Kivy reckons the
topic ‘the most widely and persistently pursued problem in
aesthetics or the philosophy of art’ (, ) and Gary Iseminger
notes that it ‘did so much to shape what has come to be called
“analytic aesthetics”’ (, vii). A comprehensive bibliography
published in  runs longer than twenty pages (Choi ), and
the topic is standard fare in the anthologies and textbooks
through which the field is introduced to students.
6
In his final word on the ‘what is art?’ question, Beardsley
() provides four reasons why it deserves a central and
foundational role in the field. First, any philosopher of art should
be ‘curious to know what he is philosophizing about’.
Presumably, anyone who philosophizes about X (for any X) should
be curious about the nature of X. Second, philosophy has the job
of engineering and testing the conceptual foundations of other
disciplines, including the social sciences. That means delivering a
theory of art as a phenomenon that figures in scientific
hypotheses, as distinct from other phenomena, such as religious
observance, political negotiation, economic exchange, and medical
treatment. Third, any critic needs ‘criteria for deciding what sorts
of things he is to criticize’, and philosophy presumably supplies
the criteria. Fourth, an answer to the ‘what is art?’ question is a
practical necessity to the legislator and administrator, who must
decide what items to exempt from import duties and obscenity
laws, and what items are candidates for funding by such bodies as
the National Endowment for the Arts.
Lurking in the background of Beardsley’s list is a concern
driven by avant-garde works, for it it surely does seem that we
have no choice but to ask ‘what is art?’ when we find ourselves
face to face with certain art works. After all, they are works that
cut their avant-garde chops by interrogating assumptions about
art. Contrast Chardin’s still lifes in the Louvre with a landmark in
the history of mid-century art, Robert Barry’s Inert Gas Series of
. In March of that year, Barry released a litre of krypton into
the atmosphere in Beverly Hills, before going on to release xenon
in the mountains, argon on the beach, and helium in the Mohave
desert. Barry is reported to have explained that ‘nothing seems to
me the most potent thing in the world’ (Lippard , ). Of
course, this gnomic utterance does nothing to help make sense of
the work, which must after all be something, not nothing. Is it the
gas? The act of emptying it into the air? The documentary
evidence that is now collected by museums? The idea of releasing
some gas and documenting it? No answer is obvious and none is
remotely satisfactory because it is hard to see how any of these
candidates could shoulder the mantle of art work. Imagine
someone who simply does not see what all the fuss is about, for
7
whom it is plain as can be that the gas (or any other candidate) is
the art work. Such a person misses the work’s Chimera-like
complexity: they fail to grasp that it puts into question the nature
of art.
This description of Barry’s production blithely assumed that it
is a work of art. With that assumption in place, the work seems to
raise the question what is art, if it is art. However, as we all know
perfectly well, the artistic status of productions like Barry’s is
tremendously controversial. A very fine line separates ‘what is art,
if that is art?’ from another question: ‘is that art?’ Having crossed
the line, it is fair game to answer ‘no! that is not art’. Some go so
far as to allege that productions like the Inert Gas Series perpetrate
some kind of hoax. They are the highbrow counterpart of kitsch,
passing themselves off as art despite overindulging the intellect as
kitsch passes itself off as art despite overindulging the emotions.
Call Barry’s Inert Gas Series and other cases that entice us across
the line the ‘hard cases’. Hard cases provoke the question, what is
art?
Since the hard cases attract intense attention, it is prudent to
clarify the label. Count as a hard case any work whose status as art
is controversial. Thus labelling a work as ‘hard case’ should be
neutral on the work’s art status. A work’s being a hard case is
consistent with its being a work of art and also with its not being
a work of art. If it is in fact a work of art then it is puzzling what
would make it a work of art; and if it is not in fact a work of art
then there must be plenty of reason to take it for one. No case is
less hard for being deprecated as not art or for being promoted as
art: deprecation and promotion generally make a hard case harder,
not easier.
Beardsley’s third and fourth reasons clearly echo a concern
with hard cases. Art is a ‘fighting word’ in criticism. That is,
calling an item art elevates it, while withholding the attribution
puts down anything with artistic aspirations, so that critics
commonly wield the name of art in commendation and withhold it
in reprimand. Arthur Danto recalls that, ‘New York critics were
known to say of something they disapproved of that it was not
really art, when there was very little else but art that it could
be’ (, ). Meanwhile, Beardsley’s mention of the legislator
8
and administrator was prescient. Within a few years of ,
when Beardsley’s essay was published, came the so-called culture
wars, in which legislators and political activists, mostly in the
United States, loudly quarrelled over the display and funding and
hence the implied artistic status of certain items – notably the
siting of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc across the plaza of the Jacob
Javitz Federal Building in New York, the public exhibition of
Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio, and the performances of the
‘NEA Four’. A more prosaic and recent example is a 
European Commission ruling that a light installation by Dan
Flavin does not qualify for the lower sales tax applicable to works
of art. The Commission found that Flavin’s installation has ‘the
characteristics of lighting fittings… and is therefore to be
classified… as wall lighting fittings’ (Artinfo ).
The second chapter of this book argues that the hard cases
drive recent philosophy, which has taken up the ‘what is art?’
question in response to disputes over art status. Nobody has the
ambition of refereeing every hard case by every hard case. The
expectation is rather that philosophy should provide a general
answer to the ‘what is art?’ question which will do two things. It
will explain why the hard cases are hard cases. It will also
distinguish in a principled way between art and non-art, no
matter whether any particular hard case lands on the art or the
non-art side of that boundary. So here is a fifth reason why the
‘what is art?’ question might be thought to deserve a central place
in aesthetics. There are hard cases, they are worth taking seriously
as hard cases, and the way to take them seriously as hard cases is
by investigating the nature of art.
If this is correct, the ‘what is art?’ question gains traction in
philosophy partly because it seems to be mandatory in face of
certain avant-garde art works. It follows that if the question is not
mandatory in face of these works, then perhaps it is not
mandatory in philosophy. Chapters  and  argue that we do not
need an answer to the ‘what is art?’ question in order to take the
hard cases seriously.
What about Beardsley’s second reason why philosophy should
include an examination of the nature of art? Beardsley argues that
social scientists routinely distinguish artistic activity from other
9
activities, thereby deploying a concept of art, and it falls to
philosophy to engineer the conceptual foundations of social
science. Chapter  proposes that the kind of answer to the ‘what is
art?’ question that is implicated in social science is not the kind of
answer that mandates confronting the hard cases.
The ‘what is art?’ question can be a good heuristic when the
task at hand is appreciating works of art: Beardsley goes a step
further in suggesting that an understanding of the nature of art is
needed to ground art critical practice. Here Beardsley is mildly
radical, for traditional theories of taste and aesthetic judgement,
such as those of Hume and Kant, were not associated with the
‘what is art?’ question. More radical still is the now common view
that criticism deals in artistic value as distinct from aesthetic
value. Chapter five argues that there is no such thing as artistic
value.
That leaves the argument that since philosophers of X should
be curious about the nature of X, philosophers of art, in particular,
should examine the nature of art, in particular. This line of
thought touches on how to think about the configuration of the
research enterprise known as aesthetics or the philosophy of art.
Since nomenclature does not legislate activity, it is fair to shrug off
the designation ‘philosophy of art’ and to look into what
phenomenon –or indeed phenomena – might go in for X.
Aesthetics is a contender, after all. No matter how it ultimately
gets characterized, the field combines the study of art with non-art
– undesigned nature, for example, as well as tea kettles,
automobiles, sports, scientific theories, and, yes, philosophical
writing. These kinds of items and activities continue to draw out
philosophical insights (e.g. Parsons and Carlson , Saito ,
and Thompson ). Does philosophy of art exclude aesthetics?
Or is it in included in aesthetics? The X is up for grabs.
Another option opens up if Beardsley’s argument wrongly
assumes that X must unify the field in a way that is illuminating.
Whether or not X is something artistic or aesthetic, it encompasses
a dizzying array of phenomena. Even the central cases induce a
little queasiness – consider Chardin’s still lifes, John Coltrane’s
improvisations, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Henry Moore’s bronzes,
and Mies van der Rohe’s office towers. Technically, little effort is
10
needed to unify this diversity. Any items may constitute the
members of a set – call it ‘art’, for example. Or we may identify art
works as those phenomena. Or maybe art is primitive. Each of
these manoeuvres provides a unified phenomenon for the
philosophy of art to be about. The trouble is that they are not
informative. They answer the ‘what is art?’ question without
adding much if anything to what we already know when we ask
it. The lesson is that it is not always true that philosophers of X
should be curious about the nature of X, for knowing the nature
of X may not repay any curiosity. An answer to the ‘what is art?’
question may turn out to illuminate nothing, or not much of
anything.
Philosophy, as it is done in this book, is not taxonomy. It does
not take phenomena fixed in advanced and then answer, for each
such phenomenon X, ‘what is X?’ within a philosophy of X. A
‘what is X?’ question should invite answers that illuminate what
we care about. In order to get the illumination we seek, the trick is
to alight on the right phenomena. That is part of the job of
philosophy. It cannot take for granted that philosophy of art or
aesthetics should investigate the nature of art or the aesthetic.
These investigations may not be informative.
Not everyone working in the field presses the ‘what is art?’
question. In near defiance of its title, Malcolm Budd’s influential
Values of Art () carefully ignores the whole business. Kendall
Walton expressly doubts that an answer to the question is ‘likely
to provide any significant philosophical insight or
illumination’ (, ) and his subsequent work proves that a
great deal can be achieved while turning the question a stony
shoulder. Imposing unity on a hodgepodge for the sake of faux
informativeness can have a distorting effect, and Kivy warns that
the field’s,
overriding concern was, and continues to be, the search for
sameness; and that search has blinded the philosophical
community to a bevy of questions of more than trivial
importance, involving the arts not in their sameness but in their
particularity... [it has] determined the way we perceive,
11
misperceive, or fail to perceive the individual arts in various
pernicious ways (1997, 53).
So three options for filling in X in Beardsley’s argument are: X is
art, X is the aesthetic, and X is a grab bag of phenomena that are
not illuminated by lumping them together as a unity.
Here is where things stand. This book argues that taking the
hard cases seriously does not mandate an answer to the ‘what is
art?’ question. In addition, an answer to this question that
revolves upon the hard cases is not the kind of answer that is
suitable to the hypotheses of the social sciences or to practices of
art appreciation. Finally, it is up for grabs whether an answer to
the question of what counts as art can be illuminating.
The book also takes Kivy’s warning to heart. Chapter 
proposes to answer the ‘what is art?’ by redirecting it to where
illumination is likely to be found – in trying to understand
specific kinds of art and their appreciation. Chapters  to  set out
a general framework in which to pursue this understanding.
Chapter  sets the stage by surveying the rich variety of
phenomena to be understood. Chapter  develops an account of
the specific kinds that should replace the generic kind, art.
Chapters  considers what it is to appreciate items as belonging to
these kinds, and Chapter  sketches an account of what it is for
this appreciation to be aesthetic. In the closing chapter, these
advances are applied to the hard cases in a way that takes them
seriously, vindicating the proposal that an answer to the ‘what is
art?’ question is not needed to take the hard cases seriously.
If lumpers vie with splitters and globalizers with localizers,
then this approach may seem to champion the splitters over the
globalizers. In truth, however, these are false dichotomies. Just as
lumpers lump together smaller pieces, localizers localize in a more
global context. The principal ambition of this book is to provide a
framework at a higher level for philosophical theorizing at a more
specific level. That does not collapse the levels into one. In a
metaphor that will recur in the pages to follow, it passes the buck
from one level of theorizing to the other.
So then, what is art? Sticky questions do deserve answers, and
the next chapter supplies an answer in the form of a theory of art
12
that changes the topic away from ‘what is art?’ Hegel lamented
that in aesthetics ‘the rights of genius, its works and their effects,
have been made to prevail against the presumptions of legalisms
and the watery wastes of theories’ ([], ????). Of course
philosophy makes bad art criticism, at least generally. The
heuristic power of the ‘what is art?’ question should not be
confused with the claim it stakes in philosophy.
PART I

Beyond Art
In a slightly snippy mood, the great art historian E. H. Gombrich
warned that ‘Art with a capital A has come to be something of a
bogey and a fetish’ (, ???). Groucho Marx, in a somewhat
different mood, agreed that ‘Art is Art isn’t it? Still, on the other
hand, east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and
stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than
rhubarb does’ (Heerman ). The reflections of these two
scholars nicely complement each other, for they combine to advise
that it should not be terribly difficult to say what is art, so long as
we begin with a relatively modest conception of art and then take
care not to expect results that are big news to anyone. Acting on
this advice is the buck passing theory of art.
Passing the Buck
A good recipe for trouble is trying to grasp what a theory says
without keeping in view the question it proposes to answer.
Philosophical theories typically answer ‘what is…?‘ questions.
What is flirting, for example? A theory of flirting supplies an
answer (e.g. Jenkins ). What is knowledge? This harder
question holds out for a correct theory of knowledge. Following
suit, ‘what is art?’ might expect to find its answer in a theory of
art. However, the buck passing theory of art gets its impetus from
the fact that matters are not quite so simple when it comes to art.
The question ‘what is art?’ is a catch-all that finds non-competing
answers in different kinds of theories. Rephrased a little more
constructively, the domain of art is structured, and stating the
buck passing theory means articulating this structure – the buck
must pass from somewhere to somewhere.
The idea is not to warm over the threadbare observation, once
routinely offered in an anti-theoretical spirit, that the term ‘art’
has a number of different uses. Obviously ‘art’ is used very
differently in listing an early music performance on the village
14
arts calendar, in musing about the art of medicine (or war), in
describing the style of a bungalow as ‘arts and crafts’, and in
exclaiming, when you finally reach the Chardins after a long romp
through the Louvre, ‘now finally, that’s art!’ This observation
poses a challenge only given the ambition to answer the ‘what is
art?’ question with a theory that explains all this diversity in a
unified manner. That was always too ambitious (Weitz ). The
task at hand is not to analyze lexical usage, but rather to build
theories that illuminate phenomena we care about, whether or not
those theories end up tracking lexical usage.
In contemporary treatments, the ‘what is art?’ question is
almost always answered by theories that state what makes certain
items works of art. Paradigm examples of these items include
Chardin’s Still Life of Cooking Utensils, Cauldron, Frying Pan, and
Eggs, John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’, Ted Hughes Tales from
Ovid, Henry Moore’s Archer, and the Seagrams Building in New
York. Other good candidates include Diane Arbus’s Child with Toy
Hand Grenade in Central Park, Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’ as sung by
Aretha Franklin, The Queen of Soul, Sergio Leone’s The Good, the
Bad, and the Ugly, George Balanchine’s choreography of Serenade
for the American Ballet in , and Isamu Noguchi’s coffee table
for Herman Miller. All of these are works of art. Call a theory that
states what makes any item a work of art a theory of art. Such a
theory completes the schema,
x is a work of art = x is…
by filling in the blank with a set of conditions. Completing this
schema standardly yields the completion of the further schema,
x is a work of art if and only if x is….
The left hand side of each of these schemas brings out that a
theory of art is work oriented: it states what it is to be a work of
art and it answers the question, what is a work of art?
To set up a contrast with the buck passing theory of art, here is
a small sampler of theories that complete the schema in quite
different ways. In George Dickie’s first formulation of an
institutional theory of art, an art work is an artifact upon which
15
some person or persons acting on behalf of the art world have
conferred the status of candidate for appreciation (, ).
According to Beardsley’s aesthetic theory of art, an art work is
‘something produced with the intention of giving it the capacity
to satisfy the aesthetic interest’ (, ???). Each of these theories
states a single, albeit complex condition that makes an item a work
of art. Berys Gaut () proposes a theory of art with highly
disjunctive and variegated conditions (see also Tatarkiewicz 
and Dutton ). A work of art is an artifact that satisfies any one
of several clusters of conditions. None of these conditions is
necessary but the conditions in each cluster are jointly sufficient
for being a work of art. Candidate conditions include having
positive aesthetic properties, being expressive of emotion, being
intellectually challenging, being original, being the product of a
high degree of skill, and being the result of an intention to make a
work of art.
As these three theories illustrate, a theory of art is likely to
invite further work. What is a candidate for appreciation? What is
the aesthetic interest? What specific clusters of conditions make an
item a work of art? Good theories of art set new tasks through
which a better understanding of art emerges.
The buck passing theory of art is somewhat more than an
invitation to further work; it is an instruction to move the work to
different theoretical terrain. Here is the theory:
x is a work of art = x is a work of K, where K is an art.
Some arts include painting, music, literature, sculpture,
architecture, photography, cinema, dance, and design. These are
not works; they are activities whose products are works. So the
buck passing theory of art states that a work of art is a product of
a certain activity, namely one of the various arts.
To some eyes (not all), this simply states the obvious; indeed,
Groucho-like, it seems to state what is so obvious that it is scarcely
illuminating. Compare it to Dickie’s institutional theory,
Beardsley’s aesthetic theory, and Gaut’s cluster theory. Whereas
each of these promises to tell us what a work of art without
making immediate use of a concept of art, the buck passing theory
16
seems almost trivial. The complaint that the theory is
uninformative is a serious one, and facing up to it will ultimately
help reveal the power of the buck passing theory. For now, note
that what the theory does is raise two further questions, each of
these a distinct specification of the generic ‘what is art?’ question,
each answered in turn by a different kind of theory. The value of
the back passing theory hangs on these being good questions.
The first question is: what is an art? This question finds its
answer in completing the schema,
K is an art = K is….
Call any completion of this schema a theory of the arts. A theory of
the arts will say what makes painting and dance arts and it will
display why philosophy and skateboarding are not arts. As the
schema shows, a theory of the arts is not the same as a theory of
art.
Given a list of the arts, another question is, what is each art?
What is architecture, if architecture is an art? And what is cinema,
if it is another art? Presumably each of these activities has a
characteristic product, works of architecture and movies
respectively, so we can replace ‘what is architecture?’ with ‘what
is a work of architecture?’ – ditto for each of the other arts. The
resulting questions, one for each art, find their answers in
completions of the schema,
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is….
Call a completion of this schema for any art K a theory of an art. A
theory of architecture will say what makes the Seagrams Building
a work of architecture and a theory of cinema will say what makes
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly a work of cinema. Again, the
schema for theories of the arts represents how they differ from a
theory of art and a theory of the arts.
The schema for theories of the arts has a special feature: it has
no full completion that covers all the arts in one fell swoop. The
reason, expressed intuitively, is that works of cinema are not
works of architecture, so a theory of architecture will not say
what makes Leone’s movie a work of cinema. Expressed
17
schematically, any theory of an art must complete the right hand
side of the schema schema by stating conditions that hold for the
art in question and not for other arts. Suppose, for example, that
what makes an item a work in an art form is its taking advantage
of a medium associated with the art form. Then maybe a work of K
is a work that is F in virtue of its taking advantage of K’s medium.
It will not do to say that a work of architecture is one that is F in
virtue of its taking advantage of some medium or other. That is
not a theory of architecture. A work of architecture is F only in
virtue of its taking advantage of the medium of architecture.
In sum, the buck passing theory of art formulates a strategy. It
advises that the heavy lifting be done not by a theory of art but
by a theory of the arts or theories of the arts. The theory is
strategically informative.
Strategic Priorities
A strategy guides us to a goal along a route that is efficient, but
efficiency can put the goal at risk and sure fire goal-achieving
strategies can be wretchedly inefficient. Since the buck-passing
theory offers a strategy, it is fair to how efficient it promises to be.
In replacing the generic ‘what is art?’ with some more specific
questions the buck is passed to a theory of the arts and also to the
several theories of the individual arts. Stalwart followers of and
contributors to recent discussions of theories of art should not
despair that one task has been replaced with several or that there
is now more rather than less to do. Additional work is fine so long
as it is profitable. Moreover, the work was always there to be
done, and a start has been made on some of it. Wollheim
foregrounded the need for a theory of the arts by making it a key
concern of Art and Its Objects ([]), and progress has
clearly been made in fashioning clear, testable, and even plausible
theories of some of the arts (e.g. Wollheim , Lamarque and
Olsen , Sparshott , Lopes b, Gaut ). The buck
passing theory of art is not a make-work project.
Nevertheless, those engaged in the theory of art business have
usually given it priority over a theory of the arts and theories of
the arts, expecting that a theory of art, once firmly in place, might
18
lead into a theory of the arts and theories of the arts. Suppose that
Beardsley’s aesthetic theory of art is correct and (condensing it a
little) a work of art is an item designed to satisfy the aesthetic
interest. Perhaps, then, an art is an activity whose products are
designed to satisfy the aesthetic interest. Music, dance, landscape
architecture and the other arts output works so designed. Perhaps,
again, for any art K, a work of K is a work designed to satisfy the
aesthetic interest by taking advantage of K’s medium. For
example, a work of dance is a work designed to satisfy the
aesthetic interest by taking advantage of the rhythmical
movements of the body.
In principle nothing prevents giving priority to theories of art.
The question, as with all matters of strategy, is whether it pays off
to do so. However, it is not a priori the more efficient strategy, for
a theory of art directly implies neither a theory of the arts nor a
theory of any particular art.
Consider first the derivation of a theory of the arts from a
theory of art, such as Beardsley’s. Logic alone leads from
Beardsley’s theory of art to the claim that an art is an activity
whose products are designed to satisfy the aesthetic interest only
on the assumption that an art is an activity whose products are
works of art. This assumption might be false. Not much reflection
is needed to see how a case could be made that not all products of
an art are works of art. You might reason that ordinary coffee
mugs are products of the art of ceramics but they are not works of
art – because, indeed, they are not designed to sate any aesthetic
interest. Without the assumption that bridges Beardsley’s theory
of art to a Beardsleyan theory of arts, the latter stands in need of
independent support.
The inference from Beardsley’s theory of art to a Beardsleyan
theory of any given art also requires a bridging assumption.
A theory of art fills in the schema,
x is a work of art = x is…
with a set of conditions. Whatever they are, call them φ. A theory
of an art form, K, fills in the schema,
19
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is…
with a set of conditions – call them ψ. A completion of the former
schema clearly need not entail a completion of the latter. A
bridging assumption is required. In addition, each art is different
from the other arts and this difference must be represented in the
bridging assumption. After all, what makes an item a work of art
and what makes an item a painting, song, or dance number are not
unrelated. A dance number is a work of art partly in virtue of
facts that make it a dance number, and what makes a song a piece
of music must factor into what makes it a work of art. One option
is to make a bridging assumption having this general form:
if x is a work of K, where K is an art then x is φ partly in virtue
of being ψ.
That is no short cut from a theory of art for a theory of a particular
art form! Fortunately, there is an alternative, namely to assume
that the kinds of features that make an item a work in an art form
are the same across all forms. For example, one might say that a
work of K is a work of art in virtue of its taking advantage of K’s
medium. The bridging assumption would be:
if x is a work of K, where K is an art then x is φ partly in virtue
of its taking advantage of K’s medium.
Add to this an account of K’s medium and a theory of K follows.
Whether or not this procedure pans out, it is not labour-free. It
requires that the same kinds of features make items members of all
of the arts. Exploiting a medium is one option, but there are other
options, and some effort is needed to choose one. As an added
complexity, it is an open question whether the same option works
for every art. Effort is needed either to demonstrate that one
option does work for every art or to identify which options work
for which arts. Finally, giving up on the bridging assumption
means supplying independent support for a theory of any
individual art that is modelled on a general theory of art such as
Beardsley’s.
20
The lesson is not that it is futile to give a theory of art priority
in the hope that it will lead to a theory of the arts or theories of
the arts. The lesson is rather that the path from a theory of art to
its companion theories is not straightforward, and clearing it may
require considerable effort. Giving strategic priority to a theory of
art is not a priori more efficient than adopting a buck passing
theory of art. Therefore, the buck passing theory of art is a
contender.
But What Is a Work of Art?
Attempting to inform strategy need not entail a sacrifice of
substantive informativeness. The buck passing theory might be a
ladder that is cast away when no longer needed, but it might also
turn out to be the only correct completion of the schema for a
theory of art. That is, it might turn out to be final the answer to
the question, what is a work of art? This is a consequence of
turning the tables in the reasoning above.
Supposing the buck passing theory recommends sound strategy
and the recommendation is taken up, work will shift to fashioning
a theory of the arts or theories of the individual arts. Lamentably,
the fact that a strategy is sound is no guarantee of success: some
phenomena might resist full theoretical treatment and there may
be a limit to what we can know. Nevertheless, our only option is
to be optimistic and suppose that the strategy pays out a correct
theory of the arts and a complete set of correct theories of those
arts. Can we infer a theory of art from the resources thus amassed?
Logic alone does not lead from a theory of the arts to a theory
of art without the assumption that an art is an activity whose
products are works of art. For example, a Beardsleyan aesthetic
theory of the arts – namely that the arts are activities whose
products are works designed to satisfy the aesthetic interest – does
not by itself imply Beardsley’s theory of art – that a work of art is
a something designed to satisfy the aesthetic interest. The
assumption that an art is an activity whose products are works of
art might be false (recall that a case can be made that not all of the
products of ceramics are works of art). If this assumption is in fact
21
false, Beardsley’s theory of art cannot rest on a Beardsleyan theory
of the arts; it will require independent support.
Similar reasoning shows that there is no direct inference from
the theories of the individual arts to a theory of art. For example,
the step from the claim that a work of K is a work designed to
satisfy the aesthetic interest by taking advantage of the medium of
K to the claim that a work of art is something designed to satisfy
the aesthetic interest entails that works of K are works of art for all
K. But this assumption might be false for at least some K. It might
turn out that, in some art forms, what makes a work a member of
the art form is not that it satisfies the aesthetic interest. In some
other art forms it might turn out that what makes a work a
member of the art form is not that it does so by taking advantage
of the art form’s medium – but rather by some other means.
Again, if the required assumption is false, the Beardsleyan theory
of art must seek independent support.
So far nothing rules out that the ducks will line up to allow the
deduction of a theory of art from a theory of the arts or the
theories of the arts; and, by the same token, nothing rules out that
the ducks will fail to cooperate just as the needed independent
support fails to materialize. In this scenario, the buck passing
theory of art might be the most illuminating answer to the
question of what is a work of art. The theory would be equivalent
to what Wollheim called a ‘minimal theory’: works of art just are
poems, sculptures, and the like ([], –). Wollheim feared
that best we could expect in response to the question ‘what is a
work of art?’ is this plurality of answers. It will be useful to
consider why anyone might disparage the minimal theory as a
booby prize. Could it not explain everything that needs
explaining? That remains to be seen. For now, the buck passing
theory is a potential contender alongside such theories as
Beardsley’s, Dickie’s, and Gaut’s.
Two Challenges
The chapters to follow tackle two basic challenges to the buck
passing theory of art, in order to defend it, reveal its power, and
zero in on what it implies. One challenge targets the theory’s
22
informativeness and the other its viability, though the two
challenges are closely tied.
The proposition that a work of art is a work in some art form
implies that
x is a work of art if and only if x is a work of K, where K is an
art.
In light of this implication, the theory makes two commitments.
First, any item is a work of art if it is a work of an art form – a
work of music, architecture, dance, or the like. There are no
further restrictions limiting what can be a work of art. Second, it
is not possible for there to be an item that is a work of art and yet
does not belong to an art form. Every work of art belongs to some
art form. If either of these implications is false, then the theory is
not viable.
A familiar line of reasoning seems to supply a counterexample
to the proposition that any work of an art form is a work of art.
Assuming that ceramics is an art, the theory implies that an
ordinary coffee mug (the one holding pencils on your desk) is a
work of art, if it is a work of ceramics. Of course, the theory leaves
open which activities are arts – it passes that buck to a theory of
the arts. Even so, not much solace is to be found in denying that
ceramics is an art. Similar counterexamples can be generated for
most if not all of the arts. However, all is not lost. The theory
leaves open what counts as a work of ceramics. So if it ceramics is
indeed an art and if the coffee mug is not a work of art, it follows
that coffee mug is not a work of ceramics. The burden rests on a
theory of ceramics – where that buck gets passed.
What about counterexamples to the proposition that every art
work belongs to some art form? Works that belong to more than
one art form are not genuine counterexamples, since the theory
does not imply that every art work belongs to one and only one
art. On the contrary, it welcomes works like William Blake’s
illustrated poems, which belong doubly to the arts of literature
and painting. Whether a theory of literature admits Blake’s Europe
as a work of literature or whether a theory of painting admits it as
23
a work of painting, either way the buck passing theory implies
that it is a work of art.
A genuine counterexample is an art work that belongs to no art
form. What about Barry’s Inert Gas Series, for instance? It is
arguably not a painting since it is not a marked surface. It could
hardly be architecture or sculpture, and if a work of literature
must be made out of words, it is not literature either. Could it be
landscape architecture or maybe a kind of dance, even if it is not
classified that way? No need to settle the matter here: it is enough
to see that there are counterexamples to be dealt with. Moreover,
it is no coincidence that these counterexamples are exactly the
kinds of ‘hard cases’ that have fuelled philosophical work on
theories of art. Therefore, if the buck passing theory of art can
deal with the hard cases, then the steam is taken out of recent
debates about theories of art.
As this discussion illustrates, challenges to the viability and
informativeness of the buck passing theory are closely tied. To say
that theories of art have been fuelled by hard cases is to admit that
an informative theory of art should make some sense of the hard
cases, in one way or another. At then end of the day, few will be
convinced that the buck passing theory of art offers a live option
unless it contends in a serious manner with the hard cases. It is
not enough to suggest a strategy, nor is it enough that the theory
may be the last option standing. The challenge to deal with the
hard cases must be taken seriously. With that in mind, the task is
to show that the theory deals with the hard cases precisely by
passing the right bucks in the right directions.
Needless to say, it was partly in reaction to the fetishistic idea of
Art about which Gombrich complained that some artists in the last
century began to produce the kinds of works that philosophers
pressed into action as hard cases. Ironically, these artistic gestures
compounded the mystery. Should it come as any surprise that
they push us back towards the more deflationary stance
represented by Groucho’s philosophy and the proposal to pass the
buck?

After the Beginning of Art
Art began a long time ago and, although they may not be quite so
old as art itself, theories of art are also ancient… or that is how the
story usually goes. Jerrold Levinson is not alone in counting the
question of what makes an item a work of art among ‘probably the
most venerable in aesthetics’. Nor is he alone in going on to
express some exasperation that the end appears nowhere in sight:
‘after rejecting the many proposals made by philosophers from
Plato to the present on grounds of narrowness, tendentiousness,
inflexibility, vagueness, or circularity, one would appear to be left
with no answer to the question at all, and perhaps a suspicion that
it is unanswerable’ (, ). Yet if the search for a theory of art
is truly venerable, then it must have been expected to do more
than cope with the arrival of the hard cases in the last century.
This is the ‘historical objection’ to the buck passing theory of art.
The buck passing theory bets that a theory of art is not needed to
contend with the hard cases directly, that they are more
effectively addressed by a theory of art or theories of the
individual arts. Does history deprive these sails of wind? Do
theories of art go back far enough that they presumably address a
function having nothing to do with the hard cases?
The Early Modern ‘Problem of the Arts’
A hundred years ago, Bell identified the ‘central problem of
aesthetics’ with the search for ‘the quality that distinguishes
works of art from all other classes of objects’ (, ). A recent
writer observes that ‘underlying every traditional aesthetic theory
is the essentialist presumption that that the expression “work of
art” applies to the entities that it does in virtue of some shared
essential property or properties’ (Matthews , ). Yet as much
as these philosophers may speak for themselves and their
twentieth century brethren, their conception of what it takes to
answer the question ‘what is art?’ cannot be projected very far
backwards.
This is a message, albeit often missed, of Paul Kristeller’s classic
and erudite study, ‘The Modern System of the Arts’ (–).
25
Kristeller explores three topics, which are easily conflated but
must be distinguished. Principal among these is the gradual
development of the concept of art until it finally comes together in
mid-eighteenth century France. The scheme of classification that
Kristeller calls the ‘modern system of the arts’ expresses the
content of this concept. Second, some concepts have histories and
Kristeller tentatively traces some of the historical causes of the
development of the modern system of the arts. Finally, the modern
system of the arts comes together partly as it is supplied with a
rationale, and Kristeller examines some of the subsequent history
of philosophical thought about how to justify of the modern
system of the arts.
Start with the thesis that a concept of art comes together in the
mid-eighteenth century. According to Kristeller, the early modern
innovation is to group some activities together with each other
and apart from others. The ‘nucleus’ of this new grouping
comprises painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry,
with several other activities – notably landscape architecture,
dance, theatre, and prose literature – slipping in and out of its
orbit. This modern system of the arts is distinguished in the
thinking of its inventors from the liberal arts, the practical arts,
and the sciences. Fishing, physiology, poetry, philosophy,
football, travel, chemical engineering, eating, architecture,
fashion, trading, astronomy, dance, painting, plumbing... which
of these belong together? A grouping is salient for you and me
that was not salient for contemporaries of Aristotle and Abelard.
To illustrate, ancient Greek and Latin discussions of techne or
ars encompass a range of activities whose mastery involves
knowledge and which we would now consider skills, crafts, and
sciences – almost all the activities listed above (Kristeller –,
–). According to the influential scheme proposed by Hugo of
St Victor in the twelfth century, architecture, sculpture, and
painting are grouped together under armatura, music is classified
under mathematics, and poetry is placed with grammar, rhetoric,
and logic (Kristeller –, –). Chambers’s Cyclopedia, a
‘universal dictionary of arts and sciences’ published in ,
classifies painting with optics, music under applied mathematics,
gardening under agriculture, and poetry alongside rhetoric,
26
grammar, and heraldry (Kristeller –, ). Only a few
decades later, Diderot’s Encyclopédie groups the fine arts together
as is now familiar – the change is dramatically graphed in tree
diagrams that accompanied the two encyclopaedias (figs.  and ).
Kristeller identifies some of the factors that, over the centuries,
may have driven the innovation, and here are just a few.
Attention from the humanists gave poetry ‘honor and glamor’ and
a place in their new curriculum (Kristeller –, –).
Having gradually gained prestige in Italy from the fourteenth
century onwards, painting, sculpture, and architecture came to be
classified together as the arti del disegno (Kristeller –, –
). Sixteenth century writing about painting routinely compared
it to poetry (Kristeller –, ). The seventeenth century saw
the founding of the French academies, which sponsored the first
treatises on painting, sculpture, and architecture to stand
alongside texts on poetics (Kristeller –, –). Around the
same time the pleasures of painting, music, and poetry were
recommended (alongside fencing and coin collecting) in what we
would now call lifestyle manuals (Kristeller –, ).
Contributors to the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns
came to distinguish those activities where success depends on
accumulated knowledge and mathematical calculation (science,
where the moderns win) from those activities where success
depends on individual talent (where the ancients win). Thus the
new concept of science and a recognition of scientific progress
helped spur the formation of the new concept of art (Kristeller
–, –). Finally, the early eighteenth century saw the
widespread publication of criticism written by and for amateurs
(Kristeller –, , ). The ‘problem of the arts’ was now a
topic of learned discussion in the salons of Paris. By mid-century a
consensus settled on the modern system of the arts.
The problem was principally to codify a new system of
classification but also to give it a rational foundation. Kristeller
argues that this was first accomplished by Charles Batteux (),
who proposed that the arts share a feature in common, each aims
to imitate beautiful nature (Kristeller –, ). This proposition
was immediately challenged by the contributors to Diderot’s
Encyclopédie as well as by later writers, but the classification it was
27
meant to justify was widely accepted and soon spread from the
salons and philosophy books into common usage.
Kristeller’s history is by no means complete and it is unlikely to
be correct in every detail, though the main conclusions are
considered to be well established. It is enriched by a broader
social history which brings into the picture such factors as the
development of the Dutch picture market and the opening of the
first public galleries, museums, and concert halls, where silent
contemplation was expected and where political statement was
neutralized (Shiner ). It connects more closely to discussions
by philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of
imagination, creative genius, taste, and aesthetic judgement
(Shiner ). It suggests a critique of the anxious policing of the
boundary between art and craft, artist and craftsman, especially in
so far as it fed various insalubrious doctrines representing art as
an autonomous realm (Shiner ). Its account of the Greeks may
need correcting if the modern system of the arts is anticipated, for
example, in Plato’s mention of the practitioners of mimesis –
painters and sculptors, musicians, and poets and their assistants,
the rhapsodes, actors, and dancers (Halliwell ).
What is well established is that the early moderns clinched the
classification that is the modern system of the arts (even if it has
an ancient counterpart).
Lessons from Kristeller
Several lessons are typically drawn from this element of
Kristeller’s account, not all are warranted, but three are both
warranted and handy for present purposes.
Kristeller brings home the historical nature of the concept of art
expressed by the modern system of the arts. This concept was
acquired at a certain time in a certain place and it spread from
there. This is neither surprising nor interesting, for many (and
maybe all) concepts are historically conditioned in this sense.
Some conclude that there is no art before the eighteenth century.
This inference implies that there is no art in a context unless
people have a concept of art in that context, and this assumption
is false, as Chapter  argues. Kristeller’s own view is clear: ‘the
28
various arts are certainly as old as human civilization, but the
manner in which we are accustomed to group them… is
comparatively recent’ (–, ).
One handy lesson is that the concept of art expressed by the
modern system of the arts comes together as a theoretical concept.
That is to say, it is introduced by means of a theory – Batteux’s
version of an imitation theory – and it is understood that what
gets classified under the concept is what is identified by the
theory. Not all concepts are like this: the folk concepts of gravity,
personhood, or the colour red do not spring from theories of
gravity, personhood, or colours. The modern system of the arts is
more like the concepts of polymers and logical completeness in the
sense that it is introduced by means of a theory, though (unlike
polymers and logical completeness) it has now entered the
conceptual repertoire of the folk.
A second handy lesson qualifies the first one: the concept of art
expressed by the modern system of the arts is outfitted to achieve
certain goals. It should establish the unity of the arts, making
salient how to group together painting, sculpture, architecture,
music, poetry, and assorted others. It should also make salient
what sets these apart from other activities, especially the sciences,
applied sciences, and the practical arts and crafts. Finally, it
should provide a framework within which to understand the
distinctive features of each of the arts. In this regard Kristeller
notes Herder’s complaint that Lessing’s contrast between poetry
and visual art in the Laocoon delivers an inadequate
understanding of the nature of poetry. For Herder, such an
understanding requires that poetry be put in contrast with all its
sister arts (–, ).
The third handy lesson should be obvious by now. The modern
system of the arts is a classification of activities which singles out
one cluster of activities as arts and distinguishes them from other
activities such as the sciences, applied sciences, and crafts. Arts
like painting and architecture are clustered together and set apart
from activities like anatomical investigation and fashion design.
Accordingly, Batteux’s theory states what makes an activity an art
form, namely that it aims to imitate beautiful nature. This theory
does not say what makes an item a work of art: the modern system
29
of the arts does not classify items into works of art. The eighteenth
century ‘problem of the arts’ was not addressed by seeking a
theory of art. The early moderns sought a theory of the arts.
A theory of the arts is not the same as a theory of art and the
work done by the former in classifying, explaining, and problemsolving is not the same as the work that might be done by the
latter, so evidence of the venerability of the one is not automatic
evidence of the venerability of the other.
True, the theories might be linked, as we saw in Chapter . In
developing an imitation theory of the arts, the early moderns
might have implicitly backed an imitation theory of art. Consider
these three propositions:
. a work of art is an imitation of beautiful nature,
. an art is an activity whose aim is to produce works of art,
. an art is an activity whose aim is to produce imitations of
beautiful nature.
Here, () is an imitation theory of art in the work-oriented sense,
() is a theory of the arts in the activity-oriented sense, and ()
represents a bridging assumption. The early moderns might have
backed () implicitly, deducing () from it via (). Or they might
have argued for () on independent grounds and taken () to be an
obvious by-product, given (). So the question is whether the
early moderns reasoned either way, from () to () or () to ().
As we also saw in Chapter , the bridging assumption
represented by () might be false. However, we need not look for
independent evidence that Batteux and his readers accepted ().
The role of () as a bridge from () to () or vice versa is close to
purely formal. Logic alone warrants attributing () to anyone who
explicitly reasons from () to () or () to (). Logic plus charity
warrant attributing () to anyone who seems to accept () and ()
and who only provides an independent argument for one of them.
Of course, by the same reasoning, someone’s assent to () is not by
itself enough to attribute their assent of (). More is needed to
indicate implicit acceptance of ().
Is this a trap, a no-win scenario? Batteux and his followers
explicitly back () and the question is whether we can also
30
attribute () to them in the absence of explicit assent to (). A
statement explicitly backing () is not needed: evidence that they
back () implicitly would suffice. Yet would that evidence be, if
not ()?
The key lies in remembering that theories do work and their
resistance to counterexamples would have been an important
measure of this work, at least in this context. If the early moderns
were not concerned by obvious counterexamples to () then it is
not reasonable to attribute their assent to ().
Perhaps resistance to counterexamples is not a required of
every good theory, but it is in this context. The development of
the modern system of the arts was understood in the salons and
lecture halls to be a high stakes enterprise, with winners and
losers dividing a pot comprising social prestige as well as financial
benefits. Although the nucleus of five arts – painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, and poetry – was stable for some time, there
were intense debate about arts at the boundary. Landscape design
was ejected in the nineteenth century, for example, and dance was
included. A theory of the arts armed partisans in these debates
with sufficient conditions as entry tickets and necessary
conditions to exclude outsiders.
Moreover, the technique of testing theories by
counterexamples was familiar to the relevant parties. A colourful
illustration is objections to the principle that an object’s beauty
can be realized by its appearing fit for its function (Parsons and
Carlson , ch. ). Francis Hutcheson objected that ‘a Coffinshape for a Door would bear a more manifest Aptitude to the
human Shape’ than the usual rectangle but is for that reason more
ugly (, ???). Edmund Burke added that ‘on that principle, the
wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough cartilage at the end,
the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well
adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely
beautiful’ (Burke , ???). Burke and Hutcheson were known to
critics of Batteux’s imitation theory of the arts.
