Problems with the Definition of Art:

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Problems with the Definition of Art: Intention, Theory, and the Transcendent in the work of Arthur Danto by Christian G. Say Advised by Professor Alexander Nehamas 3 May 2016

2 The definition of art is increasingly important in the field of analytic aesthetics. Following the well-known essays of Paul Ziff and Morris Weitz on the definability of art, the general consensus for years was that art, like game, was a Wittgensteinian open concept and so undefinable for reasons of family resemblance. 1 In the 1960s, this consensus began to crumble with the work of philosophers such as Maurice Mandelbaum who argued that the admittance of e.g. relational properties could effectively counter the arguments against there being necessary conditions of art. 2 Subsequently, a number of important theories and definitions of art developed, among these, notably, were what have now been classed as institutional definitions. While George Dickie is credited with having defined and defended the most developed version of this view, it is Arthur Danto who laid its foundations. Danto s definition differs in many important respects from Dickie s formalized institutionalism, and it is his view that I find to have the most promise. That said, while I agree with much of Danto s definition of art, its overreliance on a particular notion of intention and artistic theory problematically limits its scope. In this paper, I hope to detail these problems in Danto s theory and to propose a potential modification based upon a revised account of artistic intention. Danto s definition comes in two versions, the earlier version found in his seminal 1964 Journal of Philosophy article The Artworld, and the later version developed in his 1981 The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. The earlier version, following Monroe Beardsley s interpretation, can be glossed as follows 3 : 1 Paul Ziff, The Task of Defining a Work of Art, The Philosophical Review 62 (1953): 58-78; and Morris Weitz, The Role of Theory in Aesthetics, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1956): 27-35. 2 Maurice Mandelbaum, Family Resemblances and Generalization Concerning the Arts, American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 219-228. 3 Monroe C. Beardsley, Is Art Essentially Institutional? in Culture and Art: An Anthology, edited by Lars Aagaard-Mogenson (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc., 1976), 203.

3 3.1 For it to be true that A is an artwork, there must be an X such that A (or some part of A) est X [where est is the is of artistic identification]. 4 3.2 For it to be true that A est X, there must exist an enabling theory of art. 5 This definition hinges on two key concepts: the is of artistic identification (est) and the artistic theories that enable this est. Unfortunately, Danto s use of these terms is opaque at best. By est, Danto seems to be referring to the use of is in such cases as when, to use his example, I point to a white spot in a painting and say That white dab is Icarus. According to Danto, to say that white dab est Icarus is not to make a claim of identity or predication, since it is obvious that the white dab is neither identical with Icarus nor is Icarus predicated of the dab in the same way that e.g. white or round might be predicated of the dab, i.e. it is not an Icarus dab in the same way that it is a white dab or a round dab. It is also not the case that this est is simply a claim that the white dab merely represents Icarus, since the word Icarus likewise represents Icarus, and yet one cannot claim that Icarus as it is used here, for example est Icarus. Rather, Danto claims that est refers to a use of is that indicates a representation that depends crucially upon an accompanying theory, i.e. the white dab est Icarus only because of a contingent accompanying mythological and art-historical context in which dabs of this sort displayed in such a way in the context of such a painting might be seen as representing Icarus in a particular way. It is this context which constitutes the theory that creates 4 For want of a word I shall designate this the is of artistic identification... it is a necessary condition for something to be an artwork that some part or property of it be designable by the subject of a sentence that employs this special is ( The Artworld 577). 5 What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is (in a sense of is other than that of artistic identification) ( The Artworld 581).

4 ontological space between the white dab qua white dab and the white dab qua element of an artwork. Without this theory, Danto seems to imply, the white dab could not be construed as anything other than the real object which it is, namely, a white dab. As he puts it, it is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is (in a sense of is other than that of artistic identification). 6 But without a sufficient specification of what counts as an enabling theory of art, this definition ends up being overbroad. Take Danto s example of a graph, G, representing the gradients of the slope of Mount Fujiyama that is visually identical to the curve, H, in a drawing by Hiroshige of the same mountain. 7 Along with Danto, I take it as noncontroversial that while G is not an artwork, the perceptually indiscernible H is. Now according to Danto s definition, the ontological difference between H and G is a product of the fact that H is more than the simple representation of the gradients of Mt. Fuji that G is, and that H is more than this simple representation precisely because H requires an accompanying artistic theory for its interpretation, an artistic theory that is above and beyond what is required for the interpretation of G. But G too requires an accompanying theory for its interpretation, since G cannot be interpreted as representing the gradients of Mt. Fuji without the appropriate scientific, geographic, and diagrammatic context, a context, moreover, that H does not require for its interpretation. It seems then that the difference between H and G reduces simply to the assertion that H requires an artistic theory for its interpretation while G does not. Danto thus requires an account of what makes a theory artistic, without which his definition of art will include too much. 6 Arthur C. Danto, The Artworld, The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964): 581. 7 Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 140.

