Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)
[SK's comments]
[249]
...
Part III
Identifying art
Definition and identification
Recent attempts to define art ... have proven thus far to be inconclusive. ...
And yet we are able
to identify art ... with a very
high degree of consensus.
" . . . , presuming of course
that nothing important is riding on the
consensus
itself,
for if there is, it will soon disintegrate. . . . "
Thus the question of how we manage to do it
remains pressing.
Well,
the apparent paradox given above establishes that
the question
is
difficult,
not that it is
pressing
.
Those are two different things.
Moreover, this is not
merely an academic question.
Classifying artifacts as artworks is
central to our practice
of art. ... is integral to
determining how we should respond
to it. ... Should we attend to the expressive properties of a amalgam of crushed and mangled automobile chassis or
[250]
consign them to the junkyard?
How about
first the one,
and then the other
?
If art, these objects bear scrutiny and interpretation. If not, we call the Department of Sanitation.
". . . Quick, what's the number for Critics and Interpreters? . . ."
Furthermore, the concept of art is an important one for
the characterization of
social reality.
It
supports
many significant generalizations,
Ain't that the truth!
such as:
that
every known culture has artistic practices;
that
there is more art today than there was in the fifteenth century;
that
the production of art is a major social activity in Bali;
that
art is an important factor in the creation of cultural identity;
and so on.
The concept of art also figures in certain
counterfactual generalizations,
e.g.,
that
any society without art would be humanly diminished.
So you're saying that mere
consensus
is inadequate to underwrite such
significant generalizations
as these?
That sounds like quite a problem for any speculators in
known culture
and
cultural identity
!
...
...
Throughout this book we have encountered a number of attempts to treat this as a matter of applying an essential definition.
...
In this, there is
an underlying assumption
that we
identify
candidates by
subsuming
them under a definition.
Ah yes, that old
assumption
.
What of it?
... many philosophers have supposed
we possess
[such a definition],
if only implicitly,
and that
we apply
[it] to candidates
tacitly.
Well yes, this can hardly be doubted as stated. Hardly anything human can be explained at all without recourse to the
implicit
and the
tacit
.
But it should hardly be surprising that this just is the way (the only way!) that such 'hidden' stuff is revealed.
Nothing is stopping us from describing how this all goes down. We know how to do that. If we're careful, we can even effect convergence toward a "consensus" this way. And then, for a touch of style, we certainly know how to "generalize", too. That has never been far to seek.
...
Clearly, a certain view of the nature of concepts underwrites all these attempts. ...
But, as the Neo-Wittgensteinians suggested, it may not be the case that all of our concepts are to be understood on the model of definitions with necessary and sufficient conditions. ...
...
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...
...
Evidently, we do not identify artworks in accordance with the family resemblance method.
But the defeat of that hypothesis does not entail that there is not some other nondefinitional method upon which we rely
...
We cannot presume that on the basis of
the past failure
of definitional theories of art that art
cannot be defined.
". . . We'll never know if we don't look . . ."
I would venture that this is the single most robust "theory" Our Man puts forward in the whole book. It's true, such a thing as he is in pursuit of here can never be presumed not to exist just because no one ever seems to succeed in catching up to it.
It seems no less obvious, however, that
(1) having such a thing in hand will not solve any important problems for us, and
(2) for the decidedly trivial problems Our Man has identified along the way here, there are other, more salutary remedies available.
It needs to be said, above all, that the past failure argument is silent about what happens if we continue to come up empty. On that, of course, we need to dig much deeper into Wittgenstein than has been done here.
Perhaps one day someone will construct a perfectly noncontroversial, comprehensive definition of all art. But ... it should also be apparent that we do not go about determining what is art and what isn't on the basis of such a definition. ...
On the other hand, it is widely acknowledged that many of the concepts that we use with admirable effectiveness are not governed by essential definitions. ...
