Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)

...

(5) We make use of contrasts, comparisons, and reminiscences: "Suppose he had made that a lighter yellow, moved it to the right, how flat it would have been." "Don't you think it has something of the quality of a Rembrandt?" "Hasn't it the same serenity, peace, and quality of light of those summer evenings in Norfolk?" We use what keys we have to the known sensitivity, susceptibilities, and experience of our audience.

Unlock me, baby.

...

(6) Repetition and reiteration often play an important role. ...we may come back time and again to the same points, drawing attention to the same lines and shapes, repeating the same words,... ...it often helps to talk round what we have said, to build up, supplement with more talk of the same kind. ...failing to score a direct hit, we may succeed with a barrage of near-synonyms.

Well, as Dr. Grayson once paraphrased Schoenberg, "repetition is for children."

(7) Finally, besides our verbal performances, the rest of our behavior is important. We accompany our talk with appropriate tones of voice, expression, nods, looks, and gestures. A critic may sometimes do more with a sweep of the arm than by talking. An appropriate gesture may make us see the violence in a painting or the character of a melodic line.

Hand-Waving™

Intellectually Dishonest, Critically Essential

...

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...

By realizing clearly that, whether we are dealing with art or scenery or people or natural objects, this is how we operate with aesthetic concepts, we may recognize this sphere of human activity for what it is.

We operate, with different kinds of concepts in different ways. If we want someone to agree that a color is red we may take it into a good light and ask him to look;... if we want him to agree that a figure is fourteen-sided we get him to count; and to bring him to agree that something is dilapidated or that someone is intelligent or lazy we may do other things,...

These are the methods appropriate to these various concepts. But the ways we get someone to see aesthetic qualities are different;...

We cannot prove by argument or by assembling a sufficiency of conditions that something is graceful; but this is no more puzzling than our inability to prove, by using the methods, metaphors, and gestures of the art critic, that it will be mate in ten moves. ...

... I shall end by showing that the methods I have outlined are the ones natural for and characteristic of taste concepts from the start.

When someone tries to make me see that a painting is delicate or balanced, I have some understanding of these terms already and know in a sense what I am looking for. But if there is puzzlement over how, by talking, he can bring me to see these qualities in this picture, there should be a corresponding puzzlement over how I learned to use aesthetic terms and discern aesthetic qualities in the first place.

We may ask, therefore, how we learn to do these things; and this is to inquire (1) what natural potentialities and tendencies people have and (2) how we

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develop and take advantage of these capacities in training and teaching. ...

...consider first those words like "dynamic," "melancholy," "balanced,"...

It has already been emphasized that we could not use them thus without some experience of situations where they are used literally. The present inquiry is how we shift from literal to aesthetic uses of them.

For this it is required that there be certain abilities and tendencies to link experiences,... It is a feature of human intelligence and sensitivity that we do spontaneously do these things and that the tendency can be encouraged and developed.

It is no more baffling that we should employ aesthetic terms of this sort than that we should make metaphors at all. ... We suggest to children that simple pieces of music are hurrying or running or skipping or dawdling,...

But the child also discovers for himself many of these parallels... ...without this natural tendency our training would get nowhere. Insofar, however, as we do take advantage of this tendency and help him by training, we do just what the critic does. ...

Of course the recognition of similarities and simple metaphorical extensions are not the only transitions to the aesthetic use of language. Others are made in different ways;...

When our admiration is for something as simple as the thinness of a glass or the smoothness of a fabric, it is not difficult to call attention to such things,...

These transitions are only the beginnings; it may often be questionable whether a term is yet being used aesthetically or not. ...

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... When we have brought someone to make this sort of metaphorical extension of terms, he has made one of the transitional steps from which he may move on to uses which more obviously deserve to be called aesthetic and demand more aesthetic appreciation. ...

...once these transitions from common to aesthetic uses are begun in the more obvious cases, the domain of aesthetic concepts may broaden out, and they may become more subtle and even partly autonomous. The initial steps, however varied the metaphorical shifts and however varied the experiences upon which they are parasitic, are natural and easy.

Much the same is true when we turn to those words which have no standard nonaesthetic use, "lovely," "pretty," "dainty," "graceful," "elegant."

We cannot say that these are learned by a metaphorical shift. But they still are linked to nonaesthetic features in many ways and the learning of them also is made possible by certain kinds of natural response, reaction, and ability.

We learn them not so much by noticing similarities, but by our attention being caught and focused in other ways. ... It is not an accident that the first lessons in aesthetic appreciation consist in drawing the child's attention to roses rather than to grass; nor is it surprising that we remark to him on the autumn colors rather than on the subdued tints of winter. We all of us, not only children, pay aesthetic attention more readily and easily to such outstanding and easily noticeable things. ...

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... It is at these times, taking advantage of these natural interests and admirations, that we first teach the simpler aesthetic words.

...these situations may serve as a beginning from which we extend our aesthetic interests to wider and less obvious fields, mastering as we go the more subtle and specific vocabulary of taste.

The principles do not change; the basis for learning more specific terms like "graceful," "delicate," and "elegant" is also our interest in and admiration for various nonaesthetic natural properties...

And even with these aesthetic terms which are not metaphorical themselves ("graceful," "delicate," "elegant"), we rely in the same way upon the critic's methods, including comparison, illustration, and metaphor, to teach or make clear what they mean.

I have wished to emphasize in the latter part of this paper the natural basis of responses of various kinds without which aesthetic terms could not be learned.

...in particular I have wanted to urge that it should not strike us as puzzling that the critic supports his judgments and brings us to see aesthetic qualities by pointing out key features and talking about them in the way he does. It is by the very same methods that people helped us develop our aesthetic sense and master its vocabulary from the beginning.

If we responded to those methods then, it is not surprising that we respond to the critic's discourse now. ...

Notes

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Categories of Art

KENDALL WALTON

I Introduction

False judgments enter art history if we judge from the impression which pictures of different epochs, placed side by side, make on us. . . . They speak a different language.

