The topic of this article is the relationship of street art to both the street and the artworld. I take it as significant that philosophers have turned their attention to “street art” and not, say, “urban outdoor art” or “site-specific art in urban settings.” The “street” in street art seems to imply more than a location or geographic modifier. I consider the further significance of the “street” in street art, and the view, argued or assumed, of the street when philosophers (...) discuss street art. My second target in this article is what I have called the “discontinuity thesis.” This is the idea, defended or assumed in some of the most important philosophical writing about street art, that street art represents a radical break with the artworld and is “antithetical” to it. I argue that the discontinuity thesis is mistaken, and that to understand the larger institutional context of street art we must examine the sociology of artworlds. Street art has followed a familiar process and pioneering street artists are best seen as “mavericks” in Howard Becker’s sense. I argue that seeing street artists in this way can help better understand and appreciate their work. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a descriptive definition of art that is able to accommodate the existence of bad art, while illuminating the value of good art. This, I argue, is something that existing definitions of art fail to do. I approach this task by providing an account according to which what makes something an artwork is the institutional process by which it is made. I argue that Searle’s account of institutions and institutional facts shows that the existence of all (...) institutions is due to their being perceived by their participants to perform some humanly valuable function. I then identify the functions to which the existence of art institutions is due. I then use these functions to provide a reductive institutional definition of art. Finally, in section seven, I examine the account’s consequences for the value of good art. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that, in a number of publications in the early 1950s, Margaret Macdonald argues that art does not admit of definition, that art is—in the sense associated with Wittgenstein—a family resemblance concept, and that definitions of art are best understood as confused or poorly expressed contributions to art criticism. This package of views is most typically associated with a famous paper by Morris Weitz from 1956. I demonstrate that Macdonald advanced that package prior to Weitz, indeed, (...) prior to any other philosopher of art of the period. Despite this, Macdonald’s contribution is nowhere to be found in the subsequent literature on the definition of art. In closing, I raise the prospect that Macdonald was in fact the primary influence on the development of Weitz’s critique of the definitional project. (shrink)

This article explores the question as to whether images generated by Artificial Intelligence such as DALL-E 2 can be considered artworks. After providing a brief primer on how technologies such as DALL-E 2 work in principle, I give an overview of three contemporary accounts of art and then show that there is at least one case where an AI-generated image meets the criteria for art membership under all three accounts. I suggest that our collective hesitancy to call AI-generated images art (...) stems from the lack of a clear author figure. I propose two possible complementary solutions. First, that some AI-generated images as artworks are conjunctively authored by both the developers of the AI and the prompt-giver. Second, that AI image generators can themselves be considered works of art authored by the developers. I conclude by way of suggesting that we might have separate art competitions specifically for AI-generated artworks. (shrink)

The last twenty‐five years have seen a radical shift in the work of politically committed artists. No longer content to merely represent social reality, a new generation of artists has sought to change it, blending art with activism, social regeneration projects, and even violent political action. I assess how this form of contemporary art should lead us to rethink theories of artistic value and argue that these works make a convincing case for an often‐dismissed position, namely, the pragmatic view of (...) artistic value. However, the pragmatic view, when properly applied, sets the bar high indeed—art that tries to change society should be considered good art only when it succeeds in making a tangible difference. (shrink)

In his groundbreaking work, Abstraction and Empathy, Wilhelm Worringer delved into the intricacies of various abstract and figurative artworks, contending that they evoke distinct impulses in the human audience—specifically, the urges towards abstraction and empathy. This article asserts the presence of empirical evidence supporting the extension of Worringer’s concepts beyond the realm of art appreciation to the domain of art-making. Consequently, it posits that abstraction and empathy serve as foundational principles guiding the production of both abstract and figurative art. This (...) holds particular significance in the 21st century, where artificial intelligence (AI) assumes a creative role that was absent during Worringer’s initial formulation of his theory. Thus, this paper postulates that AI inherently harbors a predisposition for the generation of abstract art, owing to its non-living and inorganic origins and functioning. (shrink)

One cannot ignore the institutions that surround art if one wants to deliver a theory of art acknowledging that art lives through a community of social relationships and assumes meaning as such. I make the claim that the evolution of sports from mere play, survival, and diversion toward the global phenomenon of modern sports can likewise be understood as a function of social connectivity. In this article, I first outline the theory of art, then link that to sport as an (...) institution to then develop the thesis that art and sport institutionalize the body in a particular way and deduce that this creates culture. I conclude that both art and sport, a notion somewhat derived from Wittgenstein, are kinds of... (shrink)

An introduction [version eight] to a worldview called Rond, which is based on ideas from science, philosophy, and spirituality and designed to help one understand the nature of existence and cope with the human condition. With regard to philosophy: Rond is based on the concept of rondure as applied to aesthetics, ontology, metaphysics, cosmology, scientific phenomenology, philosophy of evolution, philosophy of mind, philosophy of conduct (including axiology, ethics, political philosophy, etc.), and epistemology.

