On the Periphery of the Artworld. The Case of the 55th Venice Biennale -/- The Venice Biennale is sort of a patent agency for art: if a work is exhibited at the Biennale, it is already regarded as being in the center of the contemporary artworld. This year the peculiarity of the Biennale was the emphasis on peripheral works: outsider art is brought to the center of the artworld. The notion of outsider art is paved with contradictions – it’s difficult (...) to find its place either in traditional art theory, or in avant-garde conceptions. This paper aims at making a parallel between outsider art and the readymade, highlights the similarities and differences, and proposes a new term instead of outsider art: “institutional readymade”. (shrink)

Ancient Greek philosophers claimed that the particular task of art was mimesis. This kind of view about the relation between art and the world was dominant until the beginning of the 19th century. The theory of genius rethought this relation, and it did not presume that art needs to mirror the world. On the contrary, it expected originality, that is, the creation of a new world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the artworld operates under a wider notion of (...) the ‘work of art’, e.g. Duchamp’s “readymade” and “institutional readymade”, which are linked to outsider art. In both cases, the creation of an object and the creation of an art piece are separate actions performed by different individuals. This paper attempts to tackle these problems and prove that the contemporary art does not relate primarily to the world, but mainly to the artworld. Thus, the path from art to the world goes through the artworld. (shrink)

This article owes a lot to Arthur C. Danto's heuristic writings about the Artworld, which have shown us, that the ontological status of works of art is, at least when we discuss some current, maybe even dominating trends in contemporary art, dependent on our more or less philosophical interpretations of them. The effects of the Dantoan atmosphere of theory and art historical consciousness are, still, decisive for just some contemporary art. Danto's interest in the philosophical side of contemporary art makes (...) his philosophy of art exclusive in relation to art which is less philosophically appealing than the readymade tradition, to the extent that Danto did not, for a long time, even try to incorporate problems of beauty, aesthetic experience, and formal qualities, to his theory of the Artworld. (Opening paragraph.). (shrink)

This dissertation examines the practice of categorizing works of art and its relationship to art criticism. How a work of art is categorized influences how it is appreciated and criticized. Being frightening is a merit for horror, but a demerit for lullabies. The brushstrokes in Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" (1874) look crude when seen as a Neoclassical painting, but graceful when seen as an Impressionist painting. Many of the judgments we make about artworks are category-dependent in this way, but previous research (...) has rarely examined in depth the ontological structure of art categories, how they are generated and maintained, and how they function. This dissertation fills this gap. The proposal of this dissertation can be summarized as follows. Categories (especially genres) should be analyzed as clusters of rules that regulate the responses and behaviors of agents in the artworld. The visual mundaneness is a critical reason to consider Duchamp's "Comb" (1916) provocative, given the existence of the readymade as a set of rules that justifies such reasoning. The critical and appreciative practice of which categorization is a part is a social practice of making, declaring, proposing, reforming, and developing rules of appreciation. How we appreciate artworks, and how criticism guides our appreciation, is sensitive to how we categorize artworks. How we categorize artworks is sensitive to what categories have been set up in our community and which categories are active regarding each artwork. (shrink)

In Beyond Art (2014), Dominic Lopes proposed a new theory of art, the buck passing theory. Rather than attempting to define art in terms of exhibited or genetic featured shared by all artworks, Lopes passes the buck to theories of individual arts. He proposes that we seek theories of music, painting, poetry, and other arts. Once we have these theories, we know everything there is to know about the theory of art. This essay presents two challenges to the theory. First, (...) this essay argues that Lopes is wrong in supposing that theories of arts were developed to deal with the ‘hard cases’ – developments such as Duchamp’s readymades and conceptual art. This is a problem since Lopes holds that the buck passing theory’s capacity to deal with the hard cases is one of its virtues. Second, this essay argues that the buck passing theory has no account of which activities are arts and no account of what makes some activity an art. (shrink)

Abstract: What follows is a contribution to the field of user modeling for adaptive teaching and learning programs especially in the medical field. The paper outlines existing approaches to the problem of extracting user information in a form that can be exploited by adaptive software. We focus initially on the so-called stereotyping method, which allocates users into classes adaptively, reflecting characteristics such as physical data, social background, and computer experience. The user classifications of the stereotyping method are however ad hoc (...) and unprincipled, and they can be exploited by the adaptive system only after a large number of trials by various kinds of users. We argue that the remedy is to create a database of user ontologies from which readymade taxonomies can be derived in such a way as to enable associated software to support a variety of different types of users. (shrink)

The role of the Ready-made Garment (RMG) sector in transforming the lives of working women in Bangladesh has been controversial. This study examines the impact of paid employment in the RMG sector on the empowerment of its female workers. The fieldwork includes semi-structured interviews with female garment workers to explore their lived experiences and views. The primary qualitative data analysis draws principally on Kabeer's (1999) three inter-related dimensions (resources, agency, and achievements) of empowerment. The main findings of the research are (...) that women with access to employment opportunities in this sector have become economically empowered and independent. The higher economic capacity gives them greater autonomy and makes them confident to make some household and strategic life choices. Increased access to public spaces and consciousness about their right to make life choices have boosted their self-esteem. The study concludes that paid employment in the RMG sector has a significant positive impact on the economic, social, and psychological empowerment of female workers in the readymade garments sector. However, some critical constraints in the sector continue to limit their potential for being further empowered. The findings offer valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers. (shrink)

Analizando las características de las facultades humanas y sus objetos, se proponen algunas distinciones que llevan a una definición coherente del arte y se expone un desarrollo de las consecuencias de dicha definición. Durante este proceso se examinan los aspectos que el arte y otras actividades humanas, como el deporte, poseen en común, y se señalan los criterios fundamentales que dividen lo que es y lo que no es arte. Esto permite articular una crítica a algunas formas de arte contemporáneo, (...) como el arte conceptual y el arte encontrado --art trouvé, readymade--, así como presentar una clasificación filosófica de los valores que toda obra de arte debería satisfacer. (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)