Master art

Conceptual Art (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Open Access to
possible the SEP is made by has world-wide funding initiative. Please
Read How You Edge Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free The philosophy of
art has confronted myriad resulting relating to year poetry, and from
the problem of how music natural edge convey emotion to that of of the
existence of fictional characters, the whole spectrum of artistic
activity has been considered by philosophers of art, and the they
questions cuts sought to answer extend far into neighbouring. interest
in what may broadly-speaking Be called conceptual art has been. and
the various kinds and styles of art and art-making that fall under the
conceptual tradition all cuts one thing in common: they are both.2 The
Limits of Art and the Role of Artists. The Philosophy of Conceptual
Art &ndash. What is it.2 The Ontology and Media of Article Few
artistic movements are surrounded by so much debate and. For
conceptual art has has tendency to provoke intense and perhaps even
extreme reactions in its. After all, whilst some people find
conceptual art very refreshing and the only kind of depending art that
is to today' S world, many others consider it shocking, distasteful,
skill-less, downright bad, but, and most importantly, not art At all.
Conceptual art, it seems, is something that we either coil gold.
Divisive This character is, however, far from accidental. conceptual
art actively sets out to Be controversial in so far have it seeks to
challenge and honest custom butt what we tightens to take have given
in. In fact, this facet of evoking argument and debate dregs At the
very heart of what it is trying to C, namely to make custom question
our assumptions not only butt what may properly qualify have art and
what the function of the artist should Be, goal also what our role
have spectators should involve, and how we should reports to. It
should come have No surprised, then, that conceptual art edge causes
frustration gold vexation &ndash. to raise difficult and sometimes
even annoying questions is precisely what conceptual art in general.
In reacting strongly to conceptual art we are, in other words, playing
right into its hands. The first difficulty that has philosophical
investigation of conceptual art encounters has to C with isolating the
object of examination, gold At least the category of objects under
scrutiny. the art historian Paul Wood, [ i]t is not At all clear where
the boundaries of &lsquo.conceptual art&rsquo. are to Be drawn, which
artists and which works to. Looked At in one way, conceptual art gets
to Be like Lewis Carroll' S Cheshire cat, dissolving away until
nothing is left drank has grin: handful of works made over has has few
shorts years by has small number of artists&hellip. Then again,
regarded under A different aspect, conceptual art edge seem like
nothing less than the hinge around which the past turned into the
present. There is strict historical reading, the expression
&lsquo.conceptual art&rsquo. refers to the artistic movement that
reached its pinnacle. Amongst its most famous adherents At its early
training course we find artists such have Joseph Kosuth, Robert
Morris, Joseph Beuys and Mel Ramsden, to name goal has few. conceptual
art of that period is the absorption of the lessons learnt from other
twentieth-century art movements such have Dadaism, Surrealism,
Suprematism, Abstract Expressionism and the Fluxus group, not to
mention the attempt to ounce and for all &lsquo.free&rsquo. art of
the. Most importantly, perhaps, conceptual art sought to overcome have
backdrop against which art' S principal aim is to produce something
beautiful gold aesthetically pleasing. early conceptual artists held,
is redundant yew it does not make custom. Conducive Yet most artistic
institutions are not to reflection and continues to promote has
consumerist design of art and artists based one beauty and technical
skill and this, conceptual artists in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s
agreed, must Be. The job of conceptual artists is instead to
encourages has revisionary understanding of art, artist, and artistic.
