The Institutional Theory of Art - Bob Yanal Professor :艺术制度理论鲍勃亚纳尔教授.pdf
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1、The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. Michael Kelly, Oxford University Press, 1998 The Institutional Theory of Art ROBERT J. YANAL he first institutional theory of art is outlined in a 1964 essay by Arthur Danto, “The Artworld,” which ruminates on the paradox that Andy Warhols Brillo Boxes is art thou
2、gh any of its perceptually indistinguishable twinsany stack of Brillo boxes in a grocery storeis not. Dantos offers this solution to the paradox: “To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descryan atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.” Ultima
3、tely, though, it is “art the- ory” that makes Warhols stack of silk screened plywood boxes into art. How does this “making” occur? Danto unpacks “art theory” in terms of what he calls “artrelevant predicates,” which are predicates that apply uniquely to artworks. Let it be that predicates P, Q, and
4、R are, at a certain point in history, the only artrelevant predi- cates in critical use. It will follow that any artwork is some or all of P, Q, or R. “But sup- pose,” Danto continues, “an artist determines that H shall henceforth be artistically rele- vant for his paintings.” Then objects to which
5、H applies can now and in the future stand as artworks. How does H become an artrelevant predicate? Danto tells us only an artist “determines” that it be so. However, his theory leaves unexplained why someones deci- sion can render a certain predicate to be artrelevant. In fact, at this point we wond
6、er what work the artrelevant predicates are doing, if in the end making something art comes down to someones decision. Why not, for example, allow decisions to make a thing art di- rectly, unmediated by artrelevant predicates? In later works Danto turned away from an institutional view, and towards
7、a theory which defined art in terms of “aboutness” (or “semantic character”). In The Transfigura- tion of the Commonplace he explicitly abjured the institutional theory of George Dickie that was motivated by his “Artworld” essay. However, the influence of that essay is con- siderable. It was the dea
8、th knell for aesthetic definitions of art, and this because Danto forced into philosophical attention the paradox (which Ill refer to as “Dantos paradox”) of two materially identical objects, only one of which is a work of art. If two objects al- pha and beta are materially identical, then alpha and
9、 beta share all material properties. Alpha and beta are then perceptually, hence aesthetically, equivalent. Each, that is, is equally beautiful (or ugly), equally serene (or garish), equally balanced (or unbalanced), and so on. Further, if alpha but not beta is a work of art, then the arthood of alp
10、ha cannot lie in its aesthetic features, for it shares these features exactly with beta which is not art. Dantos essay also spawned other institutional theories by pointing to one way of solving his paradox, namely the possibility that something is art not by virtue of any properties of T 2 it but r
11、ather by virtue of a relation it bears to some larger context. Danto, and after him, Dickie, call this larger context “the artworld.” The best know institutional theorist is George Dickie, who has taken Dantos paradox seriously, and has drawn out in detail the view that Danto, perhaps inadvertently,
12、 fell into at the end of his artworld essay, namely that it is the decisions of persons, para- digmatically though not exclusively artists, that make objects into art. Dickies first ver- sion of the institutional theory of art appeared in a 1969 essay, “Defining Art,” which was slightly modified int
13、o the more familiar version that appears in his 1974 book, Art and the Aesthetic: “A work of art in the classificatory sense is (1) an artifact (2) a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain
14、 social institution (the artworld).” We shall set aside both the artifactuality condition, since this isnt specific to the institutional theory, and Dickies claim that it is “a set of aspects” of something that gets arthood status, since this introduces a complication that also has little to do with
15、 the institutional theory (it means, for example, that the status of candidate for appreciation is typically conferred on the painted sides of paintingsthat “set of their aspects”and not on their unpainted backs). Two features of Dickies institutional theory embrace a value neutrality. The clas- sif
16、icatory sense of art is supposed to be a nonevaluative use of the term “art” that picks out a thing of a certain kind without thereby attributing to it any value (or disvalue). The classificatory sense of “art” is thus like “bicycle” or “water” and unlike “durable” or “brackish.” “Appreciation,” Dic
17、kie tells us, means “in experiencing the qualities of a thing one finds them worthy or valuable.” To be a candidate for appreciation is, then, to be an object for evaluation, not an already evaluated object. The most prominent institutional aspect of the definition is the conferral of status by some
18、one on behalf of the artworld. Dickie likened the conferring of the status of can- didate for appreciation on objects to such things as a universitys bestowing a Ph.D. de- gree on a person, Congresss making a piece of geography a national park, and the like. He acknowledged that the artworld has no
19、codified procedures, lines of authority, or con- ditions for membership. Although there are “core personnel” in the artworld, such as art- ists, museum curators, art critics, and the like, ultimately, “every person who sees himself as a member of the artworld is thereby a member.” The institutional
20、theory, if correct, neatly solves Dantos paradox. For it accepts that there is no material difference between Duchamps notorious urinal-artwork Fountain and any of its plumbing store twins; and accordingly that the arthood of Fountain must come from some institutional status it has come to have. And
21、 institutional status is not a material but a relational property. Accord- ingly, is art, upon analysis, is revealed to be not a one-place predicate but a multi-place relation. While Dickie was influenced positively by Dantos essay, we should note that he was also reacting against the view that art
22、is an open concept, a view rooted in the later Wittgenstein that was most famously expressed by Morris Weitz in his 1956 essay, “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics.” Dickie took that essay to deny the possibility of defining “art,” and in advancing his definition took himself to have refuted the open
23、concept theo- rists. However, we should note that there is an ambiguity in the claim that art is an open 3 concept. It may mean (i) that there is no true statement of the form “For any x, x is art if and only if x meets finitely statable conditions thus-and-such.” But it may also mean (ii) that for
24、all things that are art, x, y, z there need be no property they all share. The open concept theorists took (i) and (ii) to entail each other, hence to be equivalent. Dickie may have followed suit. Now, Dickies definition, at least if true, shows (i) false. But this did not entail that (ii) is thereb
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