Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)
[SK's comments]
[this post picks up where this one left off]
[226]
...
Neo-Wittgensteinianism has an obvious problem dealing with readymades and found objects. If In Advance of a Broken Arm is an artwork, then any snow shovel that is indiscernible from it, including yours and mine, should be an artwork as well. If we simply attend to the
[227]
perceptible features of the shovels in question, they should all count as artworks, since they are perceptually indiscernible. ... But this result is wrongheaded. ... The Institutional Theorist appeals to certain nonmanifest, relational properties that In Advance of a Broken Arm possesses and that my snow shovel does not, ...
The Institutional Theorist calls the relevant social practice "the artworld." The artworld, he claims, is
a social institution, like religion,
insofar as it is
underwritten by rules and procedures.
Candidates are artworks because they abide by the pertinent artworld rules and procedures. In other words, an artwork is
generated by
playing by
the required rules and procedures. These social rules are the underlying factors that
make artworks possible
(they are
analogous to the genetic mechanisms
that account for family resemblances).
The relation of the artwork
to the rules
is
not a manifest property
of the artwork—you cannot eyeball it ... ; it is
a function of
the social context
into which the artwork is inserted.
This seems not quite
genetic
so long as it is
not quite a
mechanism.
.
It approaches a "mechanistic" tractability only as scale and sample approach infinity.
i.e. It is tractable in this way only where it can be formulated as a problem of disorganized complexity and its surface thereby observed.
But
to land on these emergent
rules
you have to ignore all of the "rules"
which prevail at the
organized
level,
i.e.,
in this case,
at the so-called
individual
level.
If the discovery that humanity is a culture-bound superorganism merely becomes the latest rationalization for subjugating 'individuals' to 'the system', then it would be better to put this discovery on a rocket and shoot it to the moon.
What are these rules and procedures? According to the Institutional Theory of Art:
x is an artwork in the classificatory sense if and only if (1) x is an artifact (2) upon which someone acting on behalf of a certain institution (the artworld) confers the status of being a candidate for appreciation.
This theory comprises two necessary conditions that are conjointly sufficient. The Institutional Theory ... [as] indicated in the last section ... has been designed in such a way that it allows that any kind of object can be an artwork, so long as [that object] is put forth in accordance with the right procedure. ... therefore, it is a counterexample to the central contention of the open concept argument (that an essential definition is incompatible with artistic innovation). ...
According to the Institutional Theory, a work of art must be an artifact. ... the candidate must somehow be
a product of human labor,
although the extent of the labor
may be exceedingly minimal.
Something
[228]
may be an artifact because a human has
worked it up
out of raw materials. But it will also be an artifact, for the Institutional Theorist, if someone has
merely framed or indexed
the object; a ready made is an artifact if someone puts it forth for exhibition purposes, or even points to it and says that it is an art object ... A performance can be an artifact in this sense, ... Moreover,
the artifactuality condition
is also meant to indicate that the work in question must be
publicly accessible.
" . . . , although
if you happen not to be
present
when
someone
points to it
you could be forgiven for thinking
that
the
publicly accessible
part of a
manifest
artifact cannot be worth much at all,
so long as its very
artifactuality
can be
(and has been!)
conferred
non-
manifest
-ly
. . . "
Many theorists of art would agree that a necessary condition for art status is that the candidate be
an artifact in the broad sense.
It is the second condition of the theory that is most distinctive. ... The conferral of status here is
a procedure.
That is why Institutional Theories of art are called
procedural theories.
Procedural theories of art contrast with
functional theories,
... , because procedural theories adjudge a candidate to be art in virtue of
its conformity with certain rules,
and not in terms of
its results or functions
...
Treacherous semantic territory here.
The epithet
Formalism
denotes strict adherence to
procedure
in most other contexts.
In a more perfect terminological world, perhaps the Bell-Fry theory would be called Formism. It centers on the 'form' of artworks. (Whatever that is!) This is no matter of 'formal'-ity; rather of 'form'-edness.
But then,
for those of us more amicably disposed toward those aesthetics which have been advanced (have been able to advance
at all)
only under the rubric of Formalism,
perhaps this is ineluctibly a matter of "procedure",
along with whatever else.
Perhaps this is truly one of those overdetermined semantic collisions, yielding an uneasy-yet-revealing synthesis of impulses on the part of (some of) those who have avowed the term. This is how I think of it, anyway. I'm probably over-thinking it.
So, to be fair to any and all Proceduralists:
The notion of procedure as imposed involutarily or from above/outside is usually a strawman here.
Rather,
in the beginning
the procedure is
revealed
by the materials.
This is not saying much, but it is saying some small thing, at least:
When a procedure is revealed to you by your materials, you had better follow it!
This, so long as you have allowed the materials to reveal the procedure rather than forming (ha!) the procedure first and only later recruiting some willing materials to the cause.
This is already approaching a needed synthesis of the formish with the formal.
Moreover, it is a restoration of compliance with the way human beings experience time as proceding in one direction rather than in two (or more!) at once.
So,
conformity with certain rules
cannot be the first question we ask.
First
we need to
verify
(Eek!)
that
the rules of "procedure"
and
the rules of "conformity"
are
the same
rules.
But what is this strange-sounding procedure— ... The model ... is something like a bishop's conferring holy orders on a priest, or the queen's conferral of knighthood on some luminary, ...
Nevertheless, who are the people who confer this status on artifacts? In the great majority of cases, they are artists. They confer the status of candidate for appreciation on artifacts by
making the objects
and then
putting them out
in the world for people to attend to appreciatively—that is, artists
confer the status of candidate for appreciation
on artifacts
by creating artifacts with understanding such that audiences can
size them up and assess them with understanding.
Generally
the understanding exercised by the artist
and
that exercised by the audience
are
roughly complementary.
🥳
🥳
🥳
🤐
🤐
🤐
... on occasion, the person who confers the relevant status on the object may not be the creator of the object. [e.g.] A museum curator ... But in the general case, the conferral of status occurs when an artist makes an artwork and puts
[229]
it forward ... , or when an artist selects a found object and displays it ...
Here, it is important to note that the artist does not confer
the status of artwork
on her artifact. The status that she confers on the artifact is
candidate for appreciation.
... just as a candidate for Vice-President who has been duly nominated may lose the election, so an artifact can be nominated as a candidate for appreciation and then go unappreciated.
The basic social interaction that the Institutional Theory describes is one that is quite familiar. ... The Institutional Theorist describes this familiar interaction in unfamiliar terms— ... in order to call our attention to the way in which this ordinary transaction is
governed by social rules and roles.
Just as there is a framework— ... in place when we
buy a newspaper,
there is also a framework— ... in place that makes the
inter-related production and consumption of artworks
possible.
...
Recently, the art historian Mia Fineman has recommended the paintings of elephants for our attention.
Ambiguous sentence alert!
But this is an exceptional case. In the main it is the artist who confers status on the artifact on behalf of the artworld.
But what does it mean to confer status on behalf of the artworld? Why is it that the artist and the critic are empowered to act on behalf of the artworld, but the chimpanzee and the elephant are not?
What is the nature of their authority?
It is like the authority of a philosophy professor who, on the basis of her
knowledge of the field,
advises that a paper proposal does or does not address a philosophical problem. Similarly, a scientist in a given area judges, on the basis of her
experience in the field,
whether or not a research proposal is likely to be "in the game."
Analogously, the people who play the role of conferring status on behalf of the artworld do so in virtue of
their knowledge, understanding, and experience of the artworld.