Paintings and sculptures are to be looked at; sonatas and songs are to be heard. What is important about these works of art, as works of art, is what can be seen or heard in them.? Inspired partly by apparent com- monplaces such as these, many recent aesthetic theorists have attempted to purge from criticism of works of art supposedly extraneous excursions into matters not (or not "directly") available to inspection of the works, and to focus attention on the works themselves. Circumstances connected with a work's origin, in particular, are frequently held to have no essential bearing on an assessment of its aesthetic nature-_for example, who created the work, how, and when; the artist's intentions and expectations concern- ing it, his philosophical views, psychological state, and love life; the artistic traditions and intellectual atmosphere of his society. Once produced (it is argued) the work must stand or fall on its own; it must be judged for what it is, regardless of how it came to be as it is.

Arguments for the irrelevance of such historical circumstances to aes- thetic judgments about works of art may, but need not, involve the claim that these circumstances are not of "aesthetic" interest or importance, though obviously they are often important in biographical, historical, psychological, or sociological researches. One might consider an artist's action in producing a work to be aesthetically interesting, an "'aesthetic From The Philosophical Review, LXXIX (1970), 334-367. Reprinted with permission of the author and The Philosophical Review.

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an aesthetic investigation of the work. Robert Rauschenberg once carefully obliterated a drawing by de Kooning, titled the bare canvas "Erased De Kooning Drawing,' 'framed it, and exhibited it.? His doing this might be taken as symbolic or expressive (of an attitude toward art, or toward life in general, or whatever) in an '"gesthetically" significant manner, perhaps somewhat as an action of a character in a play might be, and yet thought to have no bearing whatever on the aesthetic nature of the finished product. The issue I am here concerned with is how far critical questions about works of art can be separated from questions about their histories.

One who wants to make this separation quite sharp may regard the basic facts of art along the following lines. Works of art are simply objects with various properties, of which we are primarily interested in perceptual ones--visual properties of paintings, audible properties of music, and so forth.' A work's perceptual properties include "'aesthetic" as well as "nonaesthetic" ones- the sense of mystery and tension of a painting as well as its dark coloring and diagonal composition; the energy, exuberance, and coherence of a sonata, as well as its meters, rhythms, pitches, timbres, and so forth; the balance and serenity of a Gothic cathedral as well as its dimensions, lines, and symmetries." Aesthetic properties are features or characteristics of works of art just as much as nonaesthetic ones are." They are in the works, to be seen, heard, or otherwise perceived there. Seeing a painting's sense of mystery or hearing a sonata's coherence might require looking or listening longer or harder than does perceiving colors and shapes, rhythms and pitches; it may even require special training or a special kind of sensitivity. But these qualities must be discoverable simply by examining the works themselves if they are discoverable at all. It is never even partly in virtue of the circumstances of a work's origin that it has a sense of mystery or is coherent or serene. Such circumstances sometimes provide hints concerning what to look for in a work, what we might reasonably expect to find by examining it. But these hints are always theoretically dispensable; a work's aesthetic properties must "in principle" be ascertainable without their help. Surely (it seems) a Rembrandt portrait does not have (or lack) a sense of mystery in virtue of the fact that Rembrandt intended it to have (or to lack) that quality, any more than a contractor's intention to make a roof leakproof makes it so; nor is the portrait mysterious in virtue of any other facts about what Rembrandt thought or how he went about painting the portrait or what his society happened to be like. Such circumstances are important to the result only insofar as they had an effect on the pattern of paint splotches that became attached to the canvas, and the canvas can be examined without in any way considering how the splotches got there. It would not matter in the least to the aesthetic properties of the portrait if the paint had been applied

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to the canvas not by Rembrandt at all, but by a chimpanzee or a cyclone in a paint shop.

The view sketched above can easily seem very persuasive. But the tendency of critics to discuss the histories of works of art in the course of justifying aesthetic judgments about them has been remarkably persistent. This is partly because hints derived from facts about a work's history, however dispensable they may be "in principle," are often crucially impor- tant in practice. (One might simply not think to listen for a recurring series of intervals in a piece of music, until he learns that the composer meant the work to be structured around it.) No doubt it is partly due also to genuine confusions on the part of critics. But I will argue that (some) facts about the origins of works of art have an essential role in criticism , that aesthetic judgments rest on them in an absolutely fundamental way. For this reason, and for another as well, the view that works of art should be judged simply by what can be perceived in them is seriously misleading, though there is something right in the idea that what matters aesthetically about a painting or a sonata is just how it looks or sounds.

II Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties

I will continue to call tension, mystery, energy, coherence, balance, serenity, sentimentality, pallidness, disunity, grotesqueness, and so forth, as well as colors and shapes, pitches and timbres properties of works of art, though "property" is to be construed broadly enough not to beg any important questions. I will also, following Sibley, call properties of the former sort "aesthetic" properties, but purely for reasons of convenience I will include in this category "representational" and "resemblance" properties, which Sibley excludes--for example, the property of represent- ing or being a picture of Napoleon, that of depicting an old man (as) stooping over a fire, that of resembling, or merely suggesting, a human face, claws (the petals of Van Gogh's sunflowers), or (in music) footsteps or conversation. It is not essential for my purposes to delimit with any exactness the class of aesthetic properties (if indeed any such delimitation is possible), for I am more interested in discussing particular examples of such properties than in making generalizations about the class as a whole. It will be obvious, however, that what I say about the examples I deal with is also applicable to a great many other properties we would want to call aesthetic.

Sibley points out that a work's aesthetic properties depend on its nonaesthetic properties; the former are "emergent" or "Gestalt" properties based on the latter.& I take this to be true of all the examples of aesthetic properties we will be dealing with, including representational and resemblance ones. It is because of the configuration of colors and shapes on a painting, perhaps in particular its dark colors and diagonal composi

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tion, that it has a sense of mystery and tension, if it does. The colors and shapes of a portrait are responsible for its resembling an old man and (perhaps with its title) its depicting an old man. The coherence or unity of a piece of music (for example, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) may be largely due to the frequent recurrence of a rhythmic motive, and the repular meter of a song plus the absence of harmonic modulation and of large intervals in the voice part may make it serene or peaceful.