Yet their criticisms took it on its own terms, as a theory of the
arts. Their most serious objection was that music does not aim to
represent beauty in nature. Peter Kivy has argued that music did
not seem to pose a serious counterexample while the paint was
31
still wet on the theory (, ch. ). Purely instrumental music
had been a ‘side show’ in western Europe since the Council of
Trent, which had ordered that music should no longer provide an
independent setting for a text but should echo its linguistic
content – and this eventually led to the emergence of the stile
rappresentativo and the opera. According to Kivy, it was not until
the late eighteenth century that purely instrumental music could
form a serious part of a composer’s output. The challenge to the
imitation theory was soon appreciated, and responses were soon in
the air. Thomas Reid, for example, offered that melody imitates
human vocal expression of emotion and harmony imitates
expressive conversation (Kivy , –). Several nineteenth
century writers also weighed in – Schopenhauer and Hegel, for
instance, and alternative theories were put on the table (see Kivy
, ch. ).
It is striking that nobody seemed to worry that Grünewald’s
Crucifixion or the horrible scenes of battle and despoliation in the
Iliad are works of art and yet they do not imitate beauty in nature.
In view of the fact that there were counterexamples to a theory
about what makes an object beautiful and that there were
counterexamples to the imitation theory of the arts represented by
(), why are there no serious discussions of counterexamples to the
imitation theory of art represented by ()? The best explanation is
that the early moderns did not take () to imply or be implied by
() via ().
Nineteenth Century Transitions
The ‘problem of the arts’ was not the only item on the agenda in
early modern aesthetics, and it was certainly not as prominent
subsequently, during the long nineteenth century, though it did
continue.
As is well known, the nineteenth century considerably
expands the options beyond the imitation theory, especially in
order to accommodate music (Kivy , ch. ). The textbook
examples are the expression theory and formalism. According to
one version of the expression theory, an art aims to express and
thereby arouse delicate feelings (e.g. Hanslick [], ch. ).
32
A standard version of formalism states that each art aims to create
beautiful arrangements using its distinctive materials. Thus
Hanslick, who seeks to ‘treat music as an art’ ([], ),
proposes that it aims at a ‘specifically musical kind of beauty’
realized in ‘tonally moving forms’ ([], ???). Several
variants on each of these theories date from this period. But are
there theories of art?
Kant does not state a theory of art, even though he had the
building blocks for one ready at hand ([]). The third
critique concerns judgements, including judgements of taste,
many of which are made in response to confrontations with
individual works of art (others being responses to nature).
Moreover, in section  of the third critique, Kant distinguishes
art ‘as human skill’ first from nature, then from science, and
finally from craft. In the next section, he distinguishes the
agreeable arts whose purpose is ‘mere enjoyment’ from fine (schön)
art, that furthers the mental powers that facilitate social
communication; and later sections discuss the distinctive features
of each of the arts. Although there are connections between genius
and the fine arts and also between the fine arts and judgements of
beauty, Kant does not define the fine arts with reference to a
theory of art.
Hegel also inherited the early modern emphasis on theories of
the arts, which put it to work in a special way within his own
systematic philosophy. According to the Lectures on Fine Art, ‘the
real world of art is the system of the individual arts’ ([],
), which function to ‘find for the spirit of a people the artistic
expression corresponding to it’ ([], ), where an artistic
expression is in a sensuous medium ([], ). Thus
sculpture expressed the spirit of the Greeks and music that of the
Germans. Given this theory of the arts, Hegel explains the role of
each art in the historical process of the unfolding of consciousness
which culminated in his own philosophy. Indeed, art came to an
end when it handed over its historical role to philosophy: ‘art,
considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of
the past’ ([], ). Obviously there has been a great deal of
art created since , but this art does not serve art’s ‘highest
33
vocation’. Its less grand new role is to represent human experience
and to help us to feel at home in that experience ([], ).
In consonance with his theory of the arts, Hegel does tender a
theory of art: a work of art is an artifact made for sensuous
apprehension, to serve an ‘end and aim in itself’ ([], ).
However, this is a simple corollary of the theory of the arts. It
does not do any work in Hegel’s system – the theory of the arts
does the heavy lifting – and Hegel does not consider how well it
holds up on its own.
Hegel exemplifies a nineteenth century interest in a ‘higher
calling’ for art that also preoccupies Schlegel, the other Schlegel,
Schiller, and Schopenhauer. For these writers and others, genuine
art or great art reveals transcendent truths: its ‘highest vocation’ is
a philosophical one – art is ‘sacralized’, as Jean-Marie Schaffer
acutely puts it (). No remotely plausible theory of art can be
extracted from this proposition. The realm of art includes art
includes works by Bunyan as well as Milton, Boilly as well as
Poussin, and Mahavishnu Orchestra as well as Miles Davis. It also
includes many superb works that do not reveal transcendent
truths or indeed any truths at all.
The philosophy of art is not exhausted by any of the various
approaches to the ‘what is art?’ question. However interesting or
plausible they may or may not be, speculations about some
features of (some) art should not be confused for theories of art.
Theories of Art and the Hard Cases
Batteux and Diderot seek a theory of the arts whereas Beardsley
and Dickie seek a theory of art. Whatever the full story about the
timing and causes of this shift in emphasis from theories of the arts
to theories of art, contemporary interest in theories of art is
certainly provoked by and tends to focus on the hard cases.
The shift in emphasis from theories of the arts to theories of art
does not represent a total break, for theories of the arts have
remained a going concern even after the flap over music settled
down. For example, the art status of photography and movies has
been examined and cross examined by critics and also by
philosophers – with Roger Scruton infamously arguing that
34
neither photography nor the movies is not an independent art
form () and many others replying (e.g. Lopes , Abell
). By the way, Scruton’s argument against photography’s
being an art does not rely on a theory of art; it relies on a partial
theory of the arts – on a theory of a subset of the arts, the
representational arts. Other arguments for new arts, such as
computer art and video games, do rely on a theory of art (e.g.
Lopes b, ch.  and Tavinor , ch. ). What activities are
arts? The question remains a live one (and it is taken up again in
Chapter ).
However, the hard cases are not seen as challenges to any
theory of the arts; they are treated as provocations to theories of
art. An encyclopaedia entry surveying theories of art attributes
interest in them to ‘dissatisfaction with the fact that certain works
are counted as art’ (Barnes , I.). Beardsley confesses that
his search for a theory of art sprung from ‘the enormous and even
ridiculous variety of objects, events, situations, texts, thoughts,
performances, refrainings from any performance, and so on that
have, in recent times, drawn the label “artwork” from their
authors, admirers, or patient endurers’ (, ). Dickie credits
‘the strange and startling innovations of Duchamp and his latterday followers such as Rauschenberg, Warhol, and Oldenberg’ as
the inspiration for his theory of art (, ). Wollheim observed
that other works, which he dubbed ‘minimal art’, ‘give rise to
certain doubts and anxieties’ ([], ). Robert Stecker,
quietly remarks that ‘avant-garde art… has made the nature of art
increasingly puzzling’ (, ) and Marcia Eaton defends the
necessity of a good theory of art in view of the ‘confusion [people]
often feel when they encounter puzzling objects and events in
museums, concert halls, or other venues where it is, supposedly,
art that is being presented’ (, –).
The Kristeller of our times is Noël Carroll. He conjectures that
certain upheavals of the last century fuel contemporary searches
for theories of art:
the driving… force behind the philosophy of art for at least a
century – a century which not coincidentally could be called
the age of the avant-garde – has been the startling innovations
35
of modern art…. For it is in the twentieth century that the
theoretical task of coming to terms with virtually continuous
revolutions in artistic practice has become urgent. That is, it is
in the twentieth century that the problem of identifying art has
become persistently unavoidable’ (, -).
The revolutions in artistic practice that Carroll has in mind are not
the invention of new art forms. The invention of photography and
the movies might have spurred developments in avant-garde
painting and theatre, but they were not themselves avant-garde
and they did not provoke puzzlement in their audiences. Carroll
goes on: ‘the characteristic situation in which this problem [of
identifying art] arises is one where a public is presented with an
object that defies its expectations about what counts as art and,
thereby, leaves the public bewildered’ (, ).
How do bewildering avant-garde production entrain theories of
art? Often the diagnosis of some bewilderment is that the
production in question is art but it does not have the features that
are thought to make an item a work of art (e.g. Dickie , ). It
is a counterexample to accepted theories of art, which rule it out
as a work of art. Faced with this situation, there are two options.
One is to side with the traditional theories and deny that the item
is a work of art. The other is to whip up a new theory of art that
foregrounds a feature that is salient in the avant-garde work
(Carroll , ). On many theories, this feature must also be
present in more traditional art. The result of this dialectic is a
procession over several decades of theories of art, each toppled by
a counterexample drawn from the latest avant-garde. The path is
littered with corpses.
In an interesting twist, the dialectic may include a feedback
loop. If philosophers are paying attention to events in the art
world, artists sometimes attend to philosophy to; and having
encountered the latest theory of art, they might set out to refute it
by counterexample. Pushing the envelope is to be expected if the
art historian Thomas Crow is right to call the avant-garde the
‘research and development arm of the culture industry’ (, ).
Indeed, some argue that nothing as mundane as an artist reacting
to some philosophy is required, for the dialectic has an historical
36
inevitability (Danto ). At any rate, the dialectic appears to be
in place. In  Beardsley contemplated what he imagined to the
ultimate affront: ‘an alleged work of conceptual art… that is no
more than a closed art gallery with a sign on it saying that the
artwork being exhibited that week is just the closed art gallery
itself’ (, ???). Robert Barry had done that in . In ,
Santiago Sierra sent invitation to his latest show at the Lisson
Gallery in London. His guests arrived to find the gallery closed.
He did not bother with the sign, however.
Before looking at how the dialectic plays out where it matters
philosophically, in arguments, a word about terminology. Labels
like ‘avant-garde’, ‘conceptual art’, ‘Dada’, ‘late modern art’ have
more or less stable and focused usage in art studies. None pinpoint
exactly the class of works that drive philosophical theories of art.
Therefore, let the label ‘hard case’ represent any and only works
of art that do drive theories of art in the way described by Carroll.
By stipulation, the hard cases are hard cases for theories of art,
and nothing more.
The Open Concept Argument
The two most influential arguments in the literature of the past
fifty years both orient on the hard cases in a way that places
theories of art at centre stage. The first of these is the open concept
argument laid out by Morris Weitz ().
Recall that a theory of art fills in the schema,
x is a work of art = x is…
and implies an analogous completion of the schema,
x is a work of art if and only if x is….
Weitz’s main argument is that there is no correct, full, non-trivial
completion of the latter so there is no correct, full, non-trivial
completion of the former – there is no correct, complete, nontrivial theory of art (, ). In Weitz’s terminology, open
concepts have no necessary and sufficient application conditions,
whereas concepts with necessary and sufficient application
conditions are closed concepts. Rephrasing the main argument,
37
there is no correct, complete, and non-trivial theory of art because
art is an open concept.
What reason is there to think that art is an open concept?
Although only one is widely acknowledged, Weitz gives two
arguments which share a premise. He writes that,
a concept is open if its conditions of application are emendable
and corrigible; i.e., if a situation or case can be imagined or
secured which would call for some sort of decision on our part
to extend the use of the concept to cover this, or to close the
concept and invent a new one to deal with the new case and its
new property (, ).
The appearance of ‘corrigible’ in the opening phrase of this
quotation gives the whole an epistemic ring. Yet the claim cannot
be merely that we sometimes make mistakes in stating the
application conditions for an open concept. It would not follow
from that claim that the concept in question is open and has no
necessary and sufficient application conditions. The claim is rather
that whether or not any given real or imagined case falls under an
open concept calls for a ‘decision on our part’.
We have three choices. We may decide X falls under concept F.
Or we may decide that X falls under a new concept disjoint from F
and we close F by stipulating necessary and sufficient conditions
for its application. Or we may decide that X falls under a new
concept disjoint from F and we leave F open. In other words, we
may decide to close a hitherto open concept by imposing
necessary and sufficient conditions on its application. If we do not
take that step, then we must decide whether every new case falls
under the open concept. Either way, the decision is legislative:
our deciding what falls under F is what determines the extension
of F.
The widely acknowledged argument for the thesis that art is an
open concept is art-specific: it conjoins the premise that an open
concept calls for a decision on our part with an appeal to the
creative condition of art-making. Weitz observes that when it
comes to art, ‘new cases can always be envisaged or created by
artists, or even nature, which would call for a decision on
someone’s part, to extend or to close the old or to invent a new
38
concept’ (, ). He goes on that ‘we can, of course, choose to
close the concept. But to do this… is ludicrous since it forecloses
on the very conditions of creativity in the arts’ (, ). That is,
it denies the ‘very expansive, adventurous character of art, its
ever-present changes and novel creations’ (, ). Stitching the
pieces together,
. if art is an open concept then there is no correct, complete,
non-trivial theory of art, and
. if the application of concept of art calls for a decision on our
part, then it is open, and
. art is creative only if the application of the concept of art
calls for a decision on our part, but
. art is creative,
. so there is no correct, complete, non-trivial theory of art.
The crux of the argument is clearly () and (), expressed in
Weitz’s refrain that when it comes to making art, ‘unforeseeable
or novel conditions are always forthcoming or
envisageable’ (, ).
This widely acknowledged argument is also widely denounced,
for premise () is either false or the argument begs the question.
On one hand, creativity in a domain is not generally incompatible
with the concept of that domain being closed. For example, the
concept of a mathematic or logical proof is closed, but
mathematical and logical proofs are often products of creativity –
a series of theorems can meet the definition of a proof in an
unforeseeable or novel way. With that in mind, suppose that
Beardsley’s aesthetic theory of art is true – perhaps because we
have decided to use it to close the concept of art – and nothing is a
work of art unless it is produced with the intention of giving it
the capacity to satisfy the aesthetic interest. That does not
foreclose the ‘very expansive, adventurous character of art, its
ever-present changes and novel creations’. Premise () is false.
Perhaps, on the other hand, the creative condition of art is more
radical than is allowed by an analogy with creativity in other
domains, for the very conditions upon being art are subject to
change in a ways that are sometimes unforeseeable or novel. Now
39
premise () is equivalent to the claim that art is an open concept
and the argument as a whole begs the question.
Even so, note how the weight of the argument rests on the hard
cases. They get the credit for art’s ‘very expansive, adventurous
character’ and, indeed, they push premises () and () towards the
question-begging reading. Surveying the parade of theories lured
out and then bumped off by one hard case after another, and
taking this resistance to theory to signal the heights of creativity,
it is tempting to infer that the concept of art must be open.
Without the hard cases and the parade ground littered with
theoretical corpses, () and () would look pretty flimsy.
Aaron Meskin () has stressed a second argument given by
Weitz for the thesis that there is no correct, complete, non-trivial
theory of art. This argument also assumes that there is no correct,
complete, non-trivial theory of art if art is an open concept and
that the concept of art is open if its application calls for a decision
in a metaphysically weighty sense. Meskin points out that Weitz
also asserts that there are necessary and sufficient conditions for
the application of concepts ‘only in logic or mathematics where
concepts are constructed and completely defined’ and not ‘with
empirically-descriptive and normative concepts unless we
arbitrarily close them by stipulating the ranges of their
uses’ (, ). However, art is an empirically-descriptive or
normative concept. As the argument goes:
. if art is an open concept then there is no correct, complete,
non-trivial theory of art, and
. if the application of concept of art calls for a decision on our
part, then it is open, and
. the concept of art is empirically-descriptive or normative
only if the application of the concept of art calls for a decision
on our part, but
. the concept of art is empirically-descriptive or normative,
. so there is no correct, complete, non-trivial theory of art.
Premises () and () express a contrast between concepts like the
concept of art and closed concepts like those found in logic and
mathematics.
40
Understanding the contrast is the key to this argument. The
contrast is not simply identical to a distinction (however it is
drawn) between logical and mathematical concepts on one hand
and all other concepts on the other, since Weitz accepts that
closed concepts range beyond the realms of logic and mathematics.
Presumably logical and mathematical concepts are paradigm
closed concepts. Other closed concepts resemble them in so far as
their application conditions are closed by ‘stipulating the range of
their uses’ (, ), ‘for a special purpose’ (, ). The
problem, as Weitz sees it, with closing these concepts is that the
result fails to model the true diversity of uses of the concept.
When it comes to art, the task is described thus: ‘our first problem
is the elucidation of the actual employment of the concept of art,
to give a logical description of the actual functioning of the
concept, including a description of the conditions under which we
correctly use it or its correlates’ (, ). We must respect all
uses of the concept ‘in the wild’ and not operationalize it for the
lab.
If this is what Weitz has in mind, the second argument also
begs the question. After all, what makes the concept of art
empirically-descriptive or normative? Many ordinary concepts are
probably closed – for example, mother-in-law, New York Subway
token, and toupée; also fraud, gas guzzler, and good umbrella.
Presumably these are closed without remainder – stipulating their
uses does not limit their uses in the wild. By contrast, what makes
art empirically-descriptive or normative is that it is only closed
with remainder. Stipulating its uses for some ‘special’ purposes
inevitably leaves out other purposes. The trouble is that now the
claim expressed in () that art is empirically-descriptive or
normative is equivalent to the claim that art is an open concept.
Again, however, the important point is how the second
argument draws its plausibility from the hard cases. The fact that
an ‘elucidation of the actual employment of the concept of art’
means accepting its unruliness stems from the unruliness of the
hard cases. The hard cases trigger contrary intuitive responses,
any theory of art will stump for some hard cases and against
others, and it merely follows that each theory is incomplete.
41
Whether or not these arguments succeed or fail, they illustrate
how the hard cases animate the ‘what is art?’ question. The same
goes for their continuing appeal, for without the hard cases,
skepticism about theories of art would not have much more grip
than epistemic skepticism would have without brains in vats.
However, here are two notes for future reference. Weitz extends
his anti-theoretical stance to theories of the arts as well as theories
of art. That is a challenge for the buck passing theory of art.
Mitigating this challenge is that the buck passing theory steers
clear of a methodological commitment to conceptual analysis.
Philosophical theories are tools through which phenomena are
discerned and their serving this ‘special purpose’ warrants
bracketing intuitions about hard cases (see the Introduction).
The Twins Argument
If the hard cases lurk in the background of the open concept
argument, they proudly assume centre stage in another argument,
the argument from indiscernibles or ‘twins’, that originates with
Arthur Danto (, , , ) and recurs throughout the
repertoire of classic work on theories of art (e.g. Binkley ,
Carroll ).
The twins argument comes in two flavours, classic and
canonical. The classical flavour is this (Danto ):
C. if the features that make an item a work of art are among or
supervene on its perceptible features, then no work of art is
perceptually indiscernible from a twin item that is not a work
of art, but
C. some works of art are perceptually indiscernible from twin
items that are not works of art,
C. so the features that make an item a work of art are not
perceptible and do not supervene on its perceptible feature.
Here the target is perceptual theories of art, which maintain that
what makes an item a work of art are features that are among or
supervene on features that are manifest to the senses. Soon after
this argument appeared, however, it was subtly but significantly
upgraded so as to target aesthetic theories of art, which maintain
42
that what makes an item a work of art is its aesthetic features.
That is,
A. if the features that make an item a work of art are aesthetic,
then the features that make an item a work of art are among or
supervene on its perceptible features, and
A. if the features that make an item a work of art are among or
supervene on its perceptible features, then no work of art is
perceptually indiscernible from a twin item that is not a work
of art, but
A. some works of art are perceptually indiscernible from twin
items that are not works of art,
A. so the features that make an item a work of art are not
aesthetic.
This is now the canonical form of the argument.
Both arguments share the premise that some works of art have
perceptually indiscernible non-art twins: these are hard cases.
Danto’s inspiration was Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, plywood
replicas of boxes for Brillo soap pads, first shown at the Stable
Gallery in New York in . Brillo Boxes is a work of art, but not
Brillo boxes. Other twins are John Cage’s ’” and four and a half
minutes of not playing a piano, Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de
Kooning Drawing and a blank sheet of paper, and William Carlos
Williams’s ‘This Is Just to Say’ and a (sort-of) apology note. These
are actual twins, and their population is augmented in the
literature by many counterfactual twins. Danto signals their
importance, writing that ‘nothing in which indiscernibles consist
can be the basis of a good theory of art’ (, ).
The argument in its canonical flavour carries more punch than
the classically flavoured argument, since aesthetic theories of art
have been a going concern, the deep motivation for the twins
argument comes from anti-aesthetic art, and the twins cases
embody the most powerful conception of anti-aesthetic art. Art
that is not beautiful, that is outright shocking or disturbing,
mounts no real challenge to aesthetic theories of art. For example,
Beardsley’s theory that a work of art is something produced to
satisfy the aesthetic interest does not imply that works of art must
43
be beautiful. Shocking and disturbing art can be very interesting;
the charming and delightful count too. A more serious challenge
to aesthetic theories of art would come from ‘beige’ works – works
that appeal to no aesthetic interest whatsoever. The trouble is that
aesthetic qualities are so easy to come by that the challenge is easy
to deflect. It is child’s play to attribute interesting aesthetic
qualities to Brillo Boxes, ’”, Erased de Kooning Drawing, and
‘This Is Just to Say’. The power of the canonical twins argument
lies in its showing that, whatever aesthetic qualities these works
may have, their non-art twins have the same aesthetic qualities, so
their aesthetic qualities do not make them works of art. The twins
argument works by showing the aesthetic to be irrelevant to art.
The argument is not decisive. There is of course the option to
deny (A) and insist no hard case is a work of art. There is also the
option to accept (A), to allow that at least hard cases are works of
art, but to deny (A), the assumption that a work’s art-making
aesthetic features are among or supervene on its perceptible
features. Danto attributes (A) to a tradition which held that ‘one
could walk through any space whatever and pick the artworks out
with a high probability of attaining a perfect score’ (, ) – equipped, he means, with nothing more than a naked eye. Thus
Danto imagines a Mr Testadura, an old-fashioned sort, steeped in
this tradition, who visits his local MoMA and cannot tell the art
from the non-art – who mistakes Robert Rauschenberg’s Bed for
the kind of item sold at Sears.
Yet theories of the aesthetic that imply (A) are contentious.
Some early modern theories of the aesthetic are inconsistent with
(A): they are devised not in order to serve aesthetic theories of
art but also to cover aesthetic responses to nature and to ideas,
particularly scientific theories (Shelley ). A widely accepted
argument by Walton (, see also Hopkins ) allows for
nothing stronger than:
(A′) if the features that make an item a work of art are
aesthetic, then the features that make an item a work of art
partly supervene on its perceptible features.
Since this claim is inconsistent with (A), the canonical version of
the twins argument breaks down. At any rate, rejecting (A)
44
allows room to claim that Brillo Boxes and Brillo boxes differ
aesthetically despite their retinal indiscernibility, and that claim
may provide enough footing for an aesthetic theory of art.
Looking in the other direction, many of those who are moved
by the twins argument have gone on to propose non-aesthetic
theories of art, following Danto’s suggestion that the twins reveal
‘a variety of elements that as a matter of intuition belong to the
concept of an art work’ (, ). For example, Brillo Boxes,
’”, Erased de Kooning Drawing, and ‘This Is Just to Say’ differ
from their non-art twins in their historical origins, their pedigrees.
So maybe what makes something a work of art is its provenance.
An extreme view is that any actual object might have been a work
of art – in some possible world its provenance is one that makes it
a work of art (e.g. Danto , xviii). Only the twins breathe life
into this thought. Although I could not have been John Cage, I
might have been a composer like him, and were I composer like
him, these four and a half minutes of silence in my office today
might have been a work of art. The hard cases that motivate the
argument against aesthetic theories of art also inspire alternative
theories.
The buck passing theory of art assumes that theories of art get
their impetus from the hard cases. After all, the content of the
theory is advisory; it advises us to pass the buck on the assurance
that the hard cases can be quite effectively dealt with by theories
of the arts or theories of the individual arts. The ‘historical
objection’ to the buck passing theory was that theories of art go
back much further than the hard cases. So presumably they are
not mainly designed to address the hard cases. So the advice to
pass the buck is premature at best.
The objection fails. Arguments like the open concept argument
and the twins argument implicate the hard cases in a way that
raises the question of what it is for an item to be a work of art.
This is a question that theories of art try to answer. No arguments
like these antedate the hard cases. The questions raised in the
tradition are ones that seek answers through theories of the arts or
theories of the individual arts. The ‘historical objection’ conflates
these different kinds of theories.
45
In effect, the buck passing theory advises a return to the
traditional concerns and it advises a return to tradition precisely
so as to contend with what seem like distinctively modern
problem cases. Any irony is merely apparent. The real irony lies
with the historical objection. It projects contemporary theoretical
concerns onto the past in a way that deprives us of crucial
distinctions between different kinds of theories and the tasks to
which they are suited. But these are the distinctions we need to
effectively contend with the hard cases.

Passing the Buck on Art
Grant that a theory of art should answer the ‘what is art?’
question by contending with the hard cases in an effective way.
The buck passing theory of art does its job if it is a good idea to
deal with the hard cases by referring them elsewhere, to a theory
of the arts or to theories of the individual arts. Its advising us that
this is how to deal with the hard cases makes the theory
informative. In the first place, buck stopping theories of art have
reached an impasse in their dealings with the hard cases and this
impasse is a good reason to take the buck passing theory seriously
and look elsewhere for tools to cope with the hard cases. The
impasse starts with a dilemma and a dilemma requires contending
claims. Second, the buck passing theory clears the impasse and
makes it possible to cope with the hard cases.
Two Stances
Philosophy often obeys Newton’s third law of motion.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Weitz () and others (esp.
Kennick  and Ziff ) to scotch the whole theory of art
enterprise by demonstrating that there is no correct, complete,
nontrivial theory of art, recent decades have seen an explosion of
new theories. Each of them is interesting and has contributed
something to our understanding of art, whether or not it
ultimately stands up to scrutiny. Obviously, a survey of all
existing theories would require many pages, with many more
pages needed to assess each one individually. Others have already
taken a close look at many theories and weighed up their
strengths and weaknesses (e.g. Davies  and Stecker ).
Moreover, the task at hand does not require muscling it out with
each contender. Since the dilemma arises because each theory
takes one of two broad stances, we can ignore the detailed
differences between theories.
There are many ways to classify theories of art. Groucho’s
theory is trivial, by contrast with non-trivial theories, such as the
buck passing theory (which is not trivial even if it is shown to be
uninformative). Some theories are reductive, stating what makes
47
something a work of art in more basic, independent terms. For
example, Beardsley’s theory of art refers to aesthetic interest and
his theory of aesthetic interest makes no mention of art ().
Both versions of Dickie’s institutional theory are non-reductive,
though they may be explanatory and informative ( and ).
In the later version, a work of art is defined with reference to an
art maker and an art world public, and these are defined in turn
with reference to what they do with works of art. Dickie argues
that only this sort of circularity can model what he calls the
‘inflected nature of art’ (, , see also –). Unlike all these
theories, Gaut’s cluster theory is disjunctive (), as are many of
the theories that vie for top billing nowadays (e.g. Levinson 
and Stecker , ch. ). Such classifications of theories are formal
in the sense that they concern only the logical structures of the
theories. Differences between each category are fully represented
when it is left open what features complete the theory schema, so
long as the logical relationships between features in the schema
are specified (e.g. Longworth and Scarantino ).
Stance-based classifications of buck-stopping theories of art are
substantive and not merely formal: theories sharing a stance agree
on what they take to be the broad kinds of features that make
items works of art. Theories taking either stance may be trivial or
non-trivial, reductive or non-reductive, disjunctive or nondisjunctive. So each stance takes in many possible theories that
differ from each other with respect to what specific kinds of
features each takes to be an art-making feature and also with
respect to the logical relationships each takes to hold between
those features (and the property of being a work of art). The
stances are very general indeed. A very rough sketch of the
contrast between them was originally suggested by Maurice
Mandelbaum, who distinguished theories of art couched in terms
of ‘exhibited’ properties from those couched in terms of the
work’s relation to its context of making ().
What is aptly called the ‘traditional stance’ is characterized by
theories which hold that some of the features that make any given
item a work of art are its exhibited features. Familiar candidates
for these features include being an imitation of beauty in nature,
expressing feeling, having significant form, and satisfying an
48
aesthetic interest. Each of these is an exhibited feature of works in
the sense that it supervenes upon the works’ perceptible or
semantic features. For example, a dance’s expressing a feeling
supervenes upon a visible pattern of movements through a space
and a poem’s imitation of beauty in nature supervenes on the
meanings of the words that make it up. The significant form of a
building might be realized through a visible relationship between
materials on one hand and volumes and masses on the other. A
bronze might satisfy an aesthetic interest in view of the apparent
beauty of its patina. Traditional theories imply that nothing is a
work of art except that such exhibited features help make it so.
The alternative to the traditional stance is the genetic stance.
Any theory taking this stance is consistent with the proposition
that in some cases what makes an item a work of art is nothing
more than some of its genetic features, where these do not
supervene on its perceptible or semantic features. Rather, the
genetic features of a work have to do with the circumstances or
context of its making. Dickie’s institutional theory of art is a
genetic theory. According to its later formulation, a work of art is
an artifact of a kind made to be presented to an art world public
(, ). Being made to be presented to an art world public is a
feature that a work has because it was made in an institutional
context. It does not supervene on the work’s perceptible or
semantic features. Jerrold Levinson defends a non-institutional
genetic theory of art that grounds a work’s being art in a history.
In a compact statement of the theory, a work of art is an item
intended for regard in some way or ways past artworks are or
were correctly regarded (Levinson , ). In sum, genetic
theories trace the art status of a work to its origins rather than its
appearance or meaning.
Other stances are possible because some art-making features
might be neither exhibited nor genetic, but every known theory
takes one of these two stances. Moreover, none can take both: the
stances are contraries. A theory that conjoins being made in an
institutional context with satisfying an aesthetic interest takes the
traditional stance since it implies that some of the features that
make any given item a work of art are exhibited features. A
theory that disjoins the same two features takes the genetic stance
49
since it is consistent with the proposition that in some cases what
makes an item a work of art is its genesis alone.
Although no theories cross both stances, it does not follow that
theories taking one stance deny that works have the features that
characterize the competing stance. Dickie’s institutional theory of
art is consistent with the undeniable fact that works of art do have
exhibited features that supervene on their perceptible or semantic
features. Likewise, an aesthetic theory of art is consistent with the
undeniable fact that works have historical and institutional
origins. A contextualist version of the aesthetic theory of art goes
further, allowing the aesthetic features of a work to supervene
partly on some of the work’s genetic features in cases where
perceptual or semantic features also partly supervene on genetic
features (see Walton ). The disagreement across stances is not
about what features art works happen to have but about which
ones make them works of art.
Aficionados of the literature will have noticed that the division
of theories into these two stances is not the standard typology,
which divides theories into functional and procedural varieties
(Davies ). According to functional theories, what makes
something a work of art is a function it has, such as satisfying
aesthetic interest. According to procedural theories, what makes
an item an artwork is a matter of the ‘procedures, rules, formulas,
recipes, or whatever by which artworks are generated’ (Davies
, ). Procedural theories take the genetic stance and
functional theories take the traditional stance. However, nonfunctional theories may take the traditional stance. Consider the
theory that a work of art is an artifact of great beauty. This is a
theory of art – it completes the schema for a theory of art – and,
moreover, it takes the traditional stance, yet it is not a functional
theory. Being beautiful is not a function of an artifact, though an
artifact may serve a function because it is beautiful. By analogy,
weighing a hundred grams is not a function of an artifact, though
the artifact may serve the function of measuring out coffee
because it weighs a hundred grams. At any rate, the classification
of theories into traditional and genetic stances may replace the
classification of theories as functional and procedural without loss,
50
particularly for the purpose of characterizing the dilemma (cf.
Davies , –).
A Dilemma
As is only to be expected, the boundary between traditional and
genetic theories is crowded with hard cases. On one hand, hard
cases are frequently born of a contrary spirit, a preoccupation
with toppling prevailing conceptions of art as represented by
traditional theories of art. If, despite the fact that works like Brillo
Boxes and ’” have plenty of exhibited features, none of these
features play a role in making them works of art, then traditional
theories of art are in trouble. On the other hand, those who favour
the genetic stance freely admit to being inspired by cases such as
these, under the assumption that at least some of them are works
of art. What makes them works of art? Their provenance, say the
genetic theories. Thus Dickie remarks that hard cases ‘reveal the
institutional essence of art’ for ‘our attention is forced away from
the objects’ obvious properties to a consideration of the objects in
their social context’ (, ). With genetic theories waiting
eagerly in the wings, we should make sure that the hard cases
really do manage to brush off traditional theories of art.
Any given case is a work of art or it is not. If it is not, then it is
not a counterexample to a traditional theory of art. So one strategy
for traditional theories of art is, as Nick Zangwill (b) puts it,
to ‘brazen it out’ and deny that the hard cases are works of art.
However, if the case at hand is a work of art, then either it is a
counterexample to traditional theories of art or it is not. These
theories get the brush off only if it is a counterexample. But it is
not a counterexample if part of what makes it art are its exhibited
features. So another strategy for traditional theories of art is, as
Zangwill (b) puts it, to ‘sneak past’ the hard cases and avoid
the brush off by insisting that they have what traditional theories
say it takes to be works of art.
There are two ways to try to sneak past the hard cases: one pins
its hopes on each hard case having aesthetic features (e.g. Lind
, –). The classic photograph by Alfred Stieglitz brings
out the pristine, graceful curves of Duchamp’s Fountain, for
51
example. However, this move is too sneaky by half, for almost
anything has some aesthetic features. Might any non-art item with
some aesthetic features have a twin that is art? This move saves
aesthetic theories at the price of making them nearly empty.
Another way to sneak past the hard cases is to bring in help, to
accept that what makes an item a work of art is a combination of
its aesthetic and genetic features. This move concedes the force of
the hard cases without giving up on traditional theories of art.
Presumably, then, the provenance of a work of art is a factor that
determines its aesthetic qualities, so that a work of art does differ
aesthetically from its non-art twin (see Davies , –).
Duchamp’s Fountain is sometimes said to be witty or provocative,
quite in contrast to its non-art counterparts; and that can only be a
result of its provenance.
Alas, this move only makes it past some hard cases. Non-art
twins are not items like copies of the Mona Lisa or epic poems in
tetrameter banged out by monkeys; they are snow shovels,
urinals, blank sheets of paper, notes left on the fridge door,
stretches of not playing a piano, and other perfectly ordinary
elements of everyday life. Nothing singles out items like these for
the kind of special treatment that would endow them with the
provenance making them works of art; yet, by hypothesis, some
of them are works of art. Perhaps some of them acquire new
aesthetic properties with their art-making provenance, but there is
no reason that all should. Provenance is not aesthetic magic. There
remain hard cases of works that are no different aesthetically from
their non-art twins. These works are anti-aesthetic not in the sense
that they lack aesthetic features but in the sense that they lack artmaking aesthetic features.
Faced with these hard cases, traditional aesthetic theories of art
must either concede defeat or brazen it out and deny that the hard
cases are works of art. Some deny exactly this (e.g. Beardsley
, Tolhurst ). Doing so is brazen. Zangwill sums up the
line that must taken by those who brazen it out: they assert ‘it is
absurd to make the whole philosophy of art turn on the antics of a
minute minority’ and so ‘turn snooty and insist on the
insignificance of the excluded object’ (b, –). A real life
example is Denis Dutton, whose view is not ‘snooty’: he complains
52
that ‘the obsession with accounting for art’s most problematic
outliers… has left aesthetics ignoring the center of art and its
values ‘ (, ). The non-traditionalist reply is that although
the hard cases are recent and constitute a numerical minority of all
art works, they are nonetheless important, indeed central, and not
so easy to shrug off. As Carroll reports, ‘anti-aesthetic art has
existed for over eighty-five years, and it has been classified as art
by art historians, critics, collectors, and a great many informed
viewers. Nor is it a marginal movement in twentieth-century art.
It has often commanded the limelight’ (, –). The alleged
marginality of the hard cases is not common ground. It is part of
the dilemma.
In the end, traditional and genetic theories render contrary
verdicts on the hard cases. Traditionalists reason that unless these
works have the exhibited features that make them art works, they
are not art. Geneticists, impressed by the central and important
role of the hard cases in twentieth century art, counter that they
are art: they have the right provenance. Dickie claims as a virtue
of his genetic theory that it counts the hard cases as art; Beardsley
counters that it is a virtue of his traditional theory that it denies
them art status.
As long as a theory of art should cope one way or another with
the hard cases, we can ride with traditionalists and deny that the
hard cases are art works, or we can ride with the geneticists and
carry the flag for the hard cases. We must choose which class of
theories gets the extension of art right.
Impasse
This would not be the first time in philosophy that a choice
between theories or theoretical stances represents a clash in
intuitions. However, a dilemma is not by itself an impasse; it
might be the starting point for making progress. In deciding for or
against the hard cases, a correct theory of art might rectify false
intuitions. What is needed are independent grounds for theory
choice –grounds that go beyond matching intuitions. The trouble
is that there is no consensus on what is to be expected of a theory
of art beyond conformity to intuitions. What is worse,
53
disagreement about what is to be expected of a theory of art
probably stems from clashing intuitions about the hard cases. That
is deep disagreement. That is an impasse.
The rather extensive debates about theories of art is inevitably
shaped by expectations about what to look for in an adequate
theory of art. Gaut explicitly supplies a list of three conditions to
be met by any adequate theory of art (, –). First is
intuitive adequacy: an adequate theory ‘must agree with our
intuitions about what we would say about actual and
counterfactual cases’ (Gaut , ). In particular, any theory
must face up to cases that test its provisions. Second is normative
adequacy, which is consists in a reflective equilibrium between a
theory and the relevant intuitions. When intuitions clash with a
theory, this reflective equilibrium is achieved when the theory
provides an ‘error theory’ – that is, an explanation of why some
people have the faulty intuitions and hence why competing
theories seem attractive. Third is heuristic utility: an adequate
theory should fit into a larger package of theories that together
illuminate the domain in question. A fourth measure of theory
quality goes without saying. No theory is worth choosing unless it
has the virtues to be expected of any theory – coherence and
internal consistency, for example – and the same goes for a theory
of art.
Not everyone accepts Gaut’s first two adequacy conditions just
as formulated. Some play down intuitions in favour of facts about
practices. As Carroll puts it, ‘a comprehensive theory of art must
accommodate the facts as [the theorist] finds them revealed in our
practices’ (, ). This is consistent with Gaut’s first condition
if intuitions are constitutive of the practices Carroll has in mind,
but not if intuitions might fail to track the relevant facts about the
relevant practices. In that case, well designed empirical studies of
artistic practices are needed to provide the data against which to
test theories of art. And in that case, the normative adequacy of a
theory will consist in its setting straight practices that have gone
off the rails by explaining why they go off the rails.
The distinction between testing the extensional and normative
adequacy of theories against intuitions and facts about practices is
important, but it does not help navigate the impasse between
54
traditional and genetic theories of art. Those whose intuitions
count the hard cases as art endorse those practices of the art world
in which the hard cases are treated as art. Those whose intuitions
balk at the hard cases either frown on those practices and
advocate their reform or maintain that they have been
misunderstood.
More to the point is disagreement about what relative weight to
give to each of Gaut’s three conditions. The first two conditions go
hand in hand but a theory that does well by those conditions may
have poor heuristic utility and a theory high in heuristic utility
might not measure up to our intuitions or practices. Gaut puts
greatest weight on the first condition; others put greater weight
on the heuristic utility condition. Zangwill loudly complains that
philosophers, being wracked with feelings of extensional
inadequacy, make extensional adequacy their God and he
recommends that a theory of X should explain ‘much else that we
independently believe about X things‘ (c, ). Forced to
choose between extensional and normative adequacy on one hand
and heuristic utility on the other, we should choose the latter.
Traditional and genetic theories face off over extensional
adequacy. Some intuitions and practices favour traditional
theories; some favour genetic theories. Moreover, each stance can
make a case for normative adequacy because each can whip up an
error theory of the other. The quick recipe is simply to accuse the
erroneous theory of taking a contingent feature of art to be
essential to being a work of art. It is common ground that most
works of art serve aesthetic functions, as it is common ground that
they are made in special circumstances. Geneticists diagnose
traditionalist intuitions as wrongly essentializing the aesthetic (or
something like it) and they distinguish aesthetic practices from art
practices. For their part, traditionalists take geneticist intuitions to
wrongly essentialize provenance, as would practices that make
nothing but provenance necessary for art status.
In the circumstances, criteria for making a good choice between
the stances must be neutral on the hard cases. Neutrality is not to
be found in considerations of extensional and normative
adequacy. Putting the point another way, there is no reason to
discount the real possibility that intuitions about the hard cases
55
are theory laden, and so too are the relevant practices. There is
reason to suspect that the theories represent – and do not
adjudicate –differences over the hard cases. That is an impasse.
Next up, heuristic utility. Zangwill’s idea is that a theory of art
should set the stage to explain ‘the fact that we value and desire
the making and the consuming of art’ (c, ). Traditional
theories of art are often crafted to explain ‘the value and
importance of art’ (Davies , ). That is, individual works of
art have more or less value and a theory of art might ground
principles that say what it is for value to accrue to any given
artwork. Thus one might prefer a theory of art if it determines
these principles. Others insist on a similar tie between art and the
aesthetic, which they take to favour aesthetic theories of art
(Beardsley , –).
The trouble is that this criterion of theory choice is not
common ground between the traditional and genetic stances. It
favours traditional theories and traditionalists favour it; it
disfavours genetic theories and genetic theories reject it in turn.