... a great tradition ... presupposes ... necessary and suffficient conditions. But that tradition has been presented with serious challenges ... not only Neo-Wittgensteinianism, but what is called
prototype theory
in psychology and
the causal theory of reference
in the analysis of natural kinds. It is
not important,
at this juncture,
to examine
each of these challenges.
🤣 🤣 🤣
I got nothin' but time!
You got a bus to catch or something?
It is enough to note that the authority of the definitional approach to concepts is not unqualified.
...
Identification and historical narration
One way to approach the question of how we classify artifacts as artworks is to consider how we proceed in
problem situations.
...
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... in circumstances like these, our thinking about what makes something art comes to the fore. A challenge ... forces us to become explicit ...
...
throughout the twentieth century,
...
accusations have abounded that this or that candidate is not art.
...
...
...
generally the proponent of the work in question responds by
telling a story
that links the contested work to preceding art ... [such] that [it] can be seen to be the intelligible outcome of recognizable modes of thinking and making ...
This ... of course, presupposes that
we already know
that some objects are art, ...
Well, sure. We can see where all of this is heading.
Constructing the ideal case as a reactive defense against this (not terribly intelligent) attack doesn't exactly vindicate the
comprehensive
ness
of the
story
.
The quality of the defense can only be as good as the quality of the
challenge
.
Then, using this antecedent knowledge as a baseline, we attempt to show how the new work at issue evolves from work already acknowledged to be artistic, ...
Well, that's never too difficult, is it?
it is a truism of logic that everything resembles everything else in some respect.
(p. 222)
...
Typically, the question of whether or not x is an artwork arises in a context in which some skeptic
fails to see
how the object under dispute could have been produced within the network of practices with which she is familiar— ...
Saying that such a
skeptic
has bothered to look for anything in particular is kind of like saying that
that we identify candidates by subsuming them under a definition.
And then, telling such people to look again is actually much stupider even than that.
There is a perceived gap, ... the standard way of
[253]
filling in that gap is to produce a certain type of historical narrative, ... to, in a manner of speaking,
fill in the distance
between a Rembrandt and a readymade.
Hmm.
This is merely
a manner of speaking
you say?
The here comes everything problem would be dissolved if we could simply measure the "distance" traveled in any given "resemblance" proposition. This would take the edge off the old "truism", since it's always a bit discouraging to think that no "resemblance" proposition can take any precedence over any other. But the impossibility of measurement seems to be a parallel unstated assumption (or is it a consequence?) of the truism itself.
If measurement were possible, the truism would still be 'true', but it wouldn't matter a lick: if everyone could see just how far a resemblance-proposition has traveled, there would be little danger of that proposition being taken to prove more than it does.
To counter the suspicion that x is not a work of art, the friend of x has to show how x
emerged intelligibly
from acknowledged practices ... With a contested work what we try to do is place it within a tradition where it becomes
more and more intelligible.
And the standard way of doing this is to produce an historical narrative.
Our Man breaks everything he touches, and so I can hardly lament that he keeps leaning on
intelligib
ility
as a product of
narrative
"Intelligibility" per se can be measured, in any number of ways. But this is no measure of truth, nor even of plausibility.
Truth is not intelligible! What would we even do with it, if we happened upon some? Probably nothing! What could we do?
Similarly: Some of the most intelligible propositions are among the most irrational.
...
... the defender of Brillo Box [e.g.] begins by pointing out something about the art-historical context in which the work appeared. ... Much modern painting has been overtly flat precisely for the purpose of asserting the idea that, in reality, paintings are flat ... Painters in this tradition ... were thought to be involved in
a philosophical venture,
the project of defining the nature of their artform.
This does seem like the way to do that, if that's what's being sought.
But do see above, re: 'interrogation', for the road not yet traveled here, i.e. for the method of determining whether this is really the
venture
that
Painters in this tradition
thought themselves to be engaged in.
...
...
...
Once one is
made aware
of the historical context of the work, Warhol's Brillo Box can be placed as a
[254]
rational, if not ingenious, expansion upon antecedently acknowledged artworld modes of making and thinking. ... if one can construct an accurate historical narrative that renders intelligible the emergence of Brillo Box, ... then that establishes the art status of Brillo Box, or, at least, it
shifts the burden of proof
entirely onto the skeptics.