Moreover, a work seems or appears to us to have certain aesthetic properties because we observe in it, or it appears to us to have, certain nonaesthetic features (though it may not be necessary to notice consciously all the relevant nonaesthetic features). A painting depicting an old man may not look like an old man to someone who is color-blind, or when it is seen from an extreme angle or in bad lighting conditions so that its colors or shapes are distorted or obscured. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony performed in such a sloppy manner that many occurrences of the four-note rhythmic motive do not sound similar may seem incoherent or disunified.

I will argue, however, that a work's aesthetic properties depend not only on its nonaesthetic ones, but also on which of its nonaesthetic properties are "standard," which "variable," and which "contra-standard, » in senses to be explained. I will approach this thesis by way of the psychological point that what aesthetic properties a work seems to us to have depends not only on what nonaesthetic features we perceive in it, but also on which of them are standard, which variable, and which contra-standard for us (in a sense also to be explained).

It is necessary to introduce first a distinction between standard, variable, and contra-standard properties relative to perceptually distinguishable categories of works of art. Such categories include media, genre, styles, forms, and so forth- for example, the categories of paintings, cubist paint- ings, Gothic architecture, classical sonatas, paintings in the style of Cézanne, and music in the style of late Beethoven- if they are interpreted in such a way that membership is determined solely by features that can be perceived in a work when it is experienced in the normal manner. Thus whether or not a piece of music was written in the eighteenth century is irrelevant to whether it belongs to the category of classical sonatas (interpreted in this way), and whether a work was produced by Cézanne or Beethoven has nothing essential to do with whether it is in the style of Cézanne or late Beethoven. The category of etchings as normally construed is not perceptually distinguishable in the requisite sense, for to be an etching is, I take it, simply to have been produced in a particular manner. But the category of apparent etchings, works which look like etchings from the quality of their lines, whether they are etchings or not, is perceptually distinguishable. A category will not count as " "perceptually distinguishable"

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in my sense if in order to determine perceptually whether something belongs to it, it is necessary (in some or all cases) to determine which categories it is correctly perceived in partly or wholly on the basis of nonperceptual considerations. (See Section IV below.) This prevents, for example, the category of serene things from being perceptually distinguish- able in this sense.

A feature of a work of art is standard with respect to a (perceptually distinguishable) category just in case it is among those in virtue of which works in that category belong to that category- -that is, just in case the lack of that feature would disqualify, or tend to disqualify, a work from that category. A feature is variable with respect to a category just in case it has nothing to do with works' belonging to that category; the possession or lack of the feature is irrelevant to whether a work qualifies for the category. Finally, a contra-standard feature with respect to a category is the absence of a standard feature with respect to that category--that is, a feature whose presence tends to disqualify works as members of the category. Needless to say, it will not be clear in all cases whether a feature of a work is standard, variable, or contra-standard relative to a given category, since the criteria for classifying works of art are far from precise. But clear examples are abundant. The flatness of a painting and the motionlessness of its markings are standard, and its particular shapes and colors are variable, relative to the category of painting. A protruding three-dimensional object or an electrically driven twitching of the canvas would be contra-standard relative to this category. The straight lines in stick-figure drawings and squarish shapes in cubist paintings are standard with respect to those categories respectively, though they are variable with respect to the categories of drawing and painting. The exposition-develop- ment-recapitulation form of a classical sonata is standard, and its thematic material is variable, relative to the category of sonatas.

In order to explain what I mean by features being standard, variable, or contra-standard for a person on a particular occasion, I must introduce the notion of perceiving a work in, or as belonging to, a certain (percep- tually distinguishable) category.? To perceive a work in a certain category is to perceive the "Gestalt" of that category in the work. This needs some explanation. People familiar with Brahmsian music--that is, music in the style of Brahms (notably, works of Johannes Brahms)-or impressionist paintings can frequently recognize members of these categories by recog- nizing the Brahmsian or impressionist Gestalt qualities. Such recognition is dependent on perception of particular features that are standard relative to these categories, but it is not a matter of inferring from the presence of such features that a work is Brahmsian or impressionist. One may not notice many of the relevant features, and he may be very vague about

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IS rush lextures, its basically traditional harmonic and formal structure, its superimposition and alternation of duple and triple meters, and so forth, and recalling that these characteristics are typical of Brahmsian works, I have not recognized it by hearing the Brahmsian Gestalt. To do that is simply to recognize it by its Brahmsian sound, without necessarily Davina attention to the features ("cues") responsible for it. Similarly, recognizing an impressionist painting by its impressionist Gestalt, is recog- nizing the impressionist look about it, which we are familiar with from other impressionist paintings; not applying a rule we have learned for recognizing it from its features.

To perceive a Gestalt quality in a work-that is, to perceive it in a certain category- is not, or not merely, to recognize that Gestalt quality. Recog- nition is a momentary occurrence, whereas perceiving a quality is a continuous state which may last for a short or long time. (For the same reason, seeing the ambiguous duck-rabbit figure as a duck is not, or not merely, recognizing a property of it.) We perceive the Brahmsian or impressionist Gestalt in a work when, and as long as, it sounds (looks) Brahmsian or impressionist to us. This involves perceiving (not necessarily being aware of) features standard relative to that category. But it is not just this, nor this plus the intellectual realization that these features make the work Brahmsian, or impressionist. These features are perceived com- bined into a single Gestalt quality.

We can of course perceive a work in several or many different categories at once. A Brahms sonata might be heard simultaneously as a piece of music, a sonata, a romantic work, and a Brahmsian work. Some pairs of categories, however, seem to be such that one cannot perceive a work as belonging to both at once, much as one cannot see the duck-rabbit both as a duck and as a rabbit simultaneously. One cannot see a photographic image simultaneously as a still photograph and as (part of) a film, nor can one see something both in the category of paintings and at the same time in the category (to be explained shortly) of guernicas.