" . . . All of us from XYSU applied but no one's
proposal
was accepted, not even Z's. D told me that most of the panel was from ABCSU and that they pretty much had 'their' people,
knowledge, understanding, and experience
from the start. . . "
Artists have the requisite background
[230]
knowledge, understanding, and experience,
acquired through study and practice,
as do critics, curators and the like. Artists create and put forward candidates for appreciation
with understanding.
...
The artist
Duchamp,
by virtue of his knowledge, understanding, and experience,
had the authority
to confer the status
🤔
🤔
🤔
🤭
🤭
🤭
😂
😂
😂
of candidate for appreciation on the urinal that he entitled Fountain. A plumber ... on the other hand, could not show up at the gallery the next day and present his own bathroom fixtures as artworks. Why not? Because he is
not empowered to act
on behalf of the artworld. Is this
sheer elitism?
No.
For the plumber
doesn't know anything about art;
he does not put forward his plumbing fixtures
on the basis of any understanding of art theory and art history,
whereas Duchamp does.
Well, among other things . . .
of the artworld
(prev. page)
has already become
of art theory and art history
(above)
. . . Small world, eh?
...
...
The Institutional Theory really claims no more than
what we all admit
about the social practice of art; that
the people with the authority
to put artifacts forward for our attention be
people who know something about what they are doing
...
We're almost through the book and I sincerely can't tell when he's steelmanning poorly vs. strawmanning well.
If a 2-year-old child ... moves the pawn ... into a position where it would hold the opponent's king in checkmate, we do not say that the child checkmated the king, not only because the child
was not a player,
but more importantly because the child
did not know what he was doing.
... Likewise, and for the same reasons, a plumber who merely imitates Duchamp without understanding does not confer status on behalf of the artworld when he unveils Fountain: The Sequel.
i.e.
Mandelbaum's Fortune Teller.
The Institutional Theory of Art is often criticized for being anti-democratic. But this is really unfair.
Democracy doesn't require that everyone be empowered to do just anything
—not just anyone can walk into a hospital and perform
brain surgery.
Similarly, not just anyone can act on behalf of the artworld. On the other hand, the artworld, according to the Institutional Theory of Art, is
an equal-opportunity employer,
since anyone, in principle, should be able
to become
an agent of the artworld by
acquiring the relevant sort of knowledge, understanding, and the right sort of experience.
[231]
... the artworld—as the Institutional Theory portrays it— ... Anyone can act on its behalf,
if
only they acquire some knowledge and understanding. This can be done
without great difficulty
in modern, literate cultures.
Daresay, it
can be done
in a completely
nonmanifest
way.
... Nor is the artworld a dictatorship, since the agents of the artworld
only nominate
candidates for appreciation— ... It remains a possibility that no one will find the candidate worthy ... Thus, the Institutional Theory of Art
allows for bad art
of fairly awful proportions.
In this, it is a
classificatory theory
of art, not a
commendatory theory.
...
... the Institutional Theory does not locate the criteria for art status in the manifest properties of the artifact. ... Since previous philosophies of art ... neglect the social genesis of artworks, this gives the Institutional Theory a wider reach than most previous approaches to identifying art.
At the same time, the Institutional Theory possesses the means to exclude candidates ... even if the person in question is properly informed—even if the relevant person is an artist—we will not count his artifacts as art, unless they are presented for the right reasons (as candidates for appreciation). ... though
generously inclusive,
the Institutional Theory of Art is not
so liberal
that it accepts everything as an artwork.
Cheap disclaimers all around.
There's plenty out there to
know
and you can learn a lot of it (in theory, most of it) without so much as sniffing Our Man's
sufficient understanding
.
The obligation to shape one's learning around the demands of the
institution
is a substantial obligation, and it becomes more substantial rather than less, as knowledge is democratized.
Such an obligation is also not quite
democratic
.
Now, is that a bad thing? Let's keep an open mind even here!
At the least, it is a thing that has to be considered.
One shortcoming, evidently, of
the child
e.g., is a lack of
knowledge of art history
.
Another is that the child's "work" has not
emerged from the social network of the artworld
.
But then, "art" and "art history" are not quite the same thing.
Moreover, a direct consequence of
knowledge and understanding
being made broadly available is (infamously!) that it is thus available to everyone outside the "network". The network itself, then, has long since shed its substantive 'educative' function by the time its apologists have thought to make the argument from non-
difficulty
and no mere expression (ha!) of altruism or inclusivity can change this once it has become a structural fact.
If "knowledge and understanding" are construed vaguely enough, then perhaps most of our supposedly naive "children" can be artists; but it's true that they still cannot be (or at least it would be highly unusual if any were) card-carrying members of the "network" or the "institution" of art. And if the point is merely to say that this is how the artworld has worked, not that it necessarily should work this way, then the gatecrasher activist has everything they need, for by that time all concerned, it seems, have, one way or another, contradicted the presumption that
it is not difficult for something to qualify as art in accordance with the Institutional Theory of Art.
At least the college admissions process is, as we say, formal. Not to say that it really is fair or rational! But those are the conceits from which the formality arises.
All merely to say: judgment proceeding from
manifest properties
may be far less inclusive in theory.
But in reality . . . ?
Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the Institutional Theory of Art is that it has
alerted philosophers
to
the importance of social context
[232]
for determining art status.
" . . . alerted them to a psychic shortcut they could take towards finally feeling as if a 'real definition' was in sight, though there are infinite possible 'real definitions' and the ability to see just one of them still entails ignorance of all the others, as always before . . . "
... preceding theories of art paid scarcely any attention to
the social dimension of art,
focussing primarily on
internal properties of the art object,
... The Institutional Theory emphasizes that there is a social practice with
rules and designated roles
underpinning
the presentation of such things and that the instantiation of these social forms and relations
in the required way
is crucial
to art status. ...
However, even if
the general social thrust
of the Institutional Theory is widely applauded,
the precise details
of the theory have been subjected to
intense scrutiny and criticism.
😱 😱 😱
It may be the case that no theory of art has garnered as much comment and inspired so much fault-finding as the early version of the Institutional Theory ...
How inconsiderate!
Were all the other philosophers
perhaps
already
quite
alert
to matters of
social context
yet also
quite
intent upon rendering them
so as to minimize
fault
?
(I am suggesting that we have
once again
met with the
argument from silence.)
The first line of criticisms pertains to the notion that art is an institution. Is the Institutional Theorist warranted in calling art a social institution, or
is his usage forced?
Takes one to know one!
...
Think about
unexceptionable cases
of institutions, ... Those institutions have
designated roles with duties, responsibilities, and powers attached to them.
The Institutional Theory claims that
art,
too,
possesses analogous roles, ... But is the role of conferrer of status anything like the roles of a bishop or a justice of the peace?
The Institutional Theorist says they are parallel, since they all
confer status
: ... But in order
to be
a bishop or a justice of the peace, one has to
meet certain specific, publicly ascertainable criteria.
...
...
But
what are the criteria
for being an artist?
Artists in modern societies
are usually self-elected;
Here is the key to a viable and coherent
moral philosophy "of art,"
a philosophy which suggests ideals of
social
and
institutional
life without kowtowing to the anomic heroism projects of permanently disaffected activists, philosophers, et al; and without mistaking this part of art for the whole.
Will the opportunity be seized upon in the remaining pages?
Rank cracked this part of the problem a century ago, when he realized that artists cannot be
self-elected
any more than a
bishop
can. He saw that really they are elected by their
societies
though that is, of course, not quite the right term.