This essay argues that bullshit art is a meaningful concept that differs from bullshitting about art, although the two may occur in tandem. I defend what I call the social pretense theory of bullshit art. On this view, calling a work of art ‘bullshit’ highlights a discrepancy between the prestige accorded a work of art and its nonsense character. This category of aesthetic criticism plays a unique role that cannot be identified with kitsch but bears only a contingent connection to (...) it. (shrink)

There is a well-documented Pre-Reflective Hostility against Machine Art (PRHMA), exemplified by the sentiments of fear and anxiety. How can it be explained? The present paper attempts to find the answer to this question by surveying a considerable amount of research on machine art. It is found that explanations of PRHMA based on the (alleged) fact that machine art lacks an element that is (allegedly) found in human art (for example, autonomy) do not work. Such explanations cannot account for the (...) sentiments of fear and anxiety present in PRHMA, because the art receiver could simply turn to human art for finding the element she is looking for. By contrast, an explanation based on the idea that machine art is “symbolically” a threat to human survival can be successful, since the art receiver’s turning from machine art to human art does not eliminate the (alleged) “symbolic” threat machine art poses for human survival. If there is a pre-reflective belief or feeling that machine art is such a threat, then it is perfectly understandable why humans exhibit a pre-reflective hostility against machine art. (shrink)

This paper examines the early aesthetic writings of Joseph Margolis from the late 1950s to the mid‐1960s in order to argue for the relevance of these works in understanding Margolis’s later, more well‐known views in the philosophy of art. Specifically, the paper addresses Margolis’s early essays on the definition and ontology of art and aesthetic perception. These essays not only show Margolis engaged in the most significant debates in mid‐century analytic aesthetics but also provide important indications of the limitations of (...) that approach to thinking about the arts that informs the development of Margolis’s later cultural realism. (shrink)

You are sitting in Chez Panisse, Alice Waters’ acclaimed restaurant in Berkeley, California. After an extensively prepared, multi-course meal, out comes the dessert course: an unmodified but perfectly juicy, fresh peach. Many chefs serve such unmodified or barely-modified foods with the intention that they count as culinary art. This paper takes up the question of whether unmodified foods, served in the relevant institutional settings, can count as culinary art. I propose that there is a distinctive form of aesthetic trust involved (...) in formal culinary settings, and it plays a central role in many instances of culinary art. Culinary institutions summon aesthetic trust, which helps to explain why a dish of unmodified food served in an appropriate institutional setting can count as culinary art. (shrink)

Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. The commentator/philosophers referenced their philosophical interests through the particular examples/instantiations created by the (...) artist and in virtue of which they were then able to engage with novel and innovative thinking. From the artists’ presentations, on the other hand, emerged a series of contrasts within which philosophical and artistic ideas resonated. This interface of philosopher-artist bore witness to the fact that just as art approaches philosophy in providing its own analysis, philosophy approaches art in being a co-creator of art’s meaning. In what follows, we discuss the conception of philosophy-art that emerged from the Symposium, and the methodological minimalism which we employed in order to achieve it. We conclude by drawing out an implication of the Symposium’s achievement which is that a counterpoint to Institutional theories of art may well be the point from which future directions will take hold, if philosophy-art gains traction. (shrink)

We discuss how analysis of contemporary artworks has shaped philosophical theories about the concept of art, the ontology of art, and artistic media. The rapid expansion, during the contemporary period, of the kinds of things that can count as artworks has prompted a shift toward procedural definitions, which focus on how artworks are selected, and away from definitions that focus exclusively on artworks’ features or effects. Some contemporary artworks challenge the traditional art–ontological dichotomy between physical particulars and repeatable entities whose (...) occurrences are physical particulars. And nontraditional techniques and materials employed in contemporary art violate the boundaries of conventional media, prompting a rethinking of what artistic medium might be. (shrink)

From the late nineteenth century to the 1950s one of the main foci of aesthetic inquiry was the attempt to develop definitions of art and such related concepts as visual art, music, tragedy, beauty, and metaphor. Clive Bell (1958) famously stated that either all works of visual art have some common quality or when we speak of “work of art” we speak nonsense. DeWitt H. Parker (1939) argued more generally that the assumption underlying every philosophy of art is the existence (...) of some common nature present in all the arts. This search for a common quality or nature of art was generally taken to be a form of essentialism. (shrink)