5 Here it is perhaps worth turning to Danto s later definition of art, though here too a similar problem results. In his revised definition, Danto does provide an account of what constitutes an artistic theory, and he bases his definition on this account by claiming that artworks are what they are because interpreted as they are, that is, art exists because theories of the sort he describes provide the relevant kind of interpretation. 8 Thus Danto defines artworks as those things that are interpreted by these artistic theories in such a way that works of art, in categorical contrast with mere representations, use the means of representation in a way that is not exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented. 9 On this account, the ontological difference between H and G is a result of H s rhetorical use of its means of representation in order to express. While G simply represents the gradients of Mt. Fuji according to the relevant graphic idiom, H not only represents Mt. Fuji, but also expresses something about this subject, and it does so in part through the means of its representation: the choice of charcoal over oil, the curve that is here rather than there, the width of the line at the base verses its width at the crest, the absence of background landscape, &c. Whatever it is that these as means of representation express, they are not specified when one has exhaustively specified what it is that H represents, namely Mt. Fuji, and they are not expressed by G, when G is properly interpreted according to the relevant idiom. Danto offers an example of his definition in contrasting Roy Lichtenstein s Portrait of Madame Cézanne with Erle Loran's visually congruent diagram of Cézanne s Portrait of Madame Cézanne. According to Danto, it is not simply that Lichtenstein s work is interpreted via an artistic theory, but that, according to the artistic theory by which it is interpreted, the artwork uses its means of interpretation in a way that 8 Ibid., 135. 9 Ibid., 147-148.

6 Loran s diagram qua diagram is unable to. Lichtenstein s painting is not a diagram, but rather a representation of a diagram, thus Lichtenstein, in producing his portrait, is not diagramming. Lichtenstein uses the idiom of diagrams, while Loran simply diagrams, albeit in the idiom of diagrams. One can think of the Lichtenstein piece as in some sense including all that Loran s diagram includes and more, since Lichtenstein s work not only includes Loran s diagram as a material part, but also uses the diagram idiomatically to express things that Loran s diagram qua diagram cannot. 10 The problem with this definition, however, is that even in its revised form it incorporates too much, since rhetorical use of the means of representation is not a sufficient condition for a thing to be an artwork. On Danto s revised account, a real object becomes a work of art when it is interpreted a certain way, i.e. when it is interpreted according to an artistic theory. It is for this reason that he claims that art is the kind of thing that depends for its existence upon theories; without theories of art, black paint is just black paint and nothing more. 11 Thus the ontological distinction between perceptibly indiscernible streaks of black paint, one of which is art and the other of which is the runoff from a spilled can of paint, can be attributed to the interpretation of the former according to which it uses the means of its representation in a way that goes beyond what is exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented. In fact, the runoff from the spilled paint can represents or to use another phrase of Danto is about, nothing, and so the ontological distinction in this case is doubly clear. But simply interpreting a thing such that the means of representation also express something in the relevant manner is insufficient to constitute a thing a work of art. I could, for instance, interpret the linearity of G, the 10 Ibid., 147. 11 Ibid., 135.

7 graph of Mt. Fuji, as making some sort of statement about the purity of nature, or the stolidity of the Japanese, but this does not constitute the graph a work of art. To address this issue, Danto s definition must depend upon a very particular notion of artistic theories and the intention of the artist. An artistic interpretation cannot simply be an interpretation made in the relevant way, since I, in interpreting G such that its means of representation are expressive, do not thereby make G into an artwork. Rather, an artistic interpretation is an interpretation that is accepted by a particular community in a particular circumstance, to use Danto s phrase, it is an interpretation made possible by theories held by the Artworld. Furthermore, this artistic interpretation must in some way be tied to the intention of the artist in producing the work. Otherwise, there would be no necessary difference between, to use Danto s example, Picasso s fictitious blue tie and the perceptually indiscernible tie painted blue by a mischievous toddler, since, prescinding from the origins and differential histories that might constitute one the kind of thing that can be subjected to artistic interpretations and the other not, both could be subjected to identical interpretations. 12 Danto s theory requires that art be the kind of thing such that the way the content is presented in relationship to the content itself is something that must always be taken into consideration, and given the perceptual, material indiscernibility of Picasso s and the child s ties, Danto must locate the requisite ontological difference between the two in the immaterial conditions of each object s coming to be, since at no time after each object has come into existence will Danto allow that the object be of the kind that it is not (whether this be representational, non-representational, or the artistic subset of what is representational). 13 That the intention of the artist must be among these immaterial conditions can be seen from the forgery case, in which the discovery that an object is a 12 Ibid., 47. 13 Ibid., 146-147.