Insisting that a theory of art should solve the mystery of art’s
value, Beardsley touts his own theory for implying that ‘it is good
for us to experience, at least occasionally and to a degree seldom
made possible except by artworks, the immediate sense (say) of
inclusive self-integration and complex harmony with phenomenal
objects’ (, ). Dickie, like others defending genetic theories,
agree that we need to explain what it is for works of art to have
value, but he denies that this explanation must be grounded in a
theory of art (Dickie ). As Davies puts it, we should not
assume that ‘a successful definition of art should account for the
place of art in our lives – that will be a separate matter’ (, ).
All that follows from the fact that we value and desire the making
and consuming of art is that there is more to a complete
understanding of art than can be extracted from a theory of art
(Davies , ).
A dramatic illustration of the problem is ready to be extracted
from Beardley’s memorable tirade against genetic theories of art:
To classify [the hard cases] as artworks just because they make
comments on art would be to classify a lot of dull and
56
sometimes unintelligible magazine articles and newspaper
reviews as artworks, and where is the advantage of that? To
classify them as artworks just because they are exhibited is, to
my mind, intellectually spineless, and it results in classifying
the exhibits at commercial expositions, science museums, stamp
clubs, and World’s Fairs as artworks. Where is the advantage
of that? To classify them as artworks just because they are
called art by those who are called artists because they make
things they call art is not to classify at all, but to think in
circles. Perhaps these objects deserve a special name, but not
the name of art. The distinction between objects that do and
objects that do not enter into artistic activities by reason of
their connection with the aesthetic interest is still vital to
preserve, and no other word than ‘art’ is as suitable to mark it
(, ???).
In this passage Beardsley makes extensional adequacy answerable
to ‘advantage’ and thus faults the extensional implications of
(some caricatures of) genetic theories of art. The reply from the
opposition? It is enough to know what makes makes an item a
work of art. Other matters are important, but they are
independent agenda items.
There is no reason to rule out the suspicion that traditional and
genetic theories of art () pump different intuitions about the hard
cases and () endorse different criteria of theory choice, where ()
results from (). Again, that is an impasse.
What is left? Only the general virtues to be expected of any
philosophical theory of any phenomenon – virtues like coherence
and internal consistency. Plenty of effort has already gone into
inspecting the details of existing theories for such traits, or their
absence. None of this effort rules out either stance, even if it rules
out some specific theories within each stance. In the first place, the
stances are extremely abstract. No theory knocked off the path to
general theoretical virtue just because it analyzes a phenomenon
in terms of exhibited features or genetic features. There are
perfectly decent traditional and genetic (e.g. causal) theories of all
kinds of phenomena. Moreover, it is important to remember that
perfectly decent theories may be trivial or non-trivial, reductive
57
or non-reductive, disjunctive or non-disjunctive. Many traditional
theories are reductive and traditionalists tend to complain that
genetic theories are often non-reductive – that is, circular. Not
surprisingly, geneticists with non-reductive theories assert back
that a non-reductive theory is just what the doctor ordered. They
are right this far: there are perfectly decent non-reductive
theories. For example, an argument is a set of premises and
conclusions, where a premise is the part of the set from which the
conclusion is inferred and the conclusion is the part inferred from
the premises (Yanal , ???).
Again, it is an impasse if traditional and genetic theories of art
() pump different intuitions about the hard cases and () insist
that theories of art have different general theoretical traits, where
() is is a consequence of ().
Unlike a dilemma, an impasse is often invisible to those it
ensnares. Those who cherish the intuitions driving their thinking
about art are as likely as not to shrug off the diagnosis that they
are ensnared in an impasse. They naturally believe that they have
dealt with the hard cases as befits the hard cases, whether they
rule them in or out of the domain of art works. What is needed
now is a way to contend effectively with the hard cases without
slighting the intuitions that divide opinion on them.
The Informativeness Challenge
The impasse between genetic and traditional theories of art is most
prominently represented as a collision over the hard cases. The
collision is not epistemic – it does not spring from ignorance about
whether the hard cases are or are not works of art. Rather, it
involves a dispute about what makes anything a work of art,
when it is a work of art, and the hard cases serve as test cases.
They raise the question, what makes anything art if that is (not)
art? The buck passing theory proposes an answer, namely that,
x is a work of art = x is a work of K, where K is an art.
This theory is methodologically informative, advising that any
problem whose solution we seek in a theory of art we should
actually seek elsewhere – either in a theory of the arts or in
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theories of the individual arts. Since the hard cases represent a
problem to be solved by a theory of art, the buck passing theory
proposes to solve it by bouncing it to these other theories. Thus
the theory is a success if it copes with the hard cases in a way that
cashiers buck stopping theories of art. It cashiers buck stopping
theories of art if theories of the individual arts are good tools for
coming to grips with the hard cases. Here is why they are good
tools for coming to grips with the hard cases.
To begin with, every hard case for theories of art is just as
much a hard case for a theory of one or more art forms. Consider
Duchamp’s Fountain. Its status as a hard case is represented in the
proposition that,
. Fountain is a work of art.
Fountain is a hard case because what makes () true or false is a
flashpoint for theories of art. However, if Fountain is a work of art,
then we may ask what kind of work it is. Patently not a poem, a
movie, or a tea ceremony. When we ask if Fountain is art, we are
not open to entertaining the claim that it is a dance or a
symphony. Presumably,
. if Fountain is art then it is a sculpture.
At least, that is what the critical and historical record seems to
indicate. It follows from () and () that,
. Fountain is a sculpture.
Whether () is true or false is a flashpoint for theories of sculpture.
What, after all, makes an item a work of sculpture, if Fountain is a
sculpture? Indeed, () is if anything more puzzling than ().
Likewise consider this analogous triad:
. ’” is a work of art,
. if ’” is a work of art then it is a work of music,
. ’” is a work of music.
Again, () puts in play the question of what makes the item a work
of art whereas () puts in play the question of what makes it a
59
work of music. Well might one ask what makes an item a work of
music if a few minutes of not playing a piano can be a work of
music. Is it genuinely an option to fret about what does or does
not make ’” a work of art and remain sanguine about what
does or does not make it a work of music?
No wonder that collisions between theories of art that centre on
() neatly correspond with collisions between theories of sculpture
and music that centre on (). Anyone who favours a genetic
theory of art that explains what makes () true will likely favour a
genetic theory of sculpture or music that explains what makes ()
true, and anyone who favours a traditional theory of art that
explains what makes () false will likely favour a traditional
theory of sculpture or music that explains what makes () false.
Why would the provenance of Fountain make it art if its aesthetic
features make it a sculpture? Why endorse an aesthetic theory of
art in conjunction with a genetic theory of music?
This neat correspondence explains why, when it comes to the
hard cases, the action tends to gravitate towards theories of art.
Disputes centred on () naturally escalate into disputes centred on
(), given () as leverage to threaten modus tollens. If ’” is not a
work of music because it lacks the aesthetic or other exhibited
features that would make it one, then it is not a work of art, given
that it is a work of art only if it is a work of music. The
traditionalist gauntlet being thus flung, the battle over theories of
art is begun.
Yet the same correspondence allows the tables to be turned.
Baffled by Fountain or ’”, some reach for genetic theories that
rule them in as works of art and others reach for traditional
theories that rule them out. However, we might wonder instead: if
Fountain is sculpture then what makes anything sculpture? and if
’” is music then what makes anything music? Centring
attention on () rather than () represents the hard cases as hard
cases. In this regard Fountain and ’” are nothing special.
Christo’s wraps, Ben Vautier’s ‘Regardez moi cela suffit je suis art’,
examples of Augusto Boal’s ‘theatre of the invisible’, and bp
nichols’s ‘Cold Mountain’ are hard cases for theories of art.
Christo’s wraps are hard cases for a theory of landscape
architecture, Vautier’s intervention is a hard case for a theory of
60
painting, invisible plays are hard cases for a theory of theatre, and
‘Cold Mountain’ is a hard case for a theory of poetry. So the first
point is that the hard cases are hard cases just as much for theories
of the art forms as they are for theories of art.
The second point is that once theories of the art forms have
settled what they are equipped to settle with respect to the hard
cases, they leave nothing to be settled a theory of art. If it is
settled by a theory of sculpture what makes Fountain a sculpture
and it is settled by a theory of music what makes ’” a piece of
music, then a theory of art has nothing to add on the score. The
same goes (assuming () is true) if it is settled by a theory of
sculpture that Fountain lacks what it takes to be a sculpture and it
is settled by a theory of music that ’” lacks what it takes to be
a work of music.
The reason is that the fact that an item is a work in an art form
implies that it is a work of art. As we saw in Chapter , theories of
the individual arts are under orders to answer the coffee mug
objection. Supposing that ceramics is an art, surely the coffee mug
on my desk is no work of art, though it is ceramic. Similarly, if
architecture is the art of building then my garden shed is a work
of art… but, alas, my garden shed is no work of art. What follows
is that a theory of each art must distinguish works in the art from
items in associated media. A theory of ceramic art must
distinguish between a piece of bizen ware and my coffee mug. A
theory of architecture (the art of building) must distinguish
between Santiago Calatrava’s Puente del Alamillo in Seville on one
hand and my garden shed on the other. No theory is a theory of
an art form if it allows that () can be true when () is false.
What if () is true and () is false? This scenario would seem to
call in a buck stopping theory of art. If a theory of sculpture
implies that Fountain does not have what it takes to be a sculpture
and yet Fountain is a work of art, then surely we need a theory of
art to tell us what makes it a work of art?
Not quite. Asserting () and denying () is logically inconsistent
with (). In light of how it is presented in the art galleries and the
history books, the following conditional might seem to be true:
Fountain is a sculpture, if it is a work of art. However, this
conditional might well be false. The buck-passing theory of art
61
conjoined with () and the denial of () simply implies that
Fountain belongs to some art form other than sculpture. To deal
with Fountain in this scenario is to refer it to a theory of the art
form it actually belongs to (not sculpture).
The first point was that the hard cases for theories of art are
just as much hard cases for theories of the art forms. The second
point is that, once it has settled what makes a hard case a work in
the relevant art form, a theory of that art form leaves nothing for a
theory of art to settle. A third point is that the workload is
asymmetrically distributed across theories of the several art forms,
on one hand, and buck stopping theories of art, on the other. The
former have rosier prospects than the latter. That is also good
news for a buck passing theory of art.
One might think that the coffee mug objection imposes a
heavier burden on theories of the arts than on buck stopping
theories of art. Not so. A theory of each art form must imply a
distinction between works in that art form and items in associated
media, but a buck stopping theory of art must imply the same
distinction. Moreover, it is subject to a rather weighty constraint
that individual theories of the arts are free to ignore. Buck
stopping theories of art must draw the distinction uniformly, so
that what distinguishes Calatrava’s bridge from my garden shed
also distinguishes bizen ware from Walmart ware. By contrast,
theories of the arts need not take a uniform approach, as long as
they pair up with a buck passing theory of art. First, correct
theories of some art forms might be traditional while correct
theories of other arts are genetic. Maybe what makes an item a
work of music is just its formal beauty even though the right
provenance is all that it takes for some texts to be literary works.
Second, traditional theories of music and painting need not refer
to exhibited features of the same kind. Maybe part of what makes
an item a painting is its representational character whereas what
makes an item a work of music is nothing but its formal beauty.
Traditional theories of some art forms are also more promising
than a traditional theory of art. The latter posits exhibited features
shared by ‘Duppy Conqueror’ and ‘Ash Wednesday’, but not by a
Rangers game or a window display at Macy’s. A dance has it, but
not an ice dance; a ballet has it, but not a gymnastics routine; The
62
Picture of Dorian Grey has it, but not Richard Ellman’s biography
of Oscar Wilde. Finding the exhibited features is a punishing
prospect, and these are not even hard cases. By contrast, the buck
passing theory of art sets a traditional theory of music free to
characterize the what makes an item music in specifically musical
terms. Recall Hanslick’s account of musical works as realizing
‘specifically musical kind of beauty’ through ‘tonally moving
forms’ ([], ???).
Finally, buck stopping theories of art are entangled in an
impasse, and theories entangled in an impasse do not have good
prospects, all else being equal. Might the buck passing theory of
art do nothing more than relocate the impasse in theories of the
arts? Possibly, but there is reason to be optimistic. Patchwork
theories typically face less intractable challenges than grand
unifying theories since they can tap a richer store of undisputed
facts specific to their patch to overcome disagreement. It is also
inherently unlikely that every theory of every single art form will
end up in impasse (that would indicate a wilful bloodymindedness that no amount of philosophy could hope to cure).
Admittedly, these are barely principled reasons for optimism.
Such a reason does emerge, though, by addressing a challenge to
the viability of the buck passing theory of art.
The Viability Challenge
The best case to be made for the buck passing theory of art is that
it is informative and viable. If theories of art are set the task of
coming to grips with the hard cases and if the buck passing theory
of art performs this task as expected, it is informative.
Nevertheless, its being informative counts for little unless it is
viable, and there is an objection to its viability. As it happens, an
answer to this challenge touches on the theory’s informativeness.
The challenge is simple but potent. The buck passing theory of
art implies the biconditional:
x is a work of art if and only if x is a work of K, where K is an
art.
63
Is it true that belonging to an art form is a necessary condition on
being a work of art? Is it true that every work of art belongs to
some art form? Are none of them free agents? As we have seen, it
is possible that in the following triad () is true and () is false, so
long as () is also false:
. Fountain is a work of art,
. if Fountain is art then it is a sculpture,
. Fountain is a sculpture.
The buck passing theory of art says that if () is true and () is
false, then Fountain is a work in some art form other than
sculpture. But is it true that every work of art belongs to some art
form and none is a free agent?
If some are free agents, the buck passing theory of art is not
viable. The free agents are counterexamples of the most lethal
kind. Not only is the above biconditional false, but the
counterexample would call specifically for a buck stopping theory
of art. Suppose that Fountain is a free agent – a work of art that
belongs to no art form. It follows that no theory of any of the arts
will state what makes it a work in that art and no theory of any art
will imply that it has what it takes to be a work of art. So comes to
mind the question what makes it a work of art. No theory of any
of the arts can supply the answer. We need a buck-stopping
theory of art.
To make matters worse, there is historical evidence of free
agency. One of the standard stories told about the s has it that
some art of this era broke free of the conventions, media,
traditions, institutional frameworks, or whatever other fetters tied
works of art to forms of art. It ‘dematerialized’ (Lippard ).
For the sake of the buck passing theory of art there can be no
free agents. One strategy is to insist on this. It is what the theory
implies and the fact that the theory is worth having on other
grounds is reason enough to accept the implication. Free agency is
merely apparent. However, this strategy may be held in reserve as
a fallback since there is good reason to doubt that free agency is
anything but a mirage.
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Four responses can be made to the challenge posed by an
alleged free agent. The first admits that no theory of any art form
accepts the item, but find that it is not, upon closer examination, a
work of art. The second admits that the item is indeed a work of
art, but finds that, upon closer examination, a theory of a familiar
art form admits it. Many works can be dealt with in one of these
two ways: doing so will help to make sense of these works for
what they are. However, not all works get a fair shake if dealt
with in one of these ways. A third response to a candidate for free
agency admits that the item in question is a work of art and
proposes that it also pioneers a new art form. The number of the
arts continually grows, notable recent additions being
photography, film, video, computer art, and conceptual art. The
fourth response is to throw in the towel: a that no theory of any
art form admits the work and yet it is a work of art.
Only the fourth response defeats the buck passing theory of
art, and it is not mandatory for any case. Any reason we have to
say that an item is an art work that does not belong to any art
form is reason to say that it pioneers a new art form. Or, more
weakly, the fact that a work belongs to no familiar art form and
yet is a work of art is reason enough to project a new art form.
The move is not ad hoc. The hypothesis that an alleged free
rider belongs to one or more pioneering art forms allows us to to
understand it in its own terms, as a works of art that pushes the
boundaries, the standard story notwithstanding. Suppose that a
theory of theatre implies that a work of ‘invisible theatre’ is not
theatre and the work finds no safe harbour with any other known
art form. This is a fruitful discovery. It does not follow that the
work is not art, and if the work is art then it follows from that fact
together with the buck passing theory that the work pioneers a
new art form. The innovations of the avant-garde are represented
on this hypothesis as innovations. Needless to say, the proof of an
abductive argument like this lies in the details. These must await
Chapter .
That theories of art are caught in an impasse does not impeach any
particular theory of art, whether it be traditional or genetic. The
impasse is methodological, not probative. But it does raise the
65
question, what if we do not look to theories of art to cope with the
hard cases? What if we look to a theory of the arts and theories of
the art forms instead? There is reason to think that looking in that
direction will pay off. That is reason in favour of the buck passing
theory of art.

Art in Culture
That art is a cultural phenomenon is a platitude, or rather a bundle
of them. A culture is often defined in part as an entity having a
tradition of art; its art is part of what makes it distinctive and
indeed valuable; a healthy art scene relies on a cultural
infrastructure; and practices of making and using works of art are
transmitted from one generation to another through learning.
Such banalities ring true even on the buck passing theory of art.
Yet truth be told, the theory does not assign art a robust role in
the cultural explanations proffered by anthropologists,
sociologists, psychologists, historians, or other students of culture.
No matter. This is as it should be.
Art Radar
The starting point in defence of this extraordinary thesis is a
distinction that has so far been skirted – a distinction between art
on one hand and the concept of art on the other. The hard cases
are typically seen as challenges both to the concept of art and to
theories of art, for they are typically seen as challenges to the
former because they are challenges to the latter.
The Iliad, Peiro della Francesca’s Annunciation, the Kailasanatha
Temple at Ellora, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot,’ an Eagle and Raven
Dance at Skidegate: texts, objects, and performances like these are
works of art. A theory of art is a proposition that states what
features of these and other art works make them works of art.
Some hold that there is no such proposition, no theory of art.
Others, as we have seen, offer theories of art – traditional theories,
genetic theories, and the buck passing theory.
At the same time, many folk have a concept of art, for this
concept has been widespread for at least a century across the
globe and across socioeconomic groups. The consensus in
psychology and philosophy is that concepts are mental
representations (see Margolis and Laurence ). The consensus
is not total. Some argue that concepts are abstract objects, such as
Fregean senses (e.g. Peacock ). Others argue that concepts are
nothing more than abilities manifest in the performance of
67
discrimination or inference tasks – for example, a concept of a
sycamore might be an ability to reliably discriminate sycamores
from non-sycamores (e.g. Dummett ). Luckily, a foray into
theories of concepts is not needed. Nobody writing on the ‘what is
art?’ question denies that in normal circumstances a concept of art
is attributable to a thinker in order to explain her thinking and
reasoning about art works and her detecting them in her
environment. This much is neutral between theories of concepts.
Works like Fountain and ’” are test cases for theories of art
because they focus the mind on the question of what makes
something a work of art. What makes something a work of art if
Fountain is, contrary to certain appearances, a work of art? Or if it
is not a work of art, contrary to certain other appearances? Good
questions! They are not, however, the same question as this: is
Fountain a work of art? Or this: by what marks can one tell
whether Fountain is a work of art? Or indeed: what facts about
Fountain would justify the belief that it is a work of art? It is no
news that the hard cases raise these and similar questions in
spades. For sake of simplicity, set aside questions with epistemic
elements and consider only those questions raised by the hard
cases that probe the concept of art as it is implicated in reasoning
about art works and detecting them in her environment.
The point or purpose of a concept of art is to enable us to
reason about and detect works of art. Beardsley’s remark that an
answer to the ‘what is art?’ question is a practical necessity to
legislators and administrators has been echoed repeatedly. Carroll
stresses in his philosophy of art textbook that,
without some sense of how to classify certain objects and
performances as artworks, the Museum of Modern Art
wouldn’t know what to collect, the National Endowment for
the Arts wouldn’t know to whom to give money…. Nor even…
would economists know how to evaluate empirical claims like
‘Art is a significant component of the financial well-being of
New York City’ (, –).
An answer to the ‘what is art?’ question that serves the purposes
mentioned by Beardsley and Carroll is an explication of the
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structure of a concept of art. Carroll goes on to say that ‘it is the
task of the analytic philosophy of art to make sure that [our
handle on the concept of art] is a sturdy one by reflecting on the
concept of art and articulating its elements in as precise a manner
as possible’ (, ).
If a concept of art is implicated in reasoning and detection then
its being put under stress by hard cases is likely to show up in
errors of critical reasoning or egregious false positives and false
negatives in detecting works of art in the environment. The
received story is that contemporary art viewers evidence both
signs of stress. Folk are presented with an item – a urinal or about
four and a half minutes of no piano being played – and they
cannot tell that they are presented with works of art. When they
learn that these are works of art, they suspect that they no longer
know what to look for in a work of art. If we are to believe the
endless stream of New Yorker cartoons, they are left wondering
whether the fire extinguisher in the corner of the gallery is a work
of art.
Back in , William Kennick set a test for having the concept
of art: a thinker has a concept of art just in case he or she mostly
succeeds when sent into a warehouse under orders to bring out all
and only works of art (, –). A few years later, having
absorbed the lesson of Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, Danto described a
fictional Testadura, who fails the warehouse test. Sent into the
warehouse, Testadura mistakes art for non-art: he leaves behind
works like Fountain, Brillo Boxes, and ’”. Danto’s point is that
we are all, now, Testaduras. We cannot tell art from non-art. As a
result, we make blunders in reasoning about art – the cliché is the
gallery goer’s outburst that ‘my little Tommy could do this!’
When made aware that our concept of art has broken down, we
wonder if we know what we mean by ‘art’.
At any rate, it has gone without question that the hard cases
challenge the concept of art. So, then, what it is about this concept
that makes it vulnerable to challenge from such quarters? A
widely accepted diagnosis has it that the concept of art has been
implemented in a way that makes an implicit commitment to one
or more inadequate theories of art. The concept naturally fails if
these theories are wrong about what look for in detecting works of
69
art. For example, a concept of art that makes an implicit
commitment to the imitation theory sets you up to detect works of
art by detecting imitations of beauty in nature, but a great many
works of art do not imitate beauty in nature, and so the concept
breaks down. The pattern repeats as each new theory of art
spreads through the folk, updating their concept of art, only to
find itself outflanked by a new generation of hard cases. The
upshot is a nice explanation of the considerable bafflement
experienced by art audiences for the last century.
This hypothesis, that the hard cases challenge the folk concept
of art because it makes implicit commitments to inadequate
theories of art, can be taken to support the proposition that an
adequate theory of art is one implicit in a folk concept of art that
is immune to challenges from hard cases. If the hard cases
challenge the folk concept of art because it makes implicit
commitment to an inadequate theory of art, then it seems
reasonable to think that a good theory of art will be one that is
implicit in a stable folk concept of art. This reasoning assumes that
a theory of art results from an analysis of the folk concept of art – an assumption that is accepted explicitly or implicitly by many
contributors to the ‘what is art?’ literature (Meskin , –).
Dickie writes that a theory of art attempts to ‘make clear to us in a
self-conscious and explicit way what we already in some sense
know’ (Dickie , ). As Stecker puts it, a correct theory of art
states the features ‘that invariably inform the classifications of
those who understand the meaning of “art”’ (, ).
Traditional and genetic theories of art can be adapted to answer
the call in somewhat different ways. Traditional theories draw a
line around a cluster of exhibited features which reliably mark
works of art. Genetic theories scrub that line and send us looking
for facts about provenance to detect works of art.
The prospects for putting the buck passing theory of art to
work in this way are much less rosy. It lacks the resources to ease
the challenge of the hard cases if what makes the hard cases hard
is that they fly below the art work detection radar. Promulgating
the theory that a work of art is a work in one of the arts is hardly
likely to increase the range or signal strength of the detection
mechanism. It adds nothing to what those who have a concept of
70
art already know. That is what makes it a buck passing theory of
art.
Here is an argument against the buck passing theory of art. If
the hard cases challenge the folk concept of art then an adequate
theory of art is one that implements a stable folk concept of art –
that is, one left undisturbed by hard cases. The hard cases do
challenge the folk concept of art, so an adequate theory of art is
one that is implicit in a folk stable concept of art. The buck
passing theory of art is a theory of art but it is not implemented in
a stable folk concept of art, so the buck passing theory of art is
inadequate.
If the buck passing theory of art is adequate, then one or more
of the premises of this argument is false. In fact, two are false. The
first is the empirical hypothesis that the hard cases challenge the
concept of art. The evidence for this hypothesis is that the hard
cases provoke considerable bafflement, but there is another
explanation of this fact.
The story of Testadura is not only a fiction; it is a false one. We
are not one bit like Testadura. In standard circumstances, anyone
minimally schooled in art (even just pre-twentieth century art) can
reliably tell art from non-art. Nobody is perfect, stuff happens,
and the concept of art is vague (along with most of our other
concepts). That said, Duchamp’s Fountain is not routinely or
systematically taken for an ordinary urinal, and ’” is not
routinely or systematically taken for an unscheduled intermission.
The reference to ‘standard circumstances’ is the key. Nobody has
any trouble recognizing (purported) works of art in museums or
concert halls – set in display cases or ‘performed’ by people sitting
at pianos. In circumstances such as these, Fountain and ’” are
no less obviously marked out for us as works of art than Winged
Victory or The Magic Flute.
In general, recognizing anything depends on context. I can tell
red from orange in standard lighting conditions, not any lighting
conditions. I can recognize my keys in part because I know what
they look like and also because they are in the dish in the front
hall. Placing a red item in a strange light may subvert my ability
to detect its colour, and I cannot recognize my keys in a lineup of
similar keys. Likewise, placed in context, the urinal or four and a
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half minutes of not playing the piano come across as works of art.
Special conditions, like Kennick’s warehouse, do subvert art
detection, but that is not surprising. Many concepts are
confounded in some conditions.
A special feature of art drives the point home. One can make a
work of art whose detection requires picking up on contextual
cues, and a great deal of recent art plays on context in this way.
According to one observer, much contemporary art ‘is rooted in
an anti-museum attitude… it is museums and art galleries that are
the primary locus for such art… [which] needs an institutional
context to be seen’ (Rush , ). Moreover, it is fair game to
rely on expert advice in one’s detection tasks. Placing an item on a
plinth or labelling it ‘Ming Dynasty’ communicates expert advice
that aids art detection.
Nevertheless, the hard cases do induce bafflement. They
challenge folk concepts of the arts. Nobody attending a
performance of ’” doubts that they are to take the performance
as art. That is what they know for sure and will bet money on.
After all, what else could be going on? The trouble is that they are
told that it is music, though they detect music by listening for
(something like) rhythmically and tonically patterned sound. If
’” is a work of music, then it puts pressure on the concept of a
musical work as (something like) rhythmically and tonically
patterned sound.
Concepts of art forms such as music, dance, and painting are
not in quite the same boat as the concept of art, for context and
the advice of experts play a lesser role in detecting items in at least
some art forms. So the hypothesis is that bafflement induced by a
hard case is not to be understood as a challenge to a concept of art
but rather as a challenge to a concept of some art form.
As ever, more needs to be said in defence of this hypothesis –
see Chapter . Note for now that the hypothesis is plausible
enough to compete with the received story, which finds its
archetype in the Tale of Testadura. And that is enough to weaken
the argument against the buck passing theory of art.
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Theories and Concepts of Art
The freely admitted fact that the buck passing theory of art is not
much use for those interested in the concept of art can be turned
against the theory, given the assumption that if the hard cases
challenge the concept of art then an adequate theory of art is one
that is implicit in a stable concept of art. This assumption is
toothless unless the hard cases challenge the concept of art. Since
they do not, the assumption is toothless. Even so, the assumption
is not only toothless; it is also false.
Suppose the argument in the previous section fails and the hard
cases are best understood as challenging the concept of art (and
not merely some art form concepts). Also suppose that the concept
of art is vulnerable to this challenge because it makes implicit
commitment to an inadequate theory of art. What follows directly
from this is that it would be a nice to upgrade the concept of art
by severing its allegiance to the inadequate theories. It does not
follow that it must be joined in a new allegiance with a correct
theory of art. In general, having a concept of a kind does not
imply any theoretical commitments. There is nothing special about
the concept of art. A stable concept of art need not make an
implicit commitment to any theory of art whatsoever.
Under the influence of a reading of Wittgenstein, Weitz ()
and Kennick () reason that there is no correct, non-trivial
theory of art, but the folk have a concept of art, so having a
concept of art does not involve a theory of art. Instead family
resemblances among works of art are the means by which they are
recognized as works of art. A statement of such family
resemblances among works of art is not a theory of art. After all,
the resemblances that enable us to recognize individuals as
belonging to the same (biological) family do not make them
members of the same family.
More recently, Noël Carroll () has coupled agnosticism
about whether there is a correct theory of art with a nontheoretical account of art detection (see also Dean ). Carroll
argues that the hard cases are philosophically interesting because
they show that theories of art are useful in detecting art (,
-). He proposes instead that we detect works of art ‘by
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means of historical narratives which connect contested candidates
to art history in a way that discloses that the mutations in
question are part of the evolving species of art’ (, ). These
narratives relate ‘how [a hard case] came to be produced as an
intelligible response to an antecedently acknowledged arthistorical situation’ (, ).
It is ultimately an empirical question whether the concept of art
is implicitly theoretical or whether it works by non-theoretical
means such as family resemblances, prototypes, or narratives.
Perhaps the concept of art is a kludge or a bag of tricks
comprising a number of mechanisms which together enable us
folk to detect works of art with an acceptable degree of reliability
in ecologically realistic circumstances – that is, in the actual
world. The kludge might be counterfactually fragile: it could
break down were it tried out in non-actual circumstances. The
same goes for most perfectly good concepts.
The deeper point is that having a stable concept of a kind is
consistent with considerable, indeed massive, ignorance about the
nature of the kind (Putnam ). Users of a concept of art may
take advantage of the fact that works of art in their environment
often have certain features – exhibited features, features of
provenance, contextual features – in order to detect them reliably.
Contextual features are especially helpful in detecting works of art
in view of the fact that at least since the early modern period a
great of art is presented in venues that have been created for the
purpose of presenting works of art – theatres and concert halls, art
galleries, and literary magazines, for example. As to the nature of
art… they defer to the experts.
Stecker correctly points out that the fact that the folk concept
of art is not implicitly theoretical does not mean that we may not
use a theory of art to alleviate some conceptual bafflement (Stecker
, ). A theory of art plugged into an upgraded concept of art
might be the cure the we seek. By the same token, the fact that
some theory might alleviate some conceptual bafflement does not
imply that a theory of art fails unless it does so. As we have seen,
that implication requires the assumption that theories of art are
wrought by analysis of the folk concept of art. That is, it requires
the claim that an adequate theory of art is one that is implicit in a
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stable folk concept of art. It should be clear now that this is not a
claim to be assumed lightly.
Denying the claim does not imply that art is a natural kind. In
particular, it is consistent with what nobody denies, that if there
are any features that make items works of art, some of them are
response-dependent. There would be no works of art without
agents who treat them in certain ways. The choice is not to find
the nature of art either to be implicit in the folk concept of art or
in a concept of art that figures in the hypotheses and explanations
of the natural sciences. That is a false dichotomy. Art is not a
natural kind: it does not figure in the hypotheses and explanations
of the natural sciences. But neither must the nature of art be
implicit in a folk concept of art.
What is left? The third option is that the place to look for the
nature of art is in the hypotheses and explanations of the social
sciences, which include history as well as psychology,
anthropology, sociology, and economics (Moravcsik , Dickie
). These are sometimes ‘debunking’ hypotheses that are
inconsistent with theories implicit in folk concepts (Lopes
forthcoming). They open up a gap between the self-understanding
expressible in folk terms and the self-understanding that can be
won through scientific discovery. Such a gap does not require that
folks concepts be set against natural kind concepts: folk concepts
need only be set against the concepts implicated in expert
intellectual labour. It is to these expert labourers that we folk
defer when it comes to what makes any item a work of art.
In his classic paper on theories of art, Timothy Binkley wrote
that ‘what counts as a work of art must be discovered by
examining the practice of art’ (, ). Carroll agrees that ‘as a
philosopher of a practice, one must go where the practice
does’ (, ). Such injunctions are common. Taking them
seriously means looking to how social science deploys the concept
of art.
The buck passing theory of art is intended as a game changer.
Game changers are hard to believe: they are correct only if we are
making fundamental errors. This was expressed in an argument
against the buck passing theory of art. As this argument goes, if
the hard cases challenge the folk concept of art then an adequate
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theory of art is one that is implicit in a stable folk concept of art,
so the buck passing theory of art is inadequate because the hard
cases do challenge the folk concept of art and the buck passing
theory of art is no help in stabilizing the folk concept of art. One
error in this argument is that the hard cases do not challenge the
folk concept of art. Another was in thinking that an adequate
theory of art must be implicit in a stable folk concept of art.
Art in Cultural Explanation
This chapter opened with the admission that the buck passing
theory of art is not much use to social science, though it was
quickly added that the admission is immaterial because a theory of
art should not assign to art a robust role in cultural explanations.
Yet the previous section concludes that social scientific hypotheses
and explanations are the source for a theory of art. The tension is
only apparent.
Art and the concept of art – each of these phenomena may be
studied theoretically or empirically. One might seek a theory of art
stating what features that make any item a work of art, or one
might study the features that art works actually have among the
Dene or eighteenth-century Parisians. One might seek an account
of what it is for any concept to be a concept of art, or one might
study the features by means of which art works are stereotyped
by the Baule or Hegelian philosophers.
Beardsley urged that a theory of art ‘should be of the greatest
possible utility to enquirers in other fields besides aesthetics –
fields to which aesthetics itself should (sometimes) be thought of
as a support and underpinning’ (, ). Fans of genetic
theories of art may and do concur (e.g. Dickie , –). It
seems a sentiment hard to deny that theories of X should be useful
to those who study X. Why should art prove an exception?
Consider that Beardsley goes on to write that ‘it stands to reason
that someone starting out to write a history of (visual) art would
want to have a reasonably definite idea of what it is he is writing a
history of’ (, ). The parentheses around ‘visual’ represent a
fudge. Drop them and the claim is that a historian of visual art
would want to know the nature of visual art. But would he want
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to know the nature of art? The nature of music, epic poetry, and
ballet lie beyond his field of expertise. Now try dropping the
‘visual’, as the parentheses suggest. Presumably the historian who
would want to know the nature of art is the historian of art as a
whole (not just visual art). There is no such beast.
The reason is that, keeping in mind that art is one thing and the
concept of art is another, art as a whole is not the object of inquiry
in any social science. That is, there are no serious psychological,
anthropological, sociological, or historical hypotheses about all
and only works of art. There are many serious hypotheses about
images, works of music, novels, and works in other art forms, as
there are about works in genres like melodrama and the epic and
styles like the Baroque and post-modernism. None of these
hypotheses are even implicitly about all art in the sense that they
are to be tested against any art work – a sociological finding about
the social function of musical works among American teenagers is
not weakened by the fact that oil paintings do not have the same
function: when the topic is music, it is not visual art.
Moreover, any hypotheses about all art works are also
hypotheses about non-art. It is true that making works of art is an
exercise in creativity, but that is not unique to art. The
psychologist Rolf Reber () proposes to explain positive
responses to works of art as the result of processing fluency, but
he takes processing fluency to explain positive responses to nonart too. Karl Marx held that art is epiphenomenal superstructure – but so are many other elements of culture (Eagleton ). Denis
Dutton suggests that works of art are products of sexual selection
– they indicate personal charm (Dutton ). As Dutton admits,
the same goes for pocket handkerchiefs and wittily presented
philosophical arguments.
If ‘art’ is a term in cultural explanations, buck stopping
theories of art predict that some cultural explanations are true of
all and only works of art. The buck passing theory predicts that
what might at first glance appear to be hypotheses about all and
only works of art are actually hypotheses about broader or
narrower kinds. The buck passing theory of art better fits the
data. In the cultural explanation game, every square marked ‘art’
is a shoot leading down to a species of art or a ladder leading up to
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a more generic phenomenon. The concept of art deployed in
cultural explanations requires nothing more than the buck passing
theory of art. That is just to say that references to works of art do
not play a robust role in cultural explanations.
Works of art, being cultural products, are fitting objects of
social scientific inquiry, and so is the concept of art, especially in
so far as it changes over time and varies from one cultural context
to another. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists describe
the concept of art that is deployed in a cultural setting, as does
Kristeller (see Chapter ). Moreover, cultural explanations which
attribute the concept of art to thinkers in a cultural context are
robust in the sense that they fail if the concept of art is replaced
with a concept of a species of art or with a concept of a more
generic phenomenon.
The buck passing theory of art predicts that references to
works of art do not play a robust role in cultural explanations; it is
consistent with the fact that references to the concept of art do
play a robust role in cultural explanations provided that the two
kinds of explanations are decoupled. Are they decoupled?
Much contemporary social science takes the stance that they
are not, and the rationale for this stance is worth pausing over. In
part it derives from an appreciation that it is often fruitful to
attempt to view works of art in a cultural setting from an ‘internal’
perspective, by using the concept of art endemic in the setting.
Taking this perspective may reveal features of art works that
would be missed otherwise. Added to this is a concern that the
only alternative to taking an internal perspective is using a
concept of art from an alien setting, which is potentially distorting
at best and oppressive at worst. The sensitivity is at its highest in
anthropological writing about ‘primitive art’. As the worry is
often expressed, ‘by calling them “works of art” I imply that the
people who make and use these objects have the same or very
similar attitudes and beliefs involved in the English meaning of
“work of art”’ (Blocker , ). So it is commonly held that to
study art in a cultural setting one ought to study art as it is
conceptualized in that setting.
These methodological norms embodied in these reflections are
frequently supported by a claim about the relationship between
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works of art and the concept of art in a cultural setting. The claim
posits a dependence of the former on the latter, and it is most
striking in arguments from the empirical observation that
members of C lack a concept of art to the conclusion that they
have no art:
. members of C have no concept of art,
. there are works of art in C only if members of C have a
concept of art, so
. there are no works of art in C.
Following a discussion of Baule attitudes to their carvings, David
Novitz concludes that the works ‘occupy a very different social
location from the location occupied by works of art in our culture,
and ... as a result of this, it would be at best misleading, at worst
inaccurate, to describe them as works of art’ (, ). The
anthropologist Susan Vogel writes that ‘although Baule art is
important in the Western view of African art, the people who
made and used these objects do not conceive of them as “art”…
“art” in our sense does not exist in Baule villages’ (, ).
Interestingly, philosophers who have rejected the reasoning
from () to () simply reverse its direction, keeping () as the
fulcrum (e.g. Dutton , Davies , Dutton ). They
complain that the criteria for concept attribution assumed in
evidence typically given in support of () – for example, that
members of C have no word in their language synonymous with
‘art’ – are far too stringent. For example, Shakespeare and his
European contemporaries had no word synonymous with ‘art’ so
it follows by the above reasoning that plays like King Lear are not
art works. But they are art works. So they argue instead:
!. there are works of art in C,
. there are works of art in C only if some members of C have a
concept of art, so
!. members of C have a concept of art.
By this reasoning, the presence of art works in C warrants
attributing a concept of art to members of C.
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The arguments from () to () and (!) to (!) represent deep
disagreements with interesting implications (see Lopes a), but
they share () as an assumption. The trouble is that it is hard to
square the robust role of the concept of art in cultural
explanations with the conjunction of () and the buck passing
theory of art. According to that theory, there is art in C if there
are songs in C (songs being works of art). Given (), it follows that
members of C have a concept of art. That is, given (), the fact that
people sing in C is sufficient by itself for attributing a concept of
art to members of C. The buck passing theory ends up trivializing
the concept of art. By contrast, those who reason from (!) to (!)
have buck stopping theories of art which set the bar high enough
for the truth of (!) that (!) is informative. For these theories, () is
not a trap, as it is for the buck passing theory.
Nobody has provided an argument for (), but the following
thought is in the air. Making works of art is a complex business
which could not be conducted by anyone lacking a conception of
what they are up to (Wollheim [], –). This thought
suggests what is probably the best argument to be given for ().
Making a work of art necessarily involves an intention to make a
work of art, but one cannot intend to make an art work unless one
has a concept of art, so any culture with works of art is a culture
whose members have a concept of art.
This ‘argument from intentions’ is unsound. Its second premise,
that one cannot intend to make a work of art unless one has a
concept of art, follows from the plausible principle that one
cannot intend to make an F unless one has a concept of Fs.
However, its first premise, that making a work of art necessarily
involves an intention to make a work of art, is false. Granted that
art-making is a necessarily intentional activity, it does not follow
that works of art are made with the intention to make art. They
might be made with a different intention.
An art work might be art accidentally. Define making
accidentally as follows:
S accidentally makes an F just in case S intends to make a G, an
F is not a G, S fails to make a G, and, in failing to make a G, S
makes an F.
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Intending to make a loaf of bread, I blunder and make a doorstop
instead. Intending to make a whatsit, I blunder and make an art
work instead. I need not have a concept of art that I use in making
my art work.
There is little chance that all the works of art in a cultural
setting, if there are a lot of them, are made accidentally. All else
being equal, the hypothesis that members of the culture intend to
make works of art is to be preferred to the hypothesis that they
output thousands of art works per year purely by accident. To
block accidental art-making, () should be strengthened:
*. there is widespread art-making in C only if some members
of C have a concept of art.
Indeed, (*) better serves the spirit of the arguments from () to ()
and (!) to (!) than does ().
Not all non-intentional making is accidental (Wollheim ,
). A mixture of saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur was apparently
manufactured first for fireworks and was only later adapted for
guns. The early manufacturers of this mixture intended to make
black powder but not gunpowder. By making black powder, they
made gunpowder, for black powder is gunpowder, but intending
to make black powder is not intending to make gunpowder –
intending is an opaque context. Moreover, they did not make
gunpowder accidentally – they did not make it as a byproduct of
bumbling in the process of making black powder. Rather, they
made gunpowder ‘incidentally’:
S makes an F incidentally just in case S intends to make a G, S
does not intend to make an F, S makes a G, and in making a G,
S also makes an F.