It will be useful to point out some of the causes of our perceiving works in certain categories. (a) In which categories we perceive a work depends in part, of course, on what other works we are familiar with. The more works of a certain sort we have experienced, the more likely it is that we will perceive a particular work in that category. (b) What we have heard critics and others say about works we have experienced, how they have categorized them, and what resemblances they have pointed out to us is also important. If no one has ever explained to me what is distinctive about Schubert's style (as opposed to the styles of, say, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Brahms, Hugo Wolf), or even pointed out that

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there is such a distinctive style, I may never have learned to hear the Schubertian Gestalt quality, even if I have heard many of Schubert's works, and so I may not hear his works as Schubertian. (c) How we are introduced to the particular work in question may be involved. If a Cézanne painting is exhibited in a collection of French Impressionist works, or if before seeing it we are told that it is French Impressionist, we are more likely to see it as French Impressionist than if it is exhibited in a random collection and we are not told anything about it beforehand.

I will say that a feature of a work is standard for a particular person on a particular occasion when, and only when, it is standard relative to some category in which he perceives it, and is not contra-standard relative to any category in which he perceives it. A feature is variable for a person on an occasion just when it is variable relative to all the categories in which he perceives it. And a feature is contra-standard for a person on an occasion just when it is contra-standard relative to any of the categories in which he perceives it. I0

III A Point About Perception I turn now to my psychological thesis that what aesthetic properties a work seems to have, what aesthetic effect it has on us, how it strikes us aesthetically often depends (in part) on which of its features are standard, which variable, and which contra-standard for us. I offer a series of examples in support of this thesis.

(a) Representational and resemblance properties provide perhaps the most obvious illustration of this thesis. Many works of art look like or resemble other objects- people, buildings, mountains, bowls of fruit, and so forth. Rembrandt's "Titus Reading" looks like a boy, and in particular like Rembrandt's son; Picasso's "Les Demoiselles 'Avignon" looks like five women, four standing and one sitting (though not especially like any particular women). A portrait may even be said to be a perfect likeness of the sitter, or to capture his image exactly.

An important consideration in determining whether a work depicts or represents a particular object, or an object of a certain sort (for example, Rembrandt's son, or simply a boy), in the sense of being a picture, sculpture, or whatever of it' is whether the work resembles that object, or objects of that kind. A significant degree of resemblance is, I suggest, a necessary condition in most contexts for such representation or depic- tion, '? though the resemblance need not be obvious at first glance. If we are unable to see a similarity between a painting purportedly of a woman and women, I think we would have to suppose either that there is such a

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similarity which we have not yet discovered (as one might fail to sce a face in a maze of lines), or that it simply is not a picture of a woman Resemblance is of course not a sufficient condition for representation, since a portrait (containing only one figure) might resemble both the sitter and his twin brother equally but is not a portrait of both of them. (The title might determine which of them it depicts.) 13

It takes only a touch of perversity, however, to find much of our talk about resemblances between works of art and other things preposterous. Paintings and people are very different sorts of things. Paintings are pieces of canvas supporting splotches of paint, while people are live, three-dimen- sional, flesh-and-blood animals. Moreover, except rarely and under special conditions of observation (probably including bad lighting) paintings and people look very different. Paintings look like pieces of canvas (or anyway flat surfaces) covered with paint and people look like flesh-and-blood animals. There is practically no danger of confusing them. How, then, can anyone seriously hold that a portrait resembles the sitter to any significant extent, let alone that it is a perfect likeness of him? Yet it remains true that many paintings strike us as resembling people, sometimes very much or even exactly- despite the fact that they look so very different!

To resolve this paradox we must recognize that the resemblances we perceive between, for example, portraits and people, those that are relevant in determining what works of art depict or represent, are resemblances of a somewhat special sort, tied up with the categories in which we perceive such works. The properties of a work which are standard for us are ordinarily irrelevant to what we take it to look like or resemble in the relevant sense, and hence to what we take it to depict or represent. The properties of a portrait which make it so different from, so easily distinguishable from, a person—such as its flatness and its painted look—are standard for us. Hence these properties just do not count with regard to what (or whom) it looks like. It is only the properties which are variable for us, the colors and shapes on the work's surface, that make it look to us like what it does. And these are the ones which are taken as relevant in determining what (if anything) the work represents.

I Other examples will reinforce this point. A marble bust of a Roman emperor seems to us to resemble a man with, say, an aquiline nose, a wrinkled brow, and an expression of grim determination, and we take it to represent a man with, or as having, those characteristics. But why don't we say that it resembles and represents a perpetually motionless man, of uniform (marble) color, who is severed at the chest? It is similar to such a man, it seems, and much more so than to a normally colored, mobile, and whole man. But we are not struck by the former similarity when we see the bust, obvious though it is on reflection. The bust's uniform color,

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motionlessness, and abrupt ending at the chest are standard properties relative to the category of busts, and since we see it as a bust they are standard for us. Similarly, black-and-white drawings do not look to us like colorless scenes and we do not take them to depict things as being colorless, nor do we regard stick-figure drawings as resembling and depict- ing only very thin people. A cubist work might look like a person with a cubical head to someone not familiar with the cubist style. But the standardness of such cubical shapes for people who see it as a cubist work prevents them from making that comparison.

The shapes of a painting or a still photograph of a high jumper in action are motionless, but these pictures do not look to us like a high jumper frozen in mid-air. Indeed, depending on features of the pictures which are variable for us (for example, the exact positions of the figures, swirling brush strokes in the painting, slight blurrings of the photographic image) the athlete may seem in a frenzy of activity; the pictures may convey a vivid sense of movement. But if static images exactly like those of the two pictures occur in a motion picture, and we see it as a motion picture, they probably would strike us as resembling a static athlete. This is because the immobility of the images is standard relative to the category of still pictures and variable relative to that of motion pictures. (Since we are so familiar with still pictures it might be difficult to see the static images as motion pictures for very long, rather than as [filmed] still pictures. But we could not help seeing them that way if we had no acquaintance at all with the medium of still pictures.) My point here is brought out by the tremendous aesthetic difference we are likely to experience between a film of a dancer moving very slowly and a still picture of him, even if "objectively" the two images are very nearly identical. We might well find the former studied, calm, deliberate, laborious, and the latter dynamic, energetic, flowing, or frenzied.