8 fake is the discovery that the object was never an artwork to begin with. As Danto says douaniers, children, chimpanzees, counterfeiters: tracing an object to any of these defeats it as an artwork. 14 This is because the object as a forgery stands in the wrong relation to its maker, that is, it was produced without the relevant motive, without the appropriately artistic intention. 15 Given this dependence upon artistic theories so construed and the intention of the artist, two fundamental issues in Danto s definition of art are revealed: one, Danto s account of intention is too strict and ultimately rules out much of what is noncontroversially considered art, and two, Danto s construal of artistic theories cannot account for the development of art. In the first case, Danto s definition must take into account the intention of the artist, but Danto s account of this intention requires too much. In Danto s view, it is not enough that one simply intends to make art, nor that one intend to make something beautiful, striking, or religiously or spiritually moving or efficacious, nor even that one intend to make something with some sort of aesthetic character, however we choose to interpret the term aesthetic. We see this from Danto s outright refusal to count the work of children as art: while children can intend to make art broadly construed, they cannot intend to make art in Danto s sense of the word. Likewise for chimpanzees, though, of course, chimpanzees cannot intend anything at all, and thus the relevant intention will always be missing. Similarly, Danto rejects the Lascaux cave paintings as art since it never occurred to the painters of Lascaux that they were producing art, art here clearly being defined as Danto defines it, i.e. by making reference to artistic theories. 16 Thus according to Danto, for a thing to be art, the maker must intend it to be art, but art defined in the particular way that Danto has 14 Arthur C. Danto, Artworks and real things, Theoria 39 (1973): 14. 15 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 51. 16 Danto, The Artworld, 581.

9 chosen to use the word. That is, one must intend to make a representational thing such that, in contrast with mere representations, it uses the means of representation in a way that is not exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented, and the absence of this intention is a defeating condition for the application of the predicate is art. But just as the lack of the relevant intention excludes the Lascaux cave paintings from the class of artworks, and just as the discovery that a work was painted by a chimpanzee belies its designation as a work of art, so too must the lack of the relevant intention exclude nearly all ancient art, religious art, and representational art, to say the least. On Danto s account, Giotto s frescos can be interpreted in the relevant way, since applicable artistic theories exist today according to which they can be interpreted as artworks, but this is no different from the prohibited ex post facto artistic interpretation of the graph G of Mt. Fuji, or from an insistence on the artistic merit of the paintings of what was discovered to be the chimpanzee Pierre Brassau. In producing his work, Giotto intended to depict reality, and so only to express what is expressed when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented, namely the real subject of the work. While Danto is certainly right in saying that we can, now, look at the Scrovegni Chapel and see not simply objects represented but also a way of seeing the world that is expressed via the means of representation, he himself admits that, at the time of its production, this extra-representational expression was notably unavailable, and thus the intention necessary to constitute these frescos works of art were absent. 17 One way out of this dilemma is to insist that the theory of art has been the same throughout history. On this view Giotto, in producing his frescoes, intended to make art in the relevant sense of the word, at least insofar as he could intend that the frescoes be 17 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 42-43; 162-163