When an F is made incidentally, it is an F and a G but it is not
made with an intention that it be an F and it is not made
accidentally.
Black powder is gunpowder, but incidental making does not
require an identity. The Pella are a remote tribe who intentionally
make windows. Since glass has properties that suit it for use in
windows, many Pella windows are made from glass; and since the
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properties that make glass good for windows also make it good for
mirrors, some Pella windows (especially their skyscraper
windows) are mirrors. The reason is not that mirrors are windows
but rather that glass mirrors and glass windows share many
properties in common. Nonetheless, the Pella do not intend to
make mirrors, for they do not have a concept of mirrors; they do
not have a concept of mirrors because they are blind. Pella mirrors
are made incidentally.
Works of art might be made incidentally too. This can happen
in countless ways, of course, but the buck passing theory allows
for works of art to be made incidentally by art-makers who intend
to make pots, songs, epic poems, totem poles, or hypertext fictions
but who do not intend to make works of art, perhaps because they
lack the concept of art. In fact the theory predicts widespread
incidental art-making in some cultures, and there are such
cultures (e.g. pre-modern Europe).
The theory also implies that art is not an essentially artifactual
kind, a kind whose members are necessarily products of an
intention to make items of that very kind. That is not an objection
to the theory, however. Not all artifactual kinds are essentially
artifactual kinds (Hilpinen  and Thomasson ). Paths are
artifacts although many paths are not made with an intention to
make a path – they are made by people simply intending to take
the most convenient route across the land.
The buck passing theory of art implies that the argument from
intentions is unsound. Unless there is another argument for () or
(*), cultural explanations of art and the concept of art may be
decoupled. Decoupling makes room for a theory of art which
assigns no robust role to references to art in cultural explanations
and yet makes no commitment to a trivialized concept of art
incapable of playing the robust role it needs to play in cultural
explanations.
Beyond Parochialism
Has the buck passing theory of art been flipped from the frying
pan into the fire? The conjunction of the theory with () or (*)
delivers a concept of art too trivialized to be an object of social
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scientific study, and the response is to deny () and (*). However,
() and (*) are often endorsed in support of a methodological
norm, that works of art in C should be understood as much as
possible using concepts endemic in C. Following the norm reveals
features of art works that would be missed otherwise, and it
guards against the imposition of an alien concept of art in
studying works of art in a cultural setting. But denying () and
(*) implies that there may be no concept of art in a culture with
works of art. Studying these works surely requires the imposition
of an alien concept of art? Surely it is better to comply with the
the norm and affirm (*) in conjunction with () or (!)?
One strategy is to try to defang these questions by showing
that there is no epistemic or moral wrong in using a concept of art
from one setting to understand art in another setting. The buck
passing theory provides no particular reason to favour this
strategy, but it does contribute to the alternative approach, which
is to leave in the fangs and supply an antidote.
Remember that the following is a false dilemma: to understand
works of art in C we must either use the concept of art endemic in
C or resort to a folk concept of art imported from outside C. The
missing option is to use no folk concept of art. If every work of art
is a work in one or more art forms, then studies of works of art in
C may understand them using art form concepts available in C.
Thus to attribute works of art to C is nothing more than to
acknowledge that members of C make pots and skyscrapers. These
may be conceptualized using the concepts of pots and skyscrapers
available in C. The attribution need not come with any baggage
that packs a folk concept of art.
Moreover, the buck passing theory of art allows for taking a
local perspective on art forms. The theory states that,
x is a work of art = x is a work in K, where K is an art.
For Calatrava’s Puente del Alamillo to be a work of art is for it to
be a work of architecture, where architecture is an art. It follows
that there are two ways for an item to fail to be a work of art: it
may fail to be a K or K may fail to be an art. Presumably, the
Puente del Alamillo might have failed to be a work of art even
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where it is a work of architecture. Also, if some K might not have
been arts, some other K might have been arts. For example, the
Bluenose is a work of naval architecture and it would have been a
work of art were naval architecture one of the arts. The truth of
these counterfactuals is secured by the proposition that,
(w) x is a work of art in w if and only if x is a K in w and K is
an art form in w.
Interpreted as consistent with this proposition, the buck-passing
theory of art does not restrict what art forms are possible to those
that are actual. By contrast, according to a modally parochial
interpretation of the theory, what makes an item a work of art is
that it belongs to a kind that is actually an art form. Given a list,
L, of the kinds that are actually arts:
(w) x is a work of art in w if and only if x is a K in w and K is in
L.
Naval architecture is actually not an art form, so this implies that
the Bluenose could not have been an art work as long (as it is a
ship). Architecture is actually an art form, so the Puente del
Alamillo is necessarily a work of art as long as it is a bridge.
Indeed, the good ship Bluenose is not an art work even in worlds
where naval architecture is counted by its inhabitants as an art
and the Calatrava bridge is a work of art even in worlds where
architecture is not counted by its inhabitants an art.
This distinction is easily adapted to represent culturally local
and parochial interpretations of the buck-passing theory. Where L
is a list of ‘our’ arts (say, the arts of actual westerners), the
parochial interpretation is:
(w) x is a work of art in w if and only if x is a K in w and K is
an art form in L.
Ikebana is not in L, so the example of ikebana on my hall table is
not and indeed could not be a work of art in any culture. Ballet is
in L, so Swan Lake is a work of art as long as it is a ballet.
According to the local interpretation:
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(w) x is a work of art in w if and only if x is a K in w, x was
made in C in w, and K is an art form in C in w.
Since ikebana is actually an art in Japan, the arrangement on my
hall table is a work of art. It would not be if ikebana were not an
art form in any culture. Finally, an intermediate interpretation
relativizes what is a work of art to a community:
(w) x is a work of art in C in w if and only if x is a K in w x was
made in C in w, and K is an art form in C in w.
Since ikebana is actually an art in Japan, an ikebana arrangement is
a work of art in, for example, a chashitsu – but not on my hall
table.
Interpreted parochially, the buck passing theory of art flouts
the norm that works of art in C should be understood using
concepts available in C; it complies with the norm if it is
interpreted locally. Which interpretation is correct? As always,
the one that is implicit in the explanations of artistic phenomena
that emerge from history, anthropology, sociology, and the other
social sciences. If the norm is correct, then it would seem that that
the correct interpretation of the theory is the local one.
Gregory Currie (, ) has characterized two of Jerrold
Levinson’s (, , , b) formulations of his historical
theory of art as parochial and local in a similar way. The gist of
Levinson’s theory is that ‘something is art if and only if it is or
was intended or projected for overall regard as some prior art is or
was correctly regarded’ (b, ). On the local interpretation,
an item made in C is a work of art only if it was intended or
projected for a regard that is or was correct in C. According to the
parochial interpretation, being art at a time is defined ‘by
reference to the actual body of things that are art prior to that
time’ (Levinson , ). The actual extension of art determines
what regards are and were correct in any modal or cultural
context. Thus ‘the concrete history of art is logically implicated in
the way the concept of art operates’ (Levinson , ).
The two interpretations are not logically consistent. One
solution is to distinguish, using one interpretation in a theory of
art and the other in an explication of the concept of art. There is
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evidence that Levinson thinks the parochial interpretation
elucidates our concept of art. For example, Gaut objected that
there might be works of art that ‘stand in no art-historically
significant relation at all to any of our art’ (, ). Levinson
replied that ‘insofar as anything outside our art tradition is
properly said to fall under our concept of art, it is because we can
appropriately relate it to our tradition of art, and in particular to
the normative regards that have, as a contingent matter of fact,
emerged in that tradition’ (Levinson , ). In other words,
the parochial interpretation elucidates our concept of art – what
Currie calls ‘art-for-us’ (, ). By contrast, when Stephen
Davies suggested an aesthetic theory of ‘what, in surveying the
known art traditions of the world, makes them all art traditions
rather than internally historical traditions of some other sort of
making’ he countered that he would ‘historicize’ in the same way
for each one (, ). In the modal case ‘we have every reason
to count or acknowledge as art what they count or acknowledge as
art, that is, things intended for regard the way earlier presumed
art in that world was correctly regarded (Levinson , ). In
other words, the local interpretation provides a (genetic) theory of
art.
Our concept of art might be as Levinson describes it. Locating
its contours, wherever they lie, is an important task. It belongs to
a full description of our history and social organization, and it also
helps to explain the contingent features of the works of art we
have – the buck passing theory of art does not imply that endemic
concepts of art are causally inert. Perhaps, in addition, the method
of probing intuitions is a good way to locate the contours of the
concept and the places where they break down into
indeterminacy. Nonetheless, an elucidation of the concept of art
need not the furnish a correct theory of art. Social concepts are not
necessarily transparent to social reality. The nature of social
reality is only, even if only dimly, illuminated by social science.

The Myth of Artistic Value
Art works are objects of appreciation and, since appreciation
involves evaluation, they are objects of evaluation too.
Rembrandt’s portraits bring home the truth of the human
condition, Ryoanji is drop-dead beautiful, music promotes
prenatal cognitive development, a good story helps to while away
long airplane journeys, bebop sells us on democracy, dance boosts
cardiac fitness. According to tradition, not all of these values are
characteristic of art: art works characteristically bear aesthetic
value. Breaking with tradition, some now say that art works bear
artistic value, as distinct from aesthetic value. However, there is
no characteristic artistic value distinct from aesthetic value.
Moreover, the argument for this thesis suggests that what fills the
breach is a concoction aesthetic value mixed with a proposal
inspired by the buck passing theory of art.
From Aesthetic Value to Value in Art
The case for the thesis that there is no characteristic artistic value
distinct from aesthetic value depends on what is being denied –
that is, on what artistic value is taken to be. That has never been
set out explicitly and clearly. All we have to go on is the fact that
conceptions of artistic value are developed with aesthetic value as
a foil, either in reasoning where artistic value emerges as an
alternative to aesthetic value or where aesthetic value figures as a
subspecies of artistic value.
Unsurprisingly, the recent history of art supplies what might
be a wedge to split artistic value from aesthetic value. Many
works of art tax our understanding of aesthetic value in a way
that seems to point to a need for a conception of artistic value.
However, the conception of aesthetic value that serves as a foil to
a conception of artistic value must not be tendentiously narrow.
Ancient tradition identifies aesthetic goodness with a relatively
narrow or ‘thick’ conception of beauty which, as Wollheim
powerfully puts it,
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would exclude much of the material that has inspired the artist
of the last one hundred and fifty years: the modern city, and its
teeming chaos, the life of the poor and the outcast, sexuality in
all its varieties, violence, suffering, and war, and the mute
tribute expected by quiet domesticity (, –).
Modern theories of aesthetic value embrace the value realized by
the kinds of art works Wollheim has in mind (e.g. Budd ,
Zangwill b, Iseminger ). These theories must go into the
foil. Danto hails ‘the discovery that something can be good art
without being beautiful as one of the great conceptual
clarifications of twentieth-century philosophy of art’ (, ; see
also Danto , ). This clarification is not enough by itself to
set artistic value apart from aesthetic value, for it has been built
recent updates to theories of aesthetic value (see Chapter ).
A better wedge for splitting artistic from aesthetic value is the
hard cases, especially as they figure in a twins argument. The
twins arguments in Chapter  concern theories of art, not artistic
value. According to the canonical formulation of the argument, if
the features that make an item a work of art are aesthetic, then the
features that make an item a work of art are among or supervene
on its perceptible features, and if the features that make an item a
work of art are among or supervene on its perceptible features,
then no work of art is perceptually indiscernible from a non-art
twin, but some works of art are perceptually indiscernible from
non-art twins, so the features that make an item a work of art are
not aesthetic. A parallel argument concerns value:
. if the value of a work of art is wholly aesthetic, then its value
supervenes on its perceptible features, and
. if the value of a work supervenes on its perceptible features,
then no work differs in value from an indiscernible twin, but
. some works differ in value from indiscernible twins,
. so the value of a work of art is not wholly aesthetic,
C. so works of art bear artistic value distinct from aesthetic
value.
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This is not the only argument that might split artistic from
aesthetic value, and it is rarely laid out so explicitly (an exception
is Goldman , ), but it undoubtedly lurks in the background
of thinking about artistic value.
Clearly () follows from () to () and, moreover, () and () are
true. Premise () follows from the definition of supervenience. A
good example of () is a work and a perfect forgery of it. They
differ in value. It is only because forgeries generally have
considerably less (market, historical, craft) value than the originals
they copy that forgers go to great lengths to deceive others about
the origins of their wares. Similarly, in one of Danto’s examples,
our use of Rauschenberg’s Bed differs enormously from our use of
a bed purchased at a department store. The best explanation of
this is that they differ in kinds of values they have.
What about ()? This premise takes a stand on the nature of
aesthetic value, as supervening wholly on perceptual features. The
best way to disable the argument is to deny (). If (C) is false and
there is no artistic value, then () might be replaced with a better
theory of aesthetic value. Such a theory would have to explain the
difference in aesthetic value between a work and a perfect forgery
of it (e.g. Hopkins ).
The main issue is how to understand the inference from () to
(C), for that inference betrays a conception of artistic value. One
option is to take the inference at face value. (C) follows directly
from () if artistic value is any value to be found in a work of art.
After all, nothing in () restricts the types of values with respect
to which a work and its twin differ. A painting and a forgery of it
may differ in pecuniary value, or maybe the forgery is a better
source of information about contemporary forging techniques. On
this reading, (C) simply indicates that aesthetic value is not the
only kind of value realized by works of art.
Works of art can be more or less good or bad in a variety of
respects, and an inventory of specific values of specific art works
can be used to generate an inventory of kinds of value to be found
in some works of art. The list includes aesthetic value, cognitive
value, moral value, therapeutic value, political value, propaganda
value, economic value, decorative value, hedonic value,
entertainment value, distraction value, prurient value, theological
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value, communicative value, bragging value, collector value… .
The inventory is lengthy indeed.
Its usefulness is diminished by the fact that many of the values
of specific art works are adventitious. It is a merit of the print
hanging over my mantelpiece that it conceals a flaw in the wall
behind it. The tempo of a song might nicely time a cyclist’s
cadence for a given route over the Pyrenées. A Holmes story
might have the flaw of spreading false beliefs about the
locomotion of snakes. The adventitious values of works of art can
shed little light on characteristically artistic value.
There are several plausible ways to exclude adventitious values
of art works from consideration, and any one will do for now.
Suppose that there is value in an art work to the extent that it
serves the purposes for which it was made or distributed (see
Wolterstorff , ; Iseminger ; cf. Parsons and Carlson
). This proposal delivers a theory of ‘value in art’:
V is a value in art = V is realized in a work of art to the extent
that the work serves the purposes for which it was made or
distributed.
Not all values that happen to be realized by a work of art are
values in art, since not all values that happen to be realized by art
works are values that they were made or distributed in order to
realize. This is why the decorative merit of my print, the athletic
merit of the song, and the cognitive demerit of the Holmes story
are not values in art.
Still, the inventory of values in art remains very long because
artists make works and art promoters distribute them with many
purposes in view. No less an authority than Horace tells us that
‘the aim of the poet is to benefit or amuse, or to make his words at
once please and give lessons of life’. Entertainment value and
cognitive value are values in art. Matisse adds therapeutic value
when he describes art as ‘like a mental soother, something like
good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue’. Works of
art have been made or distributed in order to raise (or lower)
political consciousness, to engender a closer union with the
divine, to titillate, to unify the decor, and to send signals about
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social status. Traditionally, at least, art works have been made or
distributed to serve aesthetic and cognitive purposes too.
With this in mind, here is a theory of artistic value on which
(C) follows directly from (). Call it the trivial theory:
V is an artistic value = V is a value in art.
Thus any value is an artistic value just in case some work of art is
made or distributed in order to realize that value. Examples of
artistic values recognized by the trivial theory include aesthetic
value, propaganda value, theological value, moral value,
therapeutic value, prurient value, and decorative value.
Although the trivial theory validates a direct inference from ()
to (C), it utterly fails to capture the force of the twins argument.
Nobody needs an argument to learn that aesthetic value is not the
only value in art – it is as plain as anything that a forgery and its
original differ in pecuniary and historical value, for example.
Moreover, nobody who thinks that artistic value is just value in
art needs an argument to learn that artistic value is not the same as
aesthetic value. Something more is at stake in the twins argument.
Instead of taking the inference from () to (C) at face value,
suppose we take it to imply a theory of artistic value according to
which not all values in art are artistic values. Most values in art,
including some of those listed above, hardly come across as artistic
values. A theory of artistic value that is stronger than the trivial
theory will state what makes some – not all – values in art
characteristically artistic values. Reading the twins argument as
implying something stronger than the trivial theory explains why
that argument has been reckoned so informative and important.
() does not make the obvious point that a forgery and its original
differ with respect to some value or other. When conjoined with a
non-aesthetic conception of artistic value that is stronger than the
trivial theory, it makes the more interesting point that they differ
with respect to some non-aesthetic artistic value.
Notice, by the way, that there is no point arguing that artistic
value is a phantom if the trivial theory is true. The phantom is a
stronger conception of artistic value that is implied by the
inference from () to (C).
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From Value in Art to Artistic Value
To have true bite the twins argument requires a distinction
between mere value in art and artistic value; the same distinction
is implied by the current debate about whether the artistic value
of an artwork may comprise some other values that it realizes,
notably cognitive and moral values (e.g. Lamarque and Olsen
, Stecker , Carroll , Kieran , John ).
In his groundbreaking contribution to this debate, Carroll
(b) distinguishes first between autonomism and moralism, and
then between radical and moderate versions of each. According to
radical autonomism, ‘it is inappropriate or even incoherent to
assess artworks in terms of their consequences for cognition,
morality and politics’ (Carroll b, ). Moderate autonomism
allows that ‘some art may by its very nature engage moral
understanding and may be coherently discussed and even
evaluated morally’ (Carroll b, ).
Daniel Jacobson () complains that Carroll’s distinction
between radical and moderate autonomism fails to describe the
positions as actually occupied. Classical autonomists such as A. C.
Bradley and Arnold Isenberg never denied that works of art can
be assessed morally. For example, Bradley wrote that ‘the intrinsic
value of poetry might be so small, and its ulterior effects so
mischievous, that it had better not exist’ (quoted in Jacobson
, ). Bradley could not have written this sincerely while
holding that it is inappropriate or incoherent to assess poetry for
its moral consequences. So who is right, Carroll or Jacobson? Is
radical autonomism an occupied position?
Assume that if an item has a given kind of value, then it is
always coherent and sometimes appropriate to attribute that kind
of value to it. Conjoin this assumption with the trivial theory of
artistic value and Jacobson is right to dismiss attempts to
distinguish radical from moderate autonomism. No autonomist
seriously denies that some works of art have mischievous moral
consequences and so none deprecates attributions of moral value
to art works as inappropriate and incoherent.
Yet, turning the tables, there is room to distinguish radical and
moderate autonomism if the trivial theory of artistic value is
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replaced with something stronger. A radical autonomist who
grants that works of art have moral value may hold that moral
value, though it is a value in art, is not an artistic value. Carroll
imputes to Clive Bell, a radical autonomist, the view that ‘it is
virtually unintelligible to talk of art qua art in terms of nonaesthetic concerns with cognition, morality, politics, and so
on’ (b, ). Notice the phrase in italics added to the official
statement of radical autonomism given above. On this version of
radical autonomism, Bell may accept that works of art have moral
value even as he denies that they have moral value qua art.
Moreover, if radical autonomism is a contrary of moderate
autonomism, which states that ‘some art may by its very nature
engage moral understanding and may be coherently discussed and
even evaluated morally’, then radical autonomism denies that any
art by its very nature engages moral understanding or has moral
value. The thought is that artistic value is not mere value in art; it
is value as art, value that an art work has by its nature.
What Carroll calls the ‘common denominator argument’ for
radical autonomism suggests that this is the right characterization
of the view. The argument is this (Carroll b, ). No value is
an artistic value unless it is a value in all art works, and moral
value is not a value in all art works, so moral value is not an
artistic value. Given the trivial theory, the opening premise of this
argument is untenable: it would say, against the spirit of the
trivial theory, that no value is a value in some art works unless it
is a value in all art works. So the common denominator argument
should be taken to imply that not all value in art is artistic value.
As a matter of fact, Bell and other radical autonomists (e.g.
Beardsley []) agreed, holding that the only
characteristically artistic value is aesthetic value.
Few will lose any sleep worrying about how to provide safe
harbour for radical autonomism, but many would be shocked to
hear that moralism – also known as ‘ethicism’ – is trivially true.
According to Gaut’s () statement of ethicism, some ethical
defects in works of art are aesthetic defects (and some ethical
merits in works of art are aesthetic merits). The ‘merited response
argument’ for the first, negative (unbracketed) conjunct goes like
this (Gaut , ):
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. if prescribed responses to a work of art are not merited
because they are unethical, that is a failure of the work, and
. what responses a work of art prescribes is aesthetically
relevant,
. so if prescribed responses to a work are not merited because
they are unethical, then that is an aesthetic defect of the work,
. so a work’s prescribing unethical responses is an aesthetic
defect.
Since Gaut reduces aesthetic value to artistic value, (), (), and ()
are equivalent to:
’. what responses a work of art prescribes is artistically
relevant,
’. so if prescribed responses to a work are not merited because
they are unethical, then that is an artistic defect of the work,
’. so a work’s prescribing unethical responses is an artistic
defect.
Having made the same substitution of ‘artistic’ for ‘aesthetic’,
George Dickie complains that the merited response argument is
‘pedestrian’: it is trivial that an ethical defect in a work of art is an
artistic defect (, –).
If artistic value is value in art, then Dickie is right and the
conclusion of the merited response argument is trivial; but the
argument is interesting and informative given something stronger
than the trivial theory. Since some works of art are made and
distributed at least in part to prescribe ethical responses, ethical
value is a value in these works of art. According to the trivial
theory, any value in some work of art is an artistic value. So
ethical value in these works is artistic value. This shortcut to
ethicism relies on nothing more than the indubitable observation
that some works of art have ethical value plus the stipulation of
the trivial theory. Given the trivial theory, ethicism is true but
hardly interesting. Therefore, if ethicism is interesting, arguments
like Gaut’s require a meatier conception of artistic value than is
supplied by the trivial theory.
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To pull these thoughts about radical autonomism and ethicism
together, if the trivial theory is correct, it is hard to see how to
sustain a distinction between radical autonomism, moderate
autonomism, and ethicism. Everybody accepts that works of art
can be morally mischievous or beneficial: they can be offensive or
they can get us to do the right thing. In addition, everybody
accepts that some works of art are made or distributed in order to
engender these morally good and bad effects. It follows that moral
value is a value in art and, given the trivial theory, that moral
value is an artistic value. Only by denying the trivial theory and
by distinguishing mere value in art from artistic value is there
room for genuine disagreement about whether an art work’s moral
value is ever an artistic value.
Value as Art
Carroll equates artistic value with a work’s value ‘qua art’ and
Gaut identifies the ‘aesthetic value’ of a work of art with its value
‘qua work of art’ (, ). The proposition that artistic value is
the value of a work of art as art is not yet a theory of artistic value
that is stronger than the trivial theory. What is it for something to
have value as art, where not all values in art are values as art?
Taking a hint from Carroll’s characterization of artistic value as
a value that an art work realizes ‘by its very nature’, one might
try to extract a theory of artistic value from a theory of art – that
is, a buck stopping theory of art. The assumption would be that
the value of an art work as art is a value realized by the features
that make it a work of art. The operation turns out to be rather too
delicate, however.
Most theories on offer plainly cannot deliver a theory of artistic
value. Institutional theories of art are ruled out, since they take
what makes an item a work of art to be a kind of feature that ends
up unable to realize artistic value (e.g. Dickie ). Aesthetic
theories of art are also ruled out if artistic value is supposed to be
distinct from aesthetic value.
Keeping in mind that the conception of aesthetic value that
serves as a foil to artistic value cannot be overly narrow, an
aesthetic theory of art need not wear the name on its sleeve. The
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theory that a work of art is an imitation of beauty in nature is an
aesthetic theory of art. A case could be made that most of the
features proposed for Gaut’s disjunctive theory of art are aesthetic
– having positive aesthetic properties, being expressive of
emotion, being intellectually challenging, having complex
meanings, being formally complex and coherent, being original,
and being the product of a high degree of skill (, ). It is a
fair question whether any given theory of art is aesthetic or not.
What options remain? Some who appeal to artistic value
explicitly shun theories of art (e.g. Carroll  and b). No
help there. Nowadays the most influential non-aesthetic, noninstitutional theory of art is Levinson’s view that what makes an
item a work of art is its having been ‘intended or projected for
overall regard as some prior art is or was correctly
regarded’ (b, ). An example of the ‘overall regard’
appropriate to a painting is: ‘with attention to color, with
attention to painterly detail, with awareness of stylistic features,
with awareness of art-historical background, with sensitivity to
formal structure and expressive effect, with an eye to
representational seeing, with willingness to view patiently and
sustainedly’ (Levinson , ). This is perfectly consistent with
standard theories of aesthetic value, like Malcolm Budd’s ().
So is the partial theory of art recently accepted by Danto (,
), namely that a work of art must be about something and
must embody its meaning (see also Fodor ).
The assumption that the value of an art work as art is a value
realized by the features that make it a work of art is not trivial.
Without a weighty argument for this assumption, those who
believe in artistic value cannot hold it against a buck stopping
theory of art that it fails to deliver a theory of artistic value clearly
distinct from aesthetic value. Nobody should be surprised that a
conception of artistic value cannot be read off any viable theory of
art on offer. The lesson is that conceptions of artistic value have a
source independent of theories of art.
In an anti-theoretical spirit, one might observe that attributions
of value as art figure in our critical practices, so that the nature of
artistic value can be straightforwardly read off those practices.
However, many outlets for art criticism – from Sotheby’s
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catalogues to Martha Stewart Living to informal conversations –
attribute a mixture of many kinds of value to art works. As Gaut
reminds us, ‘art critical evaluations are as such aimed at the
evaluation of art qua art: that is, not art as investment, as a social
symbol and so on’ (, ). Since discourse about art mixes
evaluations of art as art with other evaluations of art, we need a
theory that distinguishes evaluations of art as art with other
evaluations in order to distinguish art criticism from other
evaluative discourse.
The only way forward is to seek a theory of artistic value not
derived from a theory of art and not simply read off art criticism.
Nobody who appeals to artistic value has spelled out such a
theory, but two models lie to hand. Both were devised to account
for the value of works in specific art forms. Perhaps they can be
refitted to serve as theories of artistic value.
Art as a Category of Art
The first model is Walton’s () discussion of categories of art
(see also Laetz ). If art is a category of art, then the value of a
work as art may be its value when appreciated in the category that
includes all works of art.
Walton considers categories of art that are characterized in
terms of certain properties of the works that belong to the
category. These properties are perceptible but not aesthetic
(though they include the perceptible properties upon which the
aesthetic properties of works in the category supervene). In
particular, Walton’s categories are characterized by the
perceptible, non-aesthetic properties that are ‘standard’, ‘contrastandard’, and ‘variable’ in the category – those whose possession
counts towards, counts against, and counts neither for nor against
a work’s belonging to the category. For example, in painting,
flatness is standard, having moving parts is contra-standard, and
having some red bits is variable.
Categories of art have two interesting features. First, it is
possible in principle to tell by perception alone what category a
work of art belongs to. The category of painting having been
characterized visually, we can see whether or not a work is a
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painting. Second, there are innumerable categories of art, though
most of them play no role in our actual appreciative practices. The
unfamiliar category of guernicas is made up of works that realize
the two-dimensional depictive pattern of Picasso’s Guernica in
different degrees of relief, so that ‘some guernicas have rolling
surfaces, others are sharp and jagged, still others contain several
relatively flat planes at various angles to each other, and so
forth’ (Walton , ). Picasso’s Guernica belongs to the
category of painting and also the category of guernicas.
With this conception of categories of art in place, Walton
argues for several theses, and here are three. First, the aesthetic
properties an art work seems to have depend upon the category in
which we appreciate it. Viewed as a painting, Guernica seems
‘violent, dynamic, vital, disturbing’, but it would seem ‘cold,
stark, lifeless, or serene and restful’ if viewed as a guernica
(Walton , ). Although the category of guernicas has no
psychological reality for us, Gombrich () provides a real
example. Viewed in the category of abstract painting, Mondrian’s
Broadway Boogie-Woogie seems cool and orderly. Viewed in the
category of De Stijl, it seems to buzz energetically.
A second thesis is that the first thesis is explained by the fact
that a category of art has standard, contra-standard, and variable
features. The features that make Guernica seem dynamic when it is
viewed in the category of painting are standard in the category of
guernicas, where its flatness becomes salient and it comes to seem
lifeless. When it is viewed in De Stijl, where a monochrome grid is
standard, the coloured grid makes Broadway Boogie-Woogie seem
to buzz energetically. This effect is lost when the painting is
viewed in the category of abstract painting, where the grid is
variable.
Third, the aesthetic properties a work actually has are those it
seems to have when we appreciate it in a ‘correct’ category.
Guernica is a guernica but it is not correct to appreciate it in the
category of guernicas, so it is not cold, stark, or lifeless. Rather, it
is violent, dynamic, vital, and disturbing because it so appears
when it is viewed in the category of painting and it is correct to
view it in the category of painting. It is correct to view Broadway
Boogie-Woogie in the category of abstract painting and also in the
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category of De Stijl, so it is cool and orderly and also buzzes
energetically, depending on its category.
To be useful in modelling artistic value, this framework must
be retrofitted. Properties must include values, so that the value
that a work seems to have depends on the category in which it is
appreciated, and the value that a work has is the value it seems to
have when it is appreciated in a correct category. Stipulate also
that a work’s value as a K is the value it appears to have when it is
correctly appreciated in the category of Ks. Broadway BoogieWoogie is correctly appreciated in the categories of abstract
painting and De Stijl, so its value as an abstract painting is the
value it seems to have when it is appreciated in the category of
abstract painting and its value as a work of De Stijl is the value it
seems to have when it is appreciated in the category of De Stijl.
Finally, in so far as the twins argument motivates appeals to
artistic value, it makes sense to allow for categories of art that
have some non-perceptual features as standard, contra-standard,
or variable. (Technically, this is not a change to Walton’s
framework, since he never claims that all categories of art are
perceptual.)
The proposal is that the value of a work as art is the value it has
when and only when it is appreciated in the category made up of
all and only works of art. That is,
V is a value of an art work as art = V is a value the work
appears to have when and only when it is appreciated in the
category of art comprising all works of art.
Just as a work’s value as music is the value it seems to have as it is
correctly appreciated in the category of musical works, a work’s
value as art is the value it seems to have as it is correctly
appreciated in the widest category of all art.
The beauty of this proposal is that it does seem to distinguish
artistic value from mere value in art. The idea is that some values
of a work are not apparent unless the work is appreciated in the
right comparison class and the right comparison class for artistic
values is the class of art works. Attributing a mere value in art
might also implicate a comparison class. An obvious example is a
work’s pecuniary value – consider circumstances in which ‘you
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paid a lot of money for that’ is true and false. However, the
pecuniary value of a work is not apparent when and only when it
is placed in the comparison class comprising all and only art
works. The same goes for propaganda value, value as a sign of
social standing, and the like.
One objection to the proposal is that, if some philosophers are
right, it turns out that aesthetic value is not an artistic value.
According to formalists, the aesthetic value of a work is at least
sometimes independent of any comparison class (esp. Zangwill
). There is something to this. Surely some works of art are
simply beautiful: they are no less beautiful when set among the
angels and no more beautiful on display in Hades. However, to get
in the spirit of the exercise we should assume, contra formalism,
that Walton’s three theses are true when it comes to such
categories as music and painting. Any objection should target
artistic value specifically.
The trouble with the proposal is that no work of art is
appreciated the category comprising all works of art. Consider
what is required in order to appreciate a work in any category of
art. A category of art is made up of a number of works and the act
of appreciating a work in the category must be sensitive, in some
way, to the category’s membership. This requirement should be
not read as too demanding. Clearly we may appreciate a work in a
category without knowing every feature of every work in the
category and without even bringing to mind any other work in
the category. Nevertheless, one does not appreciate works of art in
a category if one systematically excludes a subset of works in the
category. Suppose, for example, that we correctly appreciate items
in the categories of red things, yellow things, blue things, and the
like. Suppose also that when we take ourselves to appreciate items
in the category of coloured things, we always exclude some tints,
so that when someone claims to appreciate a red item in the
category of coloured things, it turns out that their appreciation is
no different than their appreciation of the item in the category of
red things. What does it mean to say, in this scenario, that we
appreciate anything in the category of coloured things? In
general,
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S appreciates x in category of art K only if there is no category
of art K*, where K* is a proper subcategory of K, where it is
correct to appreciate x in K*, and where S’s appreciation of x in
K* would not differ from S’s appreciation of x in K.
That is, when we exclude works in one or more categories of art
that are proper subcategories of K, with the effect that an
appreciation of a work in K is no different from an appreciation of
the work in K* (the non-excluded sub-category), then we really
only appreciate x in K*.
This minimal requirement is not met by the category of art.
Works of art are never appreciated in a category including all
works of art; there is always a systematic exclusion of some works
of art. ‘Sneakin Around’ may be appreciated in the category of
blues or in the category of songs, but it is not appreciated in a
category that includes all ceramics and landscapes, for instance.
The exclusions are systematic in the sense expressed by the
principle above. Consider the hypothesis that we appreciate
‘Sneakin Around’ in the category made up of all works of art. So
appreciated, we hear it as having certain features. Now consider
the subcategory of art made up of music: when we appreciate it in
the category of music, we hear it as having the same features as
before. The features we hear it as having are not determined by
the features of ceramics or landscapes. Applying the above
principle, it follows that, contrary to hypothesis, we do not
appreciate ‘Sneakin Around’ in the category of art made up of all
works of art.
Why, then, do we think that we ever do appreciate works of
art in the category of art comprising all works of art? Notice that
we correctly appreciate works across the boundaries of the
familiar categories of art. We might see, for example, how the
design of a Jerry Garcia necktie resonates with the mood of his
music, so that we appreciate the tie in a category with the music.
Evidently, correct appreciations need not remain within the
bounds of familiar art forms like painting and music. As long as
we always appreciate works in some category of art, we might
conclude from cases like the Jerry Garcia tie that we sometimes
appreciate works in the widest category of art made up of all art.
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The mistake is in thinking that we are stuck with the familiar
categories and that we cannot correctly appreciate works in
unfamiliar categories that cross art forms and are more specific
than the category made up of all art. Nothing in fact prevents the
correct appreciation of works in categories of art that are projected
on the fly. Jerry-Garcia-like-concoctions is such a category. We do
not appreciate the Jerry Garcia tie in the category made up of all
works of art, including poetry, dance, and chado.
Walton’s framework explains why this should be the case. A
category of art has standard, contra-standard, and variable
features, and Walton’s second thesis says that the appreciation of
a work in a category is sensitive to the membership of the
category because it is sensitive to what features are standard,
contra-standard, and variable in the category. What non-aesthetic
standard, contra-standard, and variable features characterize the
category of art comprising all works of art?
We do not appreciate works of art in the category of art whose
membership is all works of art. So there is nothing it is for a work
to have value as art if the value of a work as art is the value it
appears to have when it is correctly appreciated in the category
comprising all works of art.
Art as Achievement
The second model takes inspiration from the fact that art works
are achievements whose value is realized in how they came to be.
This applies to any artifact, from scotch tape to the writings of
David Lewis, to van Gogh’s paintings, though different kinds of
value accrue to these different kinds of achievement. Assume, in
general, that an item’s value as a member of a kind is its value as
the product of an achievement of that kind. For example, the
value of a song as a work of music is its value as a musical
achievement. On this model,
V is a value of an art work as art = V is a value of the work as
the product of an artistic achievement.
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An analysis along these lines is encouraged by developments in
aesthetics which foreground the role of artistic acts in
understanding art works (e.g. Currie , Davies ).
Nobody denies that making a work of art is often an
achievement, but it does not follow that it is often an artistic
achievement. An achievement is an act and any act of making a
work of art falls under many descriptions. It might fall under such
descriptions as: getting a good price from the dealer, using up the
last of the cadmium yellow, and having provided a distraction
from the bothersome roommate. If none of these is an artistic act
which can be an artistic achievement, then the question arises:
under what description is the act of making a work of art an
artistic act?
Moreover, not every instance of successfully engaging in an
activity under a description is an achievement under that
description. Making it down the bunny hill is an achievement for
me but not for an Olympic skier. More importantly for present
purposes, doing something difficult and novel may not be an
achievement if it is not a goal within the relevant practices or
traditions. Having managed with enormous effort to breed a very
large dog is no achievement in the breeding of toy spaniels. That
practice or tradition sets (or includes) standards that govern which
ways of engaging in the activity of breeding spaniels are
achievements. Therefore, a supplementary question is: what
practice or tradition is that of making art?
An achievement-based theory of artistic value depends on a
theory of what makes an act artistic and a theory of what practice
or tradition sets the standards for artistic achievement. The
strategy is to model what we need on a representative account of
achievement in specific art forms – musical or pictorial
achievement, for example.
Wollheim’s () account of ‘thematizing activities’ is
representative (Currie  is an alternative). A work of art is
intelligible as a product of an activity under a description
according to which behaviours that were otherwise unintentional
are intentional, with the result that we come to see how an inert
material carries meaning. When a work is made intelligible in this
way, the activity is a ‘thematizing activity’. Painting is a
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thematizing activity because a painting is intelligible as the
product of an activity of marking up a surface to support seeing–
in. Accordingly, an achievement in painting is one realized by
marking up a surface to support seeing–in. Likewise, writing
music is a thematizing activity wherein inert materials (soundspace structured by tone, metre, and timbre) come to carry
meaning. A musical achievement is one realized by making the
tone, metre, and timbre properties of sounds come to carry
meaning. From here it is a short step to a partial account of the
practices and traditions of painting and music: these express
standards which can be met by some of what is to be achieved
through the thematizing activities of painting and music.
This picture of thematizing activities delivers a plausible theory
of what it is to value a painting as a painting. The value of Van
Gogh’s Sunflowers as a painting is its value as an achievement of
painting – an achievement in the handling of the materials of
painting to carry meaning. Making Sunflowers is not a thematizing
activity under such descriptions as getting a good price from the
dealer, using up the last of the cadmium yellow, or having
provided a distraction from that bothersome Gaugin. Under these
descriptions, his achievement is not a painterly achievement and
none of the values that Sunflowers realizes as a product of these
achievements are its values as a painting.
The value of a work as art is its value as the product of an
artistic achievement only if making art is a thematizing activity,
but art is not a thematizing activity. There is art. Artists make it.
What they do when making art is often an achievement of some
kind. However, it is not an artistic achievement, because there is
no description under which their activity is a thematizing activity
of making art. The reason is that the artist has no inert materials
that she can make to carry meaning except the materials of some
art form or genre. The only resources for thematizing are those of
music, painting, chado, and the like. There are no resources for
thematizing over and above these that could covert making a
painting to making art.
Take Sunflowers. It is a work of art. Van Gogh made it.
Moreover, his making it was a pictorial achievement, for it was
realized by engaging in a thematizing activity of depiction where
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he made the inert materials of depiction bear meaning. Yet he had
no artistic materials that he could make to bear meaning except
the materials of depiction. What he did falls under no description
of a thematizing activity of simply making art that is not identical
to a description of the thematizing activity of making art of a
particular kind, namely painting.
Moreover, there are practices and traditions of painting and
music, but there are no practices or traditions of making art over
and above these. This fact explains why there is no history,
anthropology, or sociology of art: every social scientific
hypothesis about art is actually a hypothesis about painting,
music, epic, melodrama, or some other kind of art.
Making art is not a thematizing activity, so works of art are not
products of artistic achievement in the way that paintings are
products of pictorial achievement. There is nothing it is for a work
to have value as art as long as the value of a work as art is its value
as a product of artistic achievement.
Deflationary Artistic Value
Walton’s and Wollheim’s discussions of categories of art and the
activity of painting represent two ways to model value as art on
value in more specific art kinds. The problems scaling these
models up to apply to all art do not turn on the details of either
discussion: they threaten alternative versions of the same models.
Nor do they offer much hope of a third model. The media,
traditions, and practices associated with specific art kinds ground
the distinctive values realized by works in those kinds. Art as a
whole has no associated medium, tradition, or practice.
Why not embrace this result? According to a deflationary
theory of artistic value, the value of a work as art is its value as a
song, painting, serving of o-cha, or the like. That is,
V is a value of an art work as art = V is a value of the work as a
K, where K is one of the art forms, genres, or other familiar art
kinds.
Since value as art is not being modelled on value as a K, scruples
about deriving a theory artistic value from a theory of art do not
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block theories of value as a K derived from theories of K. Hence
the deflationary theory of artistic value may be stated:
V is a value of an art work value as art = V is a value realized
by φ where φ is what makes the work a K and where K is one
of the art forms, genres, or other familiar art kinds.
Some who have pondered the nature of artistic value have hinted
at just such a theory (e.g. Stecker : ; Carroll : –).
Moreover, it is certainly in tune with the spirit of the buck
passing theory of art (though it is not entailed by it).
Since the goal is to say what makes a value an artistic value and
not merely a value in art, the challenge for the deflationary theory
is to safeguard a distinction between artistic value and mere value
in art, such that not all values in art turn out to be artistic values.
Indeed, the ultimate challenge is to correctly divide artistic values
from mere values in art. As Gaut put it, ‘art critical evaluations are
as such aimed at the evaluation of art qua art, that is, not art as an
investment, as a social symbol and so on, but at establishing the
value of art as art’ (: ). Painted on a very large oak panel,
the weight of a Tintoretto is a demerit from a transportation point
of view, but that is hardly an artistic flaw, whereas a Rembrandt’s
evoking compassion through its representation of its subject
matter is an artistic merit. Deflationism implies that all and only
values of a painting or story as art are values of the painting as a
painting or of the story as literature. Is it true that value as a
member of an art kind lines up in this way with value as art?
