Response to John Hurrell

Dear John.


1). I cannot speak for Arthur Danto. As for George Dickie, his definition of art is that art is any instance of an ‘artwork’ that is so authorized by the art-world. This definition is intelligible only post- Duchamp; and even with Duchamp in mind, this stipulative definition is both anachronistic and tautological. More to the point: it begs the question. It presupposes that Duchamp’s urinal actually is art. Whatever the tricksy logic here, (to quote a friend) when artists have to appeal to the authority of an analytic philosopher for backup, you know they’re running out of ideas.
But enough of the tu quoques. I've been thinking about the "anachronism" argument re. art. (That is: to reject conceptual art requires an old- fashioned idea of what art is that discounts all modern art since Duchamp's urinal). You could go the way of Wittgenstein's observation that the term 'game' has no fixed meaning; a lottery is a game, and so is soccer, but they have nothing in common. The term 'game' refers to a whole family of instances, some members have no common elements. The term 'art' is similar. Duchamp's Fountain has nothing in common with Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The real problem is that it is difficult to show how Da Vinci and other Renaissance artists, or the Impressionists, or any art before 1917 has anything to do with conceptual art: the latter seems completely adrift, conceptually speaking. That is, it seems an error to consider Da Vinci and et. al. (for example) to be in the same professional class. That's the corollary of the claim that a traditional definition of art (such as mine) is anachronistic. That is, essentially, the barrel you are looking down, as a practicing artist. If my definition of art ignores the fundamental discord between pre- and post- Duchamp art, any tacit assertion that et. al., Jeff Koons etc. are in the same profession, let alone the same league, ignores this same rift. I think the burden of proof falls on anyone who makes such an assertion.
2). You wrote: “Lilith, your notion of art seems to be 'art is what looks like art' Art however need not to be fabricated 'with artistry' or any visual quality.”
This is a straw man. I simply stated that “an artwork is a thing which has been fabricated with some degree of artistry.” I did not say that an artwork has to look like an artwork. I seriously doubt that this is a controversial claim: the etymology is clearly understood. I propose a change of tack: an artist is a person who is artistic, broadly construed. (This claim is similar to the claim that a scientist is someone who is scientific, and a musician is someone who is musical. Someone who worships sticks is not scientific; someone who has no musical skills is not a musician; someone who cannot produce art is not an artist). If a person has made no attempt to cultivate a craft, art or talent that distinguishes them from someone else (and this may include, I concede, someone who can find domestic objects and install them in an art gallery in such a way as to inspire a new way of seeing that object), I suggest that they are not an ‘artist.’
3). “In your discussion of conceptual art you are confusing a definition of the anthropological activity with value judgments of the work's quality. There is no connection linking the two.”
If an artwork is defined as whatever is deemed by the artworld public, and nothing else, you have rendered quality irrelevant. Granted. Yet consider this: every conceivable human activity that does not merely produce waste material has standards and an implied quality, insofar as the objective is implied (cooking, automotive design, playing tennis, practicing scales). Art prior to 1917 had this quality: an artist is a person who paints, sculpts, etc. One can paint well, or poorly, or (post- Bosch) can open the portals to the Unthought, or whatever. Dickie’s theory wins coherence and official approval, at the expense of actual substance. “Art,” as you seem to understand the term, is a very strange idea. I suggest that it is grounded on an empty mysticism, representing nothing.