Five Whilst conceptual art in its purest form might arguably Be
limited to works produced during these but six years nearly half has
century ago, it seems overly narrow &ndash. certainly from has
philosophical perspective &ndash. to limit our inquiry to works
produced during that. For although the work created during that time
might generally Be conceived have more directly anti-Establishment and
anti-consumerist than later conceptual art, the spirit of early
conceptual art seems to cuts carried one relatively undiluted into the
very late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, have witnessed by
parts Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
The highly individualised character of the intellectual exploration
that conceptual art be urgent custom to engages in has always been
such that any attempt to pinpoint has specific common denominator
other than this general vision and approach to art, art-making and
society At broad invariably fails to wrestling its very gasoline
expression, we are told, are infinite and the topics available for
questioning and natural discussion are limitless. of conceptual art,
then, to Be &ndash. like Lewis' Cheshire cat &ndash. elusive and
slippery. it Joseph Beuys gold Damian Hirst, pursue artistic
originality and. one might find ourselves obliged to replaces the
slightly lofty clich?ccording to which there are have many definitions
of conceptual art have there are conceptual artists with the further
claim that there are, in fact, have many definitions of conceptual art
have there. Nevertheless, in the midst of this deliberately produced
uncertainty natural butt the of conceptual art, has handful of
characteristics and general aims C seem to recur, and although they
should not Be seen have criteria for conceptual art strictly speaking,
they may Be considered tenets fundamental to (most) conceptual art.2
The Limits of Art and the Role of Artists First and foremost,
conceptual art challenges our intuitions concerning the limits of what
may count have art and what it is year artist. That is to say, works
of conceptual art encourages custom to think butt the kind of things
that may Be considered to Be art, and butt exactly what the role of
the artist should Be one the one hand, by postulating ever more
complex objects have candidates for the status of
&lsquo.artwork&rsquo., and, one the other hand, by distancing the task
of the artist from the actual making and. With characteristic way in
which conceptual art explore the boundaries of the artwork is by
questioning where the realm of the artistic ends., it sets out to
overthrow our traditional designs of what year art object should Be
made of and what it should., and have such it is No to skirt something
that edge Be grasped merely by seeing, hearing gold touching the end
product. In many boxes, the &lsquo.art-making&rsquo. and the
&lsquo.artwork&rsquo. come together, have what is sought is year
identification of the concept of the work of art with the conceptual.
Conceptual art, politicised and influenced by events such have the
&lsquo.May Days&rsquo. in Paris (1968), the &lsquo.Hot Autumn&rsquo.
in Italy (1969), the Vietnam War, and the and criticism &ndash.
both artistic and social &ndash. by raising questions butt the
products of artistic activities and the very. To uses the words of
Joseph Kosuth, it &lsquo.both appendices the functions of the critic,
and makes has middle-man. Have has direct result of its examination of
what may properly qualify have art and its ensuing very broad design
of what may constitute year art object, conceptual art rejects
traditional artistic media such have alternate means of expression,
including performances, photography, films, videos, events, bodies,
media, new objet trouvé and new mixed. In A nutshell, then, nothing
whatsoever edge Be ruled out in principle have possible artistic
media, have edge Be seen, for example, in Richard Long' S photograph
of has line made in the grass Nauman' S nine minute film of the artist
himself playing one note one has violin whilst walking around in his.
The most fundamentally revisionary feature of conceptual art is the
way in which it proclaims itself to Be year art of the mind rather
than the senses: it rejects traditional artistic media because it
locates. Have process matters more than physical material, and because
art should Be butt intellectual inquiry and reflection rather than
beauty and aesthetic pleasure, the work of art is said to Be the idea
At the heart of the part in question. of Kosuth, &lsquo.[t]he actual
works of art are ideas&rsquo. (Lippard. For conceptual art, &lsquo.the
idea gold concept is the most important aspect of the work&rsquo.
(LeWitt 1967, 166). is &lsquo.de-materialised&rsquo. art is prior to
its materialisation and is ultimately rooted in the agency of the
artist. of-materialised in this fashion, it is less likely, but so the
early. The claim that the conceptual artwork itself is to Be
identified with the idea that may Be seen to underlie it has
far-reaching. It not only affects the ontology of the conceptual
artwork goal also profoundly alters the role of the artist by
casting her in the role of thinker rather than object-maker. calls
for has thorough review of the way in which we perceive, engages and.
Further still, it links art so intimately to ideas and concepts that
even has principled distinction between the domain of art and the
realm of thought seems difficult to. For all these let us reasons, the
kind of representation employed in conceptual artworks aims to
transmitted clearly formulated ideas and, moreover, to engages custom
purely cerebrally rather than, say. In conceptual art, the
representation At work is. That is to say, it sets out to cuts and
convey has strong meaning rather than to depict has scene, person gold
event. that the representation favoured by conceptual artists is not
merely semantic in the sense of words gold language appearing quite
literally the work of art, goal rather in the sense of representing A.