Deflationism implies that artistic value is widespread. Artistic
techniques like depiction and storytelling are used outside art.
Pictures are used to illustrate anatomy for surgeons and stories are
told in philosophy papers. So deflationism implies that the
pictorial value of the surgeon’s anatomical atlas is an artistic value
and that Bernard Williams’s essay ‘Against Utilitarianism’ has
artistic merit realized through some compelling storytelling.
However, these are welcome implications. We should expect to
find artistic value outside art if the techniques of art are borrowed
in non-art contexts.
The trouble is that features that make a work a member of an
art form or genre may well be features that realize prototypical
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non-artistic values. A picture may have prurient value precisely
because of what it enables us to see in it. It may have pecuniary
value just for the precious metals, jewels, and pigments out of
which it is made and in virtue of which it carries meaning (as in
the medieval use of pigments ground from semiprecious lapis
lazuli to depict the cloak of the Virgin Mary). Its scale may be a
factor in its decorative value (as in airport art). Its depictively
expressing certain thoughts may realize some propaganda or
marketing value (as is alleged by psychoanalytic art critics). In
each case, a value realized by pictorial means is a central case of a
value that is not characteristically artistic. Deflationism crowns as
artistic values many values in art that are prototypes of nonartistic value.
Is there a bullet to bite? Critical practices are not sacrosanct;
they are open to revision, especially in light of compelling
theoretical considerations (Davies ). A deflationist might
argue that the discovery that some prototypical non-artistic values
are in fact artistic values argues for nothing more than a revision
of the critical practices that determine what values are
prototypically artistic and non-artistic. It is no objection to
deflationism that it redraws the boundaries demarcating
characteristically artistic values from values in art that are not
artistic.
However, deflationism implies more than some
gerrymandering; it entirely erases the boundary between artistic
value and mere value in art. What value in art is not, according to
deflationism, an artistic value? What value is not realized in some
work through some such means as depiction or storytelling?
Without some principled way to distinguish some values as
characteristically artistic, the deflationary theory collapses into the
trivial theory of artistic value. The only bullet to bite is to accept
the trivial theory and concede that there are many values in art,
none characteristically artistic, except aesthetic value. There is
nothing it is to have artistic value distinct from aesthetic value,
stronger than mere value in art if artistic value just is the
aggregate of pictorial value, musical value, and other such values.
A Hybrid Approach
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There is no artistic value that is stronger than value in art yet
distinct from aesthetic value. This negative thesis suggests a
positive lesson. The value of works of art is not exclusively
aesthetic, and the many values in art include the values of art
works as paintings, songs, and melodramas. Thus the aesthetic
value of a work may be realized by features that make it a song or
a melodrama.
A hardy hybrid of deflationism gives due weight to aesthetic
value. It identifies a work’s artistic value with its aesthetic value
as a painting, song, melodrama, or the like. That is,
V is an artistic value of a work = V is an aesthetic value of the
work as a K, where K is an art form, genre, or other art kind.
This theory has several advantages over pure deflationism and the
trivial theory. It delivers a conception of artistic value stronger
than mere value in art. It does not imply a conception of aesthetic
value as realized in works typed as art, but only as typed more
specifically. Therefore, unlike the trivial theory, it makes room for
the pluralism debate room to play out, albeit within a somewhat
different framework. The question is not whether cognitive and
moral values in art works are artistic values but whether they
interact in significant ways with aesthetic value (Lopes ).
Incidentally, this framing of the pluralism debate is less radical
than may appear if some parties to the debate implicitly operate
with an aesthetic theory of artistic value (e.g. Gaut ). Finally,
whereas deflationism and the trivial theory take the bite out of the
argument from indiscernibles, the hybrid theory represents it as
compelling.
Appeals to an overarching notion artistic value recall the
intense search, especially in the nineteenth century, for an equally
overarching theory of aesthetic value as realized by any kind of
art work (Schaeffer ). Both may be doomed for the same
reason: they seek the value of works typed as art, when nothing
has value typed as art. The remedy is to develop more specific
theories of aesthetic value as realized by works of in the
individual art forms (plus non-art artifacts and bits of nature).
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What need have we for attributions of artistic value when we
have characterized the values in a work, including its aesthetic
value, and the values it realizes as a painting, as Baroque art, and
as a still life? Why not explain apparent attributions of artistic
value as attributions of other and more specific kinds of value?
PART II

Beyond Bricolage
Some activities are arts and some are not. Among the arts we find
music, poetry, and landscape architecture but not chess,
philosophy, or mountain climbing. At the boundary lie some
seemingly close pairs: dance but not ice dance, novels but not
biographies, East Asian calligraphy but not paper making, mime
but not clowning, sculpture but not body building, grand opera
but not World Cup soccer, installations but not department store
window displays. Following in the footsteps of early modern art
theorists, who wanted to know what makes some activities arts
(see Chapter ), Wollheim asked ‘why certain apparently
arbitrarily identified stuffs or processes should be the vehicles of
art’ ([], ). This he called the ‘bricoleur problem’. It
probably has no satisfying theoretical answer.
Two Options Beyond Art
In the decades since Wollheim gave its name, the bricoleur
problem has had little or no attention from philosophers. By ,
theories of art, fortified by Danto’s () and Mandelbaum’s
() defences against anti-essentialism, had stolen the limelight.
Recall that a theory of art states what it is for an item to be a work
of art:
x is a work of art = x is….
We would expect to find a solution to the bricoleur problem not in
a theory of art but rather in a theory of the arts, which states what
makes an activity an art form:
K is an art = K is….
The hard cases set us in search of a theory of art by feeding into
arguments which turn on the possibility that any given work of
art may have an indiscernible twin that is not art. This
hypothetical scenario concerns individual works, not entire art
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forms. Moreover, having assumed that an art is an activity whose
products are works of art, some might have expected to extract a
theory of the arts from a theory of art. However, both reasons for
putting the bricoleur problem on the back burner are
compromised by the buck passing theory of art.
The buck passing theory of art is a theory of art – it states what
makes an item a work of art – but it is not directly informative.
The theory is:
x is a work of art = x is a work of K, where K is an art
Taken on its own, the theory is uninformative at two levels in
particular, and it passes the buck at two levels too.
Starting at the surface, the right hand side of the theory does
not seem to provide an analysis of an item’s being a work of art in
terms that are more basic and perspicuous than those appearing on
the left hand side. Thus the theory immediately raises two
questions: what is an art? and what makes x a work of K? Answers
to these questions are to be found in a theory of art and in theories
of the individual arts. The latter comprise a set of theories, one for
each art, each fitting the schema,
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is….
They will tell us what makes a work a painting, a song, or a
performance of the chado.
So far this buck passing is not especially deft. It simply
balances the books: the right hand side of the theory is short on
more basic and perspicuous terms and so they are borrowed from
the theories to which the buck is passed. To be deft, passing the
buck must be informative at a deeper level.
We expect an informative theory of art to address certain needs
(see the Introduction). It should contend with the hard cases. It
should engineer some foundations for empirical art studies. It
should anchor art criticism. Buck stopping theories of art meet
these needs or, as a fall back, explain why they need not be met.
The buck passing theory of art does neither, and in that sense it is
uninformative. Yet it deftly passes the buck with the promise that
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each of these needs can be met by the theories to which it passes
the buck.
Part I outlined how passing the buck promises to pay off with
respect to each of these needs. Chapter  argued that buck
stopping theories of art cannot contend with the hard cases
because they represent an impasse over them. The buck passing
theory of art proposes that a theory of art or theories of the arts
can effectively attend to the hard cases. Chapter  adds that the
hard cases are better understood as putting pressure on the folk
concept of the arts as a whole or on the folk concepts of the
individual art forms than on any folk concept of an art work.
Moreover, social scientific hypotheses do not implicate a concept
of art that requires a buck stopping theory of art. Any heavy
lifting that is done in empirical art studies falls to a concept of the
arts or to concepts of the individual arts. Finally, Chapter  argues
that art criticism is not anchored in distinctive evaluations of
works as works of art. It is anchored in aesthetic and other
evaluations of them as belonging to more specific kinds of art.
These conclusions admittedly have the look of promissory
notes, and the case for the ultimate informativeness of the buck
passing theory of art must wait upon the notes’ being paid off.
Payment in full requires not merely a theory of the arts or a
framework for theories of the individual arts. These must be
shown to address the needs that sent us looking for a theory of
art.
The bricoleur problem has been sitting for some time on the
back burner; the buck passing theory of art compels us to ask
whether it can stay there. It cannot as long as we need an
informative theory of the arts and as long as an informative theory
of the arts is one that solves the bricoleur problem. The next two
sections argue that the prospects for a theory of the arts that
solves the bricoleur problem are grim. It will follow that if the
problem stays on the back burner, then it is only because a theory
of the arts that solves the bricoleur problem is not needed.
Theories of the individual arts can address the explanatory needs
that buck stopping theories of art undertook to serve.
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Theories of the Arts and the Bricoleur Problem
Wollheim’s bricoleur problem colourfully expresses what sparked
interest in developing a theory of the arts during the early modern
period. Historians like Kristeller (–) and Shiner () have
documented a lengthy and gradual reconceptualization of human
activities that was finalized in the mid-eighteenth century. For the
first time, a group of activities, with painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, and poetry at its core (and several others
towards its periphery), were seen as species of a genus to be
sharply distinguished from activities belonging to other newlyformed genera – the sciences, the applied sciences, the crafts, and
the liberal arts or humanities (see Chapter ). This reorganization
was not unreflective; it came about partly as a result of a search
for a theory of the arts, a statement of some features that unify the
arts and distinguish them from non-art activities. Batteux () is
credited with formulating the first such theory, and it was a
success in so far as it fixed the extension of the arts as the common
ground over which subsequent theories were to contend. But
although the genus of the arts was now well established, no
theory of the arts ultimately proved satisfactory. Indeed, the
obstacles to a theory are probably greater now than they were in
the eighteenth century.
The glaring new development is the hard cases, which scotch
any hope of deriving a theory of the arts from a theory of art. As
we saw in Chapter , this derivation depends on the bridging
assumption that an art is an activity whose products are works of
art. Given a theory stating what features make paintings and
songs works of art, we can say that an art is an activity outputting
works with the features in question. Unfortunately, however, the
dispute between traditional and genetic conceptions of the
features in question has stalled at an impasse (see Chapter ).
Consequently, a theory of the arts should be formulated
independent of a theory of art: such is the advice of the buck
passing theory of art.
It does not follow that a theory of the arts must be cut from
entirely new cloth. A traditional theory of the arts that echoes a
traditional theory of art will take what makes an activity an art to
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always include some exhibited features. For example, it might
propose that an art is an activity which serves an aesthetic
function. Notice that it need not imply that every product of the
activity serving this aesthetic function has the same exhibited
feature – it need not endorse the bridging assumption. Thus it
need take no stand on the hard cases. By the same token, a
genetic theory of the arts that echoes a genetic theory of art might
propose, for example, that an art is an informal institution of a
certain kind. If it does not imply the bridging assumption, then it
does not imply that what makes every item a work of art is its
institutional genesis. It also stands neutral on the hard cases.
As a matter of fact, Dickie () pairs his institutional theory
of art with an institutional theory of the arts. A work of art is ‘an
artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public’ by
an artist – that is, ‘a person who participates with understanding
in the making of a work of art’ (Dickie , ). The idea is that
the act of making a work of art is partly constituted by the fact
that it is made by someone playing the role of artist for others
playing the role of audience. Making art is not like kissing:
whereas the behaviour involved in kissing is kissing no matter
who does it, the behaviours involved in making art works are not
making art works unless they are done by and for individuals
playing roles within the art world. That is Dickie’s considered
statement of the institutional theory of art.
Appended to it is the proposition that the art world is made up
of several ‘art world systems‘ – that is, the individual arts (Dickie
, ; see also Dickie , ). In other words, each art
features its own artist and audience roles as well as its own
supplementary roles (Dickie , ). Strictly speaking, the role
of artist is a role type which is played by painters, set designers,
choreographers, among others, and the role of audience is a role
type played by those who ‘participate with understanding’ in
each of the arts. The institutional theory of the arts is this: an art is
a practice in which artists (persons who participate with
understanding in the making of works of art) make works of art to
be presented to an art world public. There are several such
practices. What makes them arts is that they instantiate this
institutional structure.
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Consider one of the closely matched pairs that traverse the
boundary between the arts and non-art activities: ballet and ice
dance. Suppose that ballet is an art but ice dance is not. According
to the institutional theory of the arts just sketched, what makes
ballet an art is that it is an art world system wherein certain
individuals play the role of artist by participating with
understanding in the making of ballets to be presented to those
playing the role of ballet audience. Although ice dances are made
by choreographers, dancers, costume designers, and lighting
designers whose behaviours are intrinsically similar to those
playing the artist role in dance, these individuals do not play the
artist role. That is why ice dance is not an art.
Notice that this theory of the arts does not solve the bricoleur
problem – except perhaps by rejecting it. The bricoleur problem is
to identify a difference between the ‘stuffs or processes’ of ballet
and ice dance to explain why the former and not the latter has
been invested with institutional trappings of an art world system.
Dickie () acknowledges what is implicit in the comparison of
ballet with ice dance, namely that there are many ‘systems’ for
making and presenting artifacts that are not art world systems,
though they are very similar in their intrinsic character to art
world systems. Dickie weighs the proposal that the art world
comprises a ‘limited number of protosystems plus any other
systems which developed historically from these in a certain
manner’ (, –). He rejects this proposal as postponing the
problem: we will want to know why the protosystems count as
art. No doubt we will also want to know how to understand in
what ‘manner’ an art world system can develop historically from a
protosystem, since non-arts can develop historically from arts. In
the end, Dickie bites the bullet: it is arbitrary what activities are
art world systems. There is no deeper explanation of what makes
ballet an art than the fact that it has in fact acquired the right
institutional structure (, –).
This is not an objection to the institutional theory of the arts. A
theory of the arts is not obliged to answer the bricoleur problem if
that problem has no solution. The institutional theory of the arts
implies that it has no solution.
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In a fresh approach to theories of art and the arts, Iseminger
() marries an institutional theory of the art world to the claim
that the art world serves an aesthetic function. First, following
Dickie, Iseminger holds that the art world is an informal
institution or practice in which people play certain roles and
engage in various activities that are partly constituted by those
roles (Iseminger , –). Iseminger does not explicitly follow
Dickie in taking the art world to be a type of practice that is
instanced through the more specific practices of each of the arts.
However, since he gives no reason against an institutional theory
of the arts, his framework is easily enhanced to include the theory
that an art is an art world system – an activity with the
institutional structure of the art world. Second, following
Beardsley, Iseminger wishes to acknowledge an important
connection between art and the aesthetic. He argues that,
(F) the function of the art world is to promote aesthetic
communication.
This is a contingent fact about the art world and so is not part of
what makes some practices art world practices. An art world
practice may persist as such although it has ceased to promote
aesthetic communication (Iseminger , ). Presumably the
same goes for each of the arts, which contingently have the
function of promoting aesthetic communication.
This summarizes only some of Iseminger’s discussion. He
fashions a theory of art to fit his theory of the art world (though it
does not evade the impasse – see Lopes c). Given some
additional assumptions, this theory of art delivers an aesthetic
theory of artistic value. Moreover, to round things off, he crafts an
original and powerful theory of aesthetic appreciation (see Chapter
). For present purposes, however, (F) is enough. It suggests the
following:
(F*) the function of an art is to promote aesthetic
communication.
This is not a theory of the arts since it is at best a contingent fact
about them, but perhaps it solves the bricoleur problem?
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Seeing what this suggestion comes to requires an examination
of the arguments for (F) and (F*), and that calls in turn for accounts
of ‘function’ and ‘aesthetic communication’. These should be read
reasonably broadly. ‘Aesthetic communication’ is bringing about
states of affairs with the intention that they be objects of aesthetic
appreciation (, ). As already noted, Iseminger plugs into
this a powerful and original theory of aesthetic appreciation. Set
that aside for the sake of breadth. After all, we usually know
aesthetic appreciation when we see it even if we cannot define it.
That leaves ‘function’, and there are a several theories of
function to choose from, though all agree that the attribution of a
function to an item is supposed to explain some of its features. The
attribution of a ‘systemic function’ to an item describes the
contribution the item makes to maintaining a capacity of a system
to which it belongs (Cummins ). For example, the heart has
the systemic function of pumping blood because pumping blood is
its contribution to the organism’s capacity to respirate. Marx
famously attributed a systemic function to art when he claimed
that it expresses and reinforces certain interests within the
economic base of a society.
The attribution of an ‘etiological function’ to an item specifies
what the item does that caused it to be selected for in the past (e.g.
Millikan ). For example, pumping is blood is what hearts do
that caused them to be favoured by natural selection. Glenn
Parsons and Allen Carlson apply etiological functions to artifacts:
an artifact has an etiological function, F, just in case the artifact is
currently manufactured and distributed because its recent
ancestors performed F, thereby causing their success in the
marketplace (, ).
According to Iseminger, if something is good at doing that it
was designed and made to do, then doing that is its ‘artifactual
function’ (, ; see also Tolhurst ). Most artifacts are
designed to perform several functions, and these functions often
nest: when an item does F by doing G, then its doing F is nested in
its doing G. The artifactual function of an item is a non-nested
function. Iseminger argues that the art world’s non-nested
artifactual function is to promote aesthetic communication.
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History shows that the art world was designed and made to
promote aesthetic communication. Citing Kristeller (–),
Iseminger observes that the eighteenth century saw the formation
of the modern system of the arts, wherein ‘painters, poets, and
composers were eventually largely persuaded to see themselves as
engaged in different branches of the same business’ (, ).
The writings of Batteux () and others express the common
understanding of those engaged in it that mission of this business
was to be the promotion of aesthetic communication.
Iseminger adds that the art world is good at promoting
aesthetic communication. It is better at promotion aesthetic
communication than any of the competition (Iseminger ,
-). Government and business are barely contenders; religion,
political activity, and advertising have had their moments but
they are unreliable as mechanisms for aesthetic communication;
and practices of nature appreciation lack the versatility and range
of the arts as sources of aesthetic appreciation. In addition, the art
world is better at promoting aesthetic communication than
anything else it does (Iseminger , –). For example, it is
not a dependable route to wealth, power, or social status, and it
does not perform well as a sphere for religion, politics, or
philosophy.
These are delicate empirical observations. Just as delicate
would be the kinds of observations that would warrant the
conclusion that promoting aesthetic communication is the art
world’s etiological function. Even granted that the art world does
in fact promote aesthetic communication, the question remains
whether this is responsible for its continued existence over the
centuries. Parsons and Carlson sensibly remark that ‘given the
variation in art and art practices over time and in different
cultures and groups, it seems likely that different kinds of
artworks have survived for quite different kinds of reasons’ (,
).
The delicacy of these operations is a challenge for anyone who
seeks to show that promoting aesthetic communication is a
contingent function of the art world. The challenge for those who
seek a solution to the bricoleur problem is somewhat different.
The suggestion is that an activity is fit to be an art world system
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just in case it has the function of promoting aesthetic
communication. The problem with this suggestion is that if the
arts have this function then so do many activities that are not arts.
Aesthetic communication is practically ubiquitous.
As Iseminger admits, a case can be made that industrial design,
cooking, and gardening have the function of promoting aesthetic
communication (, -, ). Most consumer products are
created in partly with an eye to their aesthetic impact:
automobiles, bicycles, laptop computers, stovetops, kitchenware,
clocks, pens, children’s toys… the list is very long. The function
of these items to promote aesthetic communication is non-nested,
at least in two obvious respects. An item’s doing F is nested only if
it does F by doing G. Obviously consumer items function to
generate a profit, but they do not function to promote aesthetic
communication by functioning to generate a profit. The same goes
for such ‘utilitarian’ functions as transportation, surfing the web,
cooking, tracking the time, signing cheques, and entertaining: it is
not only by performing these functions that consumer products
promote aesthetic communication. The problem cannot be pinned
on the artifactual conception of function. If artistic practices
survive because of their aesthetic function, so do any design
practices. If artistic practices contribute to a larger aesthetic
system, so do any design practices.
Remember the paired activities listed at the beginning of the
chapter: dance and ice dance, novels and biographies, East Asian
calligraphy and paper making, mime and clowning, sculpture and
body building, grand opera and World Cup soccer, installations
and department store window displays. It is hard to believe that
an empirical case can be made that only the first member of each
pair has the artifactual, etiological, or systemic function of
promoting aesthetic communication. The prospects for a theory of
the arts that solves the bricoleur problem do not look rosy.
Concept and Contestation
Theories of art are driven by the challenge posed by the hard
cases. Maybe the search for a theory of the arts is driven not only
by the initial formation of the modern system of the arts but also
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by revisions to that system since the eighteenth century,
especially during the past few decades. The eighteenth century
core – painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry – has
expanded enormously. The novel is an early addition and recent
contenders include photography, the movies, earthworks,
installation art, happenings, computer art, jazz, popular music,
video games, and comic books. The admission of every one of
these activities (including the novel) into the arts club was
controversial. One might think that a theory of the arts that solves
the bricoleur problem is implicit in adjudicating these
controversies.
Chapter  distinguished between a theory of art, which states
what makes any item a work of art, and an explication of the
workings of the folk concept of art, which pinpoints the features
by means of which we recognize works of art. Having the concept
need not consist in knowing the theory. Likewise, a theory of the
arts is one thing and a concept of the arts is another. A concept of
the arts figures in reasoning about and reliably detecting activities
that are arts, but it need not consists in knowing a theory of the
arts. Thinkers might in fact exercise a concept of the arts even if
there is no true, non-trivial theory of the arts.
What might be implicit in the initial formation of the modern
system of the arts and in its subsequent reformations is a concept
of the arts. That concept was expressed by Batteux () in the
form of a theory, but that theory was soon shown to be
inadequate, without perturbing the concept or its remarkably
rapid promulgation among the folk. Still, the modern system of
the arts has been updated over the years. Activities not previously
recognized as arts were tested and found to be arts. How was this
test carried out? It may seem that in the answer lies an explication
of the concept of the arts.
It may also seem that in this explication lies a solution to the
bricoleur problem. Wollheim divided potential solutions to the
bricoleur problem into two kinds: one may say why certain ‘stuffs
or processes’ are the vehicles of art either when there are no arts
or when ‘certain arts are already going concerns’ ([],
). Only the latter is part of a ‘serious or interesting inquiry’; it
is ‘determined by the analogies and disanalogies that we can
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construct between the existing arts and the art in
question’ ([], ). Therefore, the idea might be that the
analogies and disanalogies express a concept of the arts.
Here, in other words, is a methodology for investigating the
concept of the arts. Examine the details of the debates about the
admission of new activities into the domain of the arts. These
debates have been and are being settled. If they are being settled
in a principled way, then it is by appeal to features that we take to
be reliable indicators that an activity is an art. Maybe they are the
very features that make an activity an art. At the least we get a
description of the concept of art and perhaps we get a theory of
the arts.
There is reason to think the plan too optimistic: it assumes that
the analogies and disanalogies that push us towards or away from
acknowledging a new art form are global rather than local. Global
analogies are features which the activity under scrutiny shares
with all other arts and global disanalogies are features its shares
with no other arts. Local analogies are features it may share with
some other arts, local disanalogies being features it does not share
with some other arts. Only global analogies and disanalogies
express a concept of the arts. If disputes about the art status of
certain activities revolve only around local analogies and
disanalogies, then they are not a good source from which to
extract a picture of the concept of the arts.
The activities whose status as arts has received by far the
deepest and most sustained treatment are photography and the
movies. By far the most compelling case against their art status is
mounted by Roger Scruton (). Scruton’s top-level argument is
this:
. cinema is an independent art form only if it is a
representational art,
. cinema is a representational art only if photography is a
representational art, and
. photography is not a representational art,
. so cinema is not an independent art form.
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The conclusion of this argument allows that cinema is recorded
theatre, yet not an art form in its own right. A corollary of the
argument is that photography is not an independent art form
either, given a variant on (), namely that photography is an
independent art form only if it is a representational art. Premise ()
expresses the thought that movies could be an art in their own
right only by exploiting the technology of photography. Thus the
key premise is () and Scruton floats several arguments for it,
which have been targeted by those who wish to defend the art
status of photography and cinema (esp. Lopes , Abell ,
Gaut ). For present purposes, note that the argument – and
premise () in particular – does not implicate a theory or concept
of the arts in general. It appeals instead to a narrower conception
of the representational arts, one which nobody would think to use
to revoke the artistic credentials of architecture, abstract
sculpture, or pure music. Moreover, nobody who rejects Scruton’s
skepticism about movies and photography would think to defend
their art status by likening them to architecture, abstract
sculpture, or pure music.
The narrower the basis for coming to a decision about a
candidate art form, the more secure the decision. We should
expect to see disputes about earthworks, installation art, and
happenings focus on their analogies and disanalogies to a small
number of established arts. The relevant analogies are not likely to
connect them to poetry and music, for example. The point is even
clearer when it comes to the recognition of art forms considered
‘low brow’. It is enough to tie jazz and popular music to serious
classical music and to tie comic books to other narrative and
pictorial arts. Video games are an interesting case: their art status
is often established by stressing their connections to cinema
(Tavinor , Gaut ) but they can also be viewed as the
popular counterpart of avant-garde computer art (Lopes b).
Reasoning inductively, the more we find that disputes about
the art status of various activities appeal to analogies and
disanalogies that hold only among subsets of the arts, the less
reason we have to believe that a concept of the arts can be
extracted from these disputes. Indeed, this was Kristeller’s
assessment, that ‘the system of the fine arts is hardly more than a
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postulate and most of its theories are abstracted from particular
arts, usually poetry, and more or less inapplicable to the
others’ (–, ).
Beyond the Arts
It is time to stop and take stock. There is hope for a viable theory
of the arts – Dickie’s institutional theory of the arts is one
example.
However, the prospects for a theory of the arts that solves the
bricoleur problem are dim. Moreover, the evidence is that our
working concept of the arts does not rely on a solution to the
bricoleur problem either. After all is said and done, the arts might
truly result from bricolage, wherein a choice of materials is largely
accidental and depends on what happens to lie close at hand.
What follows is that the prospects for an informative theory of the
arts are thin if an informative theory of the arts is one that solves
the bricoleur problem. It would be nice, then, to leave the search
for a theory of the arts on the back burner. That remains an option
so long as theories of the individual arts are informative. Pursuing
this option frees us to be agnostic about any theory of the arts.
Can theories of the individual arts take over the explanatory
tasks that buck stopping theories of art have been expected to
serve? Can they come to grips with the hard cases? Do they
supply the conceptual foundations of empirical art studies? Do
they anchor practices of art criticism? These are questions for the
next four chapters. They are put on the agenda not only by the
buck passing theory of art but also in recognition of the dismal
prospects of a theory of the arts that solves the bricoleur problem.
At the same time, these dismal prospects suggest an opportunity
from which theories of the individual arts may profit.
Without denying that there is a distinction between the arts
and non-arts, reason recommends keeping an open mind about
whether that distinction tracks a solution to the bricoleur
problem. That is, there may be no informative, general answer to
the question why certain apparently arbitrarily identified stuffs or
processes should be the vehicles of art. To repeat, this agnosticism
does not entail skepticism about the boundary between the arts
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and the non-arts. It more modestly warrants proceeding on the
assumption that, as we gird our loins to devise theories of the
individual arts, there may be something to learn about those nonarts that, like the arts, also engage us in appreciation. Maybe there
is something to learn about dance from ice dance, novels from
biographies, East Asian calligraphy from paper making, mime
from clowning, sculpture from body building, grand opera from
World Cup soccer, and installations from department store
window displays.
The class of appreciative kinds extends far beyond the arts.
Design, interior decoration, food, wine, clothing and personal
adornment, quilts, television, dog breeding, circuses, games,
sports: it is hard to know what to exclude. Noting the
heterogeneity of the arts themselves, Zangwill recommends that
we try to understand them alongside ‘everyday creative activities
such as industrial design, advertising, weaving, whistling, cake
decorating, arranging and decorating rooms, religious rituals, and
fireworks displays’ (, ; see also Walton ). Zangwill’s
proposal seems a worthy heuristic.
An objection to this heuristic is dampened by keeping in mind
the need for agnosticism about a theory of the arts that solves the
bricoleur problem. The objection is that the heuristic blurs the
boundary between the arts and non-arts so as to distort our
understanding of appreciation outside the realm of the arts.
The objection is worth worrying about. Whatever the
epistemic contours of the concept of the arts – whatever we take
to be the reliable indicators that an activity is an art – there is no
question that the concept’s application has an honorific impact.
Calling an activity an art singles it out as somehow important,
serious, especially worthy of attention. As a result, it can be
tempting to smuggle into the arts those activities that are deemed
important, serious, and worthy of attention. For example, Kevin
Melchionne convincingly argues that interior design aims to
‘create an environment that facilitates domestic practice while at
the same time making the environment worthy of aesthetic
attention and admiration’ (, ). The ‘domestic practice’ that
can be made worthy of attention and admiration is the routine
stuff of everyday life in a space – cooking, cleaning, playing,
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reading, sleeping, and the like. Interior design can ‘refine and
intensify experiences already available to us in everyday
life’ (Melchionne , ). So far, so good, but Melchionne goes
a step further, characterizing ‘the ordinary process of inhabiting
our homes’ as an artistic practice, an ‘art of domesticity’ that is
practiced on a daily basis (, ).
Melchionne might be right about an art of domesticity: the task
at hand is not to decide what activities to list alongside poetry and
dance as arts. Rather, the issue is the wisdom of the
methodological heuristic of studying the arts as appreciative kinds
alongside appreciative kinds that are not arts.
In Everyday Aesthetics Yuriko Saito () describes our
understanding of the appreciation of non-art as dominated by an
‘art-centred aesthetics’. Not much weight falls on the ‘aesthetic’,
which Saito defines as ‘any reactions we form toward the sensuous
and/or design qualities of any object, phenomenon, or
activity’ (, ???) – that is as much of a placeholder as
‘appreciation’. As Saito observes, aesthetic appreciation pervades
everyday life:
most of us attend to our personal appearance almost daily:
choosing what to wear and what sort of haircut to get, cleaning
and ironing clothes, and deciding whether or not to dye our
hair or try some kind of ‘aesthetic rejuvenation’ treatment or
body decoration. These decisions and actions are primarily, if
not exclusively, guided by aesthetic considerations (, ???).
Nor do we check these considerations at the boundary of the
personal:
as citizens, we find ourselves forming opinions on societal
debates primarily based upon aesthetic reasoning. Examples
range from supporting the rehabilitation of a brownfield,
criticizing the design of a proposed building, opposing the
construction of a wind farm or a cell phone tower, to
condemning graffiti while welcoming a mural and objecting to
the appearance and location of a billboard (Saito , ???).
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Once the everyday appears on the philosopher’s radar as a target
of appreciation, it tends to be viewed in relation to art. Fretting
about how the arts differ from the non-arts is matched, once some
feature of everyday life is recognized as a target of appreciation,
by fretting over whether or it is art.
Saito argues that the art-centred approach distorts our
understanding of everyday appreciation. No surprise: the
argument calls on twins cases. A paradigm example of everyday
appreciation is cooking and eating food, but Rirkrit Tiravanija’s
artistic practice famously includes creates gallery installations
made up of nothing more than his cooking food to be eaten by
gallery visitors. The appreciation involved in eating curry at home
and eating curry cooked by Tiravanija in a gallery in the West
Village are not the same. What Tiravanija does makes the
everyday into something extraordinary. Therefore, to understand
our appreciation of the everyday in its own terms, it is essential to
resist ‘making the ordinary extraordinary and rendering the
familiar strange’ (Saito , ???). The lesson is that
while one earns a bit of stature for food by advancing it as an
art form, the endeavor is apt to divert attention from the
interesting ways in which the aesthetic importance of foods
diverges from parallel values in art… the fact that these
features count against something being an art object does not
mean that they are aesthetically uninteresting, insignificant, or
irrelevant (Saito , ???).
An art-centred approach to appreciation is partial and incomplete.
Not having a solution to the bricoleur problem does not erase
the boundary between the arts and the non-arts. Following Dickie,
one might deny that a theory of the arts should even attempt to
solve the bricoleur problem. This fact should serve as a reminder
to heed Saito’s warning. It is one thing to view the arts as kin to
appreciative kinds that are not arts and it is another to treat nonarts as arts. Without a theory of the arts that solves the bricoleur
problem, the attempt to artify non-art is a dubious proposition.
Unfortunately, Saito plays into this herself by listing some
characteristics of the arts, leaving it open to others to defend an
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art-centred approach to appreciation by objecting that the list fails
to police the boundary separating art from non-art (Dowling
). Agnosticism requires an open mind about similarities and
differences across the boundary.
A final note. The arts are activities that involve the intentional
production of artifacts and events by human agents, and so are
many non-art appreciative kinds. However, some non-art
appreciative kinds do not involve the intentional production of
artifacts and events by human agents. Why not view the arts as
appreciative kinds of this widest sort? There has been intensive
study of natural objects, events, and settings as targets of
appreciation (see Parsons ). Other targets of appreciation
include bodily events like ‘being in the room you are in right
now, with its particular visual features and sounds; sitting the
way that you are sitting, perhaps crookedly in an uncomfortable
chair; feeling the air currents on your skin’ (Irvin a, see also
Irvin b). The point is not that these stuffs and processes are
vehicles for art; like each art, they afford appreciation each in
their own way.
The buck passing theory of art sends in search of an informative
theory of the arts or informative theories of the individual arts.
The prospects do not seem good for a theory of the arts that
illuminates what we care about. It is time to see what can be
learned by developing a framework for theories of the individual
arts as appreciative kinds.

Appreciative Kinds and Media
Theories are useful in so far as they give us some insight into
phenomena that we care about, and the buck passing theory of art
is indirectly informative, referring us to theories of the individual
arts for the insight we seek. A theory of art is hardly a
prerequisite for getting on with work on the individual arts and
indeed philosophers have proposed partial or complete theories of
painting (e.g. Wollheim 1987, Lopes 2005), movies (e.g. Carroll
1996a, Gaut 2010) music (e.g. Levinson 1990), dance (e.g.
Beardsley 1982), theatre (e.g. Hamilton 2007), poetry (e.g. Ribeiro
2007), and literature (e.g. Lamarque and Olsen 1994, Stecker
1996). Success in these endeavours may seem to be enough to
clinch the case for the buck passing theory of art. However, truth
be told, theorizing about the individual arts has often proceeded
with a buck stopping theory of art in the background. Absent
such a theory, it is fair to ask what is the framework within which
theories of the individual arts are to be developed. Ultimately,
such a framework should indicate how these theories can be
informative in a way that satisfies the demands traditionally
placed on theories of art.
Framework
The great advantage of the buck passing theory of art for those
who are interested in theories of the individual arts is that it does
not require them to be uniform. That is also its great challenge.
Each art is different from its sister arts. This datum is
represented in the fact that the schema for theories of the
individual arts,
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is…
is to be completed differently for every art. A theorist of music,
for example, need not be looking over her shoulder at theories of
painting or poetry.
Yet, as nobody denies, if an item is a work in an art form then it
is a work of art. More strongly still, what makes an item a work of
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art and what makes an item a painting, song, or dance number are
not unrelated. A dance number is a work of art partly in virtue of
facts that make it a dance number, and what makes a song a piece
of music factors into what makes it a work of art. Given the
stronger claim, if a buck stopping theory of art says that,
1. x is a work of art = x is F
and if a theory of an art says that,
2. x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is G
then it follows that,
3. x is a work of K = x is G and x’s being G is part of what
makes it F.
This result quite considerably constrains the theory of any art
form, by ruling out many theories of the art.
The buck passing theory of art does not imply (3). The buck
passing theory is that,
x is a work of art = x is a work of K, where K is an art.
This proposition conjoined with (2) delivers a variant on (3) that is
identical to (2), namely,
3*. x is a work of K = x is G and x’s being G is part of what
makes it a work of K.
The second half of the conjunction in (3*) is otiose and its
elimination results in (2). The practical upshot is that the specific
features of each art form – the ones in virtue of which it differs
from its sister arts – need not be represented in a theory of that art
as realizing a feature it shares in common with its sister arts. There
are plenty of similarities among the arts, but these similarities
need not be built into what makes each art the art that it is. That is
an advantage of the buck passing theory of art for theorizing
about the individual arts.
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Is this silver lining on a cloud under which we must now
labour? Presumably the point of developing theories of the arts
was to understand how items in those arts came to be works of art
by exploiting the specific features of each art. Thus a theory of
music was expected to say what makes songs by Henry Purcell
and Leonard Cohen works of musical art, as a theory of
photography was to bring out what makes the productions of
Diane Arbus and Jeff Wall works of specifically photographic art.
According to the buck passing theory of art, this cannot be the
point of theories of the individual arts. But unless we have some
idea of what tasks we expect theories of the arts to perform, how
can we devise theories the truth of which we can measure?
To see the force of the question, consider a version of Weitz’s
(1956) ‘open concept’ argument adapted to the individual arts. In
fact, as Meskin (2008) acutely observes, Weitz himself endorses
the adaptation when he asserts that ‘every sub-concept of art’ – from the novel to painting – is an open concept (1956: 32). Chapter
2 interpreted Weitz as giving two arguments from the claim that
art is an open concept to the conclusion that there is no correct,
complete, non-trivial theory of art. The first argument, the
creativity argument, is either unsound or circular, and there is
reason to think that the second argument also begs the question
(see Chapter 2 for details). However, the second argument has a
methodological dimension that is useful in thinking about the
question above.
The argument contrasts concepts which are either ‘empiricallydescriptive’ or ‘normative’, on one hand, and concepts that, on the
other hand, are closed by stipulation ‘for a special purpose’ (Weitz
1956, 32). Adapting the argument to painting, for example:
. if painting is an open concept then there is no correct,
complete, non-trivial theory of painting, and
. if the application of concept of painting calls for a decision on
our part, then it is open, and
. the concept of painting is empirically-descriptive or
normative only if the application of the concept of art calls for a
decision on our part, but
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. the concept of painting is empirically-descriptive or
normative,
. so there is no correct, complete, non-trivial theory of
painting.
Premise (4) implies that painting is not closed by stipulation for a
special purpose: any attempt to close the concept by stipulation
fails to elucidate ‘the actual employment of the concept… the
conditions under which we correctly use it or its correlates’ (Weitz
1956, 30). Meskin (2008) attributes a normative flavour to Weitz’s
argument: we should not close the concept of painting if doing so
leaves a remainder, excluding some uses of the concept of
painting.
Setting aside any structural difficulties (see Chapter 2), the
argument embeds a methodological assumption, namely that a
theory of painting must elucidate the concept of painting in its
many and diverse uses. It must be extracted from our
classificatory practices, which are highly variegated. The method
is analysis of the folk concept of painting. Given this method and
the disorderly folk use of art form concepts, it is perfectly sensible
to doubt that correct, complete, non-trivial theories of many, if
not all, of the arts lie over the horizon.
This methodology is not the only option. Theories must be
informative, but their informativeness need not come from
elucidating folk concepts. One might reasonably suspect that only
history, sociology, and psychology can make much progress with
such a task. Instead, theories of the arts, like theories of art, might
be informative, firstly, in so far as they ground art form concepts
employed in scientific studies of the arts and, secondly, in so far as
they ground evaluations of works as belonging to the arts.
There are hypotheses about painting, music, and poetry that
are generated in art history, musicology, and literary studies, but
also the psychology and anthropology of visual art, music, and
verse. Theories of painting, music, or poetry might be closed for
the ‘special purpose’ of integrating and elucidating these technical
concepts. This is one way for philosophy of art to contribute to
empirical inquiry (Bergeron and Lopes 2011). Its contributions are
bound to be piecemeal, since art studies are themselves piecemeal
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(musicologists are not anthropologists of dance even if they
sometimes pool what they know).
The rest of this chapter sets out a framework for developing
theories of the arts as categories which figure in the appreciation
of works of art, where appreciation is a cognitive process
involving the ascription of value, typically as a result of
classification and interpretation. In this framework, art forms are
appreciative kinds, and the notion of an appreciative kind is the
framing device that replaces the concept of art. As we learned in
Chapter 6, the arts make up a small subset of the appreciative
kinds.
Note that this last point about the domain of appreciative kinds
combines with the methodological point that the task is not to
analyze folk concepts – indeed, theories of appreciative kinds may
not line up perfectly with folk concepts. Theories of the
individual arts might not, in particular, follow the (vague and
disorderly) boundaries marked by the folk concepts of painting or
dance, for example. Those folk concepts may not track our actual
appreciative practices, and appreciative practices are always open
to correction.
Reverse Engineering
Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Normativity (2008, 19–33) draws a set of
distinctions that are implicit in some discussions of art
appreciation (e.g. Lopes 2005, 2008b). None of them are at all
controversial, nor do they imply any of the theses in Thomson’s
book that have drawn heavy fire. They may be taken as
fundamental. Without them, it is easy to miss what we are looking
for in an account of appreciative kinds.
First, some evaluations are made true by the fact that an item is
good as a K or for a K or, in Thomson’s official jargon, qua K. For
example, being good qua toaster consists in toasting well, being
good qua seeing eye dog consists in serving well in assisting
disabled people to navigate their environment, being good qua
tennis player consists in playing tennis well. The kinds toaster,
seeing eye dog, and tennis player are what Thomson calls
‘goodness-fixing kinds’. By stipulation, a kind is a goodness-fixing
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kind just in case what it is for an item to be a K sets the standard
that a K has to meet if it is to be good qua K. Toasters, seeing eye
dogs, and tennis players are functional kinds in the sense that
what it is to be a member of the kind is to have a certain function.
Thus to be good qua member of the relevant kind is to perform
that function well.
