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Class 2: Defining Art

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain(1917)

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Class 2: Defining Art

George Dickie: “The New Institutional Theory of Art”

Background• Found Art (“Readymade”; “Objet Trouvé”)

Thesis:“A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.” (222)

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Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel(1913)

Class 2: Defining Art

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Man Ray, Gift(1921, 1958)

Class 2: Defining Art

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Class 2: Defining Art

George Dickie: “The New Institutional Theory of Art”

Background• Found Art (“Readymade”; “Objet Trouvé”)

Thesis:A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.

• Danto’s “Artworld”- Key question: What makes Fountain anything other

than merely a urinal?- “To see something as art requires something the eye

cannot descry – an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.”

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Class 2: Defining Art

Background (cont’d)• Danto’s “Artworld” (cont’d)

- Conceptual revolution required, allowing new art kinds to be added without removing old art kinds.

• Weitz’s “Anti-Essentialism”- “Art” is too complex an idea to be defined by a

single theory.- Warehouse Test- Wittgensteinian “family resemblance”

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Class 2: Defining Art

Artifacts• Reacting to definitions of art like Collingwood’s or

Tolstoy’s, Dickie wants to maintain that a work of art is an artifact: “an object made by man, especially with a view to subsequent use.”

• But: Dickie argues that an artifact need not be a physical object (poems, etc.).

• Fountain is an artifact where the urinal is the artistic medium in the same way that the marble is the artistic medium used in creating a traditional sculpture.

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Class 2: Defining Art

Similarity Art and Non-Similarity Art• Non-similarity art (artifactual) as more basic than

similarity art. Non-similarity art created by human activity of making (alteration or manipulation); similarity art created by human activity of noticing similarities.

• Being a work of art is “a status achieved as the result of creating an artifact within or against the background of the artworld.” (217)

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Class 2: Defining Art

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain(1917)

men’s room urinal

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Class 2: Defining Art

The Artworld• Indiscernibles: “The fact that the first element of each

pair is a work of art and the second is not although the elements of each pair are visually indistinguishable shows that the first object in each pair must be enmeshed in some sort of framework or network in which the second element is not.” (218)- It is being enmeshed in this framework that makes

the first a work of art, and the second not.

• The Artist: Intends to create a thing of a kind which is presented, even if she does not actually intend to present it.

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Class 2: Defining Art

The Artworld (cont’d)• The Artist

(i) is aware of her creation as “art”(ii) has an ability to use art techniques

• The Public(i) is aware of the creation as “art”(ii) is sensitive to the particular kind of art presented

• “There are as many different publics as there are different arts, and the knowledge required for one public is different from that required by another public.” (219)

• Supplementary artworld roles: critic, art teacher, curator, conductor…

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Class 2: Defining Art

The Artworld (cont’d)• Artworld Systems

- “[T]he artworld consists of a set of individual artworld systems, each of which contains its own specific artist and public roles plus other roles. For example, painting is one artworld system, theater is another, and so on.” (221)

Definition:“A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.” (222)

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Class 2: Defining Art

Secondary Artifacts• “Works of art are artifacts of a primary kind in this

domain, and playbills and the like which are dependent on works of art are artifacts of a secondary kind within this domain.” (222)

Circularity• “The circularity of the definitions shows the

interdependency of the central notions. These central notions are inflected, that is, they bend in on, presuppose, and support one another. What the definitions reveal is that art-making involves an intricate, co-relative structure which cannot be described in the straight-forward, linear way envisaged by the ideal of noncircular definition.” (222)

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Class 2: Defining Art

Questions & Problems(1) Dickie’s account does not solve the problem left over

from Weitz’s theory: how to account for the first artwork.

(2) Why don’t playbills count as artworks, with artworld systems of their own?

(3) What happens if an object is removed from the artworld context?

(4) Doesn’t the artworld public ultimately have to appeal to something intrinsic to identify objects as artworks?

(5) Dickie’s account doesn’t seem to tell us anything about evaluation, only classification.

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Class 2: Defining Art

Jerrold Levinson: “Defining Art Historically”Thesis:

“X is an artwork at t =df X is an object of which it is true at t that some

person or persons, having the appropriate proprietary right over X, nonpassingly intends (or intended) X for regard-as-a-work-of-art – i.e., regard in any way (or ways) in which objects in the extension of ‘artwork’ prior to t are or were correctly (or standardly) regarded.” (240)

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Class 2: Defining Art

Background• Levinson is reacting to the first (1974) version of

Dickie’s “Institutional Theory” – in Dickie’s original version:- One could not create private, isolated art (a work

required the artworld to confer the status of “art” upon it).

- The institution plays a much greater role, and does not merely play the part of the informed public.

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Class 2: Defining Art

Central Notion:• New art is art because of a relation to past art. Art of the

recent past is art because it bears the same relation to art of the not so recent past… and so on, back to the ur-arts.

• Ur-Art: The proto-art, or precursor to art, from which art develops, but which is not, itself, art.