"Institution" is also entirely the wrong term. Even the present author cannot manage to botch that part. Clearly, election-to-art and conferral-of-status are not top-down processes; they are institutions in the looser sense, but not in the more precise sense that the Institutional Theory invokes. It seems that this theory tries to thread the needle between these usages ands ends up poking itself in the eye.
The funny thing is, if we follow the Rankian analysis through to its conclusion, art becomes a zero-sum, winner-take-all proposition: it becomes both intensely democratic and intensely elitist. The people speak, they nominate only a few, and their word is final. This is where the synthesis emerges. And this is one reason, at least, why Rank ends his analysis hoping for something better.
it is not an official role, connected with
publicly agreed upon criteria.
And what about the cases where the conferrer of status is
a critic?
What are the criteria for
[233]
that role?
🥵 🥵 🥵
...
In short, there is a strong disanalogy between the agents who supposedly act on behalf of the artworld and the agents of established social institutions ... In order to fulfill the roles ... , the people in question have to meet certain well-entrenched, generally formal criteria; ...
" . . . which 'criteria' get 'established'
when _____ . . . , and if _____ . . . , and
[this part is literally
always
a conjecture!]
_____
because . . . "
It all gets started at the bottom right?
From the bottom up?
And then,
"the higher a monkey
[bishop!]
climbs,
the more you see of his backside."
At the top, then, a
formal
procedure
for covering one's arse.
... there are requirements that an institutional agent, like a bishop, must meet before they are empowered to confer the status of, say, priest upon candidates.
But, ... there seems to be very little by way of established criteria that specify what it takes to be acting on behalf of the artworld. ... with most authentic institutional roles ... there is some process of certification and, where the role is
connected with some form of knowledge
... the person who occupies the role must exhibit at a certain level of understanding, ... [as] judged formally by previously certified practitioners.
...
...
an academic degree is not a necessary condition for being an artist, a critic, a gallery owner, a movie producer, and so on.
There are no known certification procedures;
it is all very informal.
...
An institution is not only a set of
inter-related practices.
An institution also has
formalized relations of authority
... But there are no formal criteria for determining who acts on behalf of the artworld; ...
[234]
...
There are similar problems with the notion of a candidate for appreciation. ... what are the criteria ... ? ... what are the constraints on the artifacts upon which agents of the artworld may confer the status of appreciation? There seem to be none. ...
...
...
But how much really hangs on this?
Suppose the Institutional Theorist agrees that art is not
a social institution,
strictly speaking, but goes on to say that it is nevertheless
a social practice.
Putting forward a work of art involves
a sender and a receiver
—a sender who makes and presents a work
with understanding
which is intended to be suitable for
reciprocal understanding
on the part of the potential audience. Moreover, at any given point in time,
what comprises understanding
... is
determined by social practice.
With these amendments, a revised Institutional Theory would claim; that
x is art in the classificatory sense
if and only if
1) x is an artifact
(2) created and/or presented with understanding by an a to an audience prepared to understand it in the appropriate manner.
Of course, this is not sufficient, ... Clearly, the second condition ...
[235]
needs to say: that x is created and/or presented with artistic understanding by an agent to an audience prepared to understand it artistically. But there are two problems that critics have repeatedly raised ...
The first is that it disallows the possibility that
art can occur
outside a network of social practices.
...
But can't art occur
[this way]
...
?
Suppose a Neolithic tribesman finds himself lost in a valley with pretty stones of different colors. He arranges some of them in a way that stirs visual pleasure in him. Also, suppose that no one in his tribe has ever done this before—maybe no living creature has ever done this before. Nevertheless, isn't this an artwork, indeed, an abstract artwork?
... the creator is not making or presenting the work with understanding born of social practice, since there is no relevant social practice. Nor [perhaps] is he making it for an audience— ... —and, in any case, he is not making it for an audience prepared to understand it artistically, ...
...
...
Some may argue that the Neolithic arrangement of stones is obviously an artwork and that this shows that any sort of Institutional Theory is false,
...
Others may be less convinced.
...
if this is just a one-off affair,
if the tribesman develops
no conception of what he is doing—no conception that is at least
in principle communicable to others
—then we should not regard the arrangement as an artwork.
It's a silly example, but we do have the tiger by the tail here.
When referring to "our practice" of art, so-called in the introduction-to-this-Introduction, we must be referring to something
social,
something
other
-directed,
if I may borrow Riesman's phrase for a use that is not quite his.
Why would we think so?
Look and see:
Examine the real and phenomenal objects to which this word-concept ostensibly refers.
What we see there,
if you'll forgive the vulgarity,
is
a bunch of people
tweeting each other's twats.
Of course,
this is not all
that we see,
but we see
so much
of it, so much of the time, done
with such gusto
( . . . tweets, retweets, subtweets, Blue Skies, . . . )
that we can be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that this part
just is
the "practice" itself.
The practice of practice must be
"done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything."
"Otherwise," Becker continues, "it is false."
The "rumble of panic" indeed is rarely absent from
the social p
art
.
Rank's example of the artist's "uniform" is unsurpassed as a case in point.
Where the rumble is absent, Becker suggests, "life" is not being "taken seriously. He does not say that its presence betokens truth, however, and for present purposes that is (against all odds) the absolutely crucial point.
So, less vulgarly:
If art is not quite any kind of "institution"
then
maybe it's just "social."
Maybe that is all we mean to say. But is it accurate to say so? When we say this, are we doing a good job of describing the "practice"? Or are we merely describing, at one remove, a "concept" which itself does not (cannot ever!) really capture anything important about the practice it purports to "make possible?"
By now, two hundred pages in, Our Man has written too much and said too little, but he has (finally) set us up to answer a throwaway counterfactual with a serious insight:
Indeed,
to deny that the stone-arrangement is art
because
it proceeds from
no conception that is at least
in principle communicable to others
is no better
than
to deny that it is art
because
it does not depict pictures,
or express feelings,
or exemplify form.
All of these denials are very nearly (if not identically) the same gestalt, and it will not do to have all of them continue, for a second millennium, to bicker over squatter's rights to the "concept" of "art." If that is the upshot of conceptual analysis, then hold the analysis, please.
I think the upshot ought to be precisely what Our Man suggests it could be, if the circle we are attemping to trace indeed turns out to be a spiral:
By "heuristic value,"
we mean that
the method of definition,
even when it fails,
can assist us in making discoveries.
The method
alerts us systematically
to
the richness and complexity
of the phenomenon that confronts us.
(p. 10)
Have we "discovered" any "richness" or "complexity" in the stone counterfactual?
Have we discovered anything at all important?
Should you ever come across a
theory
description,
don't hesitate to write it down.
That is, if our Neolithic artificer
does not realize
that
the kind of thing he has made
[236]
could be
presented to others
as a source of visual pleasure
—that the visual pleasure in question is communicable—he has not created an artwork. It is
a happy accident for him
that he contrived such a pleasing configuration of stones, but it is
not an artwork.
By now,
we might add:
lucky for him!
Archaeologists ... , it may be said, ... will wait for further evidence that the arrangement was intended for an audience prepared to receive it with whatever made for Neolithic artistic understanding, ...
The argument, of course, will not end there. Of the archaeologists, it may be claimed that, if they behave in the manner described, that only shows that they
presuppose
that art is a social practice which, in this context, simply
begs the question
at issue. We want to know
whether or not
art is social. That certain social scientists assume that art is a social practice comes as no surprise; after all, they're social scientists.
Hmm. Again, social scientists deal with the social part of some whole "practice".
