This module concerns the definition of art: what does a thing have to be (like) in order to count
as a work of art? How are art works distinguished from other things people make and do?
FYI, there’s a general term for things that are made by people: artifacts. One of the few points
that most philosophers of art agree on—not all, but most—is that artworks are artifacts; they
are things that people have produced, and so don’t include naturally occurring objects. We
might admire a sunset, or the remarkable order and symmetry of a nautilus shell, in a way that
can be quite similar to the way in which we might appreciate a work of art. But the sunset and
nautilus shell are nevertheless not works of art. At any rate, most philosophers of art don’t think
so. (Are they right?)
It's important to distinguish the question “what makes something a work of art?” from the
question “what makes something a good work of art?”. The first question is more fundamental;
we can’t evaluate a work as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, profound or trite, and so on, unless
we already know that we are dealing with a work of art. There is, after all, such a thing as bad
art; no matter how bad it is, however, it’s still art. It may well be that the right characterization
of art will also help us distinguish good art from bad. But they’re not the same question. (FYI,
chapter 3 of the text concerns the evaluation issue.)
On the top of page 20, the text’s author suggests that the typical goal is a “real definition”. A
real definition of something, X, is a definition that identifies the essence of X. Philosophers have
traditionally tried to identify such definitions for a number of concepts: justice, knowledge,
ethical rightness, truth, existence, and, of course, art. The goal is typically a set of necessary and
sufficient conditions. N is a necessary condition for something’s being P when being P requires
having N; if something isn’t N, it isn’t P. S is a sufficient condition for P when something’s having
S ensures that it is P. These aren’t the same. Getting a final grade of A in this class is sufficient for
passing the class; but it’s not necessary since, for example, getting a B is also sufficient for
passing. Visiting this course’s elearning site during the term is necessary for passing the course,
since if you don’t at least look at it you’re not going to pass; but it’s not sufficient, since you
have to actually do the work as well.
So, the goal would be to identify a characteristic (or a number of characteristics) of artworks
that is such that having it is required for something to count as a work of art, and that is such
that having that characteristic is enough to so count. As per above, being an artifact is very
typically thought to be a necessary condition. But it’s not sufficient, since there are lots of
artifacts—things people have made—that are not artworks (your kitchen sink, for example).
How, then, do we evaluate a proposed definition of art? There are two general considerations.
First, there are always standard, widely-agreed-upon, paradigmatic examples that clearly count
as art, and ones that clearly don’t. The Mona Lisa is an example of the first; your car’s
carburetor as it now sits in your car (and so hasn’t been put on display in an art gallery, for
whatever reason), is an example of the second. And then there are “borderline” cases, ones
where it’s not clear whether it is or isn’t art. (The typewriter on p. 32 of the text might be an
example.) A good definition will accord with these examples. A definition of art according to
which the Mona Lisa isn’t an artwork is no good, and neither is a definition according to which
your car’s carburetor is an artwork.
You might think that a good definition will also allow us to decide whether the borderline cases
count as artworks. But not necessarily. “Art” is a concept in ordinary language, not a specialized,
technical term in philosophy. And ordinary concepts are very typically vague: they have
borderline cases. And there’s nothing wrong with vague concepts! Being vague doesn’t mean
that a concept is meaningless. Take, for example, the concept “blue”. That’s a perfectly
respectable concept, applying to blueberries, bluebirds, and so on. But it’s also vague. If you
slowly add yellow pigment to some blue paint, eventually it will be green instead of blue. But
there is no specific point at which it stops being blue and starts being green; there’s a range of
borderline cases that aren’t clearly blue and aren’t clearly green. (In fact, the points at which
the borderline cases start and end are also vague.) Nevertheless, “blue” is a perfectly
meaningful concept. So, if we’re trying to define the ordinary-language concept “art”, then we
would expect there to be borderline/unclear cases, and the definition should explain why the
borderline cases are borderline cases, rather than forcing a decision about whether those cases
count as artworks.
Sometimes, however, we do want a definition to resolve such borderline cases. For example, the
concept “vehicle” is vague. A Ford Explorer clearly counts, and a chicken clearly doesn’t. But
what about a moped? Or a bicycle? Or a skateboard? The ordinary-language concept “vehicle”
may not answer such questions. But if we’re part of a city government formulating a legal traffic
code, we can’t leave it there; we need to make the definition of “vehicle” precise enough so
that it decides these kinds of cases, so that riders on bicycles can know what laws apply to
them. Such definitions--ones that are more precise than the original ordinary-language
definitions--are sometimes called “precising” definitions.