10 art at all. Danto seems to adopt this solution on one reading of his account of newly significant features. On this reading of his account, the theory of art is constant, and what changes are the available set of artistically relevant predicates, with each artistic breakthrough adding newly significant features of art that then become new art-relevant predicates which increase the number of available artistic styles by 2 n. 18 Here, there are two possible cases: either this unitary theory has existed in constant conjunction with those beings capable of making art, such that there has never been a point in human history in which this theory was unavailable, or else this unitary theory has not existed in such a conjunction, in which case there will be points in human history in which no such thing as art could exist, at least in Danto s view. In the first case, Giotto, insofar as he intended his frescoes to be art, or whatever the linguistic equivalent of the term for him might be, had to have intended them in the relevant way. In this case, Danto might simply be wrong about the Lascaux cave paintings, since those painters too, insofar as they intended their work to be art, would have intended them in the required manner. But this view is factually incorrect, since there have been times in which there was no concept of art, or especially a concept of the aesthetic, as we currently understand the term, notably the times in which Giotto worked and in which the Lascaux caves were painted. This holds regardless of the size of the set of artistically-relevant predicates, since no matter how many or few art-relevant predicates were available to Giotto at the time in which he worked, it is still the case that he did not intend to present the content of his work in a way such that the means of representation must always be taken into consideration when considering what is being represented, nor that the means of representation express in a way not exhaustively described when exhaustively describing what is being represented. In the second case, it 18 Danto, The Artworld, 583-584.

11 will still turn out that Giotto s frescoes, and indeed most art prior to the Impressionists, will be excluded from the class of artworks, since Giotto could only intend his works in the necessary way if the theory of art as we or, at least, Danto currently understand it existed in the times in which he worked, and as we have just established, it did not. Now it might be objected that, while Giotto did not intend his work to be art in the particular, representational sense with which Danto uses the word, he still intended his work in the context of artistic theories. Take, for example, the fact that the claim of the physicalist of pigment, the man who has found in paint per se the point of art, is not saying what the philistine is saying when he says this is black and white paint, nothing more, since, in contrast with the philistine, he is remaining within the idiom of art by saying, in effect, that a whole other class of [artistic] identifications is wrong, relative to a theory of what art is. 19 Likewise Giotto, in effecting his artistic breakthrough, can be seen as making some sort of statement relative to the prevalent perspective-less and elongated Byzantine style, in much the same way that Danto and Millard Meiss argue the Strozzi altarpiece is a response to the newly introduced Giottesque perspective. 20 This objection, however, runs into the same problem we encountered when examining the earlier version of Danto s definition, namely, it does not sufficiently specify what counts as an enabling theory of art. The objector here must argue that Giotto intended his work in a way that depends crucially upon some sort of background artistic theory, but at the same time, the objector must also reject Danto s developed account of what constitutes such a theory, with the result being a definition of art that is either overly broad or unacceptably arbitrary. An alternative solution to the problem raised by Danto s account of intention is to think that there were analogous but different theories of art that made historic objects 19 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 135. 20 Ibid., 50.

12 into artworks at the time in which they were made, which, given a sort of Calvinist once-an-artwork-always-an-artwork principle P, would work to resolve the issue. On this view, there was something like a development of artistic theories, such that the theory of art, when it existed, was not a unitary theory but rather the development of a single concept. This is analogous in some sense to the multiple and developing theories of gravity, since the different theories at different times are not identical, and yet they still describe the same concept, such that what one theory at one time describes as gravity is the same thing that another, better developed theory describes at a later time. Danto appears to have this view when he argues in The Artworld that Reality Theory (RT) has replaced Imitation Theory (IT) in the same way that one scientific theory might replace another. 21 The problem here, however, is that either the different theories are only ostensibly different, in which case the problem reduces to that of the first solution i.e. the theory of art has been the same throughout history or else the different theories are in fact different, in which case the issue will depend upon giving an acceptable formulation of the principle P, which I will argue cannot be done. On one reading of Danto s account of the development of different artistic theories, these theories turn out to be only ostensibly distinct. Take the alternative reading of Danto s account of newly significant features, in which the addition of particular newly significant features is precisely what marks the evolution from IT to RT. Colin Lyas, in a parallel critique of Danto s theory, describes this shift as follows: Up to a certain time people call things art if they exhibit some one or other of a set of features A,B,C,D,E. After that time they call things art if they exhibit some one or other of an expanded list of features 21 Danto, The Artworld, 573-574.

