| This thesis is dedicated to the fundamental problem of the philosophy of art: what is art.After reviewing many existing art theories,this thesis holds that the definition of art proposed by American analytical aesthetician Arthur Danto in his works such as“The Transfiguration of the Common Place” and “The Artworld” is more in accordance with the real situation of the contemporary art.Danto’s theory of art has great explanatory power and is very persuasive.Based on the investigation of the contemporary situation of art and the analysis of several aspects of the definition offered by Danto,this thesis seeks to justify the reasonable parts of this definition while rejecting the others which do not conform the reality,and puts forward new proposals as complement,making every effort to explore a new definition which covers all the typical and atypical phenomena of art.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is to prove the necessity of putting forward a new definition of art by presenting the complexity of the contemporary situation of art and revealing the insufficiency of the existing art theories,also to highlight the prospective of Danto’s art theory.First of all,this chapter clarifies that the concept of art to be explored in this research refers to the contemporary concept of art,which corresponds to not only the contemporary art in a narrow sense originated from the avant-garde tradition,nor the art contemporarily created,but covers all the objects that are generally considered as art in the contemporary world.A genuine definition of art must take care of all aspects of all the following kinds of object: the art developed from the avant-garde and created mainly by professional artists;all the classical forms of art,such as painting,sculpture,music,film,drama,literature,etc;the art created by amateurs and artisans outside the art institutions;the commercial art,such as industrial design,graphic design,advertising,etc;the art from non-western traditions,such as Chinese and Japanese painting,the aboriginal art from Africa and Australia;the primitive art created in ancient times,such as cave paintings;the art which has appeared in other social fields such as in the space exploration and the wildlife documentary.Till now,the definitions of art proposed in the history can be roughly categorized into three types: the mimetic theory and its derived theory of representation;the expressional theory;the formal theory.The problem of the mimetic theory and the representational theory is that the music and the abstract art are not well explained.The problem of the expressional theory is that it does not distinguish between artistic expression and emotional expression;The problem of the formal theory is that it does not distinguish art from symbols and diagrams.With the art revolution,these definitions of art have failed to cover many new artistic phenomena,therefore a new definition of art is necessary.After that the traditional art theories encountered difficulties,art philosophers have also put forward some new theories.Although these theories still have their shortcomings,they have gradually revealed some characteristics of the contemporary concept of art.According to Beardsley,art is something that satisfies aesthetic experience or happens to satisfy aesthetic experience;Munro believes that art is not only a technique and its product,but also a field of social culture;Eaton believes that artworks are artifacts whose history of creation can draw people’s attention to their noteworthy parts;Rand holds that art is the recreation of the reality based on the artist’s metaphysical value judgment;Dickie claims that art is everything created for the purpose of being presented in the art world,namely the art circle and art institutions;Danto argues that an artwork must obtain its place in the history of art which should be its reference consists of all the past works,and an artwork also is a metaphorical representation of its subject and its style.Among these art theories,this thesis selects Danto’s theory as the foundation to propose a new definition of art,because on the one hand,Danto’s analysis of metaphor,representation,and expression conforms very much the reality of art;on the other hand,its final conclusion points out that the current art evolution has entered into the relatively stable stage,which means that the art field has exhausted all the possibilities.Danto thinks that the concept of art will not change dramatically again,so now is the best time to define art.The second chapter is to comprehensively refute one by one the anti-essentialism claims that art cannot be defined,so as to prove the legitimacy of the definition of art.The artistic revolution of the last century makes a group of anti-essentialists believe that art cannot be defined.Other art philosophers including Dickie,Margolis and Danto refute this view.On the one hand,this chapter analyzes the debate and the arguments of the two sides.On the other hand,in order to stand that art can be defined,some anti-essentialism arguments which have not been overturned by essentialism are further analyzed and refuted.It is firstly clarified that the form of definition discussed by both sides of the debate is the from of necessary and sufficient conditions,which means that the anti-essentialists proposed that there is no necessary and sufficient conditions for being art.Secondly,a problem of both sides must be realized: the concept of art and the concept of artwork are often confused in the discussions while they are not the same concept.The anti-essentialist argument is basically developed from Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance: all works of art share no common feature as a necessary condition,but have only overlapping similarities,thus art cannot be defined.The problem of this argument is that,first of all,the absence of the common feature of all artworks is an empirical inductive conclusion.Some theorists’ failure to define art doesn’t mean the definition can never be found in the future.Second,the defining property of being artwork is not necessarily a property of its appearance or its physical being,but probably a property of a unique way of producing it.Moreover,the concept of art and the concept of artwork are not the same,therefore the absence of the common feature of artworks can only probably prove that there is no necessary condition for being artwork,but won’t prove that art cannot be defined neither with necessary and sufficient conditions.In addition,anti-essentialism holds that there is no way to verify the correctness of the proposed definition of art,while in fact,the definition of art can be verified by existing examples.If there are artworks that cannot be covered by certain definition,this definition is incorrect.Weitz,the most important supporter of anti-essentialism of art,argues that even artificiality is not a necessary condition for artwork,because someone will say "what an excellent work of art" to a natural object.However,the use of the term "art" here is not a categorical use,but an evaluative one,which does not mean that the natural object is really an artwork.Kennick claims that the definition of art is not only impossible,but also unnecessary,because everyone knows what art is,and art criticism does not rely on the definition of art.This claim is clearly problematic.One of the important real situations of contemporary art is that the audiences are increasingly confused about what art is.Furthermore,it is impossible to make art criticism without knowing whether the object is an artwork or not.Especially facing some marginal and atypical art phenomenon,a judgment of whether the object can be considered as artwork must be made before making art critics.Finally,since both sides of the debate are discussing the definition in the form of necessary and sufficient conditions,the anti-essentialists can at most only prove that art cannot be defined with necessary and sufficient conditions,while there is no evidence to prove that the possible form of definition has been exhausted.The third chapter gives a comprehensive and objective presentation of Danto’s definition of art through the analysis of Danto’s texts including “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace”,“The Artworld”,“What is Art”,etc.In “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace”,Danto proposes that artwork is the representation of the subject which it is about;it expresses the attitude or the point of view of the creator with a style in a metaphorical way.In “The Artworld”,Danto puts forward the concepts of “artworld”and “style matrix”: the creation and interpretation of art depends on the art history,and all the existing artistic predicates are presented positively or negatively in every artwork,which will at last form a style matrix.A work can only be artwork and get its way into the art history by bringing a new predicate or denying an existing predicate.Danto found that the most puzzling problem the contemporary art brings to the exploration of the definition of art is that there are often pairs of objects which look exactly the same while one of them is an artwork and the other is not.This proves the fact that the essential property of artwork is not the property that can be directly observed.In addition to the observable properties,there are many other properties of an object which can only identified in ways other than mere observation,such as the process of production,the relationship between the object and other things.So he suggests that what makes a work artistic may not be its physical properties,but a property concerning its relationship with other things.He believes that an artwork is about something which is not itself,that is,the subject of the artwork;this relation of aboutness can be called representation.Even if there is an object which looks exactly the same with certain artwork,as long as it is not about a subject,it is neither representation nor artwork.Being representational is a necessary condition but not sufficient for being artwork,because there are other representations which are about something other than themselves,but are not artistic: symbols and diagrams.To distinguish them from artworks,Danto introduces the concepts of metaphor and style.Danto’s concept of metaphor is developed from the theory of Goodman.Goodman considers art as a metaphorical exemplification,Danto who followed his path defines artwork as metaphorical representation.Metaphor is a rhetorical device that makes the audience to focus on what the creator expects them to notice.The principle is to leave the common character between the work and its subject untold as a metaphorical ellipsis,so that the audience can find the common character by themselves and take the attitude or perspective as the creator hoped.In mere representations,namely the symbols and diagrams,there is no such rhetorical element since symbols and diagrams are made to convey information directly and clearly.The metaphorical representation is what Danto called expression,which expresses things inevitably with a style.Danto’s concept of style in “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” refers to the personal way in which the creator represents the world,and it is originated from the way how the creator sees the world.An artwork is not only about the subject but also about the creator’s style,both the subject and the style are represented in the work.The symbols and diagrams do not have artistic styles,because they do not concern any information other than the subject which needs to be conveyed accurately,which makes the style of the creator irrelevant.Artworld is another important concept in Danto’s art theory.It is easily misunderstood as “art world” in daily expressions,that is,the art circle,a social sphere composed of artists,art critics and art institutions.However,the artworld here is a concept about style