Part III: Aesthetics

Chapter 8 Study questions for What is Art?

Make sure you understand the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Try to work out: what are the necessary conditions of being a traffic warden? What are the sufficient conditions?
Make a list of as many different artworks as you can think of. Include items from the visual, literary and performative arts. Look at your list. Are there any manifest, perceptible properties common to all such items? If so, are these properties of any help in attempting to formulate a definition of art?
Now consider whether the items on your list share any particular function, and if so, whether that is of any help in formulating a definition of art.
Earlier I suggested that Dickie’s institutional definition of art was unable to account for the (good) reasons for which individuals classified certain items as artworks. Do you think a successful definition ought to be able to account for such reasons?
Do you think a successful definition ought to be able to accommodate most or even all of the items currently classified as artworks by artists, critics and other members of the artistic community? Why/why not?
If it were true that no necessary conditions governed the concept of art, would it follow that there was no such thing as art?

Multiple Choice Questions

Weblinks for What is art?

Adajian, Thomas (2012). ‘The Definition of Art’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition. [A useful overview of issues surrounding the question of the definition of art.]

Introductory further reading for What is art?

Carroll, Noel (ed.) (2000). Theories of Art Today, University of Wisconsin Press. [A good collection, with entries from many prominent recent contributors].

Danto, Arthur (2013). What Art Is. Yale University Press. [A recent introductory work by a historically influential figure in the field].

Davies, Stephen (1991). Definitions of Art. Cornell University Press. [A comprehensive and useful orientation to the debate on the nature of art].

Freeland, Cynthia (2002). But Is It Art? Oxford University Press. [Introduction focusing on the avant-garde as an issue for defining art, and as a stimulus for development].

Kristeller, Paul (1951). ‘The Modern System of the Arts’. Journal of the History of Ideas 12(4, October): 496–527. [Classic art-historical account of how the modern concept of ‘the fine arts’ emerged].

Advanced further reading for What is art?

Beardsley, Monroe (1982). ‘Redefining Art’. In M. J. Wreen and D. M. Callen (eds), The Aesthetic Point of View. Cornell University Press, pp. 298–315. [Contains a relatively succinct statement of Beardsley’s functionalist definition of art].

Dickie, George (1969). ‘Defining Art’. American Philosophical Quarterly 6(3): 253–6. [An early statement of Dickie’s influential institutional theory].

Lopes, Dominic (2008). ‘Nobody Needs a Theory of Art’. Journal of Philosophy 105(3): 109–27. [An ingenious and persuasive attempt to argue that the project of defining art as a general category is an uninteresting one.]

Weitz, Morris (1956). ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15(1): 27–35. [An influential anti-essentialist paper, and the spur to Dickie’s attempt to define art in terms of relational properties].

Wollheim, Richard (1980). ‘The Institutional Theory of Art’. In Art and Its Objects. Cambridge University Press, pp.157–66. [Makes a powerful objection to Dickie’s Institutional Theory].