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Art & Philosophy

Pact or Artifact?

Greg Stone offers a contractual definition of art, among other artful ideas.

Every painter, gallery viewer, or philosopher probably has his or her own definition of art. Yet so-called ‘hard cases’ abound, which stretch our concept of art. Does it include ‘driftwood art’ plucked from a beach and put on display? Or environmental art, such as Pat Falco’s ‘Cloud Installation, Abstract’, an outdoor sign with arrows pointing upward in an otherwise normal landscape outside a museum? Is it possible to forge a comprehensive definition of art?

I should emphasize to start with that defining art is a different matter than explaining its ontology, that is, from saying what sort of thing a work of art is once it has been designated as art. As Amie Thomasson notes in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics (p.18): “The ontological question does not ask what conditions anything must satisfy if it is to be a work of art, but rather, of various entities accepted as paradigm works of art of different genres (such as Guernica, Clair de Lune or Emma), it asks: what sort of entity is this?” So, instead of addressing the ‘ontological question’ of shedding light on the attributes accepted works of art possess, let us attempt to delineate the elements they should possess.

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