and art history defined by Danto,a system of reference which consists of all the existing styles in the art history.Suppose there are many predicates that can be used to describe artwork,then every artwork is either with or without a certain predicate.Different combinations of these predicates constitute different styles,all the existing styles constitute a style matrix,and the style matrix of an artwork’s time is its artworld.If so far all the existing artwork don’t fit the predicate A,then in fact A isn’t considered an artistic predicate at all,not until some new work comes along with A.This event will not only bring A into the vision of art,but also enriched the style of all the previous works: all the previous works are non-A.For every following works,there will be a new choice: to be A or non-A.Danto believes that a work must find a place in the artworld in order to become an artwork.By finding a place he means that either adding some new predicate to its style matrix or intentionally rejecting some existing predicate in the style matrix,so that it can obtain its significance in the art history.The fourth chapter collects the existing criticisms of Danto’s theory to verify every aspect of Danto’s definition,and distinguishes the reasonable and unreasonable accusations among them.Some of the accusations should be rejected,others should be kept or further explored.Since Danto’s art theory has attracted much attention in the second half of last century,many scholars have dedicated their analysis and criticisms.This chapter will focus on the criticisms of several researchers.In addition,some shortcomings in Danto’s theory which have not been noticed by existing researches will be discussed so that they would be fixed in the next chapter together with the existing reasonable accusations.Carrier points out that when Danto discussed the unobservable nature of art’s defining property,he treated the two objects which were originally different as identical,and then revealed their differences.This was a rhetorical trick,which was suspected by Carrier of inducing the reader.This accusation is not justified.Danto has always emphasized that the pair of examples he chose is only indistinguishable from the appearance while actually have been different from each other all the time.Carroll points out that in Danto’s theory of the artworld,artists make their works enter the artworld intentionally,while in Danto’s analysis of style he emphasizes that the style comes from the way people see the world as if style is something not consciously intended.This criticism is a reasonable one,but it must be noticed that the essence of this contradiction about intention pointed out by Carroll is the contradiction between Danto’s concept of style in the two sets of theories of the metaphorical representation and the artworld.Wollheim accuses Danto of some of his thought experiments that did not conform to standard thought experiments’ norms,which may lead to a wrong definition of art.However,Danto himself never claimed that his imaginary sets of examples of artwork are thought experiments.In addition,what Danto concluded from these examples is not the essential property of art,but what kind of this property is.Dickie argues that Danto’s definition of art cannot cover non-objective painting and untitled works,because they are not about a subject.This accusation is caused by the misunderstanding of the concept of subject.Subject is not equivalent of title but is whatever is represented by the work.Non-objective painting is not keen to express the objective subject,its real subject is often the subjective experience of the creator;an untitled work is expressing an attitude and a choice,the absence of title itself could be a part of the subject of the representation.Dickie also claims that Danto’s theory cannot be applied to music.This is true,since the problem of music has always been a puzzle to the study of art.It seems difficult to capture the logical connection between the melody and rhythm of music and the represented subject since there seems nothing in common between the sound of music and the emotion.It is difficult to explain why some kinds of melody are often used to represent certain emotions.In addition,Dickie also points out another problem in Danto’s theory: Danto does not admit that children’s paintings are artworks,which is indeed a contradiction to the reality and the general understanding of art.There are more shortcomings in addition to the ones mentioned above,they are listed in this chapter as follows: Danto’s concept of style in “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” and “The Artworld” is contradictory,since if the style is originated naturally from the creator’s way of seeing the world,then any metaphorical representation must naturally has its own style,which makes having a style a sufficient but not necessary condition of being artwork;Danto excludes the primitive works from art,which contradicts the reality of art;Danto’s theory doesn’t explored the phenomenon that some scientific photographs are admired as works of art;it is unable to explain why there are works whose artistic identity is not clear such as commercial designs;it is also unable to explain the relationship between an artwork and its copies;what Danto proposed is still a definition of artwork rather than a definition of art;Danto’s theory of the artworld excludes a large number of folk art and non-professional works;some of the necessary conditions in Danto’s definition may only be criteria for the evaluation of artwork,such as having a distinctive style and the significance in the art history.Chapter five is the last chapter of the thesis,which attempts to propose a new definition of art concerning the concept of artistic action based on Danto’s definition,and then apply it to explain various artistic phenomena to justify its validity.This chapter firstly reviews all previous chapters to summarize all the unsolved