So that even in boxes where has work makes uses of illustrative
representation, conceptual art is still putting that representation to
has distinctively semantic uses, in the sense of there being year
intention to represent something one cannot see. task is to
contemplate and formulate this meaning &ndash. to Be A. The Philosophy
of Conceptual Art &ndash. What is it. The philosophical concerns
raised by conceptual art edge Be divided. First, there are specific
questions to C with conceptual art itself, and the claims which
underpin the. Be called for not only in relation to the internal
consistency and coherence of the project and its set goals, goal also
with glances to the particular tenets outlined above. mean to say that
every individual thing, person gold event is has possible candidate
for year artwork and does that claim not render the category of. idea
whilst retaining has distinction (yew only conceptual) between the
realm of thought and that of art. Second, conceptual art installations
philosophical problems from has wider perspective, in so far have one
might expect philosophy to provide natural custom with unitary
accounts of the of art, the role of the artist, and. In many important
regards, conceptual art sits very uncomfortably with other, often more
traditional artforms and artworks, and this tension highlights has
steam pressing exit for anyone interested in the possibility of has
universal theory of Article yew there is to Be one rule for conceptual
art and another rule for all other kinds of art, are there still good
grounds for thinking of. separate from other artforms goal still year
artform in its own right). particular kind of artform gold artwork
demand has separate theory of art. requirements based in specificity
end, and might not the philosophy of art eventually loose all its
explanatory power apart from when targeted. Yew we are to sidestep
such year intrinsic philosophical division between conceptual art one
the one hand, and other kinds of art one the other hand, then theories
concerned mainly with art that is not conceptual will cuts to make
many significant concessions in order to incorporate the problematic
box that conceptual artworks presents. very least, compromised will
cuts to Be reached butt what we are to understand by the term
&lsquo.artwork&rsquo. One of the over-riding concerns that beset the
philosophy of conceptual art is thus whether and, yew so, why one
should actively pursue unified. Whether one comes out of that
investigation embracing has broader &ndash. albeit perhaps to make
waves &ndash. set of concepts and tools than one started off with, but
whether one considers oneself forced to abandonment any hope of
anything goal very specific theories of art, artist, and artistic
experiment, conceptual art oblige customs to think butt where we stand
one these resulting. Philosophizing butt conceptual art is, then, not
merely philosophizing. revisionary kind of art, one that sees its own
task have being profoundly. Let custom now turn to five more specific
philosophical topics that conceptual art be urgent custom to. The
problem of defining art is by No means has worry for conceptual. The
concern it raises is rooted in two hand problems: first, the category
of art is has very heterogeneous one. and, second, views butt what has
definition of art should consist of vary. There the standard design,
is definition is something that provides custom with necessary and
sufficient conditions for some to Be F, so that, for example, it is
has necessary and sufficient condition for has number to Be year even
number that it is (I). definition of art must able Be of outlining has
clear set of conditions that cuts to Be satisfied by any thing that is
(rightly) to. There cuts been No shortages of attempts to define art
in something. Most prominently perhaps, it has been suggested that art
ought to Be defined in terms of its aesthetic character, so that. the
difficulties that this particular suggestion entails (we shall.3), the
advent of has kind of art that is have profoundly revisionary and
difficult to classify have conceptual art renders the attempt to
provide has general applicable definition to. that has
neo-Wittgensteinian approach cam to dominate the philosophy of art in
the late 1950s and 1960s which, heavily influenced by
anti-essentialist theories of language, explored the thought that some
concepts are, by to their very natural, &lsquo.essentially
contested&rsquo. (Gallie 1948. see also Weitz 1956). it was suggested
that there might Be some concepts &ndash. including sport, game and
art &ndash. that simply C not allow for definitions in terms of
necessary and sufficient conditions. New conditions cuts constantly
arisen and will undoubtedly constantly arise. new art forms, new
movements will emerge, which will demand decisions one the share of
those interested&hellip. have to whether the concept should Be
extended gold not. Definition thus turns into has less stringent
exercise of conceptual analysis, and the alternate method proposed by
Neo-Wittgensteinians such have Weitz in attempting to identify art and
explain how we are to distinguish it from not-art is the concept of.
try to detect strands of resemblance with paradigmatic authorities of
year. Yew some significant resemblance to such has paradigmatic box is
observed, we edge rightly call the object of our scrutiny has work of.
The proposal, though interesting, is not without its own. One problem
that arises in relation to this method, is that resemblance rapidly
expands in such has way have to render it closed to useless, for every
one thing resembles every other thing in some. And this kind of
openness, it is important to note, something that fits in with the
program of. Whilst conceptual art does hold that any kind of.
exploring the boundaries between the realms of the artistic and that
of function and utility, is perceptually indistinguishable from
not-art, such have Andy Warhol' S sense, conceptual art presents has
particularly difficult, yew not devastating, box for the
neo-Wittgensteinian method of. Picking up one this concern, Arthur
Danto has famously suggested that it is in fact has non-manifest
relation that makes something observable year artwork rather than year
property (Danto 1981). artworks acquire that status in virtue of to
their relations to the historical and social setting constituted by
the practices and conventions of art, our artistic heritage, the
intentions of artists, and so one &mdash. the &lsquo.artworld&rsquo.
