By SB 2007

What is Art?

As an artist it is difficult to think where to begin, with such a broad and important question in defining ‘what is Art’.  In a paradoxical way artists need to maintain the essence of obscurity and subjectivity, whilst having to accept criticism of their work to be accepted with a view to objectivity and appreciation.  When an artist produces a piece of work many features are significant such as my motivation, intention, meaning, method and evaluation.  Perhaps the metaphysical theme of an absolute universal truth is a starting point and in western philosophical thought Plato provides a starting point in his writing on Art as imitation.  That Art imitates reality is a recurring idea in the theory of Art.  Plato’s theory works with the fundamental ideas of his Theory of Forms: claiming that absolute universal truths exists as unchanging and fixed ideals of which we can reach true knowledge by studying philosophically.  The forms of  The good,  justice and Beauty are objective realities of which we merely aspire to know,  most of us live in the veil of cloudy appearances which are not as they seem and certainly not the truth of our existence.  The artist, we may intuitively suppose, is in a unique position here, isn’t his function to play with and represent these realities?  Can he be a facilitator in our journey of the ascent to the universal truth of Beauty and Art?  Beauty as being an essential feature in Art was a predominant idea in the theory of Art. Plato viewed Art as a copy of the objective reality.  Art falls under two main themes for Plato:  Art as morally educative and as representation.  Plato viewed Art as potentially dangerous; introducing the concept of censorship.  This on the grounds that Art had the power to impart morally influence over society and thus he recognized Art’s vast potential for changing perception and it’s impact on shaping and influencing human thought and behavior.  Art was to be used in a morally responsible manner if indeed it was to be used at all!  Thus we can see a clear link to the political institutions of the Greek state and its adopted ideals.  An artist for Plato had to be taught how to be morally responsible and part of an artist’s function and role was to pass this message on to citizens of the state.

 As human thought progressed into the twentieth century we can observe that the concept of Art has retained these themes of Art as representation and morally significance.  However the trend of individualism and independent thought have become stronger and we can see that Artists, although still accountable to criticism, have pulled against the concept of conventions in Art,  in fact in some ways this movement against the status quo has enabled the progression of what we define and include in our concept of Art.  If we compare the idea of Greek Pottery and Art with Damien Hurst’s radical challenge of tradition conventions, it is clear to see how the definitions and inclusions have changed and are constantly changing.   

In “The Art Question” Warburton (pg 3) sums up the differences between motive of the philosopher and artist saying of philosophers “They reason, they define, they clarify.  Above all, they are interested in truth, forever trying to get beyond appearances”. 

This is the nature of the problem in answering the question of ‘what is Art’.  The philosophers deal in truth and the artists if nothing else represent the appearances.

Can Art really be defined correctly in the ever changing transient truth of progression and the development of Art?  Theories focusing on ‘Significant Form’, ‘Expression of Emotion’, Representation and Beauty, all make claims about the qualitative features of a work of Art, but are these plausibly providing significant explanations of characteristics that can be present in a work of Art?  I am going to reference these theories only by critiquing the idea that Art can not be clearly defined by separating its essential features.

A teacher of mine once advised me “Don’t keep your information in water tight containers” and this very much reminds me of the Socratic assumptions mentioned in Warburton on culturally created concept such as justice, virtue and art , when he says of Socrates “ What he pursued relentlessly was a watertight definition that was immune to criticism.  The implication was that others’ inability to give a definition was a weakness in them rather than a logical feature of the subject in question”. (pg 66)

The idea that Art cannot be defined merely through interpretation of the language term ‘Art’ seems intuitive and as a development towards defining Art more generally fostered a shift to a conceptual definition.

Is the word ‘art’ meaningless?  The view of meaning and language presented in Plato’s Socratic dialogues asks; ‘what is beauty?’ assuming that definition must consist in a set of necessary and sufficient conditions.  But can most ordinary words be defined as such?

Neo Wittgensteinian’s such as Morris Weitz argued against classical theories being able to define Art in terms of exhibited qualities.  Although representationalism, expressivism and formalism all have certain plausibility they still contain problems.

Representationalism and expressivism both seem to locate the purpose of a work of art outside of the work itself.

Bell’s Formalism corrects this by bringing the focus back onto the work of art, however at the price of a disadvantaged view of what a work of art is.  Formal features are significant but become much more important when linked to expressive and representational qualities. Bell, on the possibility of definition of art says, “ Either all works of art have some common quality, or when we speak of ‘works of art’ we gibber”.

We can note the movement to conceptual definition from Platonic views through to Wittgensteinian theory. However the Platonic idea that Art can be a fixed universal truth that exists and can be defined objectively is refuted by a Wittgensteinian view.  Plato sought to exclude via censorship Wittgenstein sought to include.

There seems to be a paradox here!  The idea that the artist struggles for her work to be included in the definition of Art according to convention yet needs to exist in a diverse conceptual environment to produce and develop.

If we were to take a work of Art such as an example that Nigel Warburton uses in ‘The Art Question’; ‘ A Real Work of Art’ by Mark Wallinger.  We can see how to define the horse in terms of tradition theory would require us to dismiss any qualification as a work of art.  However if we apply a resemblance theory it clearly includes this piece in such an open concept.  Tony Godfrey comments in ‘Conceptual Art’ (1998) pg 19 “Art is a concept: it does not exist as a precisely definable physical type of thing, as elephants or chairs do.  Since it became self conscious, aware that it was a special category, art has often played with conceptual status”.

An objection can be raised about Art’s perceptually indistinguishablity from things that are not considered to be art.  With artists presenting work whose subject is every day content?  Artists such as Tracey Emin and Andy Warhol present nothing that art looks like.

“The touchstone of all art is thus seen to be the aesthetic experience and not a definition.  Clearly, the experience of art is prior to its definition.  If an object succeeds in evoking an aesthetic experience, it, then, in that instance, becomes an aesthetic object.  The problem, consequently, resolves into the description and clarification of the experience of art.  Similarly, the assertion that “evaluations occur by way of definitions” raises the question of whether a definition must be a prerequisite for evaluation or whether evaluation follows from the experience of art and then becomes formulated in a justificatory definition.  The latter, if it were the case, would not necessarily mean subjectivism in evaluating art.  It does insist, however, that art is never art by definition.  A rule, in this case a definition, never made a painting or a piece of music beautiful.  It is the intellectual, who strives for cognitive apprehension of what he has undergone in an art gallery or concert hail, who seeks to understand, to codify, to systematize and regularize, who may inadvertently discover himself upholding the contrary.  Nor is there anything amiss in his cognitive activities, so long as the priority of experience to definition be acknowledged and deferred to”.

Plato and his contemporaries were the critics defining art in terms of function and moral value and it seems that classification is needed for social control but whether this is necessary or sufficient for definition is still overshadowed by the importance of our experience of Art as human beings, it seems that taking the critic out of the picture; the vast majority of people value the importance of Art in their lives, whether it be definable through concepts and language or qualitive characteristics.  In other words: Do most human beings experience a work of art with concern of how or who else defines it? Or is it their subjective experience that is of most significance?

Bell, Clive, Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987