A goodness-fixing kind need not be a functional kind.
Thomson’s example is beefsteak tomatoes. They do not make up a
functional kind, for ‘there is nothing they do about which it could
be asked whether or not they do it well’, yet tomatoes that are
‘large at maturity while nevertheless tasting good’ are good qua
beefsteak tomatoes (Thomson 2008, 20). Other goodness-fixing
kinds that are not functional kinds are the kinds tiger and human
being. As these examples indicate, goodness need not be fixed in a
goodness-fixing kind by a function performed by members of the
kind.
Not all kinds are goodness-fixing kinds. A pebble is a small
stone smoothed by erosion, but that does not fix any standard that
a pebble has to meet to be good qua pebble, so there is nothing it
is for an item to be good qua pebble. A pebble may be good in
some respect or other, but not qua pebble. Thomson argues that
acts, events, and facts are not goodness-fixing kinds. Chapter 5
concluded that there is nothing is it for an item to be good as art.
Restating that conclusion, art is not a goodness-fixing kind.
Second, not all goodness is fixed by a goodness-fixing kind: the
goodness of an item need not consist in its meeting a standard
fixed by a kind. Some of Thomson’s examples: being good for
England, being good to use in teaching elementary logic, being
good to look at, being good with children (2008, 27). These are
instances of ‘being good-modified’. Since acts are not a goodnessfixing kind, morally good acts are not acts that are good qua acts.
Instead, ‘morally good’ is a good-modifier (Thomson 2008, 80).
Another good-modifier is ‘aesthetically good’. There is no kind
such that what it is to be a member of that kind fixes what it is to
be aesthetically good.
Third, an item might be good-modified for a K. This is not the
same as the compound property of being good-modified and a K.
Someone might be good to look at and also an athlete, whereas to
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be good to look at for an athlete is to be good to look at, adjusting
for how good athletes are to look at. Likewise, a six-year-old boy
might be good at doing crossword puzzles. He would be a
crossword prodigy. However, his being good at doing crossword
puzzles for a six-year-old child does imply that he is a prodigy –
he might not even be as good at doing crosswords as someone who
is good at doing crosswords for a New Yorker. To take an example
from the arts, a work might be a thriller movie and it might be
gripping without being gripping for a thriller movie.
Finally, an item might be a good K for a K*, where K is a
goodness-fixing kind but K* is not. An Apple II might be a good
computer for a computer made in 1980, a movie might be a good
thriller for a Hitchcock movie, and a boy might be a good
composer for a six-year-old child. Again, these are not compound
properties like those of being a good computer and being made in
1980 (not just a classic of its era), being a good thriller and being
made by Hitchcock (maybe not his best stuff), or being a good
composer and being a six-year-old child (a prodigy).
In sum, Thomson distinguishes four ways in which an item
may be good in some respect: being good qua K, being goodmodified, being good modified for a K, and being good qua K for a
K*. This list fleshes out but is not entailed by the disputed thesis
that nothing is good except in some respect. Needless to say, the
examples are just examples and quibbles about their classification
as examples of one case rather than another do nothing to disturb
these distinctions.
The task at hand is to sketch a framework for arriving at
theories of the art forms, each one filling in the schema,
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is….
The idea is to take that schema as a special case of the more
generic schema,
x is a K, where K is an appreciative kind = x is….
With that in mind, how do Thomson’s distinctions bring us closer
to a framework for theories of appreciative kinds, including the
arts?
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In most cases, our understanding of what it is for an item to be
a K keeps pace with our understanding of how to evaluate the
item in a way that is sensitive to its being a K. That is certainly
true of the kinds tennis player, toaster, six-year-old child, and
composer. The fact that someone does not know how to evaluate
an item as a toaster counts as strong evidence against their
knowing what a toaster is. Someone’s not knowing how to adjust
for the fact that a logic proof is done by a six-year-old child is
strong evidence against their knowing what it is to be a six-yearold child.
Many cases that provoke serious inquiry are not like this. In
these cases, our understanding of what it is for an item to be a K
significantly lags our understanding of how to evaluate the item in
a way that is sensitive to its being a K. (Again, having a concept
does not require knowing a theory.) The arts are paradigm
examples of this. Anyone who listens to music is fairly well skilled
at judging it, though few can even being to say what it is for an
item to be a work of music. That is why books like Daniel
Levitin’s This Is Your Brain on Music (2006) are so peculiarly
instructive: they dispel mysteries that cloud over the most familiar
phenomena. Homo sapiens is first of all Homo valorens.
This fact is a convenient methodological toe hold. So long as
our evaluations of items in appreciative kinds are reliable, they are
a source from which to extract the nature of the kinds in question.
Stipulate that,
K is an appreciative kind if and only if is there is a property of
being good qua K, or being good-modified for a K, or being
good qua K* for a K.
That is, in appreciative kinds, K, what it is to be a K fixes the
standard for being a good K, or inflects what it is to be goodmodified for a K, or guides any adjustments for the fact that an
item is a K when judging it against the standard for being good
qua K*. We can reverse engineer from facts about appreciation of
items in appreciative kinds to the nature of the kinds themselves.
Doing so does not require that all appreciative kinds be
goodness-fixing kinds. Nor does it require that the appreciative
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kinds that are invariably goodness-fixing kinds be function kinds:
some are obviously not. It sets aside for separate treatment what it
is for an item to be aesthetically good, if ‘aesthetically good’ is a
goodness-modifier. At the same time, it allows what it is to be a K
to play a role in what makes it the case that an item is aesthetically
good for a K. If art forms are appreciative kinds, then it allows for
the hybrid theory of artistic value ventured at the end of Chapter
5.
Beyond Media Bashing
What it is for a work to belong to an art form is traditionally
cashed out, at least in part, with reference to the art form’s
characteristic medium. As Dickie put it, ‘making art has had at its
center working with a medium. Learning to be an artist has meant
learning to work in some medium or other – paint, stone, words,
tones’ (1984, 61). However, most art theorists nowadays dissent,
and Carroll (1985, 2003, 2008) is their leading philosophical
champion, urging us to ‘forget the medium!’ Taking the
dissenters’ concerns seriously steers us towards a moderate and
viable conception of the role of media in the arts – a conception
that some art scholars seek (e.g. Mitchell 2005, Smith 2006).
The debate about medium is disorienting. It looks as if the
players are not hitting the same ball over the same net. Those who
wish to remember the medium ally themselves with Wollheim
(1980[1968]) in his argument against a view that he had pinned on
Croce (1922[1902]) and Collingwood (1938). Whether or not Croce
and Collingwood actually endorsed the view, it was certainly in
the air. For example, it is taken to task by Walter Pater in his
essay on ‘The School of Giorgione’ as a,
mistake of much popular criticism to regard poetry, music, and
painting – all the various products of art – as but translations into
different languages of one and the same fixed quantity of
imaginative thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities
of colour, in painting; of sound, in music; of rhythmical words in
poetry. In this way, the sensuous element in art, and with it
almost everything in art that is essentially artistic, is a matter of
indifference (1877, 130).
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According to the indifference thesis, the ‘technical qualities’
associated with art forms are not factors in the value of works in
those art forms. No medium is an appreciative kind. Wollheim
(1980[1968]) supplies the classic argument to the contrary. The
imaginative activity that an artist engages in as she works is
couched in a recognition of the possibilities and limitations of her
medium. Thus what she achieves through her imaginative activity
cannot be grasped without taking into account the ‘recalcitrance’
of the medium. In so far as the value of the work includes its value
as an achievement in that medium, the medium is an appreciative
kind.
Media skeptics take on a purity doctrine which can be found in
early modern writers (e.g. Lessing 1962[1766]) but which has far
more influential backers among twentieth century art theorists,
principally Clement Greenberg (1940, 1961) and Michael Fried
(1967). Carroll chooses this passage from Greenberg as an example
of the doctrine:
a modernist work of art must try, in principle, to avoid
dependence upon any order of experience not given in the most
essentially construed nature of its medium. This means, among
other things, renouncing illusion and explicitness. The arts are
to achieve concreteness, ‘purity’, by acting solely in terms of
their separate and irreducible selves (1961, 139).
Although Greenberg speaks of ‘modernist’ art, Carroll treats this
passage as meant to apply without restriction to any kind of art.
(The criticisms of the doctrine found below do not touch upon its
place in modernism.)
What precisely does the doctrine say? There is no easy answer.
Carroll expresses it in a dozen ways – here is a sample:
[1] each art form should pursue those effects that, in virtue of
its medium it alone – i.e., of all the arts – can achieve… [2] each
art form should pursue ends that, in virtue of its medium, it
achieves most effectively or best of all those effects at its
disposal… [3] each art form should pursue only those effects
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which, in virtue of its medium, it excels in achieving (1985, 6–
7; see also Carroll 2008, 36–7).
The differences between these statements are non-trivial, and,
wisely enough, Carroll does not attempt a generic formulation that
accurately sums them all up. However, he does break the doctrine
down into two theses (1985, 13–14). The first is a descriptive
thesis and is stable across all versions of the doctrine: each art
form is differentiated from the other art forms by its distinctive
media. The second, prescriptive thesis varies from one version of
the purity doctrine to the next. According to Greenberg, for
example, works in a given art form should only be made to
achieve effects unique to the art form by using the art form’s
distinctive media.
This prescriptive thesis is so astonishing that it is tempting to
dismiss it. The proposition that some media are appreciative kinds
certainly does not imply it. Perhaps the fact that K is an
appreciative kind imposes the very weak collective obligation on
us to create some good examples of Ks when we create Ks. That
falls short of what the purity doctrine seems to require. A strong
argument would be needed to show that we are under the further
obligation only to create Ks that are good examples of Ks, when
we create Ks. Knife makers are not obliged only to create sharp
knives: there are countless respects in which knives can be good,
and many are independent of their sharpness (e.g. being
aesthetically good) while some are downright incompatible with it
(being good for playing with). As Carroll advises, we should not
let the doctrine ‘stand between us and excellence’ (1985, 14). So
why think that painters are obliged only to create manifestly flat
paintings? There are many respects in which paintings can be
good and many are independent of their manifest flatness while
some (e.g. being good illusions) are incompatible with it. Finally, it
appears that the descriptive and prescriptive theses are
independent, so that dismissing the prescriptive thesis does not
seem to put the descriptive thesis in jeopardy – it remains an
option for those who seek theories of the arts.
Far from dismissing the prescriptive thesis, Carroll takes it
seriously enough to reconstruct and critique the reasoning in
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support of it. He argues that there is no good case for the
prescriptive thesis because the descriptive thesis is false, and that
suggests that the theses are not in fact independent, that the
descriptive thesis is a premise in some reasoning for the
prescriptive thesis. His ensuing critique of the descriptive thesis
threatens the hope that theories of the arts can build upon ideas
about media.
The reasoning from the descriptive thesis to the prescriptive
thesis requires some backstory about the purpose of the doctrine
(Carroll 1985, 2008, 40). That purpose is to establish that new
media qualify for status as arts. Thus Greenberg puts the doctrine
to work in touting non-depictive painting, the art status of
photography was backed in the 1930s by appeals to its pure use of
its distinctive medium (e.g. Newhall 1937), and Carroll (2003)
writes in reaction to a strand of film studies which promotes
movies in the same way (e.g. Arnheim 1957[1932], Bazin
1967[1958–62]). If we ask, ‘why are these the arts?’ we might
answer that each makes a distinctive contribution to the
collection, and that is why each belongs in the collection. The
reasoning from the descriptive thesis to the prescriptive thesis
might be a kind of practical syllogism whose minor premise is the
claim that those who work in a medium and wish to secure its
standing as an art should should create works that emphasize its
distinctive contribution to the arts as a whole. Viewed in this
light, the prescriptive thesis is not so astonishing after all.
Carroll’s reply is twofold. To begin with, he denies the premise
that comes from the backstory. ‘The arts’, he writes, ‘are not
systematic, designed with sharply variegated functions… there is
no rationale for the system… it is only a collection’ (1985, 16–17).
In effect, concern with media in the arts grows out of the search,
launched by the early moderns, for a theory of the arts. Granting
Carroll’s doubts about this enterprise is consistent with the
previous chapter. The prescriptive thesis is safely set aside.
Nevertheless, Carroll also rejects the descriptive thesis as a
holdover that exerts some pull even after the purity doctrine has
been repudiated. Recall that the thesis is that each art is
differentiated from other arts by its distinctive media. Carroll
objects that ‘we have no idea of what features of the medium are
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important unless we have a use for the medium’ (1985, 8). The use
of the medium in an art form ‘determines what aspects of the
medium are relevant’ (1985, 11). But a given art form is
differentiated from the other art forms by its distinctive medium
only if its medium is ‘identifiable in advance of, or independently
of, the uses to which the medium is put’ (Carroll 1985, 18).
Therefore, art forms cannot be differentiated from each other by
their distinctive media.
The requirement that media be identified independently of
their uses leads Carroll to identify media with material stuffs, such
as paint and canvas or silver halide emulsion on cellulose strips. In
a formula, medium = material. It follows that some arts, in
defiance of the descriptive thesis, have no media. Literature, in
particular, ‘does not appear to have a medium at all…. You might
be tempted to regard words as the distinctive medium of
literature. And yet, are words the right sort of thing to constitute
a medium? Aren’t media, in the most clear-cut sense,
physical?’ (Carroll 2003, 3). The problem is endemic if digitally
encoded images, movies, and music are also media-free. Even
worse, if media are material stuffs, then the material media of
many arts fail to differentiate them from other arts. If plays and
dances are made up of bodies and props on stage, then they do not
differ from each other in respect of their media. A medium
materialism clinches the case for medium skepticism, against those
who side with Ruskin and Wollheim in wishing to remember the
medium.
It follows that Ruskin and Wollheim are right only if medium
materialism is false; and if the independence requirement implies
medium materialism, then it is false too. There are reasons to think
both are false.
One might conjecture that medium materialism is a side effect
of the fact that contemporary debates about the purity doctrine
are most at home in visual art theory. Appreciating a work of art
generally takes into account what went into its making. In
painting and sculpture, materials are exceptionally salient – it
matters whether a painting is made of tempera on wet plaster or
oil paint on canvas and it matters whether a sculpture is made of
lime wood, marble, or bronze.
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The salience of materials in painting and sculpture must not
distract us from a more general and equally down-to-earth
conception of media as ‘technical resources’ (Lopes 2004, 110). To
begin with, a resource may be a material stuff, but it may be
informational (e.g. a language), and events like the sounding of a
c-sharp and an actor’s movement are also resources. So a resource
is a generalization of Carroll’s ‘material’. In addition, resources are
inert until we do something with them by using techniques.
Techniques are simply procedures: they need not be ‘high tech’ –
some familiar techniques applied to eggs (a resource) give us
omelettes, for example. Obviously, resources afford but do not
determine the techniques we can use to work with them. One
resource, such as paper, affords the application of different
techniques, such as drawing, printing, and composing verse.
Likewise, the same technique can be used on different resources –
drawing can be done with pencil on paper, with lipstick on a
mirror, or vector data in a computer system. A medium is not just
a resource, it is a technical resource. In a formula, medium =
resource + technique. Medium materialism is a bad idea.
So is the requirement that each resource be ‘identifiable in
advance of, or independently of, the uses to which [it] is put’.
Another conjecture is that this requirement is a legacy of the
purity doctrine, which is presumably implemented as a regimen
for artists to follow: ‘set aside the techniques you have learned
(e.g. drawing) and look at your materials afresh… now do what
expresses their nature (e.g. dripping paint)’. With the purity
doctrine firmly behind us, the independence requirement is ad
hoc.
Some say: purify your thoughts, think only of the medium. The
reaction: ‘forget the medium!’ Both sides share medium
materialism and the independence requirement as common
ground. The spirit of Ruskin and Wollheim lives on in a moderate
conception of media that implies neither medium materialism nor
the independence requirement and that is therefore at odds with
Carroll’s skepticism on one hand and the purity doctrine on the
other.
Media in the Arts
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According to the descriptive thesis, each art form is differentiated
from the other arts by its distinctive media. That kick starts
theories of the arts: each theory will identify the art form’s
differentiating media. The technique of reverse engineering helps
make the identification.
Before going any further, care must be taken to formally
disown a rather too strong reading of the descriptive thesis.
According to the excessively strong reading, the descriptive thesis
says that
1. each art form has some medium and no other art form has
that medium.
A weaker reading of the thesis says that
2. each art form has a (non-empty) set of media and no other art
form has that set.
Obviously (1) implies (2) but (2) does not imply (1). The
proposition that each person is differentiated from all other people
by their facial features does not imply that each person has a facial
feature that no other person has. Think of the weak reading of the
difference thesis as positing a distinctive medium profile for each
art form (Fig. 3). W. J. T. Mitchell (2005, 260–1) colourfully
compares media in the arts to ingredients and recipes in cooking:
boeuf bourguinon and yam neua share an ingredient but differ in
their ‘media’. Nothing prevents arts with different profiles from
sharing some media in common; practically speaking, it is
inevitable. Incidentally, the purity doctrine requires (1), but
nothing more than (2) is needed to make reference to media in
theories of the arts.
Figure 3 is a simplification in so far as it flattens the media. In
fact, they nest (Gaut 2010, 290). This is a simple consequence of
the fact that media are technical resources. If language is a
medium for literature then so are inscriptions, speech, and signed
utterances, since they are linguistic media. Nested within the
medium of imaging are drawing and photography, nested within
drawing are charcoal drawing and vector drawing, and nested
within vector drawing are drawing woth Adobe Illustrator and
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drawing with Inkscape. Of course, nested media may be found
scattered across the tree representing media in the arts.
The task at hand is not to work out a theory of each one of the
arts; it is to assemble a framework in which these theories might
be developed, seeing as they are not to be developed against the
background of a buck stopping theory of art. The pieces are now
ready for assembly. The first is the thesis floated at the end of the
first section of the chapter: art forms are appreciative kinds. The
next section stipulated necessary and sufficient conditions for
being an appreciative kind:
K is an appreciative kind if and only if is there is a property of
being good qua K, or being good-modified for a K, or being
good qua K* for a K.
A moderate conception of media opens up room for a weak
reading of the descriptive thesis: each art is differentiated from the
other arts by its distinctive medium profile. This thesis must be
paired with a rich conception of media as resources and means. All
three theses can be assembled into a restriction on the schema for
theories of the arts:
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is a work in medium
profile M, where M is an appreciative kind,… .
This schema preserves the spirit Ruskin and Wollheim on art
media by implying that media in the arts are appreciative kinds.
However, as the ellipses signal, the schema is not fully restricted,
for it leaves open whether there is more to a given art form than
its medium profile. This point is taken up in Chapter 8.
The framework before us provides for a coordinated top–down
and bottom–up strategy in developing theories of the arts. The
top–down component of the strategy is to use reverse engineering,
inferring elements of a theory of an art to explain data about the
appreciation of works in the art form. These data can indicate the
art form’s media, since media are appreciative kinds. An example
of such an inference is:
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. a photograph’s being good qua photograph is its being good
at revealing the character of a scene,
. photographs reveal the character of scenes because they
depict scenes,
. so part of what it is for an item to be a photograph is for it to
depict a scene.
That is, depiction is a medium of photographic art. Of course, (1)
might be false. Our access to facts about the goodness properties of
works in art forms is not incorrigible.
Facts about the actual resources exploited by an art form can
correct mistaken appreciations. The bottom–up strategy is to take
as data facts about what media are exploited as the resources of an
art form. These facts can be explained by facts about art form as
an appreciative kind, since media are appreciative kinds. In this
way, it is possible to infer facts about the goodness properties of
an art form from facts about its media. An example of such an
inference is:
. moving images are a medium in cinema,
. moving images are a medium in cinema because, by depicting
events unfolding in time, they are good for telling stories,
. so being good at telling stories partly determines what it is to
be good qua cinema, to be good-modified for cinema, or to be
good qua K* for cinema.
Of course, (1) might be false. Our beliefs about the media exploited
in art forms are subject to revision under pressure from top–down
inferences.
The top–down and bottom–up strategies may be coordinated
with the aim of reaching an informative equilibrium. At the
equilibrium point, the goodness properties of an art form’s media
partly determine the goodness properties of the art form itself.
Carroll emphasizes that his critique of the purity doctrine brings
home the lesson that it is ‘not an easy task’ to identify an art
form’s media (1985, 8). The two inferences set out above are
‘potted examples’. They illustrate modes of reasoning that can be
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used in developing theories of the arts. Putting them to work in
practice would obviously mean bringing serious empirical work to
bear. That this is what the framework asks is no drawback. Any
framework that suggests that theories of the arts can be got by
purely a priori methods is doomed to failure.
Two Objections
Theories of the individual arts have traditionally been worked up
using a buck stopping theory of art as a framework, but that is not
an option given a buck passing theory of art. So the proposal so
far is that theories of the arts may be worked up by aligning facts
about the appreciation of works as belonging to art forms with
facts about the media that are exploited in those art forms. The
proposal is expressed as a new, restricted version of the schema
for theories of the arts:
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is a work in medium
profile M, where M is an appreciative kind,… .
It would be too much to ask for a deductive argument entailing
this proposition. After all, the schema represents a methodological
proposal. However, the schema does have a substantive
implication, which can be tested against counterexamples. In
addition, it is fair to ask whether the proposal is likely to get us as
far as the competing methodology favoured by tradition and
funded by buck stopping theories of art.
The substantive implication is the descriptive thesis, that each
art form has a medium profile. It is tempting, when viewed in the
context of the debate over the purity doctrine, to object that no
art form has a unique medium. The reply is that this objection
assumes a strong and mistaken reading of the descriptive thesis.
However, an entirely different objection comes into view when
the weak descriptive thesis is contrasted not with the doctrine of
medium purity but rather with the indifference thesis opposed by
Ruskin and Wollheim and attributed by Wollheim to Croce and
Collingwood. According to the indifference thesis, the ‘technical
qualities’ of art works are not a factor in their value.
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The artists who created the works that function as hard cases
were reacting to Greenberg’s purification edicts by making works
whose interest does not lie in any medium they might happen to
exploit. Indeed, Cage’s 4’33” and Rauschenberg’s Erased de
Kooning Drawing might be described as works without media.
Croce and Collingwood are godfathers of the kind of avant-garde
art making that gives us the hard cases.
At any rate, the objection is that there are works of art without
media. Either these belong to art forms or they do not. If they
belong to art forms, then the weak descriptive thesis implied by
the framework is false. That is not good news for the framework.
Alternatively, if the works in question do not belong to any art
form, then the buck passing theory of art is false. That is not good
news for the framework either, since it will have lost its raison
d’être. Either way, matters look bleak for the framework.
This objection is a reminder that a rain check (issued in Chapter
1 and 3) remains to be redeemed. The buck passing theory of art
does imply that every work of art belongs to at least one art form.
None are free agents. But some appear to be free agents. The
objection was set aside to be dealt with in Chapter 10. Now there
is an additional task for Chapter 10. A case must be made not only
that the apparent free agents do belong to art forms but also that
they exploit the media of those art forms.
A second objection demands immediate attention. A restriction
has been placed on the schema for theories of the arts: a necessary
condition to be met by an item that is a work in any given art
form is that it be a work in a certain medium. However, there are
necessary conditions and there are necessary conditions. While
they may not be sufficient conditions, they are theoretically
significant only when they move us closer to sufficient conditions,
and not all necessary conditions are theoretically significant. The
objection is that the proposed framework mandates a kind of
necessary condition that is not significant. Being told that works
of architecture, for example, are necessarily buildings is like being
told that persons are necessarily living things. That is true but it is
not much to go on.
To see why it is fair to suspect the proposed framework of
mandating a theoretically insignificant kind of necessary
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condition, compare the framework to one that leans on a buck
stopping theory of art. Gaut (2010, ch. 7) endorses a moderate
conception of media much like the one sketched here, except in
one important respect. The difference is obvious looking at three
claims that Gaut defends:
[] some correct artistic evaluations of artworks refer to
distinctive properties of the medium in which these artworks
occur…
[] correct explanations of some of the artistic properties of
artworks refer to distinctive properties of the medium in which
these artworks occur…
[] for a medium to constitute an art form it must instantiate
artistic properties that are distinct from those that are
instantiated by other media (, –).
Works in an art form are not merely works in an associated
medium. They are works that exploit a medium to realize artistic
properties (and values). A buck stopping theory of art supplies an
independent conception of artistic properties (and values).
Technically, Gaut’s three claims are consistent with the buck
passing theory of art. For example, (1) conjoined with the buck
passing theory of art says that some correct evaluations of works
as Ks refer to distinctive properties of the medium of K. Similarly,
(3) conjoined with the buck passing theory of art says that a
medium constitutes an art form, K, only if it instantiates properties
of K that are distinct from those that are by other media. However,
plugging the buck passing theory of art into (1), (2), and (3) robs
the appeal to artistic properties of its intended function. That
function is to delimit which media, of all the media exploited by
works, are artistically relevant.
The example Gaut gives is the compact disk. CDs are storeage
media for music but they are not in any interesting sense musical
media. Being stored on CD is not part of what makes an item a
work of music. According to Gaut, works of art have distinctively
artistic features and works in an art form have artistic features
distinctive of the art form. CDs are not responsible for these
features. No such move is available on the framework proposed in
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this chapter. In principle any medium that is an appreciative kind
is an artistic medium.
To tackle this problem, some new resources must be brought on
field. The framework so far proposed is not the whole story.

Appreciative Practices
What are dance, music, the movies, poetry, the chado and
landscape architecture? Carroll remarks, in a Dantoesque spirit,
that ‘coming to understand these concepts is an important
contribution to the life of the practices in which they figure, often
constitutively’ (, ). The truth in this remark is not yet
accommodated by the proposal that theories of the arts be devised
to fit a schema like this:
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is a work in medium
profile M, where M is an appreciative kind, ….
A work of poetry is not just a work in a medium, it is a product of
a practice. Moreover, if Carroll is right, engaging in the practice in
some way implicates a concept of poetry. Some fleshing out along
these lines sharpens our pictures of the arts as appreciative kinds
and it solves the problem left hanging at the end of the previous
chapter.
The Coffee Mug Objection
Rikyu famously said that the chado is ‘nothing but / Boiling
water / And making tea’. As advice for practitioners these words
had a profound impact, but they obviously will not do as a theory
of the art form. Worldwide tea consumption exceeds that of all
other manufactured drinks, with millions of tonnes of tea leaf
harvested annually. Every second of every day sees the making of
tens of thousands of cups of tea. Counting all this tea-making as
the performance of chado would cheat that concept of its
explanatory and critical power. There is more to the chado that
boiling water and making tea. What more?
Switching to another hot drink, recall the coffee mug objection
to the buck passing theory of art, first stated in Chapter  and
then reiterated in Chapter . According to the buck passing theory
of art, what makes an item a work of art is its being a work of one
of the arts. The objection was that ceramics is an art and the coffee
mug on my desk is a work of ceramics, but, alas, it is no work of
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art. The objection can now be refined by referring to the medium
of ceramics. Ceramics is an art but the coffee mug on my desk is no
work of art, though it is a work in the ceramic medium. A theory
of ceramic art must distinguish a piece of bizen ware from a
sample of Walmart ware. Since they are the same in respect of
medium, more than the medium is needed. Generalizing, a theory
of each art form must distinguish works in the art from works that
are merely in associated media.
Of course, it is an open question what are the arts. Ceramics
might not be an art after all. It is another open question what is
the medium of ceramics – it might be that Walmart ware and bizen
ware do not share the same medium. A third open question is
what items are works in the ceramic art form. I might be wrong
about my coffee mug – perhaps it is a work of art. That these
questions are open is to be expected since the framework is a
methodology and the task is to test the adequacy of that
methodology as far as possible without already having applied it.
So choose another example if you like. The framework has to
allow that sometimes not all works in a medium are works in the
associated art form.
The proposition that art forms are appreciative kinds bears on
an answer to the coffee mug objection. An art form, K, is an
appreciative kind just in case there is a property of being good
qua K, or being good-modified for a K, or being good qua K* for a
K. So if a piece of bizen ware belongs to the art of ceramics and a
piece of Walmart ware merely belongs to the ceramic medium,
then the art form and the medium are distinct appreciative kinds;
and they are distinct appreciative kinds only if they differ in their
goodness properties. The question of what it is to be a work of
ceramic art links up to the question of what it is for a work to be
good as ceramic art. This linkage should come as no surprise.
Ceramic art and mere ceramics do differ in the values that they
realize. The point is not that they differ in the values they realize
because one is an art and the other is not – that point relies on a
theory of the arts (see Chapter ). The point is more simply that
they are different appreciative kinds.
Often – though probably not as a matter of conceptual truth – a
theory of any given art form implies that it realizes more
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determinate values than its associated medium. A work in the
medium of ceramics has scores of different kinds of goodness
properties. Here are some true propositions about the coffee mug
on my desk: it is good for holding hot liquids, it is good for
holding pens, it is not good for use as a tennis ball, it is
moderately good to look at, it goes for a good price, it is a good
reminder of the time I spent in Chapel Hill, it is a good example of
standardization in manufacturing processes. Each of these
propositions is made true by the mug’s having certain goodness
properties and what goodness properties those are takes account
of the fact that it is a work of ceramics. However, only some, not
all, of these goodness properties are goodness properties of the
ceramic art form. Some do bridge the kinds – being good for
holding hot liquids might be an example. Some do not bridge the
kinds at all – being a good example of standardization in
manufacturing processes is arguably not a goodness property in
ceramic art. Some bridge as determinables but grade differently.
For example, being good to look at for a K is a goodness property
both in ceramic art and in mere ceramics, but an item that is very
good to look at for a piece of ceramics might be no more than
moderately good to look at for a piece of ceramic art. The upshot
of these observations is that what makes a work of ceramics a
work of ceramic art often makes more determinate the goodness
properties pertaining to ceramic art.
Provided that ceramic art is an appreciative kind, it follows
that one way forward reverse engineers a conception of ceramic
art from the goodness properties that pertain to it. The strategy
recommended to zero in on the media associated with an art form
is also available to zero in on what it is, beyond their medium, that
makes items works in an art form.
Art Practices
Philosophers writing on art and the arts frequently insist that
these are not natural kinds. An adequate description of what
makes an item a work of art or a work of any of the arts must
make reference to the thoughts and actions of agents. Peter
Lamarque glosses the observation that literary works ‘have no
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existence apart from the nexus of activities and judgements within
which they are identified and evaluated’ by adding that they are
‘products and not just objects of critical discourse’ (, ).
Davies () has argued the same for music. In general, the arts
are practices. Augmenting the proposed framework for developing
theories of the arts,
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is a work in medium
profile M, where M is an appreciative kind, and x is a product
of appreciative practice, P.
What distinguishes my coffee mug from a piece of bizen-yaki is not
their media, for both are ceramics, but rather the fact that they are
products of different practices. The practice of bizen, and any
other art practice, has some notable features.
It is a social practice in the sense that engaging in the practice
consists in conforming to some rules on condition that others who
engage in the practice do so too (Rawls ). This is a minimal
conception of a practice. The rules need not be conventions: they
may not solve a coordination problem (Lewis ). Moreover, a
social practice need not be institutional in the sense that to engage
in the practice is, at least in part, to play one of a number of
differentiated roles, where one’s playing the role depends on
others playing their roles, and where some of these roles are
constitutive of the practice. The practice of ceramic art may be
institutional in this sense. If it is, that is a fact to represent in a
theory of ceramic art. However, it would be wise to keep an open
mind about whether every art is an institutional practice.
Some practices are appreciative: the rules that are constitutive
of an appreciative practice set a standard of goodness for products
of the practice. Shetland sheepdogs are not a natural kind – they
are not, in particular, a biological kind. They depend for their
existence upon a practice within which they are identified and
evaluated. As it happens, the rules constitutive of this practice are
expressly articulated and published as the ‘breed standard’, which
stipulates, for example, that shelties should have eyes of ‘medium
size obliquely set, almond-shape. Dark brown except in the case of
merles, where one or both may be blue or blue flecked’ (Kennel
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Club ). To be a breeder or admirer of Shetland sheepdogs is to
accept this rule as a standard of what it is to be good qua Shetland
sheepdog, on condition that others engaged in the practice do so
too.
Not all practices are appreciative. Although constitutive rules
may be described as norms, they do not always determine
goodness properties. A classic example is the practice of banking.
The rules of this practice make it the case that there is such a thing
as a debit to an account. However, there is no property of being
good qua debit. While a debit of a large sum may be less welcome
to the account holder than a debit of a small sum, but it is no less
good qua debit.
When a practice is in fact an appreciative practice, chances are
that its constitutive rules are not explicitly represented within the
practice. The breed standard for the sheltland sheepdog is one end
of a spectrum. At the other end are implicit rules, regularities in
behaviour which are best explained as rule-following. Most if not
all of the arts are appreciative practices with implicit constitutive
rules. When what appear to be standards are voiced by art critics
and art theorists, it is rarely to articulate what is otherwise
implicit but rather to advocate a change to what is implicit.
Rules of Engagement
Nobody will deny that the arts are in some sense practices. The
bone of contention is whether the fact that they are practices
(combined with a recognition of the association with media)
supplies what is needed to craft theories of the arts. According to
Goldilocks objections, the rules constituting artistic practices are
either too broad or too narrow to figure in theories of the arts.
Here is one objection to the claim that the arts are appreciative
practices. The arts have no monopoly on appreciative practices.
Arguably all manufacturing practices qualify. At any rate, for
many art forms there is a non-art appreciative practice centred on
the very same medium. It would be a callow mistake to suppose
that there is or could be no appreciative practice centred on
Walmart ware.
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The response is to mind the distinction between a theory of the
arts and theories of the individual arts. Filling in the schema for a
theory of ceramic art provides a representation of what it is for an
item to be a work in the ceramic art form, but it is silent on what it
is for ceramics to be an art form. Ceramic art and ceramics are both
appreciative kinds, and a theory of each represents what makes
them different appreciative kinds, but it does not represent what
makes one of them an art form. For that, a theory of the arts is
needed. The point is subtle enough that we should guard against a
tempting mistake in reasoning. The fallacy hinges on thinking that
a representation of what makes an item a work of ceramic art
rather than ceramics is a representation of what makes ceramics an
art.
The same fallacy helps boost the appeal of another objection,
that the rules constituting the practices of the arts are far too
general to distinguish works in the arts from works in non-art
practices. Once we have made the rules of ceramic art explicit, we
will see that they are so general that they apply to much else
besides ceramic art. Moreover, the same might turn out to be true
for some, many, or all of the other arts. This bleak possibility
cannot be excluded a priori, but it is fair to ask what reason there
is to be pessimistic. Well, the objection packs considerable punch
as long as an art practice is meant to be characterized so as to
reveal what makes it an art practice. It is hard to imagine
constitutive rules common to the practices of ceramic art and
dance that are not also rules blinding the appreciative practice of
non-art ceramics.
The problem with this objection is that it conflates what is
required for a theory of each of the arts with a theory of the arts,
wherein the arts are distinguished from the non-arts. The reply to
the objection is that a theory of an art may bring out the specific
rules constituting the practice without regard to the arts as a
whole.
In presenting his theory of literature, which nicely fits the
framework proposed here, Lamarque writes that the rules must be
‘specific enough to capture a substantial, recognizable, conception
of literature,… yet not so specific that they apply only to some,
not all, forms of literature’ (, ). These are the only
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constraints that govern the project of developing a theory of
literature. Indeed, although Lamarque regularly describes his task
as developing a theory of literature ‘as art’ and although he comes
close to reasoning fallaciously when he also says that his task is to
say what it is for literature to be an art form (e.g. , ), he
never attempts to test his theory of literature for its
generalizability to other arts. If its failure to generalize is no mark
against it, it is a theory of literature and not part of a theory of the
arts. The framework proposed here accommodates a requirement
that the rules constitutive of a practice should be specific enough
to determine the specificity of the practice itself.
Another objection tugs in the opposite direction. According to
this objection, it will turn out that there are no rules general
enough to be constitutive of the whole of an art. The point can be
expanded in different ways. Identifying art practices with critical
traditions, one might argue that there are different critical
traditions within which works are situated, though they belong to
the same art form. For example, modernist painting as understood
by Greenberg and his followers is allied to critical practices at
odds with those governing the practice of s conceptual art.
Alternatively, one might argue that sub-arts such as poetry and
the novel are practices but not sub-practices of a more generic
literary practice.
The reply to this objection has two parts. To begin with, keep
in mind that a theory of anything, including an art form, is not
worth working towards unless it is informative. The fact that a
theory is informative is a reason to retain the theory and revise a
folk concept, when they do not line up. It might be a discovery
that there is no art of literature if we come to understand more by
relinquishing our folk concept of literature as comprising both
poetry and the novel. The objection assumes that theories of the
arts must vindicate folk concepts of the arts. Making this
assumption misses an opportunity for discovery.
In cases where a theory of an art provides no reason to revise
the folk concept in question, there must have been a discovery
that what appear to be disparate practices represented by different
critical traditions are really of a kind. To achieve such a discovery
requires detailed empirical study of the practices in question.
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Lamarque’s () discussion of literature is an excellent model.
Having directed intense attention upon a wide variety of literary
works and critical stances, he discerns what he maintains to be a
generic literary practice. Although its rules of engagement cannot
be stated as a succinct set of propositions and his full account
extends over many pages, here is his summary of the practice of
literary reading:
inevitably this will involve an examination of the formal
‘devices’, conventional or unconventional, general and specific,
that allow the artefact to ‘hang together’, through which its
subject is expressed and its themes developed. It will involve
exploring how parts cohere with the whole, how linguistic
means further aesthetic ends. It will also use interpretation to
assign symbolic, figurative, or thematic significance to the
work’s elements. As every work has a subject, be it a story told
or an emotion expressed, attention will be directed to the
subject content itself, what it is, what connections might be
drawn inside and outside its ‘world’, what its characters,
incidents, or setting are like; but it is a common mark of
literature (as opposed to ‘genre’ fiction or popular verse) that
interest goes beyond such subject details, inviting readers to
reflect on thematic ideas that both bind together and transcend
the immediate subject portrayed (, -).
According to Lamarque, such a practice embraces various critical
stances and types of literary expression.
The complexity of art practices makes subtle work of
elucidating their constitutive rules. It helps to keep in mind that K
is an appreciative kind just in case there is a property of being
good qua K, or being good-modified for a K, or being good qua K*
for a K. A rule might fix what it is to be good qua K. Take the rule
that literary readers are to reflect on thematic ideas as they are
expressed by subject matter. If part of what makes a work a work
of literature is that it is a product of a practice governed by this
rule, then literature is a goodness-fixing kind wherein part of
what it is to be good qua literature is to afford such reflection. If it
is a rule of the practice of Chinese painting that its audience is to
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include the formal qualities of linguistic characters as part of the
work, then those qualities figure into what it is to be aesthetically
good-modified for Chinese painting. Finally, if it is part of the
practice of ceramic art that its products be destined for display in
glass cases, then there is a distinct property of being good qua
cooking vessel for a work destined for display in a glass case – a
pot might be very good qua cooking vessel for a work of ceramic
art and yet turn out not to be at all good qua cooking vessel. Art
practices may but need not determine goodness-fixing kinds and
they may but need not determine properties of being aesthetically
good-modified.
Carroll’s observation that engaging in an art practice implicates
a concept of the art does not entail that the concept in question is
a folk classification. Having the concept may consist in mastery of
the rules constitutive of the practice, and since these are generally
implicit, they need not line up with a folk classification. Coming to
understand these implicit rules might well contribute to the life of
the art practices which they constitute.
Media in Practice
Without reasons to believe that the rules that constitute artistic
practices are either too monolithically broad or too tied to narrow
traditions to contribute to theories of the arts, Goldilocks
objections deserve the brush off. A final worry concerns the
apparent lack of a connection between the two elements making
up the proposed schema for theories of the arts – that is, between
media on one hand and appreciative practices on the other.
The worry is the flip side of the coffee mug objection, which
exploits a continuity of media between ceramics and ceramic art.
Imagine a ceramic artist with certain avant-garde ambitions. She
decides that it is time to dissociate ceramic art from its material
basis, its alliance to arts like the chado, and its historical origins in
such everyday activities as drinking hot liquids. Using instead
Lucy Lippard’s () ideas about the dematerialized art object,
she proceeds to create works of ceramic art that leave out the
ceramics – no clay, no glaze, no firing. For example, one of these is
entitled All the Pots I Did Not Throw on September , , and
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that title and what it evokes in the context of ceramic art is all
there is to the work. All that remains is the practice and its
constitutive rules.
Faced with such a scenario, two responses are available. One
might concede the scenario’s coherence: the practice of ceramic art
might make a decisive break with ceramics and leave its medium
behind – in the dust, as it were. Since the medium turns out to be
inessential to the practice, the practice might be identical to a
practice that was once associated with an entirely different
medium and has been similarly dematerialized – painting for
example. In that case, painting and ceramic art might be one and
the same art form.
Enough has now been said to sketch an alternative response to
the scenario. The alternative is not merely to insist that the
medium is constitutive of the art form, for that is to concede that
the practice of ceramic art might be continuous with an art
practice that has nothing to do with ceramics. The better response
is to deny that the practice of ceramic art can be characterized
independently of the medium of ceramics. This denial can be
implemented by amending the schema for a theory of the arts:
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is a work in medium
profile M, where M is an appreciative kind, and x is a product
of M-centred appreciative practice, P.
A theory of ceramic art built on this framework implies that to try
to make works that are products of the practice of ceramic art but
that are not in the medium of ceramics is to fail to engage in that
practice and hence to fail to make works of ceramic art.
Which alternative is appropriate? On one hand, centring an art
practice on media helps to strike the balance of specificity and
generality that is needed in a theory of an art form. Lamarque
could hardly describe the practice of literary reading in anything
but empty terms without referring to the media of literature. On
the other hand, it is a tenet of writing on late modern art as early
as Lippard () that its use of any medium is purely
opportunistic. Since this tenet must be taken seriously and not
dismissed out of hand, a full assessment of the two alternatives
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must wait upon a study of late modern art – art that is reported to
have done just what we imagined our ceramic artist to have done.