We caricature this, as in:
Lecture 1:
Everything Is a Social Construct.
Class dismissed.
But presumably many are wide awake to the partialness of their project.
I'm willing to anoint Philosophy as the Culminating Science, but the hazard is obvious: It seems to be the philosophers and their rage for a "real definition" who are thereby railroaded into tunnels of their own construction, tunnels which run through mountains without affording travelers any scenic viewing at all.
Here is a provisional intuition about definitions: it seems possible (perhaps inevitable) that a 'real definition' could succeed in facilitating an infallible heuristic view of the art-nonart distinction from the pragmatic perspective of someone looking at or making or criticizing art, but without, nevertheless, coming anywhere close to establishing a capital-A Analytic concept of "art." Yes, 'infallible heuristic' is a contradiction. I mean that the heuristic in fact works every time because it is being asked only to 'work' on cases which it is able to deal with. Why is it able to deal with these cases? Because a "practice" that is actually worthy of the name just is an epistemology unto itself, sort of: it converges on knowledge . . . sort of; it circumscribes an objective so tightly that the practitioner can then converge upon single solutions, as in deduction; this as opposed to diverging out into the abyss, throwing darts one at a time, no two in quite the same direction. If there is no objective, there can be no convergence. I'll go out on a limb and propose, not for the first or last time, that the ability to draw the art-nonart line with certainty and clarity is not part of very many people's "practice" of artmaking or connoisseurship or criticism. But if for any reason it is just this important, say, if you make baubles and you want these baubles to walk right up to the line and threaten to jump across it without ever actually doing so, then perhaps this could be a sense in which an art practice really does depend upon belief in a real definition. So, you open the search for a real definition, as if this were merely an analytic task, but it seems more to be a practical task: it is being sought in order to be put to work . . . and if it doesn't work then the whole enterprise has been a bust.
Glickman's proposal that creativity is best "characteriz[ed]" by "attend[ing] to the artistic product rather than to the process" seems apt here. Of course the so-called Expression Theory, and the Institutional Theory, as presented by Our Man Here, these "theories" do look to processes rather than products; and they do not work at all as theories. Nor does the Imitation Theory turn out to work (it is actually the furthest of all from working), although it might be called a theory of "products." (Maybe!) So far, then, we cannot be very confident in either tack. (I realize that Glickman was not referring to "art" but to "creativity." Keep reading.)
All of this is still quite inadequate for reaching my conclusion, but for now: the product-process distinction itself, to name at least one such distinction, seems precisely to mark (at least!) one reason why we cannot seem to define art at all. We could just say that we are defining one or the other, and then get on with our work to that end. (To those ends.) But that won't do the trick at all. Why not? Because in that event we have not analyzed the concept art. Rather, we have said precisely how to know it when we see it, in two notable (but hardly exhaustive) senses: now we know precisely what art-products look like and also what art-processes (metaphorically) "look like." But we still have a serious problem, one which Our Man has already used (certainly not in these words) to generate several useful counterfactuals: the product-of-a-process may wear no marks-of-process. Hence we cannot recognize it as a product-of-a-process, not unless we can identify those process-marks with the same infallibility as a "real definition" itself identifies its "concept." This calls into question the actual relatedness of product and process: we cannot yet say how they are related, or even that they are; we have taken that part for granted. Yet we claim in both cases to be defining art, in the first case by its products, and in the second case by its process. (I fear I have not made myself the least bit clear as to why I am assuming that there are quite literally infinite "analyses," infinite 'real definitions,' that could be composed by human minds, and could be coherent, for a practical purpose, with no one being the wiser. It may be come clearer below, elliptically.)
And so, Danto is once again helpful, because of his intransigence on such questions and not in spite of it: the 'mark' we are seeking just is the knowledge, gained in whatever fashion, that a work just is the result of a certain process. There is no observable process-product nexus, but observation per se is only one way that such knowledge can be found. Observation is just one epistemology among others, and here, indeed, the formalist and the institutionalist even can agree, observation just so happens not to be the right tool for the job. Why stare at an art-object looking for marks which cannot be seen? Just ask someone (anyone!) who knows, So, how was this made? (" . . . And where? And why? And by whom? . . . ")
If someone can tell you, and if you can believe them, then together the two of you have succeeded where all Theories of Art have failed: you have marked the process-product connection; you have revealed something about the art-object at hand which is true of the object yet cannot be seen, and this something is no less true of its object only because it cannot be seen. If that was your only problem, then you have solved it . . . for one particular art-object. The most obvious limitation of this strategy is that it cannot be generalized: it is an overt retreat to the particular in order to avoid an essential conceptual impossibility, i.e. that of seeing something which is not visible. (Danto, coarsely paraphrased: "But don't say it's not there!") Danto of course thinks he can say exactly what this something is: it is 'aboutness' or 'embodied meaning.' He sees no reason why these can be dismissed as un-real simply because they are un-visible; and with that point thus duly articulated, I can see (so far) no sense in mounting a thoroughgoing case against it. It seems unnecessary to get entangled in litigation of the 'real-ness of embodiment or of aboutness. Margolis contends that these 'real' qualities are 'emergent.' That is an interesting concept; I admit that I don't understand much about it; but it also seems not to solve our problem here. If you cannot see the marks, if you have no one to ask what they are, or if you (yep!!) don't believe you can trust the person telling you, then I contend that the marks have not (yet) 'emerged' to you. (At you?) I could try saying, "The marks are not real to you." This is indeed a figure of speech, familiar enough to be readily understood, even when it is said in regard to an artwork that cannot be understood. Presumably both Danto and Margolis both would seize on this little white lie of figurative language, simply to point out that 'real' things can be imperceptible. Only Margolis attempts to deal adequately with the "to you" part, however; on which point I must concede my incomprehension unless and until it can be remedied. One thing I don't understand is: Just what differentiates a selective emergence from a non-emergence? Do we have to find more than one person to avow the emergence in order for it to be real? Or does one single person, one termite, suffice? Is it unnecessary, then, to consult the superorganism of culture at all? This seems to cut directly against Margolis (he against himself). But perhaps I am confused. (If you've tried to read him, you could forgive me.) The upshot seems to be: The mark just is real, whether or not it emerges; because . . . well, it could emerge anytime; because . . . well, this has happened as recently as last Thursday, so somethin's gotta be in there somewhere, awaiting . . . what exactly? Someone to see it? We ruled that out from the start. Awaiting a critic to be the one to tell everyone else that the mark is in there after all? To say what the mark is, how it got in there in the first place, and why? To be the one person to speak on such things on behalf of the entire culture? To justify this with Danto's brand of daft sophistry? "Any of you may be the second, if only your story adds up."
My contention, my intuition here which underwrites all of my skepticism, is that (1) a story 'adding up', and (2) a story being 'real', are discrete and incommensurable attributions. There's much, much more to it than that, but that seems to be the gist. In the Maes interview, Danto agrees that there could be infinite interpretations, he describes this as a question of things "falling into place," or not, and he describes a scenario wherein a certain interpretation of a centuries-old work "falls into place" in virtue of contemporary (i.e. much later) events. That seems to concede the entire argument right there. It seems to concede that meaning per se, embodied or otherwise, is infinite rather than bounded; spiral rather than circular, if you'll humor my deployment of a pet metaphor. That's why I think we could catch analytic lightning in a bottle anytime, or all the time. i.e. If we repeatedly jump into the spiral, if we operationalize the meaning-spiral as an Infinite Monkey proposition, there are meanings in there, surely, that can be composed into real definitions. You say, this is not saying anything. Exactly. That is the whole point.