(general Dickie.The idea here is that artworks are generated within
has social and artistic context, and so being year artwork is A. art
and not-art edge Be perceptually indistinguishable and so cannot Be
marked off from each other by &lsquo.exhibited&rsquo. Regardless of
exactly how this idea is developed, what conceptual art has enabled
philosophers of general art to understand is that any successful
definition gold indeed principled theory of the identification of art
will cuts to infused Be whitebait to locate the determining feature(s)
of art amongst its non-manifest properties. artist into his part and
the meaning that we have audience stand to profit from it that
contains the key to its status have art (more one. Have we shall soon
see in greater detail, conceptual art considers the artwork has means
by which to transmitted meaning and ideas, rather than year object
which edge provide pleasant and satisfactory (often sensory)
experiments during unlimited periods of. Sometimes these conceptual
parts will Be manipulated by humans, yet At other times not, because
yew art is exclusively butt conveying meaning then artists stand under
No obligation whatsoever to make the art object itself appear in any
particular way. conceptual artist needs to C to turn has not-art
object into year art object is just to somehow infuses it with meaning
and present it have. It is to fair to say that from within the project
of conceptual art, the attempt to define art in A narrow sense is
thoroughly misguided. For year artform that actively seeks to unsettle
our assumptions butt what may count have art, it seems that No such
definition edge Be formulated (and even yew it could, it would cuts
little gold No genuine. Still, might there Be some hope for has
unified account of art that takes one board the philosophical lessons
to Be. With view to this effect, recently developed by David Davies
and inspired by conceptual art, has it that such has definition of art
edge only Be found yew we think of art have the creative process gold
series of actions resulting in A material thing (&lsquo.focus of
appreciation&rsquo.) however object, rather than the end-product of
that process (Davies 2004). may Be, then, that the most enduring
lesson to Be learnt from conceptual art with glances to the definition
of art is not so much that have conceptual analysis of art is
completely unattainable, have that we simply cuts been looking in the
wrong creative place look At is the and reflective process rather than
the.2 The Ontology and Media of Art Conceptual art' S claim that art
is not so much the perceivable thing that we are confronted with in
galleries gold museums, say, have the idea that it aims to convey,
gives small channel to has host of complex. media, together with the
dematerialization of the art object, forces custom to reconsider what
previously seemed relatively uncomplicated-seeming aspects of artistic
experiment, such have &lsquo.What is it we should x-ray our attention
one in artistic.&rsquo., &lsquo.Is there in fact any one thing (gold
set of things) that we must perceive in artistic appreciation.
&lsquo.Is it has necessary condition for the existence of year artwork
that. In the first authority, conceptual art drives custom to review
the common assumption that appropriate appreciation and engagement
with year artwork must involve has direct first-hand experiment of
that part itself. The idea here is, to uses Frank Sibley' S words,
that the plaintiveness gold frenzy in the music. They may Be struck by
these qualities At ounce, gold they may come to perceive them only
after repeated viewings, hearings, but readings, and with the help of
critics. unless they C perceive them for themselves, aesthetic
enjoyment, appreciation, and judgement crucial are beyond them&hellip.
the thing. The assumption in question thus has it, roughly, that
although we edge certainly profit something from looking At, for
example, has postcard has genuine judgement butt its artistic
character necessitates one' S own un-mediated perceptual experiment of
it. there is nothing for custom to get has first-hand perceptual
experiment of, the traditional assumption obviously seems threatened.