That is part of the task of Chapter .
Meanwhile, there is an independent reason to favour restricting
the art practices that figure in theories of art to those that are
centred on the medium. A look at this reason also brings out what
it is for an art practice to be medium-centred.
Two Norms of Appreciation
A practice is constituted by rules or norms and a medium-centred
appreciative practice is one which is constituted in part by a norm
that concerns the medium whose exploitation is what makes items
works in the appreciative kind. The norm in question must be a
general one – one that is part of any appreciative practice.
Walton’s classic ‘Categories of Art’ () suggests such a
general norm. As we saw in Chapter , Walton argues that the
aesthetic properties that are work has is determined by two factors
(see also Laetz ). The first is the category of art to which it
belongs. Since any given work belongs to indefinitely many
categories (Guernica is both a painting and a guernica), it is further
determined by the category in which it is correct to view it. Thus
the aesthetic properties of Guernica are the properties it seems to
have when viewed as a painting, since it is a painting and since it
is also correct to view it as a painting. Thus a norm governing the
aesthetic appreciation of works of art is: view a work in a category
in which it is correct to view it.
Some extend this norm to the aesthetic appreciation of non-art.
Thus Budd writes that ‘if you aesthetically appreciate a natural
object as an instance of natural kind K, and it is not of kind K,
then your appreciation is, in that respect, malfounded’ (, ).
Carlson () argues that since whales are not fish an appreciation
of a whale as a fish is inadequate. Presumably the norm can also be
generalized beyond the aesthetic. The general norm would be:
appreciate an item for what it is. Grounding this norm is the
principle that
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an appreciation of an item as a K is adequate only if the item is a
K.
An appreciation of an item that violates this condition is
inadequate in the sense that it is not true to the item. We should
appreciate an item for what it is.
Not everyone buys in. Reflecting on his appreciation of the
grandeur of a blue whale, Carroll writes, ‘I may be moved by its
size, its force, the amount of water it displaces, etc., but I may
think that it is a fish’ (, ). Indeed, the point may be put
rather more strongly. Carroll may be moved by the size and force
of a whale because he thinks that it is a fish. After all, the whale is
orders of magnitude larger and stronger than fish and it is not
grander than other sea mammals to the same degree. All the same,
Carroll insists that his appreciation is not inadequate.
The standard argument for the norm that Carroll rejects is an
argument from objectivity. The classic statement of the argument
is once again Walton (). The aesthetic properties an art work
seems to have depend on the category of art in which it is viewed.
Guernica seems ‘violent, dynamic, vital, disturbing’ when viewed
as a painting but it seems ‘cold, stark, lifeless, or serene and
restful, or perhaps bland, dull, boring’ when viewed as a guernica
(Walton : ). For any art work and any aesthetic property,
F, there is some category of art in which it appears F. However,
category-relative viewings of works do not allow ascriptions of
aesthetic properties to be mistaken ‘often enough’ (Walton :
). Walton’s solution is to claim that it is correct to view a work
in some categories and incorrect to view it in others. It is correct
to view Guernica as a painting and it is not correct to view it as a
guernica. So Guernica is dynamic, not serene. Some appreciations
are mistaken: those that ascribe properties a work seems to have
only when it is viewed as a K and it is incorrect to view it as a K.
Walton’s argument generalizes beyond the aesthetic
appreciation of works of art. For many (maybe all) ascriptions of
goodness properties to an item, there is (likely) to be an
appreciative kind, K, such that the ascription is not mistaken
when the item is appreciated as a K. Guernica is serene when
appreciated as a guernica, for example. Our appreciations are not
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mistaken ‘often enough’. The solution is to restrict adequate
appreciation: one adequately appreciates something as a K only if
it is a K. Hence the injunction to appreciate items for what they
are.
Rejecting this norm leads to a choice. One option is to accept
that our appreciations are not mistaken often, or ever. The other is
to find another norm. Note that Walton does not claim that
category-relative interpretations never allow ascriptions to be
mistaken. The weaker ‘often enough’ hints that there is already
room for error in category relative appreciation.
There is room for error about the category itself. Suppose that
Munro judges a dog to be too short. Posh objects that the dog is a
shetland sheepdog, not a collie, and although it is short for a
collie, it is a good height for a shetland sheepdog. ‘No’, replies
Munro, ‘it’s too short for a sheltie’. Either Munro or Posh is
mistaken about the ideal height of shetland sheepdogs. Or suppose
that Rosalind remarks that Guernica is restful. You might think
that she takes her philosophy a little too seriously, and has started
to view Guernica as a guernica. However, she reads your mind and
hastens to add, ‘and I mean that it’s restful as a painting’. If she is
wrong, she is not wrong in viewing Guernica as a painting,
because it is a painting and it is correct to view it as a painting.
She is wrong about the expressive properties of paintings in
general – perhaps she has seen a biassed sample.
An alternative to the directive to be true to the item is to be
true to the kind. That is, when you appreciate an item as a K, do
not misunderstand what it is to be a K (Lopes b). This norm is
grounded on the principle that,
an appreciation of x as a K is adequate only if it does not
depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with
the truth about what it is to be a K.
This principle says that the adequacy of an appreciation is
threatened when several conditions are met. First, the appreciation
counterfactually depends on a belief: it would not have the
content it has were it not for a certain belief. Second, that belief
very is inconsistent with some truth about the Ks. Third, the
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relevant truth about the Ks is a truth about what it is to be a K.
Adequate appreciation must be theoretically kosher. Someone’s
appreciating a whale as a fish does not violate this norm. Carroll
might have a degree in marine biology; he might know that
whales are mammals and not fish.
Both norms are modest, setting low benchmarks for adequate
appreciation. One might think that many appreciations are
inadequate although they violate neither. However, the task at
hand is not to compose a complete epistemology of appreciation.
The task is rather to locate a norm that makes art practice a
medium-centred practice. Either of our two norms will do that
job. One is to be true to the item; the other is to be true to the
kind. According to one analysis of what it is for a practice to be
medium-centred,
an art practice, P, is M-centred if and only if it is a constitutive
norm of P not to appreciate a work as a work in M unless the
work is a work in M.
According to an alternative analysis,
an art practice, P, is M-centred if and only if it is a constitutive
norm of P not to appreciate a work as an M if that appreciation
counterfactually depends on any belief that is inconsistent with
the truth about what it is to be a work in M.
Of course, a third analysis of medium-centred art practices has it
that they incorporate both norms. However, the argument from
objectivity supports either norm and not both. Moreover, either
one norm or the other appears not to be in place in some art
practices .
Some art practices involve the deliberate and knowing
appreciation of non-Ks as Ks. For example, it is part of the practice
of landscape architecture that we are to appreciate some
landscapes as paintings – not simply as scenes that can be viewed
two-dimensionally but as telling stories in the way that images do.
There are also cases where we () appreciate a non-K as a K and
where () our appreciations counterfactually depend on false
beliefs about the Ks, but where it is reasonable to expect that we
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will correct () and not (). Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture
was painted and inlaid. The discovery during the renaissance of
ancient marbles that had lost their paint and inlay over time
established the false image we have of ancient sculpture as pure
marble or bronze, and that set the standard for modern sculpture.
As a result, our appreciation of the Charioteer of Delphi as Greek
sculpture counterfactually depends upon a false belief that Greek
sculpture is naked stone or metal, and it is to that extent
inadequate. Armed with better knowledge of the ancient world,
we might appreciate the Charioteer as Greek sculpture, where glass
eyes were common. Alternatively, we can appreciate it as
belonging to the kind whose standard was set in the renaissance.
We opt for the latter since we would lose too much by opting for
the former.
The appreciation of photographs seems to involve systematic
misunderstanding of the nature of the medium, with serious
consequences for appreciation. Barbara Savedoff argues that we
appreciate photographs for their power ‘to make even the most
familiar objects appear strange’ (, ). This power requires that
we have a confidence in the veracity of photographs that ‘allows
our faith in the documentary character of photography to be
inappropriately transferred to the way things appear within the
photograph’ (Savedoff , ). Our seeing photographs as
‘objective records of the world… has a far-reaching influence on
interpretation and evaluation’ (Savedoff : ). As Savedoff
puts it,
perhaps photographs cannot be correctly understood as
possessing a special documentary status; nevertheless, that is
how they are experienced…. And insofar as [this] is necessary
to a well-grounded evaluation and understanding of the
photographs that we have been considering, it must be
reflected in the critical principles we bring to bear (, ).
Yet if our trust that photographs cannot lie depends on a
misunderstanding of the nature of photographic technology, then
photographic appreciation violates the injunction to be true to the
medium.
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Appreciations can go astray because they do not conform to the
norms governing our appreciative practices. They can also go
astray because those practices are inadequate and should be
revised. Art practices are not sacrosanct. The proposed framework
represents this fact by requiring art practices to be mediumcentred.
Strategic Priorities, Again
Time to pause and take stock. The fact that they provide ready
resources for developing theories of the individual arts is a mark
in favour of buck stopping theories of art. Yet the buck passing
theory of art does not leave us empty handed. Taking advantage
of the method of reverse engineering, a conception of what it is for
a work to belong to an art form can be built from an independent
conception of a medium profile together with a set of practices
centred on that medium profile. These materials are sufficient in
principle to answer the coffee mug objection and its analogues in
the other arts. Moreover, this approach to theories of the
individual arts has an edge on approaches that start with buck
stopping theories of art.
In the first place, a buck stopping theory of art does not deliver
theories of arts for free. It also requires that we do the kind of
work that has been done in these past two chapters. Take
Beardsley’s theory of art as an example: a work of art is
‘something produced with the intention of giving it the capacity
to satisfy the aesthetic interest’ (, ???). As we saw in Chapter
, this theory of art implies a Beardsleyan theory of any given art
form only with the help of a bridging assumption. Let φ label
what makes any item a work of art and let ψ label what makes
any item a member of an art. Since an item is a work of art partly
in virtue of facts that make it a product of some art, K,
a general bridging assumption might be this:
if x is a work of K, where K is an art then x is φ partly in virtue
of being ψ.
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Substituting in, we get:
if x is a work of K, where K is an art then x is something
produced with the intention of giving it the capacity to satisfy
the aesthetic interest partly in virtue of being ψ.
That does not take us very far unless something can be said about
how being a member of K helps a work satisfy the aesthetic
interest. Bringing in the framework developed in these two
chapters gives us a useful bridging assumption:
if x is a work of K, where K is an art then x is something
produced with the intention of giving it the capacity to satisfy
the aesthetic interest partly in virtue of its taking advantage of
K’s medium and medium-centred practices.
This assumption conjoined with Beardsley’s theory of art is a
machine for churning out theories of the individual arts. It
outputs this, for example:
if x is a work of ceramics, where ceramics is an art then x is
something produced with the intention of giving it the capacity
to satisfy the aesthetic interest partly in virtue of its taking
advantage of the ceramic medium and ceramic’s mediumcentred practices.
This is true, if the bridging assumption and Beardsley’s theory of
art is true. However, it is hardly informative to those who want to
know what is ceramic art. They will ask for information about the
medium and the relevant practices. Starting with a buck stopping
theory of art brings us right back to where we are now anyway.
That leaves us at a strategic wash: whether we start with a
buck stopping or a buck passing theory of art, we are end up
framing out theories of the arts. Another point gives buck passing
theories of art the edge. Buck stopping theories of art found
theories of the arts only if they imply a substantive unity across
the arts. Beardsley’s, for example, says that what makes any item a
work in any art form its its appeal to the aesthetic interest.
Perhaps the arts are a mixed bag. If they are not, that is a result
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that must be won through the hard work of examining each of the
arts in their own terms.
Finally, developing theories of the arts with a buck passing
theory of art takes off the table what makes each art an art. It
takes off the table a theory of the arts. All that is required is the
claim that the arts are appreciative kinds. The arts belong in a
very large company – a company that includes natural objects and
settings, what are often set apart as crafts, products of industrial
design, and much else besides. We can be secure in the knowledge
that the arts keep such (good!) company – even if we suspect that
their own clique is not much more a matter of convenience.
In its broad strokes, the framework for developing theories of the
arts is now in place and it nowhere requires a buck stopping
theory of art – a buck passing theory of art is all we need.
However, one part of the framework merits a closer look.
Appreciative kinds are kinds with characteristic goodnessproperties, and these include but are not restricted to the property
of being aesthetically good. Yet aesthetic goodness is (at the very
least) a prominent and important kind of goodness that finds its
realization in (at the very least) a great many works of art.

Aesthetic Appreciation
Few deny some important connection between art and the
aesthetic. To acknowledge a connection, even a deep one, is not
yet to subscribe to an aesthetic theory of art that takes a work’s
aesthetic credentials to be what makes it a work of art. The frescos
of Piero della Francesca, the compositions of Thelonious Monk,
the landscape of the Taj Mahal, and the short stories of Alice
Munro are works of art. Whatever makes them so, they all realize
exceptional aesthetic value – it is for this that we cherish them. A
discussion of art that leaves out aesthetic appreciation can only
disappoint. Chapter  stipulated that generic appreciation is a
cognitive process that includes an ascription of value, which
typically results from classification and interpretation. Presumably
in aesthetic appreciation the evaluation ascribes an aesthetic value,
a property of being aesthetically-good-modified whether
simpliciter, qua K, or for a K. The task of this chapter is to take
steps towards an account of specifically aesthetic appreciation that
can contribute to the framework for developing theories of the
arts.
The Aesthetic in Art and Beyond
Chapter  suggested that it may not be prudent to seek a theory of
aesthetic appreciation of works typed as art. It does not follow
that it is not prudent to seek a general theory of aesthetic
appreciation.
Carroll colourfully grumbles that the aesthetic has a ‘way of
spreading once it’s turned loose’ to populate a domain of ‘aesthetic
what-nots’ (????). Some such what-nots are: aesthetic properties,
aesthetic values, aesthetic experience, aesthetic attention, aesthetic
attitude, aesthetic judgement, aesthetic concepts, aesthetic
pleasure, and aesthetic appreciation. However, the fact that
‘aesthetic’ is a promiscuous modifier is not by itself cause for
complaint. The moral and the perceptual are equally promiscuous.
We do of course have grounds for complaint if, at the end of the
day, the aesthetic what-nots are not reducible to a small set of
relatively more basic aesthetic what-nots. Two candidates
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dominate the current literature. The majority hold that a state of
mind – usually an experience – is more basic than other aesthetic
what-nots (e.g. Beardsley , Dickie , Levinson ,
Walton , Budd , ch. , Stecker , Iseminger , ch.
, Goldman ). The minority position is that properties or
values are more basic than other aesthetic what-nots (e.g. Sharpe
, Carroll , Carroll , Shelley ). The presumption
that an aesthetic appreciation involves an attribution of aesthetic
value is consistent with the positions of both the majority and the
minority.
An advantage of the buck passing theory of art is that it frees
us to consider theories of aesthetic appreciation independently of
theories of art. An aesthetic theory of art must strike a balance
between two conditions. On one hand, it should invoke an
independent conception of the aesthetic, not one that implies the
very theory by which it is invoked. It asks a theory of the
aesthetic to stand on its own feet. On the other hand, the concept
of the aesthetic that it invokes should help to correctly carve out
the domain of art. The invoked concept should not generate
counterexamples to the invoking theory. Balancing these
conditions constrains and so can exert a distorting force on
theories of aesthetic appreciation.
A blatant example is the ninetieth century appeal to beauty, at
least according to Danto’s history (). Danto writes that ‘it was
long assumed that works of art constituted a restricted and
somewhat exalted set of objects that everyone would be able to
identify as such’ (, ). Given an aesthetic theory of art, it was
natural to explain art’s exalted status by identifying aesthetic
value with an exalted conception of beauty as bearing high moral
and even cognitive weight (Danto , – and Shiner ,
–, –). Thus near the end of the long nineteenth century,
G. E. Moore identified ‘the pleasures of human intercourse and the
enjoyment of beautiful objects’ as ‘by far the most valuable things
we can know or can imagine’ (, ). Moore did not think he
was being provocative – he went on to add that probably nobody
‘will think that anything else has nearly so great a value’ as
‘personal affection and the appreciation of what is beautiful in Art
or Nature’ (, ). Bell, a member of Moore’s circle, confessed
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to being ‘tempted to believe that art might prove the world’s
salvation’ (, ???). In Danto’s history, the avant-garde sets out
to wreck this marriage of art to beauty by creating works that
offer anything but the enjoyment of beauty.
Mediated by an aesthetic theory of art, bad ideas about art may
be projected onto the aesthetic, and they may continue to attach to
the latter even once cleansed from the former. Here again is Danto:
‘I regard the discovery that something can be good art without
being beautiful as one of the great conceptual clarifications of
twentieth century philosophy of art…. That clarification managed
to push reference to aesthetics out of any proposed definition of
art’ (, ). In this passage, Danto identifies aesthetic value
with beauty and indeed with the exalted conception of beauty. He
forgets that this identification is a product of the exalted idea of
art and should fall as it falls. The palpable hopelessness of the
exalted idea of art does not by itself push aesthetics out of any
theory of art. (Nor does it rule out less exalted conceptions of
beauty – e.g. Nehamas .)
Once the demands of the highfalutin theory of art that Danto
discusses have been shrugged off, the identification of aesthetic
value with beauty is hardly mandatory. Already in the eighteenth
century, some understood the aesthetic with reference to the
sublime as well as to beauty (Burke ). Many now consider
aesthetic value to be realized by way of any of a number of
thicker merits or demerits, such as being graceful, shocking, and
balanced or insipid, didactic, and incoherent (Sibley , Sibley
, Zangwill a). Perhaps not all of these are compatible with
beauty. A work’s aesthetic power may consist in its being
disturbing and ugly, for example. The options are best kept open
for now.
Another dead horse is flogged by Carroll (, see also Carroll
). Carroll argues that the western tradition since the early
modern period is dominated by a characterization of aesthetic
value as realized in experiences of disinterested pleasure. He also
conjectures that the dominance of this characterization results
from the consolidation of the modern system of the arts in the
eighteenth century (see Chapter ). That is, works of art,
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understood as works prized exclusively for the intrinsically
valuable experiences they encourage, can be thought to stand
apart, virtually automatically, from all the other arts – such as
agriculture, rhetoric, and engineering – since the other arts are
valued primarily for their utility and not the sake of the
intrinsically valued experiences they engender. If aesthetic
experience is the mark of Art, properly so called, and aesthetic
experience is divorced from serving any ulterior purpose, then
Artworks, properly so called, thereby have no essential truck
with any aims, interests, or purposes other than that of
providing intrinsically valued experiences (Carroll , ).
So the tremendous authority wielded by the theory of aesthetic
experience as disinterested pleasure was backed by the theory of
art that invoked it.
Needless to say, this theory of art is a non-starter. There are
works of art whose aesthetic value is inextricably bound up with
their ‘utility’. The cathedral at Chartres, for example, or Eero
Saarinen’s tulip chair. Surely Stephen Davies is right that ‘a
beautiful chair is one having features that make it graceful and
stylish and, at the same time, comfortable to sit on, stable and
supportive of the back’ (, ). Moreover, aesthetic
experience is ubiquitous. Assuming that clothing design is not an
art, the iconic dresses made by Chanel in the s are
nevertheless beautiful. If their beauty is bound up with their
‘utility’, then they furnish another example of the inadequacy of
the theory of aesthetic experience as disinterested pleasure (see
Parsons and Carlson ). The same goes if their beauty does not
consist in a disposition to evoke disinterested pleasure. And if
their beauty is independent of their utility and consists in a
disposition to evoke disinterested pleasure, then the proposed
theory of art is inadequate.
Theories of the aesthetic can be pulled off course by the weight
imposed upon them by theories of art. It would be rash to
conclude that no aesthetic theory of art is correct, but it would be
wise to keep in mind that a correct aesthetic theory of art requires
a correct theory of the aesthetic as it is distinctively realized in the
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individual arts and as it is found beyond the realm of art
altogether.
The Aesthetic in the Twins Arguments
While the theories of aesthetic value arraigned by Danto and
Carroll now boast few fans, contemporary thinking about the
aesthetic is profoundly shaped by the twins arguments. Since the
s, these arguments have functioned as fulcrums to leverage
theorizing about art, and their workings include theories of the
aesthetic.
Thus the canonical version of the twins argument laid out in
Chapter  assumes that,
A. if the features that make an item a work of art are aesthetic,
then the features that make an item a work of art are among or
supervene on its perceptible features.
What this assumption comes to is sharpened by the additional
assumption that,
A. if the features that make an item a work of art are among or
supervene on its perceptible features, then no work of art is
perceptually indiscernible from a twin item that is not a work
of art.
Since some works of art have perceptually indiscernible non-art
twins, it follows that the features that make an item a work of art
are not aesthetic. That was Danto’s () landmark argument. Its
axiological spinoff begins with a similar pair of assumptions. First,
V. if the value of a work of art is wholly aesthetic, then its
value supervenes on its perceptible features,
and, second,
V. if the value of a work supervenes on its perceptible
features, then no work differs in value from an indiscernible
twin.
Since some works of art differ in value from their perceptually
indiscernible twins, it follows that the value of a work of art is not
wholly aesthetic. Setting aside whether each of these arguments,
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taken as a whole, ultimately holds up, notice that each one is
launched by a theory of the aesthetic – a theory of aesthetic
properties in the case of (A) and a theory of aesthetic value in
(V).
The view of the aesthetic embodied in (A) and (V) implies
that aesthetic properties and values are perceptual. Such a theory
enjoys wide currency. Levinson, for example, holds that aesthetic
properties are higher-order ways of appearing that depend on and
emerge out of lower-order ways of appearing, where these are
looks and sounds and the like (, –). An interesting
example of a view of aesthetic value as perceptible in a literal
sense is that assumed by Parsons and Carlson () in their
defence of functional beauty. Having defined an item’s functional
beauty as its ‘looking fit for function’, they assume the burden of
explaining what it is for an item’s being fit for function to be
‘translated’ into its look or sound. ‘It is not’, they write, ‘that we
see beauty, and then assess how well that beauty fits with
function. If things are functionally beautiful, then knowing the
function is what allows observers to see the beauty in the first
place’ (, ).
If the twins arguments deserve to be taken seriously – and they
do – then it is only because (A) and (V) are either true or ring
true. If they are not true, then they are nearly true. Perhaps they
are so nearly true as to save the soundness of the twins arguments;
perhaps they are not (Shelley ). Neither alternative is enough
by itself to vindicate an aesthetic theory of art; putting theories of
art to the side, two questions make a good start on a theory of
aesthetic appreciation, as that phenomenon figures in
contemporary thinking. Are (A) and (V) true? If not, what
theory of aesthetic appreciation gives them the ring of truth?
Beyond Perception
The old chestnut in discussions that reach this point is that
Baumgarten ([]) named the field of aesthetics by defining
it as the science of sensible knowledge. According to Binkley’s
influential diagnosis of where he thought aesthetic theories of art
go wrong, ‘Baumgarten’s “science of perception” is a moribund
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enterprise…. Yet a survey of contemporary aesthetic theory will
prove that this part of philosophy still accepts its raison d’être to
be a perceptual entity – an appearance’ (, ). In order for
the twins arguments to reach the conclusions that they reach, (A)
and (V) must identify perceptible features with features
‘discerned through the senses’ (Danto , ). One might well
ask what else they could be.
Theorizing without an explanandum in view is a treacherous
business, even if theories help bring explananda into view.
Iseminger singles out the following fact for explanation: aesthetic
appreciation of an item requires an experience of the item (,
). He is not alone (e.g. Sibley , Pettit , Mothersill ,
Eaton ; cf. Budd , Livingston , Meskin ).
Wollheim agrees that aesthetic judgements ‘must be based on firsthand experience of their objects’ (, ) and Alan Tormey
puts it that ‘we require critical judgements to be rooted in “eyewitness” encounters’ (, ). Each immediately follows up by
remarking on what they take to be a consequence of the claim.
Wollheim adds that aesthetic judgements are not ‘transmissible
from one person to another’ and Tormey that ‘the epistemically
indirect avenues of evidence, inference, and authority that are
permissible elsewhere are anathema here’. The thesis that aesthetic
appreciation requires ‘first hand experience’ or an ‘eye-witness
encounter’ has come to be called the ‘acquaintance principle’. The
question is how to interpret the principle.
Tormey draws an epistemic lesson from the principle, and the
principle is frequently interpreted as implying that aesthetic
testimony is weak (e.g. Hopkins , Budd , Livingston
, Meskin ). For sake of simplicity, define testimony as
communication from one person to another, wherein the testifier
asserts something she believes. A testifier’s asserting a belief
usually entitles her audience to that belief. Most of us have title to
believe only through testimony that Socrates was Athenian and
that brown is dark orange. Aesthetic testimony is a
communication which consists in the testifier asserting an
aesthetic judgement, and Tormey denies that it provides much
title to belief. My assertion that the hybrid teas I just planted are
elegant gives you little right to join in my judgement. The
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explanation is that aesthetic judgement requires ‘first-hand
experience’.
Critics of the acquaintance principle sometimes deny that
aesthetic testimony is weak in this way; and there are at least some
domains of aesthetic discourse where it seems not to be (Laetz
). Fortunately, there is no need to take sides in the debate on
aesthetic testimony (for that see Lopes a). There are
independent reasons to downplay the epistemic interpretation of
the acquaintance principle.
First, there is a gap between the claims that aesthetic judgement
is ‘based on first-hand experience’ and the claim that aesthetic
testimony affords little or no title to aesthetic judgement. After all,
perceptual belief is based on first-hand experience but perceptual
testimony affords title to perceptual belief. You are entitled to
believe that my cat is brown when I assert my perceptual belief
that she is brown. Evidently, we cannot take aesthetic judgement
to be ‘based on first-hand experience’ in just the way that
perceptual belief is based on first-hand experience. The challenge
remains to say what is meant by the principle that aesthetic
judgement is ‘based on first-hand experience’. The idea that this
might be understood in plainly perceptual terms – terms friendly
to (A) and (V) – does not pan out.
Second, the epistemic interpretation is too narrow. The
acquaintance principle is supposed to be general, applying to all
aesthetic appreciation, including the aesthetic appreciation of
literature. We must read for ourselves before we judge, just as we
must see or listen for ourselves. Yet most literary works have no
perceptible properties. The epistemic interpretation of the
acquaintance principle does not solve this puzzle. The options are
either to seek an interpretation of the acquaintance principle that
makes sense of its application to literature or, desperately, to deny
that most literary works can be objects of aesthetic evaluation (e.g.
Zangwill ).
An important, obvious, yet neglected lesson is this. Barring
desperate measures, a theory of aesthetic appreciation must make
sense of the aesthetic appreciation of items without perceptible
features – most works of literature, for a start. Danto takes Hume
to task for speaking of beauty in literature: he tells us that Hume
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must have really been thinking of ‘literary excellence, superiority,
and depth’ and should have distinguished ‘between aesthetic
beauty and what we might call artistic beauty’ (, –). Why
assume that Hume did not have a perceptual conception of
aesthetic value inconsistent with (V)? For example, Francis
Hutcheson outlined a conception of aesthetic appreciation
intended to cover intellectual objects such as mathematic theorems
as well as sensuous objects like paintings (Shelley ; see also
Iseminger ).
A final and (as it will turn out) useful problem facing the
epistemic interpretation of the acquaintance principle is that it is
too broad. Classic statements of the principle come with a
qualification. Thus Tormey grants that ‘reproductions or
representations’ such as photographs and drawings ‘may, for
critical purposes, be adequate surrogates for the object of critical
judgement’ (, ). The qualification is sensible. Images are
important vehicles for communicating information, including
information about the aesthetic qualities of things, and people
routinely make aesthetic judgements on the basis of images of
scenes or objects (cf. Stock , –).
Photographs and drawings are used to convey the aesthetic
qualities of all kinds of consumer goods. We may not trust what
we see in advertising images, but not all mass media images are
geared to advertising. Consider travel reporting, as distinct from
travel advertising. Many people make and then act on aesthetic
judgements by looking at images in travel guidebooks and
newspaper travel sections. The same goes for clothing and flower
catalogues, architectural drawings, and on-line personals.
Images also play a key role in communicating the aesthetic
qualities of art works. When painting moved out of church and
palace into the secular public space of the art museum, it also
moved onto the printed page, first through engraving and then
through photography and now Google Images and ARTstor.
Paintings and sculptures, especially canonical or famous ones, are
more often seen depicted than face-to-face. Is it going out on a
limb to add that we often judge these works via images of them?
Could these images be the exception to the rule that aesthetic
testimony is weak? Not unless the use of images to transmit
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aesthetic judgements from person to person is a form of aesthetic
testimony. But images cannot be vehicles for aesthetic testimony.
The claim is not that images are never used to assert. Believing
that Josh is taller than Brian, I show you a picture of them, which
I sincerely take to be accurate, with the intention of getting you to
believe that Josh is taller than Brian – and I take responsibility for
my action. In general, images can be used in acts of assertion as
vehicles that depict what is asserted (Novitz , Eaton ,
Korsmeyer , Lopes , ch. ).
The reason images cannot be vehicles for aesthetic testimony is
that testimony involves ‘bare’ assertion. When I tell you that the
butter is in the fridge and you accept my testimony, my reasons
for my belief may become your reasons, but you do not have
cognitive access to my reasons because I do not assert them. If I
assert my reasons along with my belief that p, then your title to
believe that p derives from your accepting my stated reasons for p
and not from my bare assertion that p. However, images never
figure in acts of bare assertion as to the aesthetic qualities of
things. I cannot show you a picture of my tea roses that depicts
their elegance without also depicting some of the features that
seem to make them elegant. I cannot even show you a picture that
depicts a simple elegant line without depicting some of the
features that seem to make it elegant. There is no bare depiction of
aesthetic features, so there is no bare assertion of aesthetic
judgements via depiction. If I show you a photograph of my tea
roses and you judge that they are elegant, then you so judge
because you seem to see what makes them elegant, not merely
because you rely on my say-so.
Since images cannot figure in aesthetic testimony, they cannot
supply an exception to the rule that aesthetic testimony is weak.
Yet they are an exception to the acquaintance principle. So the
acquaintance principle should not be interpreted epistemically, as
a claim implying the weakness of aesthetic testimony. For the
record, none of the reasons to downplay the epistemic
interpretation of the acquaintance principle decisively defeat it.
They leave wiggle room. But they are enough to warrant a search
for a better interpretation. They also provide some hints towards a
better interpretation. ‘First-hand experience’ is not just perception
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by means of the senses. Imperceptible items may be objects of
aesthetic appreciation. Aesthetic judgement is not transmissible by
words but it is transmissible by images, or ‘surrogates’ more
generally.
Aesthetic Acquaintance
‘One cannot’, according to Binkley, ‘communicate Mona Lisa by
describing it’ (, ). Alexander Nehamas elaborates that
‘nothing a critic ever says about a work can show how it will
effect me when I am exposed to it directly’ (, ). These
observations echo the principle that aesthetic judgement must be
‘based on first-hand experience’ but they seems less to be getting
at an epistemic fact that a fact about the transmission of mental
states. Suppose that transmission is a content-preserving relation
between representations. Philip Pettit writes that ‘the state one is
in when… one sincerely assents to a given aesthetic
characterization is not a state to which one can have nonperceptual access’ – it is ‘essentially perceptual’ (, ). This
claim about access is considerably stronger than any claim about
entitlement. When the transmission of an aesthetic judgement is
blocked, the result is not merely that the person on the receiving
end makes a judgement to which he is not entitled. He is not in a
position to make the judgement at all.
Representational states are transmitted from one person to
another only with the help of artifactual representations, such as
sentences and images. Thus transmission can be analyzed as a
relation that obtains between the cognitive state of a transmitter
and an artifactual representation only when the artifactual
representation is understood by the receiver. As an
approximation:
R is transmitted by R only if full grasp of R is a state R
whose content includes the content of R.
This is only a partial analysis, but it is enough for an account of
what it is for types of states to be transmissible. A type of
cognitive state is transmissible by a given type of artifactual
representation just in case representations of that type transmit
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states of that type. By this analysis, many types of cognitive state
are transmissible by any type of artifactual representation. A
perceptual belief that mondo grass is black is transmissible by my
saying ‘mondo grass is black’ because your grasp of this sentence
consists in having a thought whose content includes that of the
perceptual belief. But I have a choice of media and I can show you
a picture of some mondo grass instead. Understood in this way,
transmission is non-epistemic: you might believe that mondo grass
is black, or imagine it, wish it, or even doubt it.
Perhaps aesthetic judgements are only transmissible by certain
types of representations. How so? Remembering my walk along
the Nakasen-do, I judge that it is beautiful, I tell you so, and you
grasp the thought expressed by my words, but your thought
differs in content from my judgement because the content of my
judgement is ‘essentially perceptual’ and the content of your
thought is not. Since your thought does not have the same type of
content as my judgement, my judgement is not transmitted to
you. Yet when I convey what I judge by showing you a
photograph of the Nakasen-do, your grasp of the photograph is a
state which has the same type of content as my judgement, so
aesthetic judgement is transmissible via images.
An extreme proposal is that aesthetic features are essentially
perceptual in the sense that they are ineffable, they cannot be
conceptualized or named. As Michael Tanner expresses the view,
aesthetic judgements ‘must be based on first-hand experience…
because one is not capable of understanding the meaning of the
terms which designate the properties without the
experience’ (, ). This kind of view has called some fire
down upon the acquaintance principle (e.g. Livingston ).
Materials for a moderate alternative come from contrasting
depiction with description, if aesthetic judgements are transmitted
by images and not words. As we have seen, there is no bare
depiction of aesthetic features, whereas there is bare description of
aesthetic features. Describing a line as graceful represents
gracefulness without representing non-aesthetic features of the
line, but no image depicts a line as graceful without depicting
some non-aesthetic features that seem to make it graceful.
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Indeed, the line’s grace is not depicted in addition to depicting
non-aesthetic features that seem to make it graceful. There is no
more to depicting the line as graceful than depicting non-aesthetic
features that seem to make it graceful. Thus the only explanation
for an image’s failing to depict a line’s grace is that it fails to
depict some non-aesthetic features that would seem to make it
graceful. By contrast, no description of a work’s non-aesthetic
features implies a description of its aesthetic features (Sibley
). So there is always something more to describing a line’s
grace than listing the non-aesthetic features that seem to make it
graceful. Although ‘the line fits the equation y(x + a) = a’ may
describe a line as having the very feature responsible for its grace,
the sentence fails to describe the line as graceful. Of course, some
descriptions represent the line’s grace as determined by the nonaesthetic features that make it graceful: ‘the line is graceful
because it fits the equation y(x + a) = a’. Again, however, with
the image, there is nothing more to depicting the line as graceful
than depicting its shape.
Some representations have inseparable content:
R represents x as F inseparably from its representing x as B = R
represents x as F by and only by representing x as B.
An image depicts a line as graceful by and only by depicting it as
having certain non-aesthetic features. In general, aesthetic features
are depicted by and only by depicting certain non-aesthetic
features. The aesthetic content of depictions is inseparable. By
contrast, the aesthetic content of descriptions is not inseparable.
Aesthetic features are never described by or only by describing
non-aesthetic features. My saying ‘the Saarinen chair is beautiful
because its floral geometry so surprisingly fits it to its purpose’
describes the chair as beautiful and also describes a non-aesthetic
feature that makes it beautiful, but the beauty is not described by
and only by describing its geometry and its function.
Frank Sibley touched on a similar point, but mistakenly took it
to suggest that inseparable content distinguishes aesthetic
judgement from ordinary perceptual experience. He wrote that,
if a man were not in a position to see or discern that a line had
such and such a curve… he could not conceivably tell that the
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line was… graceful…. One sees the grace in that particular
curve. And if one cannot clearly see or discern the determinate
character or properties which are responsible for the merit-term
‘P’ being applicable, one cannot discern that ‘P’ applies (,
).
Sibley then attempted to draw a contrast with seeing the
brightness of a highway sign. Suppose that speckled signs look
brighter than signs with uniform colours, and a given highway
sign looks bright because it is speckled. From a distance, one sees
the sign’s brightness without seeing its speckling, so seeing the
brightness is separable from seeing the speckling that makes for
the brightness. Sibley inferred that its inseparable content marks
aesthetic judgement apart from ordinary perceptual experience,
which has separable content.
Grasping why this inference is too hasty drives home an
important point about inseparable content. One sees the sign’s
brightness without seeing its speckling, but it does not follow that
the brightness is represented inseparably. The sign looks
uniformly coloured from a distance, and experience may well
represent the sign’s brightness by and only by representing its
uniform coloration. Perhaps we do see the sign’s brightness by
and only by seeing other features that seem to make it bright,
albeit not always the features that actually make it bright. It
would be too much to expect that when a state represents x as F
inseparably from its representing x as B, the representation of x as
B is in fact responsible for the representation of x as F. The
highway sign’s speckling and not its uniform colour is responsible
for its looking bright, but experience may represent its brightness
inseparably from its uniform colour.
Inseparable aesthetic content is no different. From a distance,
the scene in Georges Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières looks calm and
dreamy. Moreover, we see this calm dreaminess by and only by
seeing the scene’s flat and uniform coloration. Of course, this is an
illusion. The calm dreaminess is achieved not through flat and
uniform coloration but rather through saturated hues laid down in
dots which are visible only from up close. Moving in close, we are
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surprised to learn what features are actually responsible for our
seeing the scene as dreamy.
A little jargon helps track the distinction that is now in hand.
Let ‘aesthetic judgement’ name a mental state that ascribes an
aesthetic value inseparably. Let ‘aesthetic belief’ name a mental
state that ascribes an aesthetic value separably. Aesthetic
judgements are not transmissible in words; aesthetic beliefs are.
(This suggests a hypothesis. We systematically confuse aesthetic
belief and aesthetic judgement and hence the non-transmissibility
of aesthetic judgement with the weakness of aesthetic testimony.
Distinguishing aesthetic judgement and belief might help to sort
out the problem of aesthetic testimony, for that problem concerns
whether accurate aesthetic descriptions warrant aesthetic belief.
See Levinson , –, Lopes a.)
A Theory of Aesthetic Appreciation
Correctly interpreted, the acquaintance principle represents a
truth about aesthetic judgement. One can say a lot about the Mona
Lisa, but a description is no substitute for an encounter the
painting, either face-to-face or through a suitable surrogate. The
explanation is that aesthetic judgement represents the Mona Lisa’s
value inseparably; this is how it is that aesthetic judgements are
‘essentially perceptual’ or ‘based on first-hand experience’.
Combining this result with the stipulated generic theory of
appreciation, here is a theory of specifically aesthetic appreciation:
an aesthetic appreciation of an item is a cognitive process that
includes an aesthetic judgement of the item. Typically the
judgement that is part of an aesthetic appreciation results from
acts of classification and interpretation and it may also yield
pleasure – these may be ingredients in the process of appreciation
– but the essential ingredient is aesthetic judgement, where an
aesthetic judgement of an item is a mental state that represents the
aesthetic value of the item inseparably from the non-aesthetic
properties that seem to realize that value.
This theory of aesthetic appreciation explains why the
acquaintance principle, correctly interpreted, is true. It implies
that a description of an item is not enough to afford an aesthetic
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appreciation of the item. Aesthetic judgement is not transmissible
by words. At the same time, a face-to-face encounter with the item
is not required: certain kinds of memories and artifactual
representations of an item may mediate an aesthetic appreciation
of it.
The theory also accommodates the aesthetic appreciation of
literary works and other works whose aesthetic value is not
realized by perceptible features. The paradigm of inseparable
content is provided by judgements that represent aesthetic values
of an item by and only by representing its apparent perceptible
features. However, the definition of inseparable content abstracts
from the perceptual paradigm:
R represents x as F inseparably from its representing x as B = R
represents x as F by and only by representing x as B.
The aesthetic values of a story or poem are represented
inseparably from the semantic and prosodic properties that realize
them when they are represented by and only by the experience of
reading the story or the poem.
If the reader will forgive an example in ill taste…. Pride and
Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Graeme-Smith and Jane Austen is a
witty mashup. More than four-fifths of the text is original Austen,
into which is interpolated deadpan descriptions of stupid and
insatiable brain-eating zombies and the zombie-fighting Ninja
prowess of the Bennett sisters. Some of the wit comes from the
martial arts spin given to the Austen’s treatment of courtship and
the blurring of line between silly girls and zombies, especially in
contrast with the black-belted Bennett girls. Some of the wit is
meta-textual, for the interpolations ‘cannibalize’ Austen’s text in a
variety of ways. It is possible to go on describing what makes the
book a witty mashup, and exensive description might just
convince you of the book’s merits. However, those merits, if they
are merits, are represented inseparably from the story itself when
you read it, starting from the opening sentence, ‘It is a truth
universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains
will be in want of more brains… ’.
Making a full case for this theory of aesthetic appreciation
would require another book. The theory appears at first glance to
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be logically consistent with a number of other theories (e.g. Budd
, Iseminger , Lopes , ch. , Shelley , Shelley MS)
and it also appears to be inconsistent with others, notably
hedonistic theories, which take pleasure to be essential to aesthetic
appreciation and aesthetic value (e.g. Beardsley , Beardsley
, Walton , Levinson ). A full case would include a
demonstration that the theories it is inconsistent with are
inadequate and that it is to be preferred over any theories it is
consistent with, unless it entails or is entailed by them. All this
must await another occasion. For now, what matters is how the
theory contributes to a framework for developing developing
theories of the arts.
According to the proposed framework, the arts are appreciative
kinds. That is,
K is an appreciative kind if and only if is there is a property of
being good qua K, or being good-modified for a K, or being
good qua K* for a K.