We could follow Margolis and call meaning 'relative', but that strikes me as a slightly misleading way to put it. Relative to what? Nothing in particular, it would seem. Does he just mean, relative to each individual? But he is a doctinaire student of the cultural whole, fit to rival any
social scientist,
and the parts of that whole do not start to look like atoms until we put them under a microscope; and this is precisely the kind of science project that seems to be his bugbear. And at that point 'relativism' too has begun to look a bit too much like 'emergence': suddenly it seems not actually to matter whether or not anyone or everyone actually agrees or disagrees; all that matters is that they could.
Why is everything possible here? Because stuff may emerge . . . or it may not; it may emerge to you but not to your spouse . . . or vice versa; social scientists may be able to predict the granular details of all of this with perfect accuracy given only your birth year . . . or they may have not the slightest inkling even what information they would need to have about you in order to do this, let alone what would then be required actually to do it. By the time that demonstrated 'emergence' is no longer a requirement for 'emergent' properties to qualify as 'real', we have sufficiently abandoned empiricism, such that emergences no longer have to be verifiable or falsifiable; they need merely to be imaginable; and yes, human beings can imagine things that are not real, and we usually do. We rely upon these unreal imaginations in order to survive: e.g., we must be willing to try to anticipate events that we cannot rationally believe are likely, simply because failing to anticipate them, in the off chance that they occur, would be literally fatal. But NB: We still do not enshrine such forecasts as 'real' just because we are able to think them up. They are 'real forecasts', I suppose, in the sense of being analytic to the type of which they are a token; but the locution itself is, again, a figure of speech: a 'real forecast' in this (figurative) sense is not a forecast that is later proven accurate; it just is a forecast that conforms to a real definition of its type. That's easy, although the "practice" of forecasting is itself incoherent. Ironic, huh?
Anyway, we can imagine that the earth will stop spinning at midnight tonight, or that our head will literally explode (and we will die excruciatingly) upon our finally understanding what Margolis is trying to say; we can quite well imagine that these things will 'emerge' from the future flux, of which we are necessarily ignorant empirically; but if our fear of these things is not real, then our belief in them is not either; and if this is the case, then, most importantly of all, we do not publicly leverage our belief that they are imminent. We do not demand that others take these forecasts seriously, although the first seems actually to be possible, and the second, though it seems implausible, is a pervasive enough metaphor that we could be forgiven for wondering if this fact alone does not speak in favor of its otherwise miniscule likelihood. We must dare to imagine, in order to try to anticipate . . . we must, truly . . . but that is where forecast starts, not where it ends. We next must ask: How would we know if our forecast was true? And then, (in)famously, the companion question, "How would we know if it was false?" can be and usually is a strikingly discrete question, on which matter the answer to the first is unhelpful or outright misleading.
Basically, if we follow the trail wherever these two questions lead us, then we are traveling away from relativism; that is what it means to ask those questions. And if there is a sign merely five steps down the trail which says, "Bar none, you simply cannot know how you would (or would not) know this," then we are forced to accept that our speculations are idle ones; we may not simply opine that everyone in the world is somewhat differently positioned vis-a-vis the matter at hand, and that surely we can find at least one person, somewhere, who is holding the right lottery ticket. Nothing 'emerges' from that enterprise but mysticism.
In this connection, the final thing to consider is Danto's prescription that audiences may become as critics. It is an utterly brilliant solution to the problem of relativism as I have tried to describe it above . . . and admittedly my description can only bend in this direction, since this is a/the issue that is of ultimate concern to me. What exactly has Danto done in issuing this fatwa on naive experience? He has admonished all of us (1) to let our imaginations run wild; and (2) to articulate the content of our imaginative cognitions. Has he admonished us (3) to publicly leverage these articulations? I can't think offhand of a passage that suggests exactly this; it's more that this is what critics do; this is exactly what criticism is, and this is all that it is unless you work very hard at reading and understanding what critics have written. (How's that for relativism, chaps?) So, perhaps he means that each audience member should 'write' their own 'criticism', in effect; they should write for themselves, as it were; but they need not publicly leverage their view with or against (all of the) other publicly-leveraged views. Rather, they need only articulate the view, to themselves.
By eschewing all public leveraging, we would seem to have avoided the most harrowing prospect of Dantoism; we seem to have avoided creating as many critical arguments as there are audience members, even though all concerned have now articulated the germ of an argument to themselves. And then, because we are keeping all of this to ourselves (unlikely, perhaps, but go with it for now), we do not need to bother with number (4). Right? We don't actually need to ask, "How would I know if my interpretation 'falls into place'?", nor need we ask, "How would I know if it does not?" Those really are questions posed to us by the public order into whose elemental structures we are integrated. And anyway, the very locution "falls into place" is a red blinking hedge against the accusation that Danto has posited interpretation as a true-or-false business. He is wise to stay out of that business, since it saves his commentariat of everymen the trouble of rationally defending logical propositions which never aspired to truth or rationality in the first place. Those propositions are not of public but of private origin; and there they ought to remain. But in that case this is not really a solution to relativism. It seems rather to create a relativism where there was none before.
Where people start earnestly trying to understand each other's views and to reconcile them to the extent possible, consensus is never guaranteed, it is true; but at least 'relativism' tends to scurry away and hide under the bed until all the party guests have left. Everyone articulates their view, to themselves, and then they leverage it: eventually they have to say it to the room.
Here is Lasch at the very peak of his powers:
"The attempt to bring others around to our own point of view carries the risk, of course, that we may adopt their point of view instead. We have to enter imaginatively into our opponents' arguments, if only for the purpose of refuting them, and we may end up being persuaded by those we sought to persuade. Argument is risky and unpredictable, therefore educational. Most of us tend to think of it (as Lippman thought of it) as a clash of rival dogmas, a shouting match in which neither side gives any ground. But arguments are not won by shouting down opponents. They are won by changing opponents' minds—something that can happen only if we give opposing arguments a respectful hearing and still persuade their advocates that there is something wrong with those arguments. In the course of this activity we may well decide that there is something wrong with our own.
"If we insist on argument as the essence of education, we will defend democracy not as the most efficient but as the most educational form of government, one that extends the circle of debate as widely as possible and thus forces all citizens to articulate their views, to put their views at risk, and to cultivate the virtues of eloquence, clarity of thought and expression, and sound judgment. As Lippman noted, small communities are the classic locus of democracy—not because they are "self-contained," however, but simply because they allow everyone to take part in public debates.
(Revolt of the Elites, pp. 170-171)
If audiences simply must become as critics, if they must articulate interpretations to themselves, if they may no longer simply allow art to wash over them like a warm bath, then surely we do better to keep most or all of this to ourselves rather than to release it into a fragile public ecosystem where it then runs amok. But even then something catastrophic has happened: What I am calling the "articulation" of a properly "critical" view has been made, but it has not been "put at risk;" we have not "entered imaginatively into" any contradictory "arguments," nor has anyone entered imaginatively into ours. We have become Silent Critics. We have become if not quite the worst kind of bureaucrats (Debord on artists) certainly among the worst. Why? Because we have gone to the trouble to "articulate our views" without "putting our views at risk" . . . and there are far worse things said about that kind of person than to call them a "bureaucrat."
I have grown skeptical of the idea of progress, but that doesn't mean I have to accept a proposal to make people worse.