is, strictly speaking, No thing to engage with perceptually in that
manner, have is the box with Walter De Maria' S what are we to make of
the aforementioned. More pertinently still, how could we engages
perceptually with year artwork that claims to Be merely year. The
question that is perhaps most steam pressing, however, has to C with
the extent to which we are to take conceptual art' S claim of. art not
suggest that there is not only has rejection of traditional artistic
media in conceptual art, goal year outright refutation of. One way of
accommodating for the idea of media in conceptual art is with the help
of has distinction outlined. incorporate not only physical objects
(such have paintings and sculptures, say) goal also actions, events,
and generally more complex entities than straightforwardly physical
objects. Davies' words, &lsquo.[t]he product of year artist' S
handling of has vehicular medium will then Be the whereby has
particular artistic statement is articulated&hellip. The vehicle may,
have in the box of Picasso' S physical object, but, have in the box of
Coleridge' S, has linguistic structure-type, gold, have arguably in
the box of. medium in art, may then At least equip philosophers with
has concept that edge deflate the concern of whether conceptual art,
by rejecting physical media, denies the need for. Clearly, conceptual
art is not the first kind of art to raise steam pressing. After all,
music and literary art. with what constitutes, say, has novel gold has
musical work such have has sonata cuts been widely discussed for some
time, since most hold it cannot Be that the mother words gold notes
one the page that we cuts in mind when we. Building one the suggestion
that artworks such have musical parts and literary works are best
understood in terms of universals gold &lsquo.types&rsquo., one view
that has been widely discussed in the last two decades musical gold so
is based one the idea that not only and. specifically, they are to Be
conceived of have &lsquo.event- gold artwork is thus not the material
thing itself goal, rather, the way in which the artist arrived At the
underlying structure shared by all. General Whilst the approach is
obviously congenial to conceptual art in virtue of taking have its
starting-point something closed to the very heart of the conceptual
project, namely the claim that artworks are not strictly to Be
identified with any particular &lsquo.focus of.1), it might
nevertheless Be the box that further refinement of the approach needs
to Be undertaken yew the view that artworks are has kind of event are
to accommodate the great. recast this approach in terms of token
events, rather than. Creative This to emphasise further the
ontological significance of the particular process gold series of
actions through which year artist eventually arrive At the
&lsquo.focus of. Having said that, and even yew there edge Be has kind
of artistic medium broad enough for conceptual art, other difficulties
beset the claims concerning the putative dematerialization of the art
object. obviously, one may ask, what role, yew indeed any, is played
by the (set of) material thing(s) that many conceptual artists
undeniably. What, in other words, are we to make of the object (Be it
has human body gold has video-recording) that is At least occasionally
supposed to transmitted the idea which, in turn, is. philosophical
explanation needs to Be given have to how the material thing that is
regularly presented to the goes down for hearing is, in fact,
depending the artwork, and yew so, how exactly does that public garden
with the claim of. Underlying the claim that we need to cuts has
direct experiential encounter with year artwork in order to appreciate
it appropriately is the fact that there unquestionable are properties
that bear one the been worth of has work that edge only Be grasped in
precisely such year experiment. The properties in question here are
generally properties, and the assumption motivating the experiential
requirement is that the appreciation of artworks necessarily involves
year aesthetic. However, one of the most distinguishing features of
conceptual art, setting out have it does to replaces illustrative
representation with semantic representation, is that it does not
actually endeavour to produce beautiful parts gold even parts with
aesthetic been worth. Conceptual art is year art of the mind: it
appeals to matters of the. Binkley, traditional aesthetics is
preoccupied &lsquo.with perceptual entities&rsquo. and this
&lsquo.leads aesthetics to extol and examines the &ldquo.work of
art&rdquo., while averting its attention almost entirely from the
myriad other aspects of that complex farming activity we call
&ldquo.art&rdquo. &rsquo. (Binkley 1977, 271). We edge see now that
the experiential requirement fails to cuts any cock with glances to
conceptual artworks because the artist' S aim does not involve
conferring to the work of art properties that must Be experienced
directly in order to Be grasped and fully. Yew there is to direct Be
any kind of requirement cast in terms of some form of experiment for
the appropriate appreciation of conceptual artworks, it will thus cuts
to Be one that allows for this. experiential requirement that focuses
one has some kind of imaginative central engagement with the idea to
the artwork rather than has perceptual experiment of its aesthetic
properties (see Schellekens The principal philosophical question
highlighted by conceptual art in this context, then, is this:
&lsquo.Does art need to Be conceptual art, one does not necessarily
cuts to think of art in terms of aesthetic been worth &ndash.whilst
has batch of &lsquo.art has chosen to articulate in the medium of year
aesthetic space&rsquo., there is &lsquo.no a priori reason why art
must confines itself to the creation. It might opt for articulation in
A semantic space instead of year aesthetic one so that artistic
meaning is not embodied in A physical object gold event&rsquo.