That is,
once a resemblance has been named,
it cannot be denied.
This is no matter of
proof
.
Not anymore.
The "truism" has made an end run around all that sort of thing.
Of course, in some cases, skeptics may not accept the starting point ... Perhaps some skeptics will query whether Cubism is art,
🥱 🥱 🥱
...
However, here, the friend of Warhol merely needs to start her historical narrative earlier, at some point in art history that the skeptic accepts ...
😴 😴 😴
...
...
...
it is also frequently the case that such historical narratives are told
before
skeptics raise their objections.
Yes, preregistration is the way to go!
These ... are not advanced simply
to forestall criticism,
but to enable viewers
to understand
where the artist is coming from,
🙄 🙄 🙄
🤐 🤐 🤐
to see why her choices
make sense
given the logic
of the artworld situation in which she finds herself.
Yeah right,
logic
.
If
"logic" is how we show that
"everything resembles everything else in some respect",
then
what's stopping us from plugging in two
choices
as
Thing₁
and
Thing₂,
and then,
simili modo,
two
situation
s,
S₁ and S₂
?
Saying that
people make "choices" according to "logic"
is kind of like saying . . .
When an artwork is challenged or likely to be challenged, our response is
not a definition,
but an explanation.
". . . Sweetie, wait . . . I can
explain
! . . ."
...
[255]
...
If this is how we generally establish that a candidate is art in cases where
there is some dispute,
it also reveals something about how we incorporate objects in the category of art
in the ordinary course
of affairs. ... We classify a candidate as an artwork by placing it in a tradition.
Hmm.
It has yet to be shown (at all!), beyond merely incanting the liturgy, that the
dispute
case illumines any
ordinary
course of business.
On the face of it I can see no reason to think that it does.
In fact we began with the observation that
A challenge
forces us to be explicit
.
That is, "ordinarily" we are not so "explicit".
...
...
...
As we have seen
...
developments in art history have been a problem for the philosophy of art.
Indeed, the future is a glaring counterexample to the proposition that Nothing is hidden.
But if we simply tack on,
". . . and don't think you can see the future!"
then the aphorism will not only stand but actually be improved.
Attempts to define art have often failed because
they do not
anticipate the future
developments in the history of art. ... One advantage of the narrative approach is that ...
narrative itself
is
a tool
for
rendering change
intelligible.
Yes,
it is usually easier to
explain
after
the fact
than
before
it.
No breaking news there.
But are the prospective theorist and the retrospective narrator really seeking to "explain" the same thing? Can we take the object to be the same in the one case as in the other?
Theorists are annoying, certainly; but if we do take them to be making predictions, then we have to say, on this basis, that they are the ones practicing 'preregistration': it is their theories which are actually put to the acid test of
history
and which, in every known case (we are told), "history" has had the last laugh.
But then, no preponderance of failure here can be taken to indicate against the mere possibility of success. Hence theory-building continues apace.
We might observe that preregistration, conventionally speaking, has been much slower to catch on; but maybe it would be better to say that the recent efforts to this end have been matters of compressing the time-scale on which preregistration unfolds. If we are taking Bell-Fry to have been refuted ('theory-refuted') by Duchamp-Warhol, then that is to say that the 'refutation' was damnably slow in arriving. But the preregistration was made: that is the whole reason why we can identify a discrete Bell-Fry Theory at all.
As for hindsight . . . hindsight can be mistaken! This is the past failure argument standing on its head. Better, it is standing with its back to us, and when we ask hindsight to save us the trouble of scientific rigor, our past failures bend over and moon us. Nothing is coming to save us from our errant hindsight theories. History is not coming to bail us out this time, because it has already tried its best to do so, once and forever. So, with all of that safely behind us, now we're free to spin all the narrative we want, and the scope for justifying our "explanations" here is so wide that these can hardly be called 'justifications' at all.