13 A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,... There being an overlap in the two lists of features it begins to make sense to speak of»conceptual revision.«22 Here, again, there are two cases. In the first case, the additional features F,G,H,... are already implicit in the original features A,B,C,D,E, or else they are implied by whatever principle it is that unites the features A,B,C,D,E as art-relevant features. In this case, RT simply reduces to IT, and so there is only an apparent distinction between the two. In the second case, the additional features really are new and RT cannot be derived from IT. Here, RT and IT are genuinely different theories in much the same way that S4 and S5 are different systems of modal logic. In order, then, for an artwork produced under IT to count as an artwork under RT, a principle P would be required such that any work, once constituted an artwork under one theory, will always remain an artwork regardless of changes in that theory or shifts from one theory to another. But this barefaced equivocation is neither logically tenable nor even supported by Danto s theory, since Danto would in principle rule out as art the works of a primitive culture whose concept of art is no more complex than that of a child. Thus we see that, in every case, Danto s account of intention remains overly strict. Our analysis of Danto s problematic account of intention raises a number of questions regarding his account of artistic theories. As it turns out, regardless of whether we read Danto as arguing for unitary or distinct theories of art, his understanding of artistic theories is unable to properly account for the development of art. Danto argues that, just as new facts resulted in a conceptual revolution in science, so too did the advent of post-impressionist paintings result in a conceptual revolution in art. 23 As Danto points out, it was impossible to accept these new works as art, unless as 22 Colin Lyas, Danto and Dickie on Art, in Culture and Art: An Anthology, edited by Lars Aagaard-Mogenson (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc., 1976), 174. 23 Danto, The Artworld, 573.

14 inept art, and so to get them accepted as art... required not so much a revolution in taste as a theoretical revision of rather considerable proportions, involving not only the artistic enfranchisement of these objects, but an emphasis upon the newly significant features of accepted artworks, so that quite different accounts of their status as artworks would now have to be given. 24 Prescinding from the criticisms of this account that have already been given, Danto s description of the development of artistic theory also suffers from a more fundamental problem with circularity. According to Danto, when it comes to art, not everything is possible at every time, that is, certain artworks simply could not be inserted as artworks into certain periods of art history. 25 As a general principle, Danto argues that the definition of art has continually expanded, including more and more real objects as works of art whose material counterparts might have excluded them from this designation in the past, with each expansion accompanied by an expansion of the set of art-relevant predicates that may or may not have resulted in the constitution of a new artistic theory (depending on whether we accept the unitary or distinct reading). 26 The problem here is that, for a real object that might formerly be excluded from the definition of art to become a work of art, there must occur a conceptual revolution in artistic theory to artistically enfranchise it. However, for such a conceptual revolution to occur, this real object must already be counted as a work of art, that is, it must already be enfranchised. Think of analogous scientific revolutions that occur when an old theory is unable to account for new facts. In these cases, the new facts are taken as given, despite being incompatible with the old theory, and so the old theory must change to account for them. Likewise, in order to effect an artistic revolution, it must be assumed 24 Ibid. 25 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 44. 26 cf. Danto, The End of Art, in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (Columbia University Press, 1986).

15 that there exist artworks incompatible with the current artistic theory. Unlike the facts that precipitate a scientific revolution, however, in Danto s view nothing can be an artwork outside of an interpretation provided by an existing artistic theory. Our analysis so far has shown Danto s definition of art susceptible to two criticisms: first, Danto s definition requires an account of the artist s intention, of which Danto s version is too strict, and second, Danto s definition depends upon the existence of artistic theories in the Artworld, of which his account is subject to issues with circularity. There are a number of possible solutions. In response to the first criticism, we can either ignore the intention of the artist or else weaken our account of it. In response to the second criticism, we can similarly divorce the notion of artistic theory from the definition of art, or else we can alter our account of it. Taking these possible solutions in order, it is impossible to ignore the intention of the artist without irreparably debasing the concept of art. If the intention of the artist does not matter, then the work of a chimpanzee can be art just as much as the work of a Botticelli, and accidentally splattered paint will be difficult if not impossible to distinguish from a Pollock. Thus, even the artifactuality of art will be called into question, such that any object, artefactual or not, which can evoke the right kind of response or be described as having the right sort of intrinsic properties can be construed as art, including trees, lakes, mountains, and the belt which currently holds up my pants. Thus it seems that the development of a weaker, alternate account of intention is the most promising avenue of response to the first criticism. By contrast, I think the proper response to the second criticism is to disassociate art and theory, at least in the thick sense of theory that Danto seems to imply. This is in part motivated by the difficulty of finding a satisfactory alternate account of artistic theory that addresses the issue of circularity. For example, one possible revision is to