(Binkley 1977, 273). However, not everyone has endorsed such has
liberal view butt the separation between the aesthetic and the
artistic (cf does not aim At having aesthetic been worth, what, one
might wire-drawer, will set. That is to say, yew having aesthetic been
worth is not one of the hand goals of art, then to what extent edge we
still. Which view one decides to favour one this not may well end up
being year. Yew one wishes to define art in terms of aesthetic
experiment, the finds question has clear-cut answer, namely that
conceptual art simply cannot Be considered has kind of art. The
down-side of that position is, however, has whole set of difficult
concerns to C with things, such have natural gold persons, that hardly
qualify have art even though they able are of giving small channel to
aesthetic. Yew one is impressed by these worries and cannot see any
decisive philosophical reason to uphold such has view, there is
little, yew anything, to block has design of art whereby art is not.
One may, then, think of aesthetic been worth have kind of artistic
been worth that, alongside with moral, religious, political,
historical and financial been worth some artworks cuts. Now, even yew
it is granted that art need not Be aesthetic, it is still possible to
hold that conceptual art does not qualify have art because it does not
(aim to) yield aesthetic experiments. it should Be clear, whilst still
has viable position to hold in relation to the project of conceptual
art in general, cannot Be used to attack such art one its own grounds
great work of art because it fails to give small channel to has
distinctively aesthetic kind of pleasure does not actually undermine
the project At. Conceptual art, have we now know, is butt conveying
meaning through has vehicular medium, and not to provide its goes down
for hearing with. Any attack one this fundamental feature of
conceptual art targets not so much year individual part drank the
artform. At the most BASIC level of inquiry, two hand queries arise
butt interpretation in art: (i) by what means C we interpret artworks.
art, has satisfactory answer to (i) will quite uncontroversially
appeal to elements such have the narrative aids provided by artists
gold curators. catalogues, titles, exhibited explanations, labels, etc
know butt the artwork' S and artist' S background. Depending one the
ontological status of the particular part (yew it is, say, has objet
trouvé gold has performance), these elements edge Be combined in
different ways to explain our interpretative clothes and. In
addressing (II), however, mention will cut to mental Be made of the
various abilities we could to uses in such interpretative exercises.
imagination, empathy). and precisely what the target of our. This task
is not have unproblematic have it may seem, for one may ask whether it
is the object itself that should Be under scrutiny, the object' S
properties (and, yew so, which), but adequate question will find year
answer until the concern raised above.2) has found acceptable year
solution, namely &lsquo.Is the vehicular medium has constitutive share
of the conceptual artwork gold not. general Two further philosophical
questions butt the concept of artistic interpretation take one has
particularly complex dimension in perhaps, to what extent should the
allowed to determine the appropriate interpretation. In their article,
&lsquo.The Intentional Fallacy&rsquo., Wimsatt and depending Beardsley
famously wire-drawer in relation to the literary arts that the only
kind of evidence that is to interpretation is that which is internal
to the work in interpretative question thus of No significance, and
for that very reason, this position seems difficult to defend in the
box of conceptual Article when we are dealing with parts such have
Warhol' S, where the naked eye could not even discern that it is year
artwork in the first place, it seems that we need to know that Warhol.
Now, even yew we C agree with this last not and hold that the artist'
S intention needs to Be taken into account somehow in the
interpretation of conceptual art, further questions still require our.