(Yep, it is necessary to know what you think. "Writing is how you find out what you think." This is what I am doing (it is one thing I am doing) right here and now. But it is only strictly necessary to know what you think about matters of a certain importance. (And perhaps that is a concept that can and must be relativized.) Dantoism thus has much more clout if art 'matters'. But that just shows precisely why art must not 'matter' too much. Just look at all of the unseemly consequences of this. Danto has espoused each and everyone of them as a positive commitment and attempted to rationalize the commitments without being able to rationalize the 'mattering' premise from which all of them follow. Anyway, I leave things here, for now, with "Art must not matter!" as a sort of prescription-benediction. It would solve almost every problem here, foremost the definition problem, which would benefit from not mattering to anyone. TBC!!)
Better evidence that the arrangement of stones is art is that
ordinary folk,
using their ordinary understanding
of our concept of art, would probably say the stones were art.
Here, the Institutional Theorist might respond that ... the plain speaker is imagining that others ... could look at the arrangement of stones and derive visual pleasure from it. But ... [this is to assume] that there is an audience capable of viewing it with
the relevant sort of artistic understanding,
thereby satisfying the second condition ... But did the Neolithic tribesman
present it with
artistic understanding? Surely, it might be argued, ... otherwise whatever he believed he was doing when he composed his arrangement would be utterly mysterious.
In addition, the proponent of the Institutional Theory might add that there are few, if any, noncontroversial cases of solitary art. Most art occurs within the context of social practices. ... Clog dancing, folk music, quilt making, and so on ... have histories that are taught, ... they have techniques and conventions ... stories about illustrious predecessors ... Amateur painters too ... employ techniques, conventions and knowledge of a sort that viewers are
prepared to respond to
with socially shared understanding.
...
[237]
... Institutional Theories are adequate for all known cases of art, since
all known art is social.
... controversial, conjectural cases ... should not weigh too heavily against the theory. The theory is
as powerful a theory as we've got.
🫢 🫢 🫢
Every theory is liable
to inspire some disputed borderline cases. One does not abandon an
otherwise successful
theory just because of a highly controversial, imaginary counterexample.
🤨 🤨 🤨
...
But there is still another problem with the Institutional Theory which merits our attention.
🙄 🙄 🙄
The earlier version of the theory maintains that status is conferred upon a candidate by an agent acting on behalf of a certain institution. Which institution?
The artworld.
Likewise the revised theory has it that an agent creates and/or presents the artifact with understanding for an audience that is prepared to understand it in the appropriate manner. But what kind of understanding is it that the agent and the audience possess?
Artistic understanding.
However, then both versions of the Institutional Theory are circular.
...
Institutional Theories of Art are supposed to define the notion of artwork in the classificatory sense.
But
it turns out that
in order to apply the theory,
we must already know how
to classify artworks, ... both versions of the Institutional Theory are effectively presupposing the concept of an artwork for the purpose of defining it. ...
Institutional Theorists ... official answer ... A definition is
viciously circular
if it is
uninformative.
"Art is art" is viciously circular. However, a definition
may be circular
and, nevertheless,
still be informative;
... it may be a circle
with a wide diameter,
not
a tight circle
...
Duly noted!
Two hundred and thirty-seven pages in,
we have begun admitting
circular
arguments,
and
we have stopped worrying and learned to love
borderline cases.
So when's lunch?
... the Institutional Theorist maintains that ... From his definition, you learn
[238]
that art
is a social affair,
that it involves artists and audiences
engaged in co-ordinated roles,
underwritten by
reciprocal forms of understanding.
Through the theory, you can come to appreciate that art
occurs against a broader social context,
the artworld, and that this forum of social activity is
structured in terms of roles
that presuppose
symmetrically inter-related
social knowledge.
... There are
those who will balk
at the distinction between vicious and informative circularity. The Institutional Theorist will claim that
most social concepts are
circular, or
"inflected,"
in the way that he says art is, and that, as a result, most definitions of social phenomena will finally be circular. ...
But even [so] ... Does the Institutional Theory really teach us anything that isn't obvious: ... ? ...
Moreover, does the fact that the understanding in question is
co-ordinated
warrant the claim that art is either
an institution
or
a social practice?
...
A man dying of thirst meets someone from another culture in the desert. ... He is trying to get the other person to understand that he needs water. ... Suppose he is understood ... There are no shared, pre-
[239]
existing conventions here. There is a social relationship. But have these two strangers just initiated a social institution or a social practice? ...
...
Indeed, one response that we offered on behalf of the Institutional Theory, to the case of the Neolithic tribesman was that his stone arrangement would not be truly solitary, if it were configured with the realization that others might also derive visual pleasure from it. We also said that the Neolithic artificer's behavior would be scarcely intelligible, unless he had some such understanding. But if we
count his activity as social
just because it is undertaken
with the peripheral awareness
that others might derive pleasure from it, then doesn't it seem as though
the notion of what is social
has become excessively attentuated?
...
...
[240]
Defining art historically
...
If Robinson Crusoe made art on his lonely island, he would have been able to do so, the Institutional Theorist argues, only because he learnt about art during his upbringing in England. ... And, furthermore, whatever he made would have been, as a result, accessible to a culturally prepared audience of fellow Europeans who themselves had been trained to understand it. ...
...
... the opponent of the Institutional Theory, though agreeing that this is how most art originates ... argues that nevertheless it is
a logical possibility,
even if it is
a practical impossibility,
that someone could create art outside of a social practice.
...
This criticism of the Institutional Theory of Art is the starting point for the Historical Definition of Art, a viewpoint defended by Jerrold
[241]
Levinson. ... Even if the Neolithic tribesman did not have the concept of artwork in his cognitive stock ... still we will count the arrangement of stones as art under our concept of art.
What enables us to count the stone artifact as art? What makes the Neolithic display an artwork? According to the defender of the Historical Definition of Art, it is
the intention that the maker had
in producing the arrangement of stones. His intention was
to promote visual pleasure.
🤨 🤨 🤨
😖 😖 😖
Moreover, from our perspective, promoting visual pleasure is a
well-precedented
intention for making art. ...
Of course, the promotion of visual pleasure is not the only intention with which an artist might create an artwork. ... Many German Expressionists ... made works expressive of moral horror. But ... that intention, too, is a historically well-precedented one.
...
in both cases, the intentions have
through the course of history
been
acknowledged as artistically relevant
intentions. ... both traffic in what the Historical Definition of Art calls well-precedented art regards—ways of regarding something as a work of art.
... regarding an artifact as an expression of feeling, as a representation, as a display of form, as an articulation of cultural ideals, as a reflection upon the nature of art, and so on. ...
This approach is called a historical definition because it connects candidates to the history of art.
We know that many historical artifacts are artworks,
whether or not we have a definition.
We also know
how
[242]
those works were intended to be regarded
by audiences. We can
use that knowledge
to construct a definition
of art. ...
As we have seen, there is little hope of crafting a definition of art simply in terms of the internal properties of things. Nor can we hope to find a common thread between artworks on the basis of their actual effects ... So, instead, the Historical Definition of Art draws our attention to another possible
shared property
of artworks: ...
...
...
the Historical Definition of Art does not rely upon tracking the
manifest properties
of candidates. It focusses on
a nonmanifest property,
namely the artistic intention to proffer objects for acknowledged art regards on the part of potential audiences. Moreover, this property is
a genetic property
of the works in question, for
the genesis of the object
is in the artist's intention.
That the intention is to promote acknowledged art regards also explains why the object is art.
...
One could come upon the intention to promote a certain art regard
...
outside any social context whatsoever.