La estética analítica hizo suyo, entre otros, el problema de la definición del arte y halló en el concepto dantiano de artworld una alternativa de solución eficiente. Motivador de subsecuentes propuestas, el costado más contextualista del programa de Arthur Danto debe aún enfrentar el reclamo de una supuesta falta de especificidad. Este escrito busca poner en diálogo dicho aporte teórico con los desarrollos hechos por Nelson Goodman en torno al arte a fin de aportar elementos de efectiva visibilidad frente a (...) tal reclamo. Al hacerlo, se prevé analizar la diferencia introducida por este último a propósito de la ejecución y la implementación como instancias configuradoras de lo artístico de espesor y relevancia para su lectura funcionalista. La articulación de un bloque explicativo afin a ambos planteos supone, así, una alternativa novedosa para el área teórica en que se inserta al tiempo que otorga una ventaja considerable frente al marco contextualista del tratamiento del problema. Analytic aesthetic addressed the problem of the definition of art and found an al ternative efficient solution in the Dantian concept of artworld. Nevertheless, the contextualist side of the Danto's program must face the claim of a certain lack of specificity. This paper seeks to link that with the developments made by Goodman around art in order to provide effective visible elements to such claim. In doing so, it is expected to analyze the difference between execution and implementation as central instances of artmaking according to his functionalist reading. The relation between both accounts represents, thus, an innovation over the theoretical area in which is inserted as much as a considerable advantage over the contextualist treatment of the problem. (shrink)

From the time of the earliest self-conscious emergence of modern painting around 1905, there have not been widely accepted criteria by which to judge the artistic significance and value of the abstract and nonobjective styles that displaced the traditions of representational art. This circumstance has made the education of artists problematic. For the arts of literature and music, modernism was a relatively short-lived phase of innovation and experimentation that was played out in works that defied easy appreciation. The attention of (...) readers was soon exhausted by literary works such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, as was the attention of listeners exhausted by Arnold Schoenberg’s serialism. Authors returned to writing... (shrink)

From the earliest days of abstract and nonobjective art, there have been no widely accepted criteria by which to judge the value or significance of innovation. Only in the visual arts has radical experimentation become the mainstream of creative endeavor, a condition that makes the vocational education of visual artists problematic. The philosopher’s institutional theory stands to describe this condition, but, because it is not a generative theory, it provides no guidance to the aspiring artist or the art educator. The (...) persistence of largely irrelevant “foundation studies” stands to illustrate the unresolved difficulties in tertiary art education. Against this background, I examine the claims of two influential art museum directors, one of whom seeks to justify the processes by which the modern artist rises to fame, while the other attributes progress in modern art to the achievements of individual artists who are exceptional in breaking the rules of the game of modern art as it played at any given time. I argue that the objectivity of these processes of discovery and critical acclaim in contemporary modern art is compromised to an extent that artworld functionaries do not themselves recognize. (shrink)

In 1938, doctors Eric Guttmann and Walter Maclay, two psychiatrists based at the Maudsley Hospital in London, administered the hallucinogenic drug mescaline to a group of artists, asking the participants to record their experiences visually. These artists included the painter Julian Trevelyan, who was associated with the British surrealist movement at this time. Published as ‘Mescaline hallucinations in artists’, the research took place at a crucial time for psychiatry, as the discipline was beginning to edge its way into the scientific (...) arena. Newly established, the Maudsley Hospital received Jewish émigrés from Germany to join its ranks. Sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, this group of psychiatrists brought with them an enthusiasm for psychoactive drugs and visual media in the scientific study of psychopathological states. In this case, Guttmann and Maclay enlisted the help of surrealist artists, who were harnessing hallucinogens for their own revolutionary aims. Looking behind the images, particularly how they were produced and their legacy today, tells a story of how these groups cooperated, and how their overlapping ecologies of knowledge and experience coincided in these remarkable inscriptions. (shrink)

(2001). International advisory board. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Trusting in Reason: Martin Hollis and the Philosophy of Social Action, pp. ebi-ebi.