This leads to our second consideration in evaluating a proposed definition of art, namely, what
the definition is for, what our purpose is in defining it. One might only want to capture the
ordinary language definition of art, perhaps just out of intellectual curiosity. But sometimes
there are more significant purposes. For example, there are any number of funding agencies,
private collectors, etc. that provide support for artists and their production of artworks. They
presumably need some idea of what constitutes an artwork and what doesn’t, in order to know
what is a candidate for such funding. Similarly, art museums presumably need some basis for
judging whether something counts as an artwork and so is a candidate for inclusion in their
collection. (Question: do these sorts of purposes mean that we need a precising definition
rather than an ordinary-language definition, or will an ordinary-language definition do?)
The text discusses a number of different approaches to the project of defining art. They fall into
roughly three categories. The first might be called “intrinsic” definitions. These are definitions
according to which what makes something a work of art has to do with the features that it has
on its own (and, so, independently of its institutional, social, or historical context). The basic
idea is that you can tell that something is a work of art by examining and interacting with the
work itself. Representationalism, formalism, expressivism, and functionalism are examples.
According to representationalism, a work of art is fundamentally a representation of something:
a natural scene, a subject’s face and shoulders, and so on. Clearly, though, not all
representations are artworks; “Western Michigan University” is a phrase that represents
Western Michigan University. But that phrase isn’t an artwork. In addition to representing,
artworks also evoke an aesthetic response. (More on that below.) Formalism rejects the idea
that art is inherently representational; one looks at the painting, not through it to something
else. The formalist claims that an artwork consists of an arrangement of forms—colors, shapes,
lines, etc. in the case of paintings, notes, chords, rhythms, etc. in the case of music, and so on—
that bring about an aesthetic response or aesthetic “emotion”. Expressivism emphasizes the
role that a work plays in expressing an emotional/psychological state of the artist, and the
artwork’s role in communicating that state to the viewer, perhaps with the effect of reproducing
that state in the viewer themselves. The functionalist understands an artwork as an artifact that
has the function of generating an aesthetic response in the viewer. (This begs the question:
what is it for an object O to have a function F? What, for example, makes it the case that a
hammer has the function of pounding nails into wood, rather than holding down paper on my
desk?)
You might note that each of these references an aesthetic emotion, or experience, or response,
or expression. A difficult question is what it is for an appreciation of a work of art to be an
aesthetic one. Aesthetics is sometimes represented as the study of beauty; if that’s right, then
aesthetic appreciation is an appreciation of beauty. But, one might argue, some works of art
aren’t beautiful, but still call for aesthetic appreciation; Duchamp’s Fountain (see the beginning
of chapter 1 of the text) is a plausible example. The basic idea is that aesthetic appreciation is an
appreciation of the qualities and characteristics of the object themselves; it’s the experience it
provokes when contemplating it that is important, not something else that the object is for.
Compare: your interest in your car’s carburetor has nothing to do with the sensory experience
you have when contemplating it, but only whether it mixes air and gas in the right way to run
the engine of your car. (A question: is aesthetic appreciation always purely sensory/perceptual?
Does aesthetic appreciation of a painting always and only involve our visual experience of it, for
example? This might be difficult to reconcile with some abstract or conceptual art for which,
arguably, it’s not so much the sensory experience that matters but rather the
intellectual/conceptual reaction it provokes that matters. Do such reactions count as aesthetic
appreciation? Or is aesthetic appreciation only a sensory matter, but art doesn’t require such an
appreciation, so the relevant abstract/conceptual art still counts as art? Or is the relevant
abstract/conceptual art not really art at all, precisely because it doesn’t generate any aesthetic
appreciation?)
Other definitions are “relational” definitions: it’s not the characteristics of the work itself that
determines whether it’s an artwork, but the work’s relationship with (parts of) the world
around it. So just looking at it isn’t enough; the work has to stand in some sort of relationship
with certain social/institutional/historical circumstances. Institutionalism and historicism are
examples. According to the former, something’s being a work of art requires that it is treated as
such by the current artistic, social, and/or cultural institution: other artists, museums, critics,
curators, art media, and so on (or, it is intended to be treated that way; there are variations on
the theme). According to the latter, it is the work’s relationship to previous artworks, its
similarity to them or its intended departure from them in certain respects, that makes
something an artwork.
Third, there are views that are skeptical of the very project of trying to define art, at least of the
understanding of that project as attempting to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for
something’s counting as art. Despite their skepticism, some suggest that there’s still work that
can be done in way of characterizing art. Morris Weitz, for example (discussed on pp. 35-36 of
the text) suggests that “art” is a “family resemblance” concept, an idea inherited from the
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The idea is that, although there isn’t a set of necessary and
sufficient conditions for something’s counting as art, there are a set of characteristics such that
having more of them makes a work count more as an artwork. Like members of a family, for
whom there’s no one specific characteristic that they all share (a Romanesque nose, for
example), but where each shares enough characteristics with some other members as to count
as having a similar appearance, counting as a work of art requires sharing enough characteristics
with examples (or “exemplars”) which clearly count as works of art.
Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages, discussed in the text. I’ll let you
think about which—if any—provides the best definition of art!