Yet it will still count as an artistic intention, if, even
unbeknownst to the artist
in question, the intention is one that
we now
acknowledge is historically well precedented.
Well . . . wtf is an
intention
then?
Sorry, that was terribly rude of me.
If the "intention" must include the given
art-regard
but need not include the criteria by which
we now
in the nowtimes
acknowledge
it,
then there is no
genetic property
here,
but only a
just so
story.
...
... though our concept of art evolved historically in our society, our concept of art can be applied to artifacts outside of our society ...
Do or do not.
There is no
can
.
...
[243]
...
...
the definition also requires that the artist have
a proprietary right
over the object in question. ... This condition is meant to block certain types of found objects from entering the order of art.
... Duchamp attempted to appropriate the Woolworth Building as a readymade.
Many have claimed
that this is one readymade that Duchamp failed to enfranchise as art. The reason, according to the Historical Definition of Art, is that Duchamp neither owned the Woolworth Building, nor did those who did endorse his attempted transfiguration of it into art.
And that is the reason why he
failed
?
Is this the reason that the
many
have given?
The "many" and the "theory" . . . not great options here!
...
...
Combining the two conditions, we get:
x is an artwork if and only if x is an object of which it is true that some person or persons (1) who have a proprietary right over x (2) nonpassingly intend (or intended) x for regard-as-a-work-of-art-i.e., for regard in any way (or ways) in which objects already in the extension of "artwork" are or were correctly or standardly regarded.
...
...
the art-regard condition requires that I intend the art regard in question
nonpassingly.
This means that
the intention must be fairly serious, long-lived, and deliberate.
... a
presiding intention,
not a passing thought. As well, it should
be at the heart of
my production of the artifact, its influence
radiating integrally
throughout the work.
What I must intend is that the object support some acknowledged form of regard-as-a-work-of-art. This regard is explicated as any sort of regard in which objects
already in the extension of "artwork"
are or were
correctly
regarded. The reason for the locution "the extension of
[244]
'artwork'" here is to avoid charges that the Historical Definition of Art is circular. The extension of "artwork" is
just a list
of all artworks.
Merely
a list
,
That's all!
Thus, we could replace "the extension of artwork" with a list of artworks. In this way, the term "artwork" in the definition is merely an abbreviation for this list and could be replaced, albeit cumbersomely, with the list itself.
Consequently, the concept of artwork is not being used to define the concept of art; all that is being invoked is a list of all artworks, and such a list need not ever mention the term art. The definition does not, then, use the concept of artwork in a
circular
fashion. It only uses "artwork" as
a shorthand place-holder
for the list of all previous artworks, or all previously known artworks.
🥵 🥵 🥵
The definition does presuppose that we know what the previous artworks are, or,
at least,
a substantial number
of them. And it presupposes that we know
the ways
in which those works were correctly regarded. This amounts to a knowledge of the histories of the arts, but
comparable knowledge
is presumed
in many other approaches to identifying art. How can we debate about whether definitions of art are adequate,
unless we know something
about art history—not only what works count as art, but also which ways of regarding them are appropriate? When the Institutional Theorist talks about artifacts being made and received
with understanding,
he has in mind understanding the ways in which it is
appropriate or correct
to regard artworks. And
where else
would this come, except from the history of the arts?
There are two ways that someone can
present an object for regard
-as-an-artwork. She can do it
indirectly;
she can expressly present the work to be regarded in some way or combination of ways that art has been regarded in the past. Here she will have to
know art history,
and that knowledge will make her part of
an ongoing social practice.
However, she may also present the work for art regard
directly.
That means that she need
only have the intention
that the work be regarded in some way or ways that has been acknowledged to be an art regard. She need not know that the regard in question is a historically well-precedented art regard; she need not know any art history. Her work will count as art, even if
it just happens
coincidentally to invite a historically acknowledged art regard. And this, of course,
does not require
that the artist
herself be a member
of an ongoing social practice.
It is in this way that the Neolithic tribesman's stones can be classified as an artwork. He
directly intended
his work for regard-as-an-artwork, even though he
knew nothing
of the tradition of art, because what he intended—that the stones be regarded as sources of visual pleasure—
turns out,
unbeknownst to him, to be an acknowledged art regard. ... if you are inclined to find the case of the solitary artist compelling,
[245]
then the Historical Definition of Art is especially attractive in contrast to Institutional Theories of Art.
In addition, the Historical Definition is very comprehensive. It is
hard to imagine
any work of art that is intended to support no well-precedented art regard at all.
Maybe you're not trying hard enough.
If the regard in question were totally unprecedented, and if the work supported no other antecedently acknowledged art regard,
how would we know
how to respond to the object, and why would we call the response an art regard?
Avant-garde art grows out of the past, modifying pre-existing art regards. But even in
modifying or defying
some pre-existing regards, it
still appeals to others.
Well, yes. This is very important. Rank and Becker allow us to presume this even of the (contemporary) recluse. We should and must make this presumption, wherever the (contemporary) recluse problem arises.
What has to be questioned here, with equal vehemence, is . . . well, several things:
(1) the
intention
issue;
(2) the
correct
ness issue;
(3) the supposition of a particular sort of relationship (seemingly a causal one) between (1) and (2).
First, and obviously: everything depends on our epistemology of others' intentions. How has this been handled in the
tribesman
case? It has been simply been assumed, although not (I don't gather?) on the basis that
we
ourselves, now, are simply entrained, by the artifact, into the
regard
-in-question. The assumption, rather, is that there really was such an intent in the making of the Neolithic artifact, and that is that. I too would prefer to assume some such thing; but if how I feel about the artifact, now, is not admissible, then I don't see how I can justify this hunch. I can't even say that I'm reading intention off of the aesthtic surface, as in Jucker and Barrett's account. Maybe Our Man Here really is doing that, and maybe he's just being honest about what he is doing. I myself can't get there; and then, anecdotally (because that's what I'm reduced to here) I have serious trouble believing that this is what's really going on in general. The skeptic is always going to win out here, because no skeptical argument can rival for absurdity the leap that is being made by the
Historical
theorist here.
From there: what can be "correct" or
appropriate
given such a situation? Why is it "correct" to "regard" an artifact in the manner intended? As best I can tell, nothing here (so far) depends on just this. The point seems to be: this is how certain art-ifacts are or have been regarded. Correctness is not doubly conditioned: it's not actually keyed to intention quite so irreversibly; instead, all that's required is that the regard in question must have entered "history", and then, if we think we are confronted with just such an intention, we don't have to prove anything beyond our hunch to this effect. So, what is "correct" (or not) here is merely the belonging of the art-regard-in-question to the class of "historically" established art-regards; and this matter is, obviously, entirely discrete from the matter of the epistemology of intent . . . which has so far been left to dangle in the wind, in a very dubious state, open to a very basic and fatal objection.
Finally: the (Rankian) basis for always taking seriously the
appeal
to others
is not nearly broad enough to bail Our Man out of these difficulties. That's because here too the epistemological case is not airtight. Rather, it is a generalization. I myself am inclined to swallow it whole, because it resonates so fully both with my own lived experience and with everything I've observed in my fellow musicians; but truth be told, I can't offer anything any more solid than that to defend my view. That's why it's not a properly philosophical (defensible) view. Rather, it's an empirical view, subject to significant problematization, given the borderline nature of the methodology. If you ask me to prove that there is an "appeal to others" in each and every work of art made today, I am going to immediately defer and concede the point. But, well . . . then I also get to concede the coherence of the Historical Theory, don't I?