In this paper, I argue that ‘art’, though an open concept, is not undefinable. I propose a particular kind of definition, a disjunctive definition, which comprises extant theories of art. I co-opt arguments from the philosophy of science, likening the concept ‘art’ to the concept ‘species’, to argue that we ought to be theoretical pluralists about art. That is, there are a number of legitimate, perhaps incompatible, criteria for a theory of art. In this paper, I consider three: functionalist definitions, (...) procedural definitions, and an intentional-historical definition. The motivation for this pluralism comes from an analysis of practice, because the term is of apparent value to practitioners. However, a closer analysis of the concept reveals that, while disjunctive definitions help us to understand how we use certain terms, they lack ontological import. In sum, I attempt to glean lessons from the philosophy of science about the philosophy of art. If my analysis is correct, we ought to be eliminative pluralists about art as a concept. (shrink)

The project of neuroaesthetics could be interpreted as an attempt to identify a ?neural essence? of art, i.e., a set of necessary and sufficient conditions formulated in the language of neuroscience, which define the concept art . Some proposals developed within this field can be read in this way. I shall argue that such attempts do not succeed in individuating a neural definition of art. Of course, the fact that the proposals available for defining art in neural terms do not (...) work does not mean that such an enterprise is in principle doomed to failure. However, I maintain that there are good reasons to suspect that in general such a definition cannot be worked out. This does not mean, though, that the study of neural correlates in artwork production and fruition is a senseless project. Neuroaesthetics could succeed in individuating widespread mechanisms common to different forms of art coming from remote cultural contexts, which presumably rely on aspects of our mind and/or brain's functioning that are innate and biologically determined, thus contrasting the idea that artistic phenomena are entirely dependent on cultural factors. (shrink)

Richard Wollheim threatened George Dickie's institutional definition of art with a dilemma which entailed that the theory is either redundant or incomprehensible and useless. This article modifies the definition to avoid such criticism. First, it shows that the definition's concept of the artworld is not vague when understood as a conventional system of beliefs and practices. Then, based on Gaut's cluster theory, it provides an account of reasons artworld members have to confer the status of a candidate for appreciation. An (...) authorised member of an artworld has a good reason to confer the status on an object if it satisfies a subset of criteria respected as sufficient within this artworld. The first horn of the dilemma is averted because explaining the reasons behind conferral cannot eliminate references to the institution, and the second loses its sharpness, as accepting partial arbitrariness of the conferral does not deprive the theory of its explanatory power. (shrink)

<P>While there are many books on the romantics, and many books on Heidegger, there has been no book exploring the connection between the two. Pol Vandevelde’s new study forges this important link. </P> <P>Vandevelde begins by analyzing two models that have addressed the interaction between literature and philosophy: early German romanticism (especially Schlegel and Novalis), and Heidegger’s work with poetry in the 1930s. Both models offer an alternative to the paradigm of mimesis, as exemplified by Aristotle’s and Plato’s discussion of (...) poetry, and both German romanticism and Heidegger owe a deep debt to Plato. The study goes on to defend the view that Heidegger was influenced by romanticism. The author’s project is thus both historical, showing the specificity of the romantic and Heideggerean works, and systematic, defending aspects of their alternative mode of thinking while also pointing to their weaknesses. </P>. (shrink)

This article explores parallel tendencies in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Ernst Gombrich’s thinking that aimed to dissolve misconceptions about mind, culture, and art that emerged in modernity but that continue to influence current art education. Section one gives an overview of Wittgenstein’s and Gombrich’s therapeutic projects, which drew on perspicuity and genealogy to eliminate confusions in thinking, rather than advance new theories. The second section illustrates Wittgenstein’s and Gombrich’s curative response to modern misconceptions about mind and culture. The analysis is extended (...) in a thematic way to dissolve similar misconceptions that prevail in current art education. The aim of the article is to provide conditions for sustaining better practices of art education. (shrink)

Argues that truth, moral right, political right, and aesthetic value may be understood as arising out of a naturalist account of humanity, if naturalism is rightly conceived.

The topic of the article is George Dickie’s institutional theory of art as one of contemporary art theories which purport to answer the “what is art?” question by defining the concept of art in terms of its necessary and sufficient conditions. Introductory part of the article brings a brief review of so-called functionalist theories, as well as of their shortcomings when compared to theories to which institutional theory belongs. Also included is a short survey of theories and arguments that significantly (...) influenced institutional theory, e.g. Danto’s “theory of meaning”. Next are presented the basics of the institutional theory. It is shown that advantages of this theory over other functionalist theories became especially visible after the appearance of art practices of the 20th century which rendered the difference between artistic and non-artistic objects extremely complex. (shrink)