All to say:
caught between "theory" and "narrative",
we are
infinitely better off
sticking with theory.
Nota bene,
however:
also to say,
this is not saying much!
The narrative approach attempts to handle the developmental aspect ... by treating it
as a conversation.
As in a conversation, so in artistic practice there is
an expectation
of artists that they be concerned to
make original contributions
...
Well, sure.
As a private citizen of a particular milieu, I'll cosign this prescription . . . but it is a prescription, and so it had better be kept out of the present discussion.
Weitz's recasting of bygone theories as 'honorific' certainly does not cast these theories as
conversation
starters. In that metaphor, they are more like conversation enders. But emphasizing the negative aspects of this at the expense of its affirmative aspects is a move which smells of mauvais foi. The expectation of
original contributions
is more often onerous than conducive, both in conversation and in art. There is something to be said for settling on an ending and leaving things there!
...
However, as in a conversation, the contribution must
have some relevance
to
what has gone before.
... What
[256]
the narratives we have been discussing do is
to make salient the relevance
of new works to the evolving conversation of art history. For, of course, if such works are completely irrelevant to art history, there is no reason to suppose that they are artworks.
What is
art history
relevant to
?
Seriously, "narrative" and "intelligibility" are problematic enough. Do we really need to introduce
relevance
on top of all that mess?
... some of the artist's interlocutors—the general public and its representatives among the critical estate—often fail to catch the relevance of the artist's "remark" ... the "originality" of the work, but not its relevance. There is, in other words, a glitch in the conversation.
Well,
that is a hazard of
"conversation" specifically,
not of experience more generally.
Conversation creates glitches where there were none before. The palliative is obvious!
But if this is the problem, ... [make] the relevance of the artist's contribution ... [more] evident. Bring perhaps
unremarked or unnoticed
presuppositions
into the open.
Point to
overlooked features
of the context. Make the intentions of the artist explicit, and show that said intentions are intelligible ...
Well, you'd have to think that there is no good reason why something has been
unnoticed
or
overlooked
.
But there are always good reasons for this, and we don't need to have storytime in order to reveal them. A wise man once said: such reasons are 'open to view'. It is such things as Our Man's precious
relevance
and
intentions
that are 'hidden'. And that is the tell.
Of course,
reconstructing the conversation
in this way amounts to a historical narrative. Where
something is missing
from the conversation—some connection—it is
supplied by retelling
the conversation in a way that historically reconstructs it, while simultaneously
filling it in.
Where we can produce a
genuine,
historical narrative of this sort, we have, generally,
sufficient grounds
for categorizing a candidate as an artwork. Historical narration is
a reliable method
for identifying art—for
explaining why
a candidate is an artwork—and, moreover, it has
a solid claim
for being the method that
we generally employ.
The narrative approach to classifying artworks establishes the art status of a candidate
by connecting the work
in question
to previously acknowledged artworks
and practices. In this regard, it may appear to recall
the family resemblance approach.
Like,
artists be all like,
"twist"
lil piece o' art
"fibre on fibre"
or some shit?
However, the narrative approach is not merely
an affair of similarities
between past and present art. The pertinent correspondences
must be shown
to be part of
a narrative development.
Such historical narratives
track processes
of
cause and effect,
decision and action,
and
lines of influence.
Unlike
the Neo-Wittgensteinian method
for
identifying artworks,
the narrative approach links present art to past art not in terms of
some unspecified notion
of resemblance, but in terms of its descent—its
genetic (or causal) linkage
to earlier acknowledged artworks and artistic practices.
Okay, maybe I still have not entirely grasped the critique of Weitz at all, but even so, this is a jaw-droppingly stupid passage from one of the leading lights of the field.
Gentlemen:
How did we get here?
Thus, according to the narrative approach, contemporary avant-garde works are classified as artworks
in virtue of their ancestry,
where that ancestry is explained by means of
a narrative
or genealogy.