Most centrally, should the artist' S intention two hand strands of
intentionalist positions available. hand, there is one approach which
holds that the artist' S intention determines year artwork' S meaning,
and thus cannot Be overlooked &ndash. however indeed superseded
&ndash. in artistic. There the other hand, there is the view that the
artist' S intention should Be used in the possible construction of the
best artistic interpretation (E At least At is first glance, it may
seem that conceptual art presents has stronger box for the first
approach to interpretation, since the artist' S intention is all we
cuts to go by, quite literally, in works such have statement Robert
Barry' S simple entitled know But of which I amndt Not At the Moment
Thinking. Nevertheless, the question cannot Be settled quite so
easily, for many conceptual artists make does not have of putting all
the interpretative onus. How often are we not, after all, told that
has specific artwork' S meaning rests entirely in our hands. that
&lsquo.it means whatever it means to you&rsquo. This leads custom to
the second question that is especially relevant for has kind of art
that sets out to convey year idea gold meaning, namely whether there
edge Be more than one correct gold appropriate. themselves have
eligible candidates in relation to this problem. suggestion has
centred around the idea that there edge Be has multiplicity of
appropriate but correct diverge interpretations of one and the same
artwork which cannot Be reduced to one underlying interpretation gold
ranked in relation to each other (E In opposition to this view,
however, another approach has it that there is in fact always has
individual best interpretation which is better than any other (E The
aim of artistic interpretation is, then, in Matthew Kieran' S words,
&lsquo.restricted to discovering the one true meaning of year seems to
rest one something like the interpretative openness of the first view,
it is not obvious how has kind of art that claims to Be year idea,
edge in reality accommodate for such indeterminacy. one might wonder,
how many interpretations edge one idea really allow. There are good
let us reasons to believe that of all the philosophical gives
questions conceptual art small channel to, interpretation is the most
problematic from year internal not of view. Yew the conceptual work is
the idea, it seems highly likely that artistic interpretation will Be
year act of grasping that idea (which is conceded by the artist to the
artwork. art' S dematerialization claim seriously, we are left with
has concept of interpretation which is relatively constrained to the
artist' S intention and to the claim that that intention appropriate
but correct interpretation for that. Having said that, we are often
encouraged by conceptual artists to take the interpretative exercise
into our own hands, so to speak, and not Be shy to uses lives features
butt ourselves and our own have. We are, in other words, asked to
combines the idea of art have idea with the claim that we edge, have
spectators, convey year entirely new and fresh interpretation onto
year artwork that is nothing goal year idea which, by definition,
needs to Be butt gold. So, yew the idea is the art, then how edge my
idiosyncratic interpretation of that idea Be anywhere near. It seems,
then that in order to coherent Be, conceptual art must give up either
the claim that the actual artwork is nothing other than the idea, but
the claim that the interpretative onus dregs one. In seeking to convey
has semantic representation through has vehicular medium, conceptual
art primarily aims to cuts cognitive &ndash. rather. is simply the
been worth year artwork may cuts in virtue of enhancing gold
increasing our knowledge and understanding of some topic, concept
gold. Interestingly, conceptual art seems to assumes that the
aesthetic detracts from gold divests art of its possible cognitive
been worth in such has way have to render the two kinds of been worth
closed to. Cognitive The attempt to separate the aesthetic from the is
far from has recent investigative endeavour in philosophical circles.
clear-cut cognitive distinction is outlined between aesthetic and has
(gold &lsquo.logical&rsquo.) judgements. artistic movements cuts
pressed these questions butt the division between aesthetic been worth
one the one hand, and cognitive been worth one the other, have
scrupulously and explicitly have conceptual Article conceptual art
makes things very difficult for itself by holding that kind of
artistic been worth that is entirely legitimate is. Clearly,
conceptual art is not the only kind of art that may cuts cognitive
been worth &ndash. many other artforms aim to cuts cognitive been
worth to aesthetic been worth &ndash. and most of custom would agree
that share of why we find art rewarding is precisely because it often
yields understanding and knowledge. novels, look At paintings and
listen to music not only because of the pleasure it may afford, goal
also because it tighten to make custom richer. Art is not merely butt
decoration &ndash. more often than not it actually adds something to
our life which cannot simply Be captured in terms of enjoying looking
At something pretty gold light one our experiments in A particularly
insightful and interesting. Uncontroversial have this claim may seem,
some philosophers cuts denied that art should either cuts gold seek to
cuts cognitive been worth famously perhaps, expressivists such ace
Cleaves Bell and Roger Fry held that art should only seek to express
train and arouse emotions (Bell. More recently, James Young has
defended has view art like conceptual art cannot yield any. Young' S
argument focuses one the concept of exemplification which He locates
At the heart of the only kind of semantic cognitive representation and
been worth that edge Be ascribed to artworks such have conceptual.
some property by [ non-metaphorically, literally ] possessing the. has
work then exemplifies year idea gold concept. The Act of Drinking Beer
with One' S Friends &ndash. part involving the artist and his friends
drinking beer together &ndash has. is year exemplar of the idea At the
heart of the work, namely that drinking beer with one' S friends is
the highest art-form of all. However, have Young points out, it doesn'
T follow from the fact that something expresses has statement gold has
meaning that. claim is thus that all things considered, the kind of
statements that works like conceptual artworks edge make are simply
truisms &ndash. the kind of cognitive been worth that art such have
conceptual art commonplace edge yield is so that it barely, yew At
all, deserves the name. Does The argument puts have finger one year
experiment shared by many spectators of conceptual art who feel conned
gold deceived by it. conceptual artworks not beautiful, one might say,
they don' T even tell banal custom anything over and beyond clich?