Over the last decades, disciplines such as cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences have shown an increasing interest for art. It remains unclear what kind of relation these "young disciplines" should have with more traditional endeavors and, more generally, in which way they can enrich our understanding of art. In this paper, I lay down the foundations of a methodological framework which distinguishes between three basic topics: the investigation of the cognitive phenomena elicited by the experience of things that (...) we call 'artworks', the investigation of the psychological structures determining the intuitive categorization of something as art and the study of the intuitions and arguments used to build justifications about whether something is a work of art. Each of these topics can benefit from the cognitive approaches, provided that some specific methodological recommendations are respected. (shrink)

The thesis is a critical examination of Danto's philosophy of art. It begins with his article 'The Artworld' where he proposes a special is of artistic identification to distinguish artworks. Danto's idea of the artworld is discussed, a historical and contextual theory of art, which arose from his attempt to explain the difference between Warhol's Brillo Boxes sculpture and an indiscernible stack of everyday Brillo boxes. It is argued that Danto unsuccessfully attempts to shore up his artworld concept with the (...) special is. The technique of comparing indiscernible counterparts, from Danto's book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, is examined. It is argued that the technique is philosophically redundant, but it is a redundant premise which has been added to a valid inference (Danto's historical and contextual view of art: his artworld theory) therefore, this does not make the original inference invalid. Danto's treatment of metaphor, expression, and style is shown to result in four claims. First, artworks embody rhetorical ellipsis. Second, artworks share features of metaphor: they are intensional (with an s) in structure and cannot be paraphrased. Third, a work of art expresses what it is a metaphor for by the way it depicts its subject. Fourth, artworks embody style. The conclusion, has two parts. The first part gives a summary of the criticism of Danto's theory of art: (1) there are logical inconsistencies in his concept of the is of artistic identification and in his use of indiscernible counterparts, (2) his theory suffers by being over-inclusive and (3) he uses circular arguments. The second part is based on a response to the criticism: it provides a definition of art. This has three elements. First, an argument is proposed for a spectrum of artistic presence in which all human activity and artefacts can be placed. Second, there is an acceptance of Danto's view of art (or artistic presence) being both intentional (with a t) and intensional (with an s); however, by applying these concepts to a spectrum, the problem of over-inclusiveness is avoided. Finally, it is argued there can he no wholly non-circular account of art. (shrink)

I argue for the Expanded Cluster Account of art by first inquiring as to whether “art” is best described by a cluster account and where ECA fits into the current landscape of theories of concepts. Second, I explicate the relevant aspects of Boyd’s theory of natural kinds and argue that his concepts of “disciplinary matrices” and “homeostatic property clusters” have relevant roles in a proper cluster account of art, thus explicating and expanding Gaut’s account in the process. Third, I defend (...) the thesis that Boyd’s concept of “disciplinary matrix,” when applied to “art,” is fulfilled by George Dickie’s notion of “the Artworld.” Lastly, I consider objections to ECA and positively explain its heuristic and explanatory efficacy above and beyond other contemporary “anti-definitional” accounts. (shrink)

Problem identiteta u svijetu umjetnosti je važan iz mnogih perspektiva. Ovaj rad ima namjeru raspraviti identitet umjetničkih djela. Rasprava je izvedena u tri koraka: problem identifikacije predmeta kao umjetničkog djela, problem relevantnih svojstava umjetničkog djela i pitanje autora kao odlučujuće (ili ne) za identifikaciju umjetničkog djela. Ova pitanja su se otvorila evolucijom umjetničke prakse i teorije u prošlom stoljeću. Pojava ready-madea destabilizirala je čvrsti identitet umjetničkog djela te nametnula zadatak odluke o razlici između umjetničkog djela i njegovog perceptivno identičnog para. (...) Tradicionalna relevantna svojstva izgubila su svoj značaj u konceptualnoj umjetnosti, stoga moramo odlučiti koja se relevantna svojstva, čak i danas, pridaju umjetničkim djelima. Konačno, praksa posuđivanja u postmodernoj umjetnosti dovodi u pitanje pojam umjetnika i smisao izvornog stvaralaštva. (shrink)

One common way of framing the recent history of definitional theories of art has it that Wittgensteinian challenges to the definitional project were not successful in establishing the impossibility of a successful definition, but they were successful in providing limits on the kinds of theories that can work. A key part of this story concerns Morris Weitz’s argument that “art” is indefinable because art is – as he calls it – an “open concept”. The argument has since been refuted by (...) definitional theories that account for art’s openness. Doing so, in fact, has become something of a motivation for and a requirement of subsequent theories. I argue here, however, first that accepting Weitz’s premise that art is open has led to an unfortunate pessimism about providing thoroughly informative definitional theories, and second that such pessimism is unwarranted. Art is not, in fact, open in the way Weitz suggests. Recognizing this should enable us to once again seek more informative definitional theories. (shrink)