Since aesthetic appreciations attribute aesthetic values, this
framework applies to works in an art form only if they are objects
of aesthetic appreciation. So does the framework apply to arts like
literature, which are made up of non-perceptible works?
Not if (V) is true, given the proposed theory of aesthetic
appreciation plus a plausible assumption. This assumption is that
the non-aesthetic properties that are represented inseparably from
an item’s aesthetic value are among the properties upon which
that value supervenes. That is, in general,
if an aesthetic value, V, is accurately represented inseparably
from determinable properties B, then being V supervenes in
part on being B.
In other words, what makes something graceful or beautiful is not
some grand illusion – it is the curve of the line, the light in the
eyes, the choice of words. So if literature is an art made up of nonperceptible works and if these are objects of aesthetic
appreciation, then their aesthetic value does not supervene even
in part on perceptible properties. This result is inconsistent with
(V). As long as (V) is true, there is no room in the proposed
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framework for aesthetic appreciation as it pertains to arts made up
of non-perceptible works.
Therefore, as long as literature is an art and as long as literary
works bear aesthetic value, the theory of aesthetic appreciation on
offer here improves on (V). Not only is it inconsistent with (V)
but it also explains why (V) rings true. It rings true because
perception is a paradigm of inseparable representation. More
importantly, it fits nicely into the framework for developing
theories of the arts. This is because it does not rule out that there
is a property of being aesthetically-good-modified for a work of
literature. On the contrary, such a property is a value that is
represented in our reading of the work in a way inseparably from
the apparent semantic and prosodic features of the work that
realize it. These are features that the work has because it is a work
of literature, so the fact that they realize certain aesthetic values
points to the nature of literature. The same goes for the other arts.
The fact that a work is aesthetically good for a K points to what it
is to be a K.
Moreover, if part of what makes it the case that a work belongs
to an art form is that it realizes aesthetic value, then there is a
property of being aesthetically good qua K. What makes a K
aesthetically good qua K is what makes it a K, so again its aesthetic
goodness points to the nature of Ks.
A rather motley collection of theses go by the name of
‘formalism’, though the theses so named are not logical kin (e.g
Zangwill , Nanay MS). Here is yet another expression of
formalism: some goodness-aesthetically-modified simpliciter is
realized by some works of art, w, though it is neither goodness
qua K nor goodness-aesthetically-modified for a K, where w is a K.
Is this true? It does not matter for present purposes, for the values
in question give us no information about the nature of any art
form.
Everywhere Aesthetics
Giving up on (A) and (V) is not the end of the twins arguments.
If, as the arguments assume, aesthetic properties are
predominantly understood nowadays as perceptual or
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supervening on perceptual properties, then the arguments may
send us back to the drawing board to rethink the aesthetic.
However, updated theories of the aesthetic might also plug into
the twins arguments.
Aesthetic properties and values are ubiquitous. They are found
in natural objects – a theory of the aesthetic that can say nothing
about the beauty (and ugliness) of the human body had better
have powerful compensating virtues. Having acquired a
sensibility that is tuned into the aesthetic values in natural
objects, human beings can only be expected to want to make
things with the same kinds of properties and also to take
advantage of the features of the things they make to realize
aesthetic values that cannot be found in nature. No rule channels
this desire into the realm of art. Almost anything that is the
product of human creativity is an opportunity to add to the stock
of aesthetic value in the world. A great deal of the time, the
opportunity is not wasted. Art furnishes but a corner of our
aesthetic environment.
A good theory of aesthetic value must accommodate this
ubiquity. The theory of aesthetic value modelled in (V) fails this
standard because it limits aesthetic values to the perceptual
domain. The theory of aesthetic appreciation as involving the
cognitive representation of aesthetic values inseparably from the
non-aesthetic features imposes no such limitation. It is consistent
with a theory of aesthetic value which explains its ubiquity.
If this is a merit of the theory, it also puts it within reach of
updated twins arguments. It makes it very unlikely that there
aren’t some works of art that have aesthetic – but not necessarily
perceptual – twins. This is the deep power of the twins
arguments. The challenge to aesthetic theories of art is sometimes
said to be this: there is non-aesthetic, indeed even anti-aesthetic
art. Examples tend to be works that denigrate beauty but there
may be works of art that scorn, or at least turn their backs on, any
aesthetic value whatsoever. Grant the point. It is not in the final
analysis the most compelling interpretation. The challenge to
aesthetic theories of art is this: a work of art may have a non-art
twin though both have plenty of aesthetic value. Thus Danto
() admires the obviously powerful aesthetic merits of the
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Brillo boxes – the items found in the grocery store – while
denying them status as art. The challenge is that an aesthetic
theory of art must either accept them as art or downplay their
aesthetic qualities.
Fancy aesthetic theories of art do not take the aesthetic qualities
of a work to suffice in making it a work of art. Thus the challenge
may be restated: what makes Warhol’s Brillo Boxes art, if it is art,
apart from the aesthetic properties that it shares with the Brillo
boxes? One traditional answer is that Warhol’s product was made
primarily with an intention to have these properties or, by having
them, to bring about some state. The man who designed the Brillo
box was an abstract expressionist painter and it strains credibility
that his intentions were not aesthetic. Another traditional answer
is that art works have special aesthetic properties. But what fences
them in to the art world? Whatever they are, can they not find
their way into the toolkits of those making non-art?
None of this amounts to a anything close to a decisive
refutation aesthetic theories of art. However, it is important to
appreciate how tough a challenge is posed to any aesthetic theory
by the twins arguments.
Aesthetic theories of the arts are not in the same boat. An
aesthetic theory of an art form, K, states that at least part of what
makes an item a K is that it realizes aesthetic value by taking
advantage of its medium, and in accordance with its constitutive
norms. There may be many artifacts in the same medium that are
not works in the art form: they are not made as part of the
relevant practice. Nothing could be in the same medium and part
of the same practice yet not A work in K. The twins arguments
can gain no ground on theories of the arts. Those theories have
resources to fend them off. Art, by contrast, has no constitutive
medium and no constitutive practice.
The buck passing theory of art lets us have our cake and eat it.
We can develop aesthetic theories of the arts (though they are not
the only option). At the same time we can take the twins
arguments very seriously indeed. Can we ignore the hard cases?
Not at all. To them it is time to return.

Much Ado About Art
This book is committed to a vision of the philosophy of art as
genuinely attentive to and even inspired by significant events in
the history of art, especially during the past century. Although
some of the most interesting work in the discipline pursues this
same vision by developing buck stopping theories of art, it would
be a serious mistake to think that buck stopping theories provide
the only tool by means of which philosophers may grapple
seriously with recent triumph and turmoil in the art world. The
buck passing theory of art also equips us to represent recent
history in an illuminating way, and perhaps it does a better job at
this than its competition.
Hard Cases and Free Agents
The function of any theory is to do some work, and work requires
resistance. Chapters  and  argue that a principal source of
resistance for buck stopping theories of art is the hard cases.
Resistance to the buck passing theory of art comes from works of
art that in Chapters  and  were called ‘free agents’. Since these
works are in fact, if not by necessity, the same works as the hard
cases, one might wonder whether the effort of stopping up one
gopher hole has been wasted, as the self same gopher pops up
nearby. The first order of business must be to clarify the
relationship between hard cases and free agents. Doing that takes
a step towards a better understanding of a prominent strand of
recent art.
Examples of hard cases pepper previous chapters. The
touchstones have been Duchamp’s Fountain, Warhol’s Brillo
Boxes, and Cage’s ’”. Beyond these, Christo’s wraps, Williams’s
‘This Is Just to Say’, Nichols’s ‘Cold Mountain’, Rauschenberg’s
Erased de Kooning Drawing, Barry’s Inert Gas Series, and Vautier’s
Regardez moi cela suffit je suis art have also been mentioned.
Meanwhile, the literature reaches out further yet to acknowledge
Mary Jane Jacobs Culture in Action initiatives, John Baldessari’s
Everything Is Purged from This Painting but Art, and Christine
Kozlov’s ‘movie’ entitled Transparent Film #. It is important to
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register that these works are not concoctions of the philosophical
imagination; they really exist.
Existence is hard to quibble with; the issue is how to classify
these items in an illuminating and useful way. The Introduction
and Chapter  stipulated to a technical definition of the hard cases
that recruits them to a precise philosophical task: they are items
whose status as works of art is controversial and contested,
making them test cases for buck stopping theories of art. Calling
Cage’s piece or Kozlov’s reel of transparent film a ‘hard case’ is
neutral on whether or not it is a work of art. Furthermore, hard
cases need not be borderline or marginal; it is not some vagueness
that makes them controversial. Theories according to which they
are not works of art may imply that they are clearly – even
paradigmatically – not art, and theories that take them to be
works of art may imply that they are central cases of works of art.
The buck passing theory of art is neutral on the hard cases, as
it refers them elsewhere, to theories of the individual arts (or
possibly to a theory of the arts as a whole). Indeed, the theory
implies neither that the hard cases are central nor that they are
marginal; it treats the question of their centrality or marginality as
not terribly meaningful. The idea is not, however, to sweep the
hard cases under the carpet. The fact is that the hard cases have
fuelled the development of buck stopping theories of art, and
those theories are supposed to be informative in so far as they deal
adequately with the hard cases. That goes not only for genetic
theories that are inspired by the hard cases but also for traditional
theories that downplay the hard cases as outliers in thirty
thousand years of human art making that should not be given too
much weight in theory-building. Since the hard cases do grip us,
the buck passing theory of art is not a live option unless it enables
us to contend with them in a serious manner.
To answer the ‘informativeness challenge’, the buck passing
theory of art must accomplish two tasks. First, it must represent
the hard cases as posing a puzzle that calls upon philosophy for a
response. It cannot brush off the hard cases – that would be
taking sides. Second, it must propose a theoretical tool for dealing
with the hard cases that has rosier prospects than buck stopping
theories of art.
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The buck passing theory of art says that what makes an item a
work of art is a matter of its meeting two conditions: it belongs to
a kind and that kind numbers among the arts. An item is a work
of art only if it is a product of some art kind. The question of what
makes Fountain a work of art, if it is one, is replaced with a
different question, of what makes it a sculpture – or a member of
some other art kind. The new question leaves room for
puzzlement. If Fountain is a work of art then maybe it is a
sculpture? But then it is puzzling what make things sculptures…
so perhaps it belongs to some other art form? Which one?
Likewise, if Transparent Film # is a work of art then presumably
it is a movie? But does it really have what it takes to be a movie?
Perhaps it belongs to some other art form? Which one? The buck
passing theory of art takes the hard cases seriously – as posing a
puzzle that calls upon philosophy for a response – by interpreting
the puzzle as a puzzle about their membership in art kinds.
Moreover, the task of saying what makes an item a sculpture or
a song or a poem or a dance is in principle more tractable than
saying what makes it a work of art. The buck passing theory of
art does not require that theories of all of the arts draw upon the
very same resources. It allows for a mix of traditional and genetic
theories of different arts, for example. It also recommends a
bottom-up approach: start with empirical facts about the specific
media and practices of the art, as these figure in appreciation of
works in that art. Start, in other words, with the hypotheses and
generalizations of art history and theory; of the sociology and
anthropology of art; and of developmental, cognitive, and social
psychology. What it is to be an art practice is implicit in empirical
research about art works and their appreciation.
Observation is theory-laden so that a change of theory can
make a difference to empirical research, and the buck passing
theory of art has a revisionist edge in so far as standard art history
shares philosophy’s understanding of the hard cases as test cases
for theories of art. Thierry de Duve (, ) makes a point of
the fact that the earliest incarnation of Dickie’s institutional
theory of art coincided with the appearance of Joseph Kosuth’s
‘Art after Philosophy’ ([]). Just when Dickie was inspired
by certain works which he saw as undercutting traditional
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theories of art, Kosuth’s essay seemed to voice the agenda of an
important body of artistic work and its associated discourse.
According to Kosuth, this work distills art to its essence, namely
to express the proposition that ‘art is the definition of art’ and to
‘inquir[e] into the foundations of the concept “art”’ ([],
–). Whatever the exact meaning of these dicta, they were
surely meant to encapsulate the idea that certain art works put in
play theories of art by demanding a theory of art that sends
traditional theories of art packing. An adaptation of traditional
theories is not in the cards: the hard cases embody art in its purest
form and an entirely new kind of theory is needed to represent
them as central cases and not as products of an experimental
fringe. What, for example, would be a central case of a work of art
for a genetic theory but Duchamp’s Fountain?
The details of the reasoning articulated by Kosuth and his peers
clearly echo the philosophical arguments that put theories of art in
play. Citing the authority of Fountain, Kosuth argues that
‘aesthetics… are conceptually irrelevant to art’ ([], ).
Presumably the thought is either that Fountain has no aesthetic
qualities yet it is a work of art or else that it does not differ in its
aesthetic qualities from an ordinary urinal and yet it is a work of
art. Either way, the elements are in place to construct the
canonical version of the twins argument (see Chapter ). Both
versions of that argument hinge on there being art works with
perceptually indiscernible non-art twins (the canonical version
additionally assumes that aesthetic features of works are
perceptual). Unsurprisingly, then, Kosuth also argues that ‘art’s
viability is not connected to the presentation of visual (or other)
kinds of experience’ ([], ). He remarks, for example,
that there are ‘a vast quantity of similar looking objects or images’
affording similar ‘visual/experiential “readings”’ but ‘one cannot
claim from this an artistic… relationship’ ([], ). Thus
far philosophy of art goes hand in hand with the explicitly
expressed self-understanding of at least one art movement.
(It is worth pausing to remark how closely Danto’s vision of
this body of work matches its own self-understanding, since
Danto has so powerfully shaped the way philosophical theories of
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art are framed. He argues in Transfiguration of the Commonplace
that
the philosophical question of [art’s] status has almost become
the very essence of art itself, so that the philosophy of art,
instead of standing outside the subject and answering it from
an alien and external perspective, became instead the
articulation of the internal energies of the subject… artworks
have been transfigured into exercises in the philosophy of art
(1981, 56).
Following up in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, he
writes that ‘the objects approach zero as their theory approaches
infinity, so that virtually all there is at the end is theory, art
finally having become vaporized in a dazzle of pure thought about
itself’ (, ).)
Suppose we accept at face value the body of art world
discourse which Kosuth exemplifies. (What is to be gained by
interrupting this cheerful display of amity between art and
philosophy?) Works like Everything Is Purged from This Painting
but Art and Transparent Film # were made to function as test
cases for buck stopping theories of art. Undoubtedly, they cannot
be appreciated fully without acknowledging this fact. The buck
passing theory of art never denies that the hard cases are hard
cases, but it does recommend against the kind of theorizing that
they invite.
However, the theory is not entirely revisionist, since it
recommends a theoretical approach that reflects a theme
developed by Kosuth and others. Kosuth borrows for an epigraph
to his essay a line from Donald Judd, his fellow artist and
manifesto writer: ‘everything sculpture has, my work
doesn’t’ ([], ). The aesthetic and perceptual features of
the works that Kosuth has in mind are irrelevant to their status as
art, and that is because their material features are irrelevant to
their status as art. As long as the medium of a work has to do with
its material makeup and defines the kind of art it is, this is art of
no particular kind.
Among the philosophers, Binkley most clearly sees that the
hard cases challenge traditional, aesthetic theories of art by
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challenging the principle that ‘media are the basic categories of
art… and each work is identified through its medium’ (, ).
His argument is, in brief, that the aesthetic properties of a work
are indeterminate until we specify which of its non-aesthetic
properties are relevant to appreciation. The non-aesthetic
properties of physical materials are organized by convention into
media, so that ‘by being told which medium a work is in, we are
given the parameters within which to search for and experience
its aesthetic qualities’ (, ). The thought is that the hard
cases undermine traditional aesthetic theories of art by weakening
the regime of media upon which aesthetic appreciation depends.
As Binkley puts it, ‘art has become increasingly non-aesthetic in
the twentieth century, straining the conventions of media to the
point where lines between them blur. Some works of art are
presented in “multi-media”, others (such as Duchamp’s) cannot be
placed within a medium at all’ (, ). He concludes that ‘art
need not be aesthetic’ (, ).
Among art theorists, de Duve () gives the view trenchant
expression in his reading of the significance of Duchamp’s
Fountain. This is ‘neither a painting nor a sculpture, nor, for that
matter, a poem or a piece of music. It doesn’t belong to any of the
arts. It is either art at large or nothing’ (, -). The same goes
for any readymade, which is ‘not painting, not sculpture and not
something interspecific straddling both’ (, ). It is generic
art, made by a generic artist, who is an ‘artist at large’ and not ‘a
painter, or a sculptor, or a composer, or a writer, or an
architect’ (, ).
Notice that these writers seek to represent what is puzzling
about certain works not by characterizing them as hard cases that
test buck stopping theories of art but rather as free agents that
test the reduction of art to the arts.
A free agent is a work of art that does not belong to an art. If
Kosuth, Binkley, and de Duve are correct, then artists have made
works that are hard cases by making works that are free agents.
No wonder the hard cases happen to be coextensive with the free
agents. However, the free agents do not figure as free agents in the
twins arguments, which never mention media or art forms. Nor do
theories of art contend with the hard cases as free agents: no
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traditional theory insists that works of art have media and belong
to art forms and only Binkley defends a genetic theory by arguing
that having a medium and being in an art form is inessential to
art. In sum, works like Brillo Boxes and ’” throw a gauntlet
down at philosophy’s feet that is not met by drawing pistols over
buck stopping theories of art. The buck passing theory of art does
not let the gauntlet lie, for it implies that there can be no free
agents. It represents the free agents as a theoretical challenge. The
theory is informative if it sheds new light on the alleged free
agents.
Viability: The Methodology
Since free agents are works of art that seem to belong to no art
kind, they are potential counterexamples to the buck passing
theory of art. The theory is not viable if we sometimes cannot pass
the buck because there is nowhere for it to go. Worse, if the
objection succeeds, then it shows the need for a buck stopping
theory of art. The answer to this objection very much turns on a
methodological stance that has come into view at several points so
far and that will return us in the next section to the history
surveyed in the previous section.
Given Brillo Boxes, there are four options (see Chapter ). The
item is not a work of art, or it is a work of art and it belongs to a
familiar and traditionally enfranchised art form, or it is a work of
art that pioneers a new art form, or it is a work of art, pure and
simple – a free agent. While the buck passing theory of art might
seem at first glance to be trivial, it does in fact undertake the
following commitment. It rules out the fourth option – it implies
that there are no free agents – and thereby undertakes the
responsibility of showing which one of the other options is
appropriate for Brillo Boxes and its kin. Indeed, the first option is
also ruled out, not as a matter of logic but as a matter of
advantage. The point of the buck passing theory of art is to
sidestep the impasse over buck stopping theories of art and we do
not make much progress if the buck passing theory reroutes us
back into the impasse. That leaves the middle two options – to
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assign any alleged free agent either to a traditional or an emerging
art.
The viability of the buck passing theory of art requires
considerable resilience from both of the middle options. Some
reasons to regard an art work as a free rider are in fact reasons to
find it a home in an enfranchised art kind. The enfranchised art
kinds are what they are, but we may understand them
imperfectly, with the result that we fail to recognize some of their
members. Brillo Boxes may question the art of painting from the
inside, so that it succeeds in its own terms only if it is a painting,
even as it fails to fit our concept of painting. Its failing to fit our
concept of painting, when it is a painting, brings us round to a
concept of painting that better represents the possibilities of the
art form. Likewise, some reasons to regard an art work as a free
agent are reasons to credit it with expanding the modern system
of the arts. Photography, film, video, computer art, and street art
have solid credentials as recent additions to the arts, and the
number of new arts continues to grow. The hypothesis that an
alleged free rider pioneers an art form might also allow us to to
understand it in its own terms, as a work of art that pushes the
boundaries of the arts beyond Batteux’s legacy.
Neither move requires a solution to the problem that vexed
Batteux and the early modern art theorists. That problem was to
come up with a theory of the arts, which states what makes any
kind an art kind. Technically, the middle options require that the
free agents meet two conditions. First, each free agent belongs to a
kind. Second, that kind numbers among the arts. Since the
prospects of a theory of the arts are not good, not much weight
should be put on what makes that kind an art kind. Someone
might well grant that a work belongs to a kind and yet insist that
it is a free agent because that kind is not an art. Good luck to
them! If that is the objection to the buck passing theory of art, it is
not decisive. (See Chapter  for a full defence of this position.)
The bar that an item must clear in order to count as a genuine
free agent must be set neither too high nor too low. It would
certainly set the bar far too high to insist that a free agent belong
to no kind except art. Fountain is, after all, a urinal; a Brillo Box is
a box; and ’” is an event. That much has to be common ground
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and it would be too much to ask anyone to deny it who wishes to
make the case against the viability of the buck passing theory of
art. Here is where the framework sketched in Chapters  to 
comes in handy. While the buck passing theory of art does not
entail that framework, that framework does provide a neutral
benchmark for free agency. The framework is,
x is a work of K, where K is an art = x is a work in medium
profile M, where M is an appreciative kind, and x is a product
of an M-centred appreciative practice.
Assume, then, that a work is a free agent only if there is no such K
to which it belongs. Of course, one might propose a different
framework, so long as it does not set the bar for free agency too
low. Anyone who alleges that a work is a free agent because it
fails a more restrictive framework must provide a good argument
for the proposed framework that is independent of their advocacy
of free agency. Otherwise the reply on behalf of the buck passing
theory will be that the proposed framework begs the question.
We must guard against works that seem to be free agents only
given overly restrictive frameworks. To take one example,
Rosalind Krauss observes that ‘the very idea of the artist's
invention of a medium… will undoubtedly make us nervous. A
medium is… a shared language developed over centuries of
practice so that no individual initiative, we would think, can
either organize new sources of its meaning or change established
ones’ (, ). Krauss is quiet right to reject this conception of
an art kind as having a long history. There are new arts and they
are sometimes invented by individuals or small groups of
individuals.
Taking the framework as read, in the absence of an alternative
to it, an item is a genuine free agent only if it is not the product of
an M-centred practice.
The presumption is that case for free agency is to be securely
anchored in empirical studies of the arts. This is not to say that
empirical research directly confirms or disconfirms the existence
of free agents, in the way that experimental physicists run
experiments to look for the Higgs boson posited by theoretical
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physics. As already noted, it is not existence but classification or
correct description that is tricky: the problem is not whether Inert
Gas Series exists but whether it belongs to an art, if it is a work of
art. Historians and other empirical art scholars seem to speak of
works as free agents, but the question is how to interpret their
claims from a theoretical perspective. The avowals of critics are
theory-driven and sometimes the wrong theory is at the helm.
That is where philosophy has a contribution to make.
That is, the presumption is that philosophy’s contribution
consists in providing a framework of theories that are logically
interconnected so as to display, in an illuminating manner, the
conceptual resources that are implicit in the best empirical
hypotheses and explanations. Putting it colloquially, philosophers
must articulate what is doing the work in empirical research.
Theories of art and the individual arts model technical concepts
that are implicit in empirical research about art works and their
appreciation.
To be blunt about what this means, theorists should not
privilege intuitions purporting to reveal the application
conditions of folk concepts of art or the individual arts. For one
thing, folk intuitions about free agents are not pre-theoretical;
they are shaped by background theories of art, and the evidence
is that folk concepts of art are feral descendants of a technical
concept of art (see Chapter ). To consult folk intuitions under
these circumstances is to get at technical matters indirectly, over a
notoriously unreliable channel.
In addition, intuitions are uninformative unless tested in very
thickly described scenarios. One might ruminate, from the
armchair, whether there could there be a work of art not
belonging to any art. Who knows what any answer to that
question means? An answer becomes meaningful only when there
is enough detail about what an art is and about the case in
question to see whether the latter falls under the former. The
situation is hardly improved by asking ‘could there be a work of
art that is not the product of a medium-centred practice, where a
medium is an appreciative kind?’ Try that in a survey at the mall
– or in the seminar room – and the answers will tell you nothing.
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The safe bet is that once a scenario is so thickly described that it is
probative, we are doing serious empirical research.
Let there be no misunderstanding. Philosophers are not well
equipped to undertake empirical art studies. These pages do not
attempt to amass empirical evidence in defence of the buck
stopping theory of art. They sketch a theoretical framework that
is in some ways implicit in and in other ways helpfully
revisionary of the best empirical understanding of the alleged free
agents.
What is an art work? The buck passing theory of art answers
that it is a member of an art kind. That is an invitation to further
research framed by the proposal that an art kind is an appreciative
kind that figures in a medium-centred practice. The objection is
that some works are better understood as free agents. The reply is
that understanding these works as members of art kinds better
brings out what is radically revolutionary about them and also
what it is in them that is connected to tradition and the rest of art.
The Post Material Condition
The buck passing theory of art refers us to theories of the
individual arts on the expectation that what appear to be free
agents actually belong to established or pioneering art kinds.
Given the framework for developing theories of the arts, one way
to stand up for genuine free agents is to argue that they are not
products of M-centred practices because they have no media. As
the slogan has it, they inhabit a ‘post-medium condition’ (Krauss
). The problem is that this case for free agency implies an
unacceptable conception of art media.
The fundamental questions concern what media are and how
they figure in making each art what it is, and some features of
contemporary art only impugn obviously untenable answers to
these questions. For example, Binkley describes some twentieth
century art woks as a toppling tradition either because they are
‘multi-media’ or because they ‘cannot be placed within a medium
at all’ (, ). More recently, Krauss stresses the significance
of art which ‘jettisoned the use of a specific medium in order to
juxtapose image and written text within the same work. The now-
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fashionable possibility of installation art followed in the wake of
this dispatch of the medium’ (, xiii). However, multimedia is
not new – witness opera and manuscript illumination – and so it is
better to understand each art not as having a single, unique
medium but rather as having a ‘medium profile’, often combining
several media (see Chapter ). Chapter  also proposed an account
of media as ‘technical resources’, resources that are accessed
through sets of techniques.
If every work of art is an artefact, then every art work results
from applying some technique or other to some or other resource.
Cage did not do nothing with nothing in making ’” and, as de
Duve describes them, Duchamp’s machinations in the making of
Fountain were supremely effortful, elaborate, and sophisticated.
Yet this is not enough to conclude the defence of the buck passing
theory of art against free agency. One might accept that all works
of art are made from something by some means and nevertheless
deny that every art work has an art medium. The American
Heritage Dictionary, a drop of whiskey (for mental lubrication),
and a Visconti pen might be used to find, assemble, and record
words in the making of a poem, but they are not part of the
medium profile of poetry. Not all means are art media. The fact
that Cage and Duchamp went busy about making ’” and
Fountain is not yet proof that these works have media. What is
needed is the claim that Cage and Duchamp were working in
practices that are medium-centred in the sense that they cannot be
fully characterized except with reference to media. To say that not
all media are art media is to say that not all media centre art
practices. Works like ’” and Fountain are free agents because
they are not made using media that centre art practices.
The objection from free agency to the buck passing theory of
art is now hull’s up. The reply begins with the thought that to see
whether an apparent free agent has a medium, it is crucial to
examine the practice of which it is a product and hence also its
historical context and problematic. A look at empirical studies of
works like Fountain, ’”, Inert Gas Series, and Transparent Film
# may suggest why they pioneer new arts.
Historians have a named art movement that seems to subsume
works of the kind that are candidates for free agency. That
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category is conceptual art, and it is sufficiently well established as
a category of art that its critical writings have been gathered
together in a canon (Alberro and Stimson ), it has been
introduced to a wider public under the name of ‘conceptual
art’ (Godfrey , Wood ), and it has even been studied as a
distinctive phenomenon by philosophers (Goldie and Schellekens
). For now, it should be left open whether every alleged free
agent is a work of conceptual art – to assume otherwise may beg
the question against free agency. No matter, for conceptual art
developed around an aspiration to free agency, and so it makes for
a useful case study that may generalize. That is, a look at the
medium profile of conceptual art, which is alleged not to have any
medium at all, may indicate how to think about the medium of
other kinds of alleged free agent.
According to standard taxonomy, typical or classical
conceptual art comprises readymades, performances,
documentation, and word-based art made during the late s
and early s (e.g. Godfrey , ). It is to be distinguished
from other avant-garde movements, such as arte povera and
Fluxus, which sought not to dispense with media altogether but
rather to hybridize them and bring them down to earth. Even so,
according to standard art history, these movements share a
common origin as repudiations of mid-century modernist art
theory as represented by the writings of Greenberg (, 
and also Fried ). As we saw in Chapter , Greenberg (was
thought to have) held that each art is specified by a unique
medium and works in that art are properly appreciated only for
their medium-specific features. ‘The arts,’ he wrote, ‘are to
achieve concreteness, “purity”, by acting solely in terms of their
separate and irreducible selves’ (, ). Hybridization and the
adoption of non-traditional media is one response to these
doctrines; another is to attempt to do entirely without media.
Now consider how this attempt is described by conceptual
artists at the time. Kosuth has already been quoted: ‘art’s viability
is not connected to the presentation of visual (or other) kinds of
experience’, though, he added, ‘this may have been one of art’s
extraneous functions in the preceding centuries’ ([]: ).
Sol LeWitt offered that ‘when words such as painting and
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sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a
consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations
on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond
the limitations’ ([]: ). About the same time, Ian Burn
wrote that ‘for painting to be ‘‘real’’, its problems must be
problems of art. But neither painting nor sculpture is synonymous
with art, though they may be used as art’ (Burn []: ).
The first issue of Art – Language proclaimed the movement’s target
to be the idea that ‘the making of a traditional art object (i.e. one
judged within the visual evaluative framework) is a necessary
condition for the making of art’ (Art–Language []: ).
‘Art’ in these passages can only shorten ‘visual art’ (or the art
form that has traditionally gone by that name). It is patently
untrue to say that anyone ever thought that art in the generic
sense, which includes all of the arts, is essentially visual; the
propositions that art need not be visual and that it exceeds the
bounds of painting and sculpture are completely obvious and
uninformative as long as music and literature count as arts. What
is happening is that early conceptual artists are engaged in a
practice which they see as standing up to a Greenbergian
conception of visual art as specified by and to be evaluated only in
terms of visual effects. Therefore, let is grant that some works of
conceptual art have no visual features whatsoever and most make
use of visual media that do not centre the relevant practice (see
Currie , Hopkins ).
Works of art that do not belong to a practice that is centred on
a visual medium may yet belong to some other medium-centred
practice (indeed, a work that has a lot of features in common with
paintings and sculptures may yet be a work in some other art
form). It is a platitude that in conceptual art ‘the idea is paramount
and the material form is secondary, lightweight, cheap,
unpretentious and/or “dematerialized”’ (Lippard , vii). And it
is a short step from this platitude to the claim that the core
medium of conceptual art is something like language or a set of
ideas, especially ideas about art. There may be more to its medium
profile, but this is its core. Binkley wrote that some artists ‘might
opt for articulation of a semantic space… so that artistic meaning
200
is not embodied in a physical object or event according to the
convention of a medium’ (, ).
The step is short but not immediate, for language and ideas
might be used in making art without centring the practice of
conceptual art. They centre the practice if it cannot be fully
characterized without reference to them. More particularly, they
centre the practice if that practice includes at least one of two
general norms, as well as some number of specific norms on how
language and ideas are to be used in the practice (see Chapter ,
pp. –). One general norm would be that we are not to
appreciate an item as a work of conceptual art unless it does use
language and ideas. Another general norm would be that we are
not to appreciate an item as a work of conceptual art if that
appreciation counterfactually depends on beliefs that are
inconsistent with the truth about what it is for a work to use
language and ideas as a medium.
It is, of course, an empirical – that is, socio-historical – question
whether either or both of these norms governs practices of
conceptual art appreciation. So is it a mistake to appreciate ‘Salt
Peanuts’ as performed in  by Dizzy Gillespie and His All-Stars
as a work of conceptual art that is up to the same tricks as Barry’s
Inert Gas Series? Would such an appreciation licence quizzical
looks and perhaps even correction? Or is it a mistake to appreciate
Barry’s Inert Gas Series as a failed piece of conceptual art because
one supposes that the ideas it manipulates must be inscriptions, as
in Baldessari’s Everything Is Purged from This Painting but Art?
Would it be in order to correct someone who so appreciates the
Baldessari, explaining to them that linguistic inscription is one
among many resources for the kind of work Baldessari is doing.
Insisting that these works are genuine free agents comes with a
cost: we must give up on conceptual art involving a use of certain
materials that we must get right in successful appreciation.
One reason to distance conceptual art from any thought of its
being centred on a medium is that media were traditionally taken
as foci of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic appreciation was
traditionally taken to be perceptually mediated. The anti-aesthetic
character of conceptual art is an attempt to shield it from being
understood through aesthetic experience, and the attempt may
201
succeed so long as appreciation is identified with aesthetic
appreciation and aesthetic appreciation is taken to be a mode of
perception. However, one might think that appreciation attributes
many varieties of goodness to works of art and aesthetic
appreciation is not essentially perceptual and applies to literature
and theories as much as to paintings (see Chapters  and ). A
broad theory of appreciation provides tools to get a grip on the
core media of conceptual art as implicated in norm-governed
appreciations.
Granted, the proposition that the core medium that centres the
practice of conceptual art is ‘something like language and ideas’ is
vague. However, further precision is not to be obtained a priori,
but rather by engaging in empirical research. For example, there
is evidence, already mentioned, that the ideas that are materials
for conceptual art characteristically explore the nature of art.
Perhaps the medium profile of conceptual art incorporates
thematic resources – doctrines of the modern system of the arts,
midcentury modernism, and indeed the philosophy of art since
Weitz. That hypothesis would, at any rate, appear to explain
many features of conceptual art production, not least what is said
by practitioners and historians (and also some philosophers). This
is, to repeat, an empirical hypothesis and not a conceptual truth.
No further precision is required to make that case that we
cannot recruit free agents from the corpus of conceptual art. Here
is the argument. Conceptual art can supply free agents only if it is
not a medium-centred practice. It has no medium that centres a
practice if media are material stuffs and events. However, media
may include conceptual and symbolic resources and techniques.
Many features of conceptual art are explained on the hypothesis
that it is centred on language and ideas as its medium. That is,
many features of the alleged free agents are explained on this
hypothesis.
This argument to show that we cannot recruit free agents from
the corpus of conceptual art is important because conceptual art
works seem to aspire to free agency. The present task has been to
look closely at conceptual art to learn how to discern a mediumcentred practice where none appears to be. However, this does
not complete the defence of the buck passing theory of art against
202
the viability objection. One might still wonder whether a case
study of conceptual art generalizes to every alleged free agent.
Art-As-Art As a Kind of Art
Many alleged free agents can be identified as works of conceptual
art, but the reasoning of the previous section may suggest what to
look for in locating free agents roaming beyond the domain of
conceptual art. These works would be products of a practice that
embodies the two norms, but where these norms are generic
norms governing every kind of art. Works of this kind are free
agents because they are purely generic works of art belonging to
no specific kind of art.
Duchamp’s Fountain is arguably such a case. The reason is not
that it antedates conceptual art proper by several decades. It is
sometime necessary and generally legitimate to appreciate
precursors of a kind as works of the kind, and Fountain is either
conceptual art or a precursor of it. Rather, the argument would be
that conceptual art evolved as a specific art kind out of purely
generic art works. There is a strand in de Duve’s authoritative
commentary on Fountain that takes literally the assertion that the
work is ‘neither a painting nor a sculpture, nor, for that matter, a
poem or a piece of music. It doesn’t belong to any of the arts. It is
either art at large or nothing’ (, -). The literal reading adds
that it is not conceptual art either.
As an aside, it is interesting to note that critics who take this
line about Fountain tend to waver, even in the space of a couple of
sentences. For all his rigour, de Duve writes that ‘readymades…
are “art” and nothing but “art”. Whereas an abstract painting
reduced to a black square on a white background is art only when
you accept seeing it as a painting, a urinal is a sculpture only when
you accept seeing it as art. Otherwise it simply remains a
urinal’ (, , emphasis added). Or again, he write that ‘a new
“species” of art is born, for which the risk of confusion with nonart is greater than ever before’ (, ). Part of a full
understanding of Fountain should explain this wavering in
thinking about it.
203
Returning to the literal reading, the claim would be that
Fountain does not even have language and ideas – even ideas
about art – as its medium. Of course, it is made using ideas, just as
it is made of porcelain slip, but these are no more its medium than
is the porcelain. It is a product of a practice not centred on any
medium profile. As de Duve puts it, the practice is governed by
the following norm: ‘do whatever so that it be called art. But make
it such that, through what you will have made… you make it felt
that this something was imposed on you by an idea of the
anything whatever that is its rule’ (, ). That is, after
Duchamp, anything can be used to make an item a work of art,
where what is used to make a work of art is not what makes the
item a work of art. de Duve proposes that what makes the item a
work of art is something like a baptism in which is it named
‘art’ (, ff).
Simply asserting that Fountain is pure generic art will not
suffice to establish the reality of free agency, but the idea of
purely generic art does seem to be implicit in a widely accepted
approach to the work by de Duve, and many others. Here is a
small taste. A remarkable feature of pure generic art is that it has
arisen only out of the visual arts and nowhere else. ‘No musician’,
according to de Duve, ‘would claim that what he or she is doing is
“art” and nothing but “art”’ (, ; see also ). The
explanation of this fact is that the doctrines of modernism pulled
far more strongly upon visual art than any of the other arts, so
that ‘painting gradually became more and more regulated by the
idea of its own specificity, or purity, or autonomy’ (de Duve ,
). Having already stripped away figurative depiction, any hint
of representation, and the even figure–ground relation, the logical
next step was to excise media entirely (see de Duve , ).
The result is, apparently, the making of works that are not specific
to any art form because what makes them art is what makes
anything art. It is this history of Fountain that plausibly implicates
a concept of pure generic art populated by free agents.
The viability of the buck passing theory of art is saved if this
history may be interpreted without appeal to a concept of pure
generic art that is no specific kind of art. One alternative
interpretation is as follows. Fountain is part of the modernist
204
project of reducing art to minimal constitutive elements – to the
basics, as it were. Perhaps, indeed, what make Fountain art is its
being art without a medium. However, the result is a work that
belongs to a specific art form – call it ‘art-as-art’ (after Reinhardt
[], ). Fountain and other works of art-as-art are aptly
described as ‘generic’ in the sense that what makes an item a work
of art-as-art is not a specific set of resources and techniques.
However, they are unlike any dances, songs, paintings,
conceptual art works, poems, and buildings in an important
respect: what makes an item a work of art-as-art is not a specific
set of resources and techniques. This fact individuates art-as-art as
a specific art form. Putting the proposal in terms of the framework
for theories of the arts, art-as-art is centred on a medium profile
that is empty.
Two interpretations of the history are now on the table. A
troublesome interpretation puts the buck passing theory of art in
jeopardy by opening the door to free agents. The alternative saves
the theory by point to the flexibility of the framework for theories
of the arts. Is there any reason to favour the latter over the
former? There are several.
To begin with, the troublesome interpretation is not
mandatory. One might reasoning that it is: what makes Fountain a
work of art is nothing more than what makes any given item a
work of art; and if what makes Fountain a work of art is part of
what makes every item a work of art, then it is generic art and not
a specific kind of art; so Fountain is pure generic art, not a specific
kind of art. The first premise of this argument is tendentious,
projecting what is true of Fountain onto art works that were
probably not made as art – Beowulf, for example, or a mask by
Kwakwaka’wakw carver Jim Howard in the nineteenth century
(see Chapter ). Setting aside this objection to the opening premise
of the argument, let us grant it along with the second premise,
which captures what the history suggests. The question is
whether the second premise can be unhooked from the conclusion
by denying the third premise, namely that if what makes Fountain
a work of art is part of what makes every item a work of art, then
it is generic art and not a specific kind of art. Why should that be
true? It does not in general follow from the fact that an item only
205
has features that are common to all species of a genus that it
belongs to no species of the genus. It might be explanatory to
distinguish the simple F things from the F-and-G things and the Fand-H things.
It is useful in several ways to interpret Fountain as art-as-art. It
should be expected that an art practice would emerge, given
suitable conditions, with a null medium. That is the limiting
condition of the framework for theories of art, and art explores to
its limits. If Fountain is not art-as-art, something is, or very
probably will be. Moreover, we should predict that there would
be some confusion – or a deliberate playfulness – over the
distinction between being generic and not specific, on one hand,
and being specific in a non-specific way, on the other.
Finally, the proposal that Fountain is art-as-art locates it within
a practice governed by the appreciative norms centred on an
empty medium profile. Is it a mistake to appreciate a Brancusi Bird
as having no medium in the way that Fountain has no medium? Is
it a mistake to appreciate Fountain in the belief that what makes
something art-as-art is its pokes fun at abstract sculpture?
Affirmative answers to these questions indicate that art-as-art fits
the framework for theories of the arts and thereby makes explicit
the norms that govern our appreciation of Duchamp’s readymade.
The hypothesis that, if it has no medium, Fountain is a work of
art-as-art is a reasonable one. It serves the standard history at least
as well as the hypothesis that it is a free agent.
The claim that there are genuine free agents is not incoherent and
the counterclaim that apparent free agents are either works of
conceptual art or art-as-art is also coherent. Both claims do justice
to the historical facts. Since we are at a wash, some metatheoretical
advantages of the latter become relevant. If there are free agents,
then we need buck stopping theories of art, and they stand at an
impasse. As a result, pursuing buck stopping theories of art is not
likely to shed light on the free agents – traditionalists will hotly
dispute de Duve’s account of Fountain, thus denying Fountain is
art, and geneticists will reply that Fountain is art so a genetic
theory of art is needed. Meanwhile, if Fountain is art-as-art and
genetic factors make it so, it does not follow that we are committed
206
to a genetic theory of music or dance. Is that sufficient reason to
heave to and impress Fountain as art-as-art? All else being equal,
the theories to choose are the most explanatory ones. We should
not allow free agency to tie our hands in understanding the
stunning variety of practices that are the arts.
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