In general, then, what we regard a work as resembling, and as represent- ing, depends on the properties of the work which are variable, and not on those which are standard for us.'S The latter properties serve to determine what kind of a representation the work is, rather than what it represents or resembles. We take them for granted, as it were, in representations of that kind. This principle helps to explain also how clouds can look like elephants, how diatonic orchestral music can suggest a conversation or a person crying or laughing, and how a twelve-year-old boy can look like his middle-aged father.

We can now see how a portrait can be an exact likeness of the sitter, despite the huge differences between the two. The differences, insofar as they involve properties standard for us, simply do not count against likeness, and hence not against exact likeness. Similarly, a boy not only

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can resemble his father but can be his "spitting image," despite the boy's relative youthfulness. It is clear that the notions of resemblance and exact resemblance that we are concerned with are not even cousins of the notion of perceptual indistinguishability.

(b) The importance of the distinction between standard and variable properties is by no means limited to cases involving representation of resemblance. Imagine a society which does not have an established medium of painting, but does produce a kind of work of art called guernicas. Guernicas are like versions of Picasso's « Guernica" done in various bas-relief dimensions. All of them are surfaces with the colors and shapes of Picasso's "Guernica," but the surfaces are molded to protrude from the wall like relief maps of different kinds of terrain. Some guernicas have rolling surfaces, others are sharp and jagged, still others contain several relatively flat planes at various angles to each other, and so forth. Picasso's "Guernica" would be counted as a guernica in this society-a perfectly flat one- rather than as a painting. Its flatness is variable and the figures on its surface are standard relative to the category of guernicas. Thus the flatness, which is standard for us, would be variable for members of the other society (if they should come across "Guernica") and the figures on the surface, which are variable for us, would be standard for them This would make for a profound difference between our aesthetic reaction to "Guernica" and theirs. It seems violent, dynamic, vital, disturbing to us. But I imagine it would strike them as cold, stark, lifeless, or serene and restful, or perhaps bland, dull, boring -but in any case not violent, dynamic, and vital. We do not pay attention to or take note of "Guer- nica"'s flatness; this is a feature we take for granted in paintings, as it were. But for the other society this is "Guernica"' most striking and noteworthy characteristic--what is expressive about it. Conversely. "Guer- nica"' color patches, which we find noteworthy and expressive, are insignificant to them.

It is important to notice that this difference in aesthetic response is not due solely to the fact that we are much more familiar with flat works of art than they are, and they are more familiar with "Guernica"'s colors and shapes. Someone equally familiar with paintings and guernicas might, think, see Picasso's "Guernica" as a painting on some occasions, and as a guernica on others. On the former occasion it will probably look dynamic, violent, and so forth to him, and on the latter cold, serene, bland, or lifeless. Whether he sees the work in a museum of paintings or a museum of guernicas, or whether he has been told that it is a painting or a guernica, may influence how he sees it. But I think he might be able to shift at will from one way of seeing it to the other, somewhat as one shifts between seeing the duck-rabbit as a duck and seeing it as a rabbit.

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This example and the previous ones might give the impression that in general only features of a work that are variable for us are aesthetically important -that these are the expressive, aesthetically active properties, as far as we are concerned, whereas features standard for us are aesthetically inert. But this notion is quite mistaken, as the following examples will demonstrate. Properties standard for us are not aesthetically lifeless, though the life that they have, the aesthetic effect they have on us, is typically very different from what it would be if they were variable for us.

(c) Because of the very fact that features standard for us do not seem striking or noteworthy, that they are somehow expected or taken for granted, they can contribute to a work a sense of order, inevitability, sta- bility, correctness. This is perhaps most notably true of large-scale structural properties in the time arts . The exposition-development-recapitulation form (including the typical key and thematic relationships) of the first movements of classical sonatas, symphonies, and string quartets is standard with respect to the category of works in sonata-allegro form, and standard for listeners, including most of us, who hear them as belonging to that category. So proceeding along the lines of sonata-allegro form seems right to us; to our ears that is how sonatas are supposed to behave. We feel that we know where we are and where we are going throughout the work--more so, I suggest, than we would if we were not familiar with sonata-allegro form, if following the strictures of that form were variable rather than standard for us. l6 Properties standard for us do not always have this sort of unifying effect, however. The fact that a piano sonata contains only piano sounds, or uses the Western system of harmony throughout, does not make it seem unified to us. The reason, I think, is that these properties are too standard for us in a sense that needs explicating (see note 10). Nevertheless, sonata form is unifying partly because it is standard rather than variable for us.

(d) That a work (or part of it) has a certain determinate characteristic (for example, of size, speed, length, volume) is often variable relative to a particular category, when it is nevertheless standard for that category that the variable characteristic falls within a certain range. In such cases the aesthetic effect of the determinate variable property may be colored by the standard limits of the range. Hence these limits function as an aesthetic catalyst, even if not as an active ingredient.

Piano music is frequently marked sostenuto, cantabile, legato, or lyrical. But how can the pianist possibly carry out such instructions? Piano tones diminish in volume drastically immediately after the key is struck, becom- ing inaudible relatively promptly, and there is no way the player can prevent this. If a singer or violinist should produce sounds even approach- ing a piano's in suddenness of demise, they would be nerve-wrackingly

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sharp and percussive-_anything but cantabile or lyrical! Yet piano music can be cantabile, legato, or lyrical nevertheless; sometimes it is extraor dinarily so (for example, a good performance of the Adagio Cantabile movement of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata). What makes this possible is the very fact that the drastic diminution of piano tones cannot be prevented, and hence never is. It is a standard feature for piano music. A pianist can, however, by a variety of devices, control a tone's rate of diminution and length within the limits dictated by the nature of the instrument."? Piano tones may thus be more or less sustained within these limits, and how sustained they are, how quickly or slowly they diminish and how long they last, within the range of possibilities, is variable for piano music. A piano passage that sounds lyrical or cantabile to us is one in which the individual tones are relatively sustained, given the capabilities of the instrument. Such a passage sounds lyrical only because piano music is limited as it is, and we hear it as piano music; that is, the limitations are standard properties for us. The character of the passage is determined not merely by the "absolute" nature of the sounds, but by that in relation to the standard property of what piano tones can be like. I8