16 read Danto s account of the role of theory in the constitution of art as merely an epistemic one. On this view, artistic theories do not constitute art in the ontological sense, rather, they merely allow us to acknowledge and discover what is already art. This alternate account allows us to follow the scientific analogy all the way through, since there can now exist works of art incompatible with current theories, of which artistic theories will need to develop in order to make some sort of account. On this view, the project of developing theories of art, much like the scientific project, will be that of attempting to best describe that ontologically independent class of works called art. While this account of theory certainly works, it is no longer an account of theory in the thick sense, that is, it is an account of theory that is independent of the definition of art, and so it reduces to the response that I favor, namely, the disassociation of the definition of art from artistic theories. Another way to revise Danto s account of artistic theory is to think of theories in more static terms. Danto s account is circular because it attempts to show either how a single theory can be expanded and developed or else how one artistic theory can transform or develop into another. In both cases, what is required is an artwork enfranchised by the existing theory that somehow still falls far enough outside that theory so as to require a conceptual revolution. If instead we think of artistic theories more along the lines of Platonic forms, in which different theories of art are akin to different forms, then it is entirely possible for real objects to be artistically enfranchised by one theory while other works at that same point in time are enfranchised by another. The picture here is of multiple, independent theories of art coexisting at different times, passing in and out of vogue, and independently enfranchising real objects as works of art. Bracketing for now the question of whether or not these theories exist eternally, who creates them or where they exist, the main problem with this account is that it has

17 as a consequence the fact that, those who call e.g. Rauschenberg s Bed or Warhol s Brillo Boxes art are using the term in a different sense than those in the past. This discredits the project of trying to define art at all, since it seems that each society and culture can have its own art, and that these different arts and their resultant artworks need not be related to one another at all. As such, there is no stable definiendum for a definition of art to capture. 27 A further consequence of this view is that art, as we understand it, really only exists post-eighteenth century, the date to which historian of philosophy Paul Kristeller traces the development of the modern concept of art. 28 Prior to this, artworks were art in another sense, and those same works can only be considered art now when we consider the term in its new, modern sense. The most promising avenue forward, then, seems to lie in a weakened account of intention and a weaker sense of theory, one that does not constitute so critical a role in the ontology of art. Here, it is worth turning to Beardsley s definition of art in which an artwork is an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording an experience with marked aesthetic character that is, an object (loosely speaking) in the fashioning of which the intention to enable it to satisfy the aesthetic interest played a significant causal part. 29 For all the problems incumbent upon the concept of the aesthetic, Beardsley s definition is promising for two reasons: first, it is the intention of the artist rather than artistic theory that is at the center of his definition, and second, his account of the artist s intention is arguably weaker than that of Danto s, since his concept of the aesthetic is much more general than Danto s developed definition of art. 27 For this critique I borrow loosely from Paul O. Kristeller, The Modern System of the Arts, in Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 163-227; and from Thomas Adajian s Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on The Definition of Art, First published Oct 23, 2007; substantive revision Oct 9, 2012. 28 see Kristeller, The Modern System of the Arts. 29 Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), xix.

18 That said, it is a specific advantage of Danto s theory that he is able to avoid any sort of dependence on the much belabored concept of the aesthetic. My own view is that Danto is right in arguing that it is a unique and necessary characteristic of art that it uses the means of representation in a way that is not exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented, but, like Beardsley, he must put an account of intention at the center of his definition, since it is the intention of the artist that qualifies a work to be interpreted in this way. Pace Beardsley, however, I argue that the relevant intention is not characterized by the aesthetic, but rather by what I will call the transcendent. Here I am thinking of transcendent intentions as in contrast to those intentions characteristic of what the Schoolmen termed the artes serviles, namely those eminently practical arts performed for the service of baser needs. 30 To have a transcendent intention is in part to intend a thing for its own sake, or at the very least, not to intend the thing solely as a means for the achievement of some practical good. It is an intention that sets apart, in much the same way that the sacrifice of the ancient Israelites incorporated a setting apart of first fruits to mark their own setting apart as a people. The contemplative, the mystical, the religious, the magical, even the aesthetic are all species of the transcendent as I have defined it. Thus for a work to be art, its producer must have the transcendent among his intentions in the making of it, and the work must be interpreted in such a way that the means of representation are expressive beyond what is exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented. The advantages of this definition become clear when reexamining previous cases. Lichtenstein s portrait and Loran s diagram remain ontologically distinct, since Loran, insofar as he was diagramming, could only have intended those ends proper to 30 Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (South Bend: St. Augustine s Press, 1998), 63.

