What Art Art?
One of the things that drew me to philosophy was the discipline’s attempt to answer questions that seemed impossible to answer conclusively. I hope the last few articles, which have surveyed some (but by no means all) of the most significant authors in Western philosophy, have shown how this can be a satisfying and useful discipline. Now it’s time to tackle some of those questions ourselves. I’m confident that some — like “Who on Earth thought a sitcom starring Emeril Lagasse would have any artistic merit?” — will never be answered. But even that unanswered question does suggest a more fundamental, and probably more interesting, set of questions — how the devil do we determine what it means for something to have artistic merit in the first place? And what is art, anyway?
There are any number of theories that try and figure out what we mean when we talk about art, as both a category and a term of praise. Some focus strictly on the properties of the artwork itself, like the formalist theory of art. This theory argues that objects with a certain set of characteristics — perhaps a certain arrangement of line and color, or a particular melodic structure — produce a specific pleasurable reaction (which one formalist theorist named Clive Bell calls “the aesthetic emotion”) in those with the appropriate sensitivity, a reaction that can only be caused by objects of the appropriate type — objects that earn the designation “art.” There’s no such thing as “bad art” under a theory like this, only things that try to be art and fail.
This theory offers the potential for totally objective criteria for art, if we can ever isolate the characteristics that produce something like Bell’s aesthetic emotion. It’s closely tied to theories that suggest that things like beauty are not merely in eye of the beholder, but rather just as subject to rules as natural phenomena like gravity. Another interesting element of this theory is that art is totally separated from any of its connections to the world outside art. If a landscape gives you some kind of satisfaction because it makes you think of the virtues of nature or the pleasures you have while hiking, that has nothing to do with its merit as a work of art. If you find personal inspiration from song lyrics, and find a way to apply those lyrics to something in your life, you’re not appreciating that song as a work of art. (That doesn’t necessarily mean the song doesn’t have some other kind of merit, of course.)
Another popular set of theories are institutional theories of art. These theories take as their starting point that humanity has developed customs and institutions around the notions of creating and appreciating art — museums, performance areas, how-to books, academic study, and so on and so forth. At this point in human history, many of our concepts of what qualifies as art are built around these institutions, even if we’re arguing against their decisions. (“What’s that doing in a museum? You call that art? My four year old could do better!”) We have theories about how to interpret works of art, formats that help us define classes of works of art, etc. We even have artworks, like a lot of pop art and postmodern work, that depend on our knowledge of these institutions in order to develop the theoretical framework necessary to see them as works of art in the first place. If Warhol paints a Brillo box and sticks it on a supermarket shelf, you’re not inclined to think much of it; but when that same box goes into a museum, it’s either a colossal waste of time or a brilliant commentary on commercialism and art in the twentieth century. The important thing is, the museum — and our beliefs about the museum — are as important as the physical object.
Therefore, institutional theories state, what is “art” is somehow connected to the institutions of the “art world.” That’s not just museum curators and professional art historians, of course; it’s everybody who serves as an educated audience for art. Different institutional theorists track the relationship of art to the artworld in different ways. Some say that an object that is created for the purpose of being appreciated by the artworld is a work of art; others say that an object that’s never intended for an audience can qualify as long as it is of a class (or “kind”) of objects that usually are intended for an artworld audience. So Emily Dickinson’s poems count, even if she never intended anyone to read them, because poems as a general category are objects usually intended to be appreciated by parts of the artworld. These types of theories leave questions of quality aside — works that are uninteresting and unpleasing might still be considered works of art, as long as they’re appropriately connected to the institutions. They also tie art very strongly to human society and its practices, in contrast to, say, the formalist theories.
There are also emotive theories of art, that focus on the feelings and reactions that a work evokes. Tolstoy, for example, thought that only those works which sincerely conveyed a message that could be understood across cultural and linguistic barriers truly qualified as art — a standard by which he disqualified many of Beethoven’s works along with many of his own. Other emotive theorists are not nearly as strict as Tolstoy, who connected his artistic theory with his religious ideals. Some of these other theorists focus less on the emotions of the audience and more on those felt by the creator — the purpose of the creative process is to help the creator work out some questions or feelings within him or herself, and if it strikes a chord in the audience, so much the better.
These categories are by no means an exhaustive list, and each has strengths and flaws — every theory seems to have something it can’t quite account for. That’s led some theorists to argue that trying to pin down a meaning for art may just be a waste of time, that in fact the word can connect to a number of different things that may seem almost totally unlike each other. It may well be that we come to that conclusion — but it’s probably worth grappling with some of these alternative proposals before we decide that to be the case.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.