problems in the investigation of the definition of art.There are many kinds of artworks which have been neglected by previous researches;moreover,the existing theories focus too much on artworks,which results in the fact that a large number of research is dealing with the definition of artwork,not the definition of art.More attention need to be paid on other concepts related to the concept of art.The forms of definition other than the form of necessary and sufficient conditions must be considered.Whether to include Danto’s concept of style,style matrix and artworld in the expected definition must be decided.In order to explore the definition of art,we must first examine all the concepts closely related to art and clarify their relations.The concepts of artwork,artist,audience and artistic action are one by one examined.This chapter tried to list as comprehensive as possible of all currently admitted categories of artwork,collecting both typical and atypical examples.Through the analysis of photography and commercial design,it is discovered that there are some categories of artwork in which some individuals are artworks,some are not artworks,and some are difficulty to be identified as artworks.In order to explain this phenomenon,the prototype theory described it as the radial structure of the concept of artwork,which means the concept is organized around some prototypes,other individuals situate in different distance from the radiation center.In such kind of concept,an individual’s membership of the category is not an all-or-nothing matter.Although the prototype theory was once promoted by anti-essentialism since it is also developed from the theory of family resemblance,it must be admitted that the description of the gradational phenomenon is very consistent with the real situation of the concept of artworks.However,the gradation of the prototypical structure is one thing,and the gradation of artistic degree is another.It is quite possible that some artwork is created in an atypical form but the work is highly artistic at the same time.The gradation of artistic degree is not interfering with the existence of necessary and sufficient conditions of being artwork.To clarify this,another property which is of the same kind with the property of art,"softness",is taken as an example.Softness is a property of a solid object possessed by the objects to varying degrees,which makes it very similar to the artistic property.Softness is a concept very well defined: easy to be deformed by external force.Therefore the necessary and sufficient defining property of artwork is still possible even it is possessed by different artworks to a varying degree.Furthermore,what Danto found as the unobservable property of artwork is its relationship with the subject,but there is another unobservable property that can be a candidate of the defining property: the process of artistic creation.It is possible that artwork can be defined as the product of a specific kind of process,therefore the artistic property of the artwork is derived from its process of creation.Compared with artwork,the artist and the audience acquire the artistic property indirectly from their relationship with artwork,so they cannot be the source of artistic property.A person usually becomes an audience after the work is created,so the audience cannot be the source of the artistic property;artist is a relatively institutionalized concept,while the creator of artwork is not necessarily a professional artist and what an artist creates is not necessarily an artwork.Therefore,there is no logical connection between being created by artist and being an artwork.Artistic action is a crucial concept of the thesis.The thesis tries to argue that the essence of art is originated from the artistic action.This chapter analyzes the actions in the process of artistic creation,including cooperative creation,interpretive creation and the creation in which the audience passively participates under the guidance of the artist.In the cooperative and interpretive creation,each creator is able to decide his own part of the metaphorical representation,because in many occasions the way of representation concerns too many aspects,the film shooting would be a very typical example;meanwhile the creation that the audience passively participates in is not actually an artistic action,but more like being used as the artist’s tool or like the action of a worker who helps the artist to arrange the work obeying instructions.The difference between this kind of work and other works is that the audience’s own actions and products become part of the representation of the work,the work is representing the audience’s action as a part of the subject.This chapter makes an important hypothesis,which is also the core conclusion of the thesis: the essence of art lies in the artistic intention of the artistic action.Certainly,some artworks are actions,such as the works of performing art and performance art.The other artworks,though are not actions themselves,must also be the productions of human actions.That is to say,all works of art are produced by actions.A generally accepted point of view of the theory of action is that the action is not merely a bodily movement,but a bodily movement plus some other elements.This thesis emphasizes the intention of the bodily movement,so as to propose that the artistic property of an artistic action is bared by the intention of the action.Only an action with artistic intention is an artistic action,only the product of an artistic action is an artwork,and only the performer of the artistic action is the creator of the work.The same action can have several intentions in different levels,but all the actions performed by the same person in creating the same work should have the same artistic intention,that is,the intention of metaphorically representing the subject.It is also discovered that the artistic intention can be interfered and weakened by other elements of the