19 diagramming, namely, the depiction of a particular subject for the sake of making explicit particular features of the work of Cézanne. If Loran had a transcendent intention alongside this diagrammatic one, then it would be the case that his diagram could be constituted a work of art, provide that it was, in fact, interpreted in the relevant way. That said, the diagram has not been interpreted in this way, and Loran s response to Lichtenstein s work indicates the lack of a transcendent intention in his production of it. A similar case can be made to argue for the distinction between the graph G of Mt. Fuji and the perceptually indiscernible drawing H by Hiroshige. In the case of a forgery, as Danto points out, a forgery only pretends to be a statement of someone else s, since it was instead made, not with a properly artistic intention, but rather from a variety of other motives, including monetary gain, deception, comparisons of skill, &c. 31 Built into this case, then, is a lack of transcendent intention, and so the discovery that a thing is a fake is the discovery that it is not a work of art. Contrast this with a forgery made with a transcendent intention, in which a person copies a work of art with the purpose of e.g. creating a contemplative piece, or, as in the case of Pierre Menard, to create a work of art perceptually indistinguishable from one that already exists. In these cases, provided the work is interpreted in the necessary manner, the presence of a transcendent intention in the production of the work serves to constitute that work a work of art. Let us turn now to some of the harder cases. While it is clear that Giotto must have had transcendent intentions in the production of his Scrovegni frescoes, as they were not made merely for everyday practical reasons such as wall durability, it is less clear with the Lascaux painters. Here, I concede Danto s point that both philosophy and art depend upon the presence of a concept of reality, upon the existence in some sense of a metalanguage with which a society can talk about reality as opposed to e.g. 31 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 51.

20 representations or illusions, but I reject his assumption that the Lascaux painters had no such conception. 32 On Danto s view, the Lascaux painters would have lacked transcendent intentions for the precise reason that they had no concept of reality as a whole, and so he classes their cave paintings alongside spearheads and clothing as just another practical product of the artes serviles in a culture where magic and reality are one. It is unclear to me, however, that any society can fail to see the distinction between the real, concrete effect of donning a bison fur in the winter and the notably less real but magical effect of drawing on a cave and subsequently spearing a bull. Regardless of the facts on the ground, this distinction is all that is needed for the attribution of transcendent intentions, since one is clearly tied to the arts, purposes, and uses of the everyday, while the other is in some sense set apart as different, magical, and useless in the sense of the everyday. Now one might object that, while it is arguable that Giotto and the Lascaux painters had transcendent intentions, it is at least clear that their works were not interpreted in the necessary way, since it has already been determined that the relevant theory did not exist at the times in which they worked. Here we see the advantages of this definition s shift away from the thick sense of theory, since it is in fact possible for the relevant interpretation to be made without an existing theory, as the existence of an appropriate theory sometimes only serves to make an existing interpretation explicit to those interpreting, i.e. not every theory makes a nonexistent interpretation possible; some simply make an existing one evident. On this model, the contemporaries of the Lascaux painters could and likely did interpret the paintings in a way such that they used the means of representation in a way that was not exhaustively specified when what was being represented had been exhaustively specified, they just may have been 32 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 78.

21 and likely were unaware that they were interpreting the works in such a manner. Danto admits of this very possibility in the following passage: It is beyond question that we may learn to effect discriminations by training, and that we may learn to make exceedingly fine distinctions as between, for example, wines. And often we can learn to see things that would have been invisible before, simply in consequence of the fact that ways of seeing are perhaps transparent to those whose ways of seeing they are, and these may turn, so to speak, opaque when they no longer are their ways of seeing. 33 As an example of this, Danto points to the realism of Giotto and the forgeries of Van Meegeren, both of which have features and styles that can now be easily recognized as a particular way of seeing things, but both of which features and styles were also invisible to their contemporaries. In a similar manner, the ancient people at Lascaux certainly may have interpreted the cave paintings in the necessary manner without being aware that they were doing so, and I would argue that they, in fact, did, since to our eyes the way of seeing that was transparent to them is now opaque, such that it is clear to us from the stylization of the animals, the manner of representing man, &c. that these painters, like Giotto, used the means of representation in a way that is not exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented, simply put, there was clearly much more to these paintings than simply the representation of particular subjects. Finally, let us reexamine the case of children, in which case, contra Danto, my definition may in fact allow for the work of children to count as art. First, on my view, the ontological distinction between Picasso s blue tie and the blue tie of the mischievous 33 Ibid., 42.