Thus, with its emphasis on genetic links between new art and past
[257]
paradigms, the narrative approach not only differs from Neo-Wittgensteinianism, but avoids the problems of the family resemblance method.
Well, there is no such
method
.
Of course, many works
do not require
such elaborate genealogical briefs on their behalf. That is probably due to the fact that in most cases
we already understand
how to place them
in the tradition.
This
is
the family resemblance
"method", so to speak, if anything is.
The "method":
enfranchise the
understand
ing
we
already
possess,
and
kindly refrain from speaking any
new
"understandings" into existence.
But where there is some question ... , the canonical method for negotiating the issue is historical narration. ... whether
implicitly understood
or
explicitly constructed
...
What would an
implicitly
constructed
narrative
be?
...
...
[although]
we often derive our models of kindhood from physics and chemistry, where elements are grouped in virtue of
some intrinsic, microphysical property
that explains its other projectible properties. ... not all kinds, even in the sciences, are like this. For example,
species are historical
entities—they are groups of organisms that are sorted together by virtue of
their common history
rather than by virtue of
intrinsic resemblances
...
As always, this is done 'for a purpose'.
What is that purpose in this case? I need to learn much more (anything) about this. So far I get the sense that all or part of the answer is: this is all in service of making predictions.
One of the first nuggets we turned up in this Wild Goose Chase was:
"From a practical perspective, grouping species monophyletically facilitates prediction far more than does polyphyletic grouping. ... [e.g.] Linnaeus' assignment of plants with two stamens to the polyphyletic class Diandria, while practical for identification, turns out to be useless for prediction, since the presence of exactly two stamens has developed convergently in many groups."
The reason for this is that species, by their nature, evolve, typically showing variations not merely in some of their peripheral characteristics, but,
in principle, in all
of their features.
No particular feature,
no matter how central to our stereotype ... is essential for an organism to be a member ... What is crucial, as Darwin claimed, is descent.
Hmm.
Species-descent and art-descent are not the same mechanism. The reason why has already been let slip: it is because so many bases upon which we identify the descent of artworks are either mentalistic projections, or else they are incomplete evidence, motivatedly selected from among a vast field of mental and material phenomena.
I presume that Darwin did not base his ascrpitions of "descent" on anything so flimsy as
decision
or
influence.
His ascriptions of cause and effect arise empirically from observed
action
s.
... pheneticists—who proposed to sort species in terms of allegedly essential similarities between organisms—versus cladists—who argued that taxa are unified historically by the mechanism of common descent. In certain respects, this debate in biology repeats themes rehearsed in the philosophy of art, ...
Of course, there are
also important differences
between questions of art classification and speciation.
OMG, are you sure??
We are now only speaking of
selected analogies
between the two.
However,
the fact that cladism is regarded as a respectable solution to the problem of speciation at least indicates that in certain cases history can supply the grounds for membership in a kind.
...
[258]
...
We have already noted that it is not the case generally that we classify objects by means of definitions. There are alternative means. For example, biologists determine species membership in terms of descent. Moreover, when we look at how problem cases go in debates about art, it seems persuasive that such debates are canonically joined by advancing historical narratives on behalf of contested works. Membership in the category of art, like species membership, also appears to be a matter of descent. Similarly, the way to identify artifacts as artworks is to explain their genealogy, where this is a matter of telling a historical narrative.
Historical narratives: their
strengths and weaknesses
The claim before us is that
identifying art
is more plausibly understood as a matter of narration rather than definition.
Well, if this was all about
identifying
and not about 'predicting', then the
phenetic
way ought to be sufficient.
To weigh this claim effectively, a little more has to be said about the nature of the narratives in question. ...
Though the relevant sort of narrative understanding is often merely implicit ... , it comes into the foreground in disputed cases ... On such occasions, the way in which we defend the art status of an avant-garde candidate is to connect it to
practices
that are
already acknowledged
to be artistic.
Which and how many will do the trick? Nothing will!
P
ractices
as
identif
iers
seem as clear an example as any of the family resemblance problem: we can't just pass the necessary + sufficient buck to "practices" once we've found that it doesn't stop with discrete artifacts themselves.
