20 th Century Theories of Art

1. 20th Century Theories of Art Morris Weitz

2. 20th Century Theories of Art Clive Bell – Beauty Theory of Art Susanne Langer – Expressive Symbolism R.G. Collinwood- Imaginative Expression Morris Weitz- Wittgensteinian

3. Morris Weitz Art as an open concept. No essential definition of art; there simply are no sufficient and necessary properties of art. Art cannot be defined through essential properties Wittgensteinian view of art.

4. Theory of Art Aesthetic should not be about developing a theory of art, or about coming to a conception of the NATURE or ESSENCE of art. Such a task is impossible. It is impossible not because of some limitation on our part, or because of the complexity of art, rather it is impossible because of the NATURE of art.

5. Nature of Art The “NATURE” of art is such that it has no NATURE.

6. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions To define something through its necessary and sufficient properties we need to find (1) the PROPERTY all the things have in common (necessary property) and (2) the property that ONLY this group has (i.e., a property that distinguishes this group from all other groups). Example: Humans are (1) animals and (2) rational.

7. Art as an Open Concept “My intention is to go beyond these to make a much more fundamental criticism, namely, that aesthetic theory is a logically vain attempt to define what cannot be defined, to state the necessary and sufficient properties of that which has no necessary and sufficient properties, to conceive of art as closed when its very use reveals and demands its openness.”

8. Open and Closed in Art There can be closed conceptions of art if we circumvent the classification in question with other non-art related properties, such as history and/or nationality. For instance the concept of Greek tragedies or the French cubists. However, tragedy or comedies can never be a closed concept.

9. Argument (1) Historical: The most important proof (or the most persuasive evidence) for the open concept of art is the complete failure of past theories to capture or classify art in a comprehensive way. (2) Aesthetic theories are not open to verification or falsification and therefore are non-theories. (3) Confusion between Evaluative and Recognition Criteria.

10. Historical Theories Formalist Theory (too narrow, circular) Emotionalist Theory (too narrow, epistemologically problematic) Intuitionists Theory (entails non-conceptual knowledge..too narrow) Organicist Theory (too general) Voluntarist Theory (too narrow)

11. Non-verifiable Theories should be testable The theories of art proposed cannot be empirically verifiable or confirmed.

12. Evaluative vs. Recognition Criteria Recognition criteria: the properties that allow one to know that something is a work of art. Evaluative criteria: the properties that allow one to know that a work is a good work of art.

13. Good art vs. Art Good art All Art

14. Weitz Weitz argues that theorists have conflated these two, so that they have supplanted the recognition criteria with the evaluative criteria. In effect, Weitz argues that theorists are arguing that only good art is art!

15. The purpose of Aesthetics The purpose of aesthetics is not to develop a theory of art but rather to elucidate the concept of art . …That aesthetic theory is a logically vain attempt to define what cannot be defined, to state the necessary and sufficient properties of that which has no necessary and sufficient properties, to conceive the concept of art as closed when its very use reveals and demands its openness.”

16. Redefining the problem The question should not be WHAT IS ART? But rather WHAT KIND OF A CONCEPT IS ART? The first question already presupposes a certain ontological structure and a certain relation between language and that structure. Weitz wants to focus on the linguistic use of the concept of art.

17. Wittgensteinian Model What is a game? What is the nature of games? What is the essence of games? What are the necessary (they all have in common) and sufficient (separates them) properties of games?

18. Games There are so many different types of games that NO definition can capture all of them. There are no necessary or sufficient properties of games. Yet the concept still makes sense and we can still use it in a meaningful way.

19. Games Games do not have an essence. Instead they Have a FAMILY RESEMBLANCE. Overlapping and crisscrossing similarities

20. Games and Art We use the concept of art similarly to games. The set of things we call “art” have “strands of similarities” and we can recognize them and elucidate them, but there is no fixed and permanent property or set of properties that DEFINES art. Game and art are OPEN concepts.

21. Open A concept is open if its conditions (criteria) are emendable and corrigible. Evolve Fluid

22. Weitz: closed and open concepts “But this [closed concepts] can happen only in logic or mathematics where concepts are constructed and completely defined. It cannot occur with empirically-descriptive and normative concepts unless we arbitrarily close them by stipulating the ranges of their uses.”

23. Extending concepts Extending a concept, such as art or any of its subgroups, to include new cases, such as new styles of paintings or new forms of writings, is a human decision (usually experts and critics) that cannot be definitely supported by the existence of necessary and sufficient conditions.

24. Weitz “What I am arguing, then, is that the very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and novel creations, makes it logically impossible to ensure any set of defining properties.”

25. A New Purpose Weitz argues that we should not view theories of aesthetics as theories of recognition but rather as evaluative theories. In this sense they still serve an important function for art (even though it is not the function their author’s intended). They point out new and neglected features of art go into the EVALUATIVE conception of art.