22 child remains, since the child neither had the relevant intention nor was his tie interpreted in the necessary manner. But take the watercolor of a child who has been enrolled in a preschool that emphasizes the creative benefits of encouraging children to perform what, at least externally, appears to be the production of art. Here, so long as the child has among his intentions the production of art, I see no reason to exclude in principle the possibility that this intention is transcendent and that the work can be interpreted in the necessary manner. In fact, I think this tracks our intuitions, since it seems much more likely that children produce bad or facile or simple or primitive or even nascent art rather than no art at all. At this point in our discussion, at least two objections can be made. First, my definition does not seem to easily include certain artworks such as the readymades of Duchamp because these objects are not made in the traditional sense and so it is difficult to see how they could be made with the right intentions. Second, given my account of the transparency of the interpretations made by the people at Lascaux and the contemporaries of Giotto, my definition seems subject to the epistemic problem of actually identifying which works in a society count as art, since a society may be unaware that it is interpreting a work in the manner necessary for constituting it an artwork. In response to the first objection, I see two possible solutions. One is to adopt an account of the making of an artwork that mirrors George Dickie s account of the conferral of artifactuality on e.g. a piece of driftwood, in which one can confer artifactuality on a natural object by picking it up, taking it home, and hanging it on the wall or entering it in an exhibition. 34 In a sense, this conferral of artifactuality is the making of a new object, so on this account, for a readymade to be a work of art, the relevant intention must simply be present when the real object is made into a new thing 34 George Dickie, What is Art? in Culture and Art: An Anthology, edited by Lars Aagaard- Mogenson (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc., 1976), 29.

23 by an analogous process. As an alternative solution, I am perfectly willing to see these objects as Beardsley does, that is, as statements about art rather than as artworks themselves. 35 That said, at least on my definition, it is unlikely that one can make a statement about art without having a transcendent intention, 36 and so even on this alternative view it is possible to construe the readymade as a work of art. As for the epistemic objection, it may in fact be the case that we cannot as a practical matter enumerate all the works of art in existence at any one time, though even in this extreme case I do not see this as too serious an issue, so long as the definition is sound in all the cases we know it ought to be. To some degree, this epistemic gap is to be expected, since an account of the necessary and sufficient conditions of a thing need not and often do not take into account the practicality of actually determining these conditions. That said, I do not think this objection holds any longer, since we presently have the theories to make explicit the kind of interpretation necessary to constitute a thing a work of art, and so we should in theory be able to identify all works of art currently in existence. Thus, this objection, if it does hold, holds only of past times in which such theories did not exist or else were unavailable, but many if not most of the societies in these past times also lacked any concept of art, high art, or the aesthetic, and so it should not be surprising that the people in these societies would also be unable to identify all the artworks that existed at that time. While a full elaboration of this particular definition of art is beyond the scope of this paper, the problems with Danto s definition are serious and some sort of revision along the lines offered here will be required for it to get off the ground. Of course, further research must be done to more precisely determine the relevant artistic intention 35 Beardsley, Aesthetics, xx. 36 N.B. It does not follow that this paper is a work of art, however, since this paper is not to be interpreted in such a way that the means of representation are expressive beyond what is exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented.

24 at play as well as the conditions in which the appropriate interpretations are made. That said, I find the incorporation of what I have termed transcendent intentions to be a promising avenue towards a sounder and more complete definition of art.

25 Works Cited Adajian, Thomas, "The Definition of Art", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/art-definition/>. Beardsley, Monroe C. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981. Beardsley, Monroe C. Is Art Essentially Institutional? In Culture and Art: An Anthology, edited by Lars Aagaard-Mogenson, 194-209. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc., 1976. Danto, Arthur C. Artworks and real things. Theoria 39 (1973): 1-17. Danto, Arthur C. The Artworld. The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964): 571-584. Danto, Arthur C. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. Dickie, George. What is Art? In Culture and Art: An Anthology, edited by Lars Aagaard-Mogenson, 21-32. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc., 1976. Kristeller, Paul O. The Modern System of the Arts. In Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays, 163-227. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Lyas, Colin. Danto and Dickie on Art. In Culture and Art: An Anthology, edited by Lars Aagaard-Mogenson, 170-193. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc., 1976. Mandelbaum, Maurice. Family Resemblances and Generalization Concerning the Arts. American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 219-228. Pieper, Josef. Leisure: The Basis of Culture. South Bend: St. Augustine s Press, 1998. Weitz, Morris. The Role of Theory in Aesthetics. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1956): 27-35. Ziff, Paul. The Task of Defining a Work of Art. The Philosophical Review 62 (1953): 58-78. This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations. Christian Say 17