actions,such as having the intention of making profits,or the performer’s not being able to freely choose the subject or to fully realize his intention in the work,etc.The extension of the concept of artistic action also has a gradational structure,all the artistic actions performed for creating an artwork jointly affect the artistic degree of this work.It must be noticed that the artistic degree of an artwork should not be a criterion for the evaluation of the work,since it is possible that a bad painting and a good painting have the same artistic degree.Thus the thesis puts forward a new definition of art: art is a property that directly possessed by the artistic action,it carried by the action as the intention of metaphorically representing a subject;the out coming of the artistic action is artwork,the artwork possesses the artistic property in a derived way.According to this new definition,the concept of "artworld" is not necessary to define art;the concept of style is neither necessary,but comes inevitably along with the artistic action.The artistic intention cannot be simply expressed in the form of language therefore the works demonstrated to the audiences are only the final results of artistic actions,while the artistic intention of the creator is not always perfectly realized in the final result.The conclusion of this thesis is that art,as a property,is bared by the intention of artistic action,and the implementation of artistic action establishes two relations at the same time: one is the metaphorical representational relation between the work and the subject,the other is the relation between the creator and the audience through non-verbal communication.Due to the fact that the artistic property is not directly observable but lies in the creator’s intention of action,it is natural that the audiences have different understandings of the same work,even have different opinions about whether an object is an artwork or not.The reason is that it is difficult to detect the content of the artistic intention of the creator,especially because the intention does not exist in the form of language.The creator of an artwork is not necessarily the one who creates its physical entity,but the one who uses it to metaphorically represent a subject.That is why the creator of "The Fountain" is Duchamp,not the worker in the urinal factory,because the worker’s action is not an artistic action and Duchamp’s action is an artistic action.This definition has two important meanings for the contemporary audiences:firstly,if you can’t understand an artwork,don’t blame yourself but ask the art institution or the creator for more information about the work,or look it up on the internet.The condition of the fulfillment of the rhetoric purpose through a metaphorical representation is that the audience must have enough knowledge of both the work and the subject so that he can realize the common feature between the two.Secondly,for the audience,the evaluation of a work made by the mainstream media,the art circle or anyone else should not interfered the individual’s experience of the work,because people’s life experiences as the database to understand art are different,thus the effects of the same metaphor to different minds are different as well.It is possible that some work with poor public evaluation can still touch certain individuals.Finally,the thesis also emphasizes that the concept of art will not necessarily stop changing as Danto predicted,since there are still many fields of art that have not been fully explored.The definition of art proposed in this thesis tries the best to capture the current situation of art,but the thesis dares not say that it will always be valid.If the reality of art is dramatically changed again,the concept of art still needs to be redefined.This thesis mainly has three innovative achievements.Firstly,a brand new approach of the study of art is developed: the research focus of the theory of art is shifted from the artwork to the artistic action,which clarified that the essence of art is the property of artistic action,and what makes a work artistic is the artistic actions which create it.Restricted by the length and topic,the thesis didn’t achieve to discuss enough the theory of action.However,locating the essence of art in action and connecting the theory of art with the theory of action will inspire more new ideas and provide new perspectives for all art-related researches,such as whether robots can create art,the relationship between ethics and artistic creation,etc.Secondly,the thesis proposed that the artistic property is an property which can be possessed in a varying degree,that is to say,some works and actions can be more artistic than others.The artistic degree is different from the quality of an artwork,and is also different from whether an action or a work is typical.It depends on whether the intention of an artistic action is influenced by other intentions such as to be practical or documentary and whether the creator has the ability to fully realize the artistic intention.This new understanding of property breaks the traditional binary logic when identifying a property while still admit the possibility of necessary and sufficient conditions,and shows better people’s real way of recognizing things.Finally,this thesis analyzed a great amount of examples of artistic action and artwork,not only including the professional works and the works admitted in the art history,but also photography,advertising,industrial design,children’s works,primitive art,handicraft,folk art,etc.to manifest the views such as the importance of artistic intention and the varying artistic degree.Overall,the conclusion of this thesis on the one hand made some innovative contributions to the theory of art,especially to the question of the essence of art,on the other hand cleared up the confusions of many art fans therefore has certain practical value. |
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