Duchamp's Fountain frustrates attempts to regard it in terms of visual pleasure, but it can still be regarded as amusing, as
surely it was intended
to be. An object that
intentionally spurned
every known art regard,
including that it is intended to be regarded as
a source of subverted expectations,
is hardly imaginable. And, in any case, it would be
unintelligible.
Hmm.
To believe this, you have to believe that we living today have thought of everything, and also forgotten nothing.
It's not surprising to find a Boomer making this assumption, but no doubt he himself would be shocked to learn of it, like one of Freud's patients being told that (and why) they have left their umbrella in the consulting room.
Moreover, if a candidate strikes us as utterly unintelligible, that scarcely encourages us to classify it as an artwork.
Well, the
Theorist
does need a lot of
encourage
ment,
but
the rest of us
don't seem to have much trouble.
Though the Historical Definition of Art has many virtues, it also raises a number of questions. The proprietary condition, for example, seems rather strange. ... graffiti artists do not have such a right. ... [Graffiti] is against the law. ... And what if Picasso ... had painted his Portrait of Dora Maar on the side of a subway car, ... ?
...
The
intention
behind the proprietary condition
🤕 🤕 🤕
is to
limit the possibilities
for creating
found objects and readymades.
... Allegedly, the reason for this is that the artists in question do not own the relevant artifacts. ...
[But] ... Imagine a school of artists who specialize in stolen found objects, which
[246]
they call outlaw readymades. ... They want their objects to be regarded, as among other things, social criticism, a well-precedented art regard.
...
The proprietary right condition does not seem to be a necessary condition for art, ... The art-regard condition would appear to have to provide us with necessary and sufficient conditions ... But clearly the art-regard condition is not sufficient.
One reason for this is that the art-regard condition makes no provision for the fact that art regards can
pass out of existence.
🫢 🫢 🫢
... Consider home videos or polaroids. ...
... such an art regard—the simple appreciation of an image for its perceptual versimilitude—alone is no longer quite as decisive as it was even one hundred years ago. ...
[247]
...
...
a great many historical works of art have mixed intentions.
It should be enough to satisfy the Historical Definition that
[a]
picture be supported by at least one integral, nonpassing intention
...
... But it is perfectly possible to imagine some other amateur who makes video recordings solely for the purpose of using his equipment to capture the visual appearances of things. He may do this simply to impress viewers with the capabilities of his equipment for producing recognizable likenesses. The Historical Definition must count these recordings as artworks. But that is far too inclusive.
These counterexamples have relied upon the fact that the Historical Definition of Art
has no statute of limitations
on art regards. But the problems with inclusiveness that these examples suggest are even deeper, ...
Alice ... has a nonpassing intention that the lawn appear visually pleasing. ... Are her lawn and countless other, deliberately well-cared-for lawns in suburbia world-wide artworks?
Well, here's what Becker says about
the lawn
:
Modern man is denying his finitude with the same dedication as the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, but now whole masses are playing the game, and with a far richer armamentarium of techniques. The skyscraper buildings, the cloverleaf freeways, the houses with their imposing façades and immaculate lawns—what are these if not the modern equivalent of pyramids: a face to the world that announces: "I am not ephemeral, look what went into me, what represents me, what justifies me." The hushed hope is that someone who can do this will not die. Life in contemporary society is like an open-air lunatic asylum with people cutting and spraying their grass . . . , beating trails to the bank with little books of figures that worry them around the clock . . . This is truly obsessive-compulsiveness on the level of the visible and the audible, so overpowering in its total effect that it seems to make of psychoanalysis a complete theory of reality. I mean that in this kind of normal cultural neurosis man's natural animal spontaneity is almost wholly stifled: the material-technological character-lie is so ingrained in modern man, for the most part, that his natural spontaneity, his urges toward mystery, awe, and beauty show up only minimally, if at all, or in forms that are so swallowed up in culturally-standardized perceptions that they are hardly recognizable: . . .
(The Birth and Death of Meaning, pp. 149-150)
Now, if "culturally-standardized perceptions" have "swallowed" our lawn-spraying normie and our amateur photographers alike, then we have to look elsewhere if we expect to be able to differentiate them. On this, as a matter of affinity I certainly endorse taking seriously the matters of "spontaneity" and "mystery", but I also don't expect to be able to mount a philosophically convincing definition of them, such that we could evaluate our contemporary "armamentarium" case-by-case. This matter of evaluation is between you and God . . . so to speak . . . Becker here offers us one way to go about this. I don't think there are infinite ways, but I suppose there might be some others besides this one.
But then, even here, if someone insists to me that their lawn is a fully authentic life-project, "done in the lived truth of the terror of creation" and all the rest, I cannot reasonably disagree, can I? And certainly neither can Our Man Here.
...
Similarly, George paints his house with utmost deliberation,
...
...
Again, the consequence is that your average-sized suburban village is likely to contain as much art as the Metropolitan Museum
...
🤔
🤔
🤔
🥳
🥳
🥳
...
[248]
...
...
art regards can be detached from what we standardly think of as art objects and they can be intended of things that we never conceive of as artworks.
...
...
It would still be a major accomplishment of the Historical Definition of Art,
if it captured at least a necessary condition for art.
...
...
Even where we are not in a position to
interview the creator
about her intentions,
the way she has made
the artifact, especially if it belongs to a
well-known
artistic genre, provides reassuring evidence that it was nonpassingly intended to support recognized and appropriate responses well-precedented art regards.
Despite being extremely annoying and characteristically freighted with wishful thinking, this is a timely juxtaposition and is worth considering in some depth.
Anywhere outside of the courtroom, the
interview
is even less trustworthy than
the way
and shouldn't enter into any matter of importance. And even within the courtroom, "intention" does not make for good direct-questioning material. In that setting, the trick is to accumulate "ways" that something has been done; toward a certain 'preponderance', it used to be said. But you can't just ask, or just look. You have to build a case.
If we insist on an "interview", this is the direction it would have to take. There would be no direct questioning about "intention". Instead, it would be an interrogation.
. . . Mr. Duchamp, for how many years did you work on the 'Large Glass'? . . .
. . . Mr. Bidlo, which of your other works were made for autodidactic purposes? . . .
In other words, you might say that we would have to combine the two methods Our Man gives here: an interview, yes; about intentions, surely. But really this is to do neither of the things he offers us. Why doesn't he just offer us the interrogation? It seems so obvious! Of course I don't really know why, but you won't convince me it's not because the type of evidence that is admissable in court is boring, whereas to get a self-absorbed artsy-fartsy chattering away about
her
"intentions" is a bit more interesting; and yes, just plain fixing one's prying eyes on the artifact and spinning voyeuristic riff on top of voyeuristic riff is something that many people seem to enjoy doing quite a bit more than evne they themselves enjoy being subjected to it.
On the other hand, ... Sometimes we place artifacts on display in our museums that were not intended for any recognized art regard. ...
...
But if the creators of such works do not intend them to afford any appropriate, well-precedented art regard,
why do we say these artifacts are artworks?
Here,
the opponent of the Historical Definition will maintain
because they can perform
an acknowledged function
of art. The creators of these artifacts may not have intended these works to perform these functions ... but nevertheless these artifacts
can be used by others
to perform these functions.
Say
us
be having
intentions
too?
...
[249]
...
...
...
unless and until the defender of the Historical Definition can supply an argument that says why artworks require the relevant intention,
the central claim of the Historical Definition
...
remains controversial.
...
No comments:
Post a Comment