This principle helps to explain the lack of energy and brilliance that we sometimes find even in very fast passages of electronic music. The energy and brilliance of a fast violin or piano passage derives not merely from the absolute speed of the music (together with accents, rhythmic charac- teristics, and so forth), but from the fact that it is fast for that particular medium. In electronic music different pitches can succeed one another at any frequency up to and including that at which they are no longer separately distinguishable. Because of this it is difficult to make electronic music sound fast (energetic, violent). For when we have heard enough electronic music to be aware of the possibilities we do not feel that the speed of a passage approaches a limit, no matter how fast it is. 19

There are also visual correlates of these musical examples. A small elephant, one which is smaller than most elephants with which we are familiar, might impress us as charming, cute, delicate, or puny. This is not simply because of its (absolute) size, but because it is small for an elephant. To people who are familiar not with our elephants but with a race of mini-elephants, the same animal may look massive, strong, dominant, threatening, lumbering, if it is large for a mini-elephant. The size of elephants is variable relative to the class of elephants, but it varies only within a certain (not precisely specifiable) range. It is a standard property of elephants that they do fall within this range. How an elephant's size affects us aesthetically depends, since we see it as an elephant, on whether it falls in the upper, middle, or lower part of the range.

(e) Properties standard for a certain category which do not derive trom

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physical limitations of the medium can be regarded as results of more or less conventional "rules" for producing works in the given category (for example, the "rules" of sixteenth-century counterpoint, or those for tweive- tone music). These rules may combine to create a dilemma for the artist which, if he is talented, he may resolve ingeniously and gracefully. The result may be a work with an aesthetic character very different from what it would have had if it had not been for those rules. Suppose that the first movement of a sonata in G major modulates to C-sharp major by the end of the development section. A rule of sonata form decrees that it must return to G for the recapitulation. But the keys of G and C-sharp are as unrelated as any two keys can be; it is difficult to modulate smoothly and quickly from one to the other. Suppose also that while the sonata is in C-sharp there are signs that, given other rules of sonata form, indicate that the recapitulation is imminent (for example, motivic hints of the return, an emotional climax, or a cadenza). Listeners who hear it as a work in sonata form are likely to have a distinct feeling of unease, tension, uncertainty, as the time for the recapitulation approaches. If the composer with a stroke of ingenuity accomplishes the necessary modulation quickly, efficiently, and naturally, this will give them a feeling of relief-_one might say of deliverance. The movement to C-sharp (which may have seemed alien and brashly adventurous) will have proven to be quite appropriate, and the entire sequence will in retrospect have a sense of correctness and perfection about it. Our impression of it is likely, I think, to be very much like our impression of a "beautiful" or "elegant" proof in mathematics. (Indeed the composer's task in this example is not unlike that of producing such a proof.)

But suppose that the rule for sonatas were that the recapitulation must be either in the original key or in the key one half-step below it. Thus in the example above the recapitulation could have been in F-sharp major rather than G major. This possibility removes the sense of tension from the occurrence of C-sharp major in the development section, for a modula- tion from C-sharp to F-sharp is as easy as any modulation is (since C-sharp is the dominant of F-sharp). Of course, there would also be no special release of tension when the modulation to G is effected, there being no tension to be released. In fact, that modulation probably would be rather surprising, since the permissible modulation to F-sharp would be much more natural.

Thus the effect that the sonata has on us depends on which of its properties are dictated by "rules, " which ones are standard relative to the category of sonatas and hence standard for us.

(f) I turn now to features which are contra-standard for us--that is, ones which have a tendency to disqualify a work from a category in which we

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nevertheless perceive it. We are likely to find such features shocking, or disconcerting, or startling, or upsetting, just because they are contra-stan- dard for us. Their presence may be so obtrusive that they obscure the work's variable properties. Three-dimensional objects protruding from a canvas and movement in a sculpture are contra-standard relative to the categories of painting and (traditional) sculpture respectively. These fea tres are contra-standard for us, and probably shocking, if despite them we perceive the works possessing them in the mentioned categories. The monochromatic paintings of Yves Klein are disturbing to us (at least at first) for this reason: we see them as paintings, though they contain the feature contra-standard for paintings of being one solid color. Notice that we find other similarly monochromatic surfaces for example, walls of living rooms- not in the least disturbing, and indeed quite unnoteworthy.

If we are exposed frequently to works containing a certain kind of feature which is contra-standard for us, we ordinarily adjust our categories to accommodate it, making it contra-standard for us no longer. The first painting with a three-dimensional object glued to it was no doubt shock- ing. But now that the technique has become commonplace we are not shocked. This is because we no longer see these works as paintings, but rather as members of either (a) a new category-collages-in which case the offending feature has become standard rather than contra-standard for us, or (b) an expanded category which includes paintings both with and without attached objects, in which case that feature is variable for us.

But it is not just the rarity, unusualness, or unexpectedness of a feature that makes it shocking. If a work differs too significantly from the norms of a certain category we do not perceive it in that category and hence the difference is not contra-standard for us, even if we have not previously experienced works differing from that category in that way. A sculpture which is constantly and vigorously in motion would be so obviously and radically different from traditional sculptures that we probably would not perceive it as one even if it is the first moving sculpture we have come across. We would either perceive it as a kinetic sculpture, or simply remain confused. In contrast, a sculptured bust which is traditional in every respect except that one ear twitches slightly every thirty seconds would be perceived as an ordinary sculpture. So the twitching ear would be contra- standard for us and would be considerably more unsettling than the much greater movement of the other kinetic sculpture. Similarly, a very small colored area of an otherwise entirely black-and-white drawing would be very disconcerting. But if enough additional color is added to it we will see it as a colored rather than a black-and-white drawing, and the shock will vanish.