It seems possible, also, that the catalog of "practices already acknowledged" has not actually been determinative of "identification" of any now-established artworks.
Since this kind of narrative is an historical narrative, it is
committed to being accurate.
". . . So that's what
historical
means . . ."
You tell 'em, buddy!
...
This ... also tells us something important about the relevant sort of identifying narratives; it tells us where they begin. ... [i.e.] at
some historical juncture
where everyone agrees
we know that
artistic practices are involved.
Like,
we
agree
about it now?
Or
we
used to
"agree" about it,
while it was happening?
... it is the point of this type of narrative to
explain
the art status of some present, disputed candidate ... by showing that it
emerged from
and is
connected to
such an acknowledged artworld context, through a
perfectly intelligible
sequence of
choices
of a sort based on existing
artistic aims
that are themselves acknowledged to be
alive and accepted
in the artworld under discussion.
🥵 🥵 🥵
[259]
We also know where identifying narratives end; they end with the production or presentation of the artifact in question. An identifying narrative of this sort gets us from an acknowledged artworld and its practices to the prospective entry into that artworld of a new work by a sequence of intervening steps. What do those steps involve?
[e.g.] ... let us consider ... an abstract film in which none of the images are recognizable figures. There is no story, just a disjunctive flow of shapes, ...
Most film-making is dominated by stories, ... At the same time, everyone acknowledges that film-making is a visual art. ...
... an artist like Brakhage wants to reclaim the visual attention of the audience. So, he makes films that virtually command audiences to pay attention to the look of his films. He does this by the almost willful subtraction of every other sort of source of attention— ...
... operating in an acknowledged artworld context, Brakhage assesses that context as one where insufficient attention is paid to the visual structure of films. This is an ironic state of affairs, since film is a visual art. ... Brakhage's choices ... were eminently reasonable choices, given his options in the existing context and his resolve to change that context.
...
[260]
...
...
If this narrative is
historically accurate,
and if it provides us with
the best explanation
of Brakhage's films, then there is little alternative but to regard his films as artworks. If there are no better explanations—no more comprehensive and accurate accounts of why they are as they are—then this explanation recommends that we classify Brakhage's films as artworks.
Well, there are severe limits to
comprehensive
ness
and
accura
cy
whenever we arrogate to say
why
things
are as they are
.
i.e. The
best explanation
need not even be 'good', it just has to be
better
than whatever else it is in competition with.
Ditto "comprehensive"-ness. That conceit gets nowhere without a principled basis for excluding from the narrative everything that an absolutely comprehensive account would entail.
Given the historical accuracy of this account, what other classification would make as much sense?
Well, let's not simply conflate 'most accurate' and 'most enfranchising', as if to assume that which is to be proven.
...
...
The beginning of the story involves the description of some acknowledged art-historical context.
The end of the story is a description of the production and/or presentation of the candidate for art status.
The middle of the story connects the beginning to the end.
...
...
One strong point of the Institutional Theory is the stress it places on the importance of
the reciprocal understanding
shared by
[261]
artists and audiences.
But this insight is readily incorporated into the historical approach, because the historical approach too supposes that artists and audiences must share certain understandings, namely,
an understanding of art history,
its practices,
and
the aims and purposes
that underpin those practices.
At the same time, the historical approach avoids the most frequently cited pitfall of the Institutional Theory—specifically, the charge of circularity. ...
circularity
is a defect
in definitions,
not narratives.
... Such narratives do presuppose
that we do know something
about antecedent artistic practices,
as does any
theory of art. But since the concept of art is not being invoked to define the concept of art, the issue of circularity disappears ...
...
A major virtue of the Historical Definition of Art is that it calls attention to the importance of
the artistic intention
to promote acknowledged art regards. The method of historical narration is also sensitive to this ... it counts the intended facilitation of accepted art regards as among the aims of art that may govern artistic choices. ...