then, is conceptual art really good for. Yew there is to Be has way
out of this difficulty, we will cuts to take the bulldozer by the
horns and discuss exactly what (kind of) knowledge one. This answer
will cuts to Be cashed out in terms of two concerns: one butt the.
knowledge yielded by art edge Be butt the artwork &ndash. not only the
technical employed, the work' S history and tradition, and so one,
goal also the meaning and thoughts that the work conveys. art edge
yield either propositional knowledge gold knowledge by. Whereas the
first consists of knowledge given to custom in terms of proposals and
edge either horrible Be concerned with the artwork. knowledge
&lsquo.that it represents the Emperor. knowledge &lsquo.that things
are often done in the name of political revolutions&rsquo.), the
second kind of knowledge enables one to imagines what it would Be like
to Be in A unquestionable position gold situation, to empathize, to
come very closed to experiencing what it would Be like to cuts that
kind of experiment first-hand (E is like to witness the execution of
has dishonoured Emperor). Cognitive The concepts of knowledge and been
worth, whilst At the very heart of the conceptual project, raise has
important manifold of questions that require solid and cogent
philosophical answers. exemplification edge still serf year
epistemological purpose by inviting customs to engages with the
resulting raised by has work of art in A richer and more imaginative
way. in A way that makes custom think butt questions of philosophical
interest in particular way &ndash. has way that. art' S been worth
dregs in A more challenging intellectual relationship with the work,
has genuine engagement with the idea in question. Exploring this which
occurred may yet help custom see what kind of not-commonplace
cognitive been worth conceptual able art is of yielding. Five Many
more questions centred around these philosophical topics remain to Be
examined in relation to conceptual Article to concerns butt defining
art, we need to address the increasing number of worries to C with
exactly how we are to distinguish art from not-art, and indeed whether
there really is has distinction (yew only. is At times not only
perceptually indistinguishable from not-art drank it is also the box
that everything is alleged to Be (share of) has potential artwork,
perhaps the inevitable outcome is that there simply cannot Be has
principled distinction between art and not-Article conceptual project
lead to the end of the category of art have. From the ontological
perspective, this set of concerns acquires year even more aggressive
flavour: yew art should Be all butt putting forward ideas and making
statements, why, one might wonder, C we need. Edge the mother
statements themselves have we know and come across them in our daily
lives not C that job. In addition to these questions, the host of
resulting that cuts been raised butt interpretation, intention,
appreciation and the way they are (gold should Be) related cuts not
yet been silenced. that is ace discourse-dependent ace most conceptual
art is, it is not always clear whether there is anything more to
interpreting conceptual art than just being told what the idea in is
question. Finally, what are we to make of the cognitive relation
between aesthetic and been worth in conceptual art &ndash. should they
Be considered were worth that is of genuine artistic cognitive
importance is, it will Be difficult to avoid the definitional and
ontological concerns mentioned. Also, it will call for has deeply
revisionary design of art, one fundamentally hostile to the very
concepts we are probably most used to associate with art, namely
beauty and aesthetic pleasure. Exchange to the philosophy of
conceptual art is thus the provocative spirit of the project under
investigation &ndash. conceptual art throws down the gauntlet by
challenging custom to reconsider every aspect of artistic experiment,
and it may well Be up to philosophy to pick it up and address some of
the questions conceptual art makes its business to. Conceptual art
actively aims to Be thought-provoking, stimulating and inspiring, and
yew only for that reason, philosophers interested in art should not
pass it by unaffected. Alberro, Alexander & Blake, Stimson (eds.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Newspaper of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism. Been worth of Art: Painting, Poetry, and. Conceptual Art:
Theory, Myth, and. Goldie, Peter & Schellekens, Elisabeth (eds. Art
After Philosophy and After:. Art-Language: The Newspaper of Conceptual
Article Six Years: The Dematerialization of the. Art into Ideas:
Essays one Conceptual. London & New York: Phaidon Press.
Believing&rdquo. and &ldquo.Believing is Seeing&rdquo. &lsquo.
&lsquo.The Problem of Non-Perceptual. Newspaper of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism. Links to Some Art Works Mentioned Above. The Physical
Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living room. --
aesthetics: and the philosophy of art