This point helps to explain a difference between the harmonic aberra-

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tons of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde on the one hand and on the other Debussy's Pelleas er Melisande and Feux and Schoenberg' Pierrot Tunaire as well as his later twelve-tone works. The latter are not merely more aberrant, less tonal, than Tristan. They differ from traditional tonal music in such respects and to such an extent that they are not heard as tonal at all. Tristan, however, retains enough of the apparatus of tonality, despite its deviations, to be heard as a tonal work. For this reason its lesser deviations are often the more shocking.? Tristan plays on harmonic traditions by selectively following and flaunting them, while Pierrot Lunaire and the others simply ignore them.

Shock then arises from features that are not just rare or unique, but ones that are contra-standard relative to categories in which objects possessing them are perceived. But it must be emphasized that to be contra-standard relative to a certain category is not merely to be rare or unique among things of that category. The melodic line of Schubert's song, "Im Walde," is probably unique; it probably does not occur in any other songs, or other works of any sort. But it is not contra-standard relative to the category of songs, because it does not tend to disqualify the work from that category. Nor is it contra-standard relative to any other category to which we hear the work as belonging. And clearly we do not find this melodic line at all upsetting. What is important is not the rarity of a feature, but its connection with the classification of the work. Features contra-standard for us are perceived as being misfits in a category which the work strikes us as belonging to, as doing violence to such a category, and being rare in a category is not the same thing as being a misfit in it.

It should be clear from the above examples that how a work affects us aesthetically-_what aesthetic properties it seems to us to have and what ones we are inclined to attribute to it- depends in a variety of important ways on which of its features are standard, which variable, and which contra-standard for us. Moreover, this is obviously not an isolated or exceptional phenomenon, but a pervasive characteristic of aesthetic per- ception. I should emphasize that my purpose has not been to establish general principles about how each of the three sorts of properties affects us. How any particular feature affects us depends also on many variables I have not discussed. The important point is that in many cases whether a feature is standard, variable, or contra-standard for us has a great deal to do with what effect it has on us. We must now begin to assess the theoretical consequence of this.

IV Truth and Falsity

The fact that what aesthetic properties a thing seems to have may depend on what categories it is perceived in raises a question about how to

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determine what aesthetic properties it really does have. If "Guernica» appears dynamic when seen as a painting, and not dynamic when seen as a guernica, is it dynamic or not? Can one way of seeing it be ruled correct, and the other incorrect? One way of approaching this problem is to deny that the apparently conflicting aesthetic judgments of people who perceive a work in different categories actually do conflict.?'

Judgments that works of art have certain aesthetic properties, it might be suggested, implicitly involve reference to some particular set of categories. Thus our claim that "Guernica" is dynamic really amounts to the claim that it is (as we might say) dynamic as a painting, or for people who see it as a painting. The judgment that it is not dynamic made by people who see it as a guernica amounts simply to the judgment that it is not dynamic as a guernica. Interpreted in these ways, the two judgments are of course quite compatible. Terms like "large" and "small» provide a convenient model for this interpretation. An elephant might be both small as an elephant and large as a mini-elephant, and hence it might be called truly either "large" or "small," depending on which category is implicitly referred to.

I think that aesthetic judgments are in some contexts amenable to such category-relative interpretations, especially aesthetic judgments about natural objects (clouds, mountains, sunsets) rather than works of art. (It will be evident that the alternative account suggested below is not readily applicable to most judgments about natural objects.) But most of our aesthetic judgments can be forced into this mold only at the cost of distorting them beyond recognition.

My main objection is that category-relative interpretations do not allow aesthetic judgments to be mistaken often enough. It would certainly be natural to consider a person who calls "Guernica" stark, cold, or dull, because he sees it as a guernica, to be mistaken: he misunderstands the work because he is looking at it in the wrong way. Similarly, one who asserts that a good performance of the Adagio Cantabile of Beethoven's Pathétique is percussive, or that a Roman bust looks like a unicolored, immobile man severed at the chest and depicts him as such, is simply wrong, even if his judgment is a result of his perceiving the work in different categories from those in which we perceive it. Moreover, we do not accord a status any more privileged to our own aesthetic judgments. We are likely to regard, for example, cubist paintings, serial music, or Chinese music as formless, incoherent, or disturbing on our first contact with these forms largely because, I suggest, we would not be perceiving the works as cubist paintings, serial music, or Chinese music. But after becoming familiar with these kinds of art we would probably retract Our previous judgments, admit that they were mistaken. It would be quite inappropriate to protest that what we meant previously was merely that

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the works were formless or disturbing for the categories in which we then perceived them, while admitting that they are not for the categories of cubist paintings, or serial, or Chinese music. The conflict between ap- parently incompatible aesthetic judgments made while perceiving a work in different categories does not simply evaporate when the difference of categories is pointed out, as does the conflict between the claims that an animal is large and that it is small, when it is made clear that the person making the first claim regarded it as a mini-elephant and the one making the second regarded it as an elephant. The latter judgments do not (necessarily) reflect a real disagreement about the size of the animal, but the former do reflect a real disagreement about the aesthetic nature of the work.

Thus it seems that, at least in some cases, it is correct to perceive a work in certain categories, and incorrect to perceive it in certain others; that is, our judgments of it when we perceive it in the former are likely to be true, and those we make when perceiving it in the latter, false. This provides us with absolute senses of "standard," "variable," and "contra- standard": features of a work are standard, variable, or contra-standard absolutely just in case they are standard, variable, or contra-standard (respectively) for people who perceive the work correctly. (Thus an ab- solutely standard feature is standard relative to some category in which the work is correctly perceived and contra-standard relative to none, an absolutely variable feature is variable relative to all such categories, and an absolutely contra-standard feature is contra-standard relative to at least one such category.)