However, unlike the Historical Definition, the method of historical narration does not restrict the aims that motivate genuine artistic choice to art regards. Any
live purpose
of
acknowledged practices
of artmaking—not merely the promotion of art regards—may play an enfranchising role ...
... [requiring] that the artistic aims referred to by identifying narratives be "recognized and live" purposes of the practice avoids another problem of the Historical Definition of Art. The proponent of the Historical Definition seemed compelled to accept home videos as art, since they are intended to support a historically, well-precedented art regard—
the mere appreciation
of verisimilitude.
However, since the method of historical narration only
[262]
endorses consideration of purposes that are alive in the prevailing practice, it does not have similar unfortunate consequences, since
in today's artworld,
as a matter of
historical fact,
the intention simply to promote the appreciation of perceptual verisimilitude
is no longer
a recognized and/or live artistic aim.
You heard it here first!
The method of historical narration ... is also open to some of the criticisms that beset the Institutional Theory and the Historical Definition. ... it will not count as artworks objects that we abstract from their nonartistic historical context and merely use as art, such as Eskimo fish hooks displayed by museum curators because of their beauty. But perhaps cases like this are not really so clear-cut.
Always a worthy possibility to consider. And here is exactly what is
not really so clear cut
:
it seems that neither the
Eskimo
maker nor the
museum curator
has been able to entirely defeat the other; yet our problem here, even having left "definition" behind, is
identification
,
and running through everything that has been said here is an assumption that this is a binary question, i.e., that our verdict must hold for all time.
The commonsense, unphilosophical conclusion might be: well, of course it was not an artwork for the Eskimo, but it is for us.
Or, perhaps in Mandelbaum's version: I saw him playing cards, whereas he saw himself telling fortunes.
I feel my greatest (possibly only) affinity with the Deconstructionists here, for it seems that if we simply must choose to enfranchise one side or the other, that we do not do so for any practical or principled reason, but rather because we have, within ourselves, already 'enfranchised' one side or the other, and as a result we now find ourselves on the defensive. This is the
explanation
that mere "history" cannot be; but of course, even after realizing this, we're not likely to drop our claim, for the stakes remain as before.
That
we use
certain things as art—like traffic signs as wall decoration—does not
clearly make artworks
of those things.
"Decision" and" intention"
can make an artwork,
but mere
use
cannot!
You heard it here first!
So maybe examples like this present problems neither for Historical Definitions nor for the method of historical narration.
Like the Institutional Theory, the method of historical narration is inhospitable to the notion of the solitary artist. It regards art as a practice in which newcomers are granted entry to the artworld in virtue of their social ancestry— ... artworks produced in an artworld of one are beyond the reach of identifying narratives. Is this a liability of the historical approach?
Either way, this raises the question of what else might be
beyond the reach
.
S
ocial ancestry
is constantly being lost to time!
Here the proponent of the historical approach can make several replies. The first is to say that all that she claims is that an identifying narrative provides
a sufficient condition
for classifying artworks. Thus, there may be
other grounds
... , even if historical narration is
the standard way.
If the work of a truly solitary artist is art, then there may be some exceptional grounds for calling it such. However, that would not call into question the central claim ...
... Of course, the proponent of the historical method might also make a stronger reply. ... [e.g.] given the social nature of human beings, the possibility of a truly solitary artist is at best a logical fiction. ... [ergo] neglecting hypothetical cases of so-called solitary artists is not a pressing problem. ...
[263]
...
... another possible problem with the historical approach ... art from other cultures ...
...
...
how does someone outside the tradition in question establish that the aforesaid tradition is an artistic practice?
...
how do we know with alien traditions that the narrative model is available?
In such cases, one needs to look for
reasons other than narrative reasons
for regarding the alien tradition as artistic. ... If
in its earliest stages
the practices ... are intended to perform the same functions ... that the earliest stages of our own tradition performed in our culture, then we have grounds to regard the alien tradition as an artistic practice. And
once we regard
the earlier stages of the alien tradition as an artistic practice, then
we may go on
to identify subsequent contributions to the tradition as artworks ...