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Class 2: Defining Art

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Class 2: Defining Art

Christo & Jean-Claude,The Gates

(2005)

Claes Oldenburg,Floor Burger

(1962)

Henri Matisse,Jeannette V

(1916)

fertility goddess(primordial)

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Class 2: Defining Art

Central Notion:• New art is art because of a relation to past art. Art of the

recent past is art because it bears the same relation to art of the not-so-recent past… and so on, back to the ur-arts.

• Ur-Art: The proto-art, or precursor to art, from which art develops, but which is not, itself, art.

• Three likely ways that a new work might be related to some previous work:(i) external similarity(ii) intended to afford the same pleasure/experience(iii) intended to be regarded or treated in the same way

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Class 2: Defining Art

(i) external similarity• Fails: some iron sculptures more closely resemble

portions of junkyards than they do previous works of art(ii) intended to afford the same pleasure/experience

• Fails: (1) pleasures/experiences derived from art are not necessarily unique to art; (2) it is the ways in which one approaches a work that gives one the pleasures/experiences

(iii) intended to be treated or regarded in the same way• It is more reasonable to think the artist is concerned with

what is done with the object, not necessarily with what is gotten out of the object.

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Class 2: Defining Art

Definition (first pass)“X is an artwork=df X is an object that a person or persons, having the

appropriate proprietary right over X, nonpassingly intends for regard-as-a-work-of-art – i.e., regard in any way (or ways) in which prior artworks are or were correctly (or standardly) regarded.” (236)

• intends – makes, appropriates, or conceives for the purpose of…• nonpassingly – intent cannot be merely transient• regard-as-a-work-of-art – how earlier artworks were regarded• proprietary right – you cannot ‘artify’ what you don’t own

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Class 2: Defining Art

Three Kinds of Intention(1) specific art-conscious intention(2) nonspecific art-conscious intention(3) art-unconscious intention

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Class 2: Defining Art

Definition (second pass)“X is an artwork at t=df X is an object of which it is true at t that a person

or persons, having the appropriate proprietary right over X, nonpassingly intends (or intended) X for regard-as-a-work-of-art – i.e., regard in any way (or ways) in which artworks existing prior to t are or were correctly (or standardly) regarded.” (238)

• Allows that an object may be an artwork at one time, and not another (found art).

• An object may become art, long after its initial creation, if it later matches up with how art is regarded.

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Class 2: Defining Art

Circularity• Doesn’t this definition define art in terms of art?

- Reflexive, not circular: it defines “being art at a given time” by reference to those things that are art at an earlier time.

- “True, one cannot use the definition to tell, all at once, what has, does, and will count as art at all times, but this is because the applicability of ‘art’ at any stage is always tied to its concrete, historical realization at that stage.

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Class 2: Defining Art

Definition (third pass)“X is an artwork at t =df X is an object of which it is true at t that some

person or persons, having the appropriate proprietary right over X, nonpassingly intends (or intended) X for regard-as-a-work-of-art – i.e., regard in any way (or ways) in which objects in the extension of ‘artwork’ prior to t are or were correctly (or standardly) regarded.” (240)

• “[T]he meaning of ‘art now’ involves the extension of ‘art previously’[and] the meaning of ‘art at t’ is to be given in terms of the extension of ‘art prior to t’.”

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Class 2: Defining Art

Problem of Revolutionary Art• What about works for which previous ways of approaching art

are entirely inadequate?- Strategy 1: The artist (a) intends that his work be approached

as previous works have, but also (b) intends that this approach will prove difficult, and patrons will have to alter their approach. Here, (b) is the true aim of the artist, but it requires (a) to be viewed as art at all.

- Strategy 2: Revise the definition as follows: “…regard in any way (or ways) in which prior artworks are or were correctly (or standardly) regarded, or in some other way in contrast to and against the background of those ways.” (242) – for an artwork to be revolutionary, it must nod to past works!

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Class 2: Defining Art

The Ur-Arts (and Definition, fourth pass):• “Initial Step: Objects of the ur-arts are artworks at t0 (and

thereafter). Recursive Step: If X is an artwork prior to t, then Y is an artwork at t if it is true at t that some person or persons, having the appropriate proprietary right over Y, nonpassingly intends (or intended) Y for regard in any way (or ways) in which X is or was correctly regarded.” (243)• The ur-arts are those objects first regarded in the way that

artworks would be regarded.• “What the recursive definition does […] is to generate all

artworks by a method that closely parallels and illuminates the actual historical process of the evolution of art.” (244)

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Class 2: Defining Art

Questions & Problems(1) Is the definition too inclusive? Don’t we regard some

non-art things in some of the ways that we regard some artworks? Does Levinson mean “total” regard? If so, what does that mean?

(2) Does the definition tell us anything about evaluation? (3) If an object was created 500 years ago, and was

intended to be regarded as artworks of 501 years ago were, but is not regarded as works of today are regarded, is it no longer art?

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Class 2: Defining Art

Roy Lichtenstein,Whaam!(1963)

Source forWhaam!