But this ... requires that the historical method ... needs to be supplemented, on some occasions, by
a functional analysis
of the role of certain practices in alien cultures. And this entails that we have not provided a single answer to the question of how we go about identifying artworks. Is this a problem?
... The admission that sometimes, but only sometimes, we resort to functional analysis only shows that historical narration is
not the only
strategy we use for classifying art, ... We do not look for functional analogies between aboriginal art and postmodernism; ...
[264]
... The fact that we employ more than one method for identifying art merely
reflects the complexity
of the phenomenon.
It would be nice
to have a single answer to the question of how we identify art, but if the data are too complex, we should not let our desire for a single answer obscure the truth.
...
If the method of historical narration is not as economical as some of its competitors, does this apparent liability outweigh the advantages it offers?
...
Arriving at a satisfactory definition of art has proven arrestingly elusive.
This does not show that art cannot be defined.
But inasmuch as
no one has been able
to do it successfully,
it seems unlikely
that all along we have been classifying art by means of an essential definition. We must be using
some other method.
...
...
...
the method of historical narration has nothing to fear from the avant-garde;
...
it is well tailored to incorporating
...
the continuous evolution of art.
...
...
[265]
Chapter summary
...
...
...
...
A consequence of the defeat of Neo-Wittgensteinianism has been
a return
to the project of defining art essentially. ... Two of the better-known theories of this sort are the Institutional Theory of Art and the Historical Definition of Art. These are
[266]
sophisticated viewpoints that call our attention to important features of our commerce with artworks. However, both theories are highly controversial and have been subjected to strong criticisms. Thus,
we still appear to be
in a position where no existing definition of art has been decisively proven to be adequate.
But if no one is able to articulate a satisfactory definition of art, it seems unlikely that we identify artworks by means of an essential definition. If we were possessed of such a definition,
why would it be so difficult to extract?
It's because "identification" and "definition" are different processes, underwritten by different theoretical (pre)commitments and aimed at different ultimate purposes.
Is that just what were you going to say?
Furthermore, many of our concepts are not governed by essential definitions. So why suppose that art is?
...
The alternative we explored in the last part of this chapter ... proposes that narratives—called identifying narratives—rather than definitions model the way in which we identify artworks. ...
Readers may discover criticisms of the method of historical narration that have not appeared as yet in the literature.
🧐 🧐 🧐
...
Or, maybe, the reader,
dissatisfied with everything she has found between these covers,
will feel moved to develop her own approach to the subject. That would be all to the good.
🤓 🤓 🤓
...
Annotated reading
The most comprehensive survey of recent developments regarding the topics discussed in this chapter is Stephen Davies' Definitions of Art (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991). ...
[267]
Perhaps the most cited article with regard to Neo-Wittgensteinianism is Morris Weitz's "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," ... See also Weitz's The Opening Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). ...
George Dickie has set forth versions of the Institutional Theory of Art in numerous articles and books.
...
Jerrold Levinson is the leading defender of the Historical Definition of Art. He develops this approach in: "Defining Art Historically," British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 19 (1979), pp. 232-250; "Refining Art Historically," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 47 (1989), pp. 21-33; and "Extending Art Historically," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 51 (1993), pp. 411-423.
The method of historical narration for identifying artworks is advanced by Noël Carroll in: "Art, Practice and Narrative," The Monist, vol. 71 (1988), pp. 140-156; "Historical Narratives and the Philosophy of Art," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 51 (1993), pp. 313-326; and "Identifying Art," in Institutions of Art: Reconsiderations of George Dickie's Philosophy, edited by Robert J.Yanal (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 3-38. Also, Peter Kivy has used the narrative approach to explain the enfranchisement of absolute music as art in his Philosophies of Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chapter 1.
The notion of art as a conversation in the section on identifying narratives in this chapter of the present book is adapted from Jeffrey Wieand, "Putting Forward A Work of Art," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 41 (1983), p. 618.
...
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