How is it to be determined in which categories a work is correctly perceived? There is certainly no very precise or well-defined procedure to be followed. Different criteria are emphasized by different people and in different situations. But there are several fairly definite considerations which typically figure in critical discussions and fit our intuitions reasonably well. I suggest that the following circumstances count toward its being correct to perceive a work, W, in a given category, C:

(i) The presence in W of a relatively large number of features standard with respect to C. The correct way of perceiving a work is likely to be that in which it has a minimum of contra-standard features for us. I take the relevance of this consideration to be obvious. It cannot be correct to perceive Rembrandt's "Titus Reading" as a kinetic sculpture, if this is possible, just because that work has too few of the features which make kinetic sculptures kinetic sculptures. But of course this does not get us very far, for "Guernica," for example, qualifies equally well on this count for being perceived as a painting and as a guernica.

(ii) The fact, if it is one, that W is better, or more interesting or pleasing aesthetically, or more worth experiencing when perceived in C than it is It

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when perceived in alternative ways. The correct way of perceiving a work is likely to be the way in which it comes off best .

(iii) The fact, if it is one, that the artist who produced W intended of expected it to be perceived in C, or thought of it as a C.

(iv) The fact, if it is one, that C is well established in and recognized by the society in which W was produced. A category is well established in and recognized by a society if the members of the society are familiar with works in that category, consider a work's membership in it a fact worth mentioning, exhibit works of that category together, and so forth- that is, roughly it that category figures importantly in their way of classifying works of art. The categories of impressionist painting and Brahmsian music are well established and recognized in our society; those of guernicas, paintings with diagonal composition containing green crosses, and pieces of music containing between four and eight F-sharps and at least seventeen quarter notes every eight bars are not. The categories in which a work is correctly perceived, according to this condition, are generally the ones in which the artist's contemporaries did perceive or would have perceived it.

In certain cases I think the mechanical process by which a work was produced, or (for example, in architecture) the non-perceptible physical characteristics or internal structure of a work, is relevant. A work is probably correctly perceived as an apparent etching?? rather than, say, an apparent woodcut or line drawing, if it was produced by the etching process. The strength of materials in a building, or the presence of steel girders inside wooden or plaster columns counts toward (not necessarily conclusively) the correctness of perceiving it in the category of buildings with visual characteristics typical of buildings constructed in that manner. Because of their limited applicability I will not discuss these considerations further here.

What can be said in support of the relevance of conditions (in), (it), and (iv)? In the examples mentioned above, the categories in which we consider a work correctly perceived seem to meet (to the best of our knowledge) each of these three conditions. I would suppose that "Guernica" is better seen as a painting than it would be seen as a guernica (though this would be hard to prove). In any case, Picasso certainly intended it to be seen as a painting rather than a guernica, and the category of paintings is, and that of guernicas is not, well established in his (that is, our) society. But this of course does not show that (it), (lit), and (iv) each is relevant. It tends to indicate only that one or other of them, or some combination, is relevant. The difficulty of assessing each of the three conditions in- dividually is complicated by the fact that by and large they can be expected to coincide, to yield identical conclusions. Since an artist usually intends his works for his contemporaries he is likely to intend them to be perceived

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in categories established in and recognized by his society. Moreover, it is reasonable to expect works to come off better when perceived in the intended categories than when perceived in others. An artist tries to produce works which are well worth experiencing when perceived in the intended way and, unless we have reason to think he is totally incom- petent, there is some presumption that he succeeded at least to some extent. But it is more or less a matter of chance whether the work comes off well when perceived in some unintended way. The convergence of the three conditions, however, at the same time diminishes the practical importance of justifying them individually, since in most cases we can decide how to judge particular works of art without doing so. But the theoretical question remains.

I will begin with (it). If we are faced with a choice between two ways of perceiving a work, and the work is very much better perceived in one way than it is perceived in the other, I think that, at least in the absence of contrary considerations, we would be strongly inclined to settle on the former way of perceiving it as the correct way. The process of trying to determine what is in a work consists partly in casting around among otherwise plausible ways of perceiving it for one in which the work is good. We feel we are coming to a correct understanding of a work when we begin to like or enjoy it; we are finding what is really there when it seems to be worth experiencing.

But if (it) is relevant, it is quite clearly not the only relevant considera- tion. Take any work of art we can agree is of fourth- or fifth- or tenth-rate quality. It is quite possible that if this work were perceived in some farfetched set of categories that someone might dream up, it would appear to be first-rate, a masterpiece. Finding such ad hoc categories obviously would require talent and ingenuity on the order of that necessary to produce a masterpiece in the first place. But we can sketch how one might begin searching for them. (a) If the mediocre work suffers from some disturbingly prominent feature that distracts from whatever merits the work has, this feature might be toned down by choosing categories with respect to which it is standard, rather than variable or contra-standard. When the work is perceived in the new way the offending feature may be no more distracting than the flatness of a painting is to us. (b) If the work suffers from an overabundance of clichés it might be livened up by choosing categories with respect to which the clichés are variable or contra-standard rather than standard. (c) If it needs ingenuity we might devise a set of rules in terms of which the work finds itself in a dilemma and then ingeniously escapes from it, and build these rules into a set of categories. Surely, however, if there are categories waiting to be discovered which would transform a mediocre work into a masterpiece, it does not It

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follow that the work really is a hitherto unrecognized masterpiece. The fact that when perceived in such categories it would appear exciting, ingenious, and so forth, rather than grating, cliché-ridden, pedestrian, does not make it so. It cannot be correct, I suggest, to perceive a work in categories which are totally foreign to the artist and his society, even if it comes across as a masterpiece in them.

This brings us to the historical conditions (if) and (iv). I see no way of avoiding the conclusion that one or the other of them at least is relevant in determining in what categories a work is correctly perceived. I consider both relevant, but will not argue here for the independent relevance of (in). (it) merits special attention in light of the recent prevalence of disputes about the importance of artists' intentions. To test the relevance of (ini) we must consider a case in which (in) and (iv) diverge. One such instance occurred during the early days of the twelve-tone movement in music. Schoenberg no doubt intended even his earliest twelve-tone works to be heard as such. But this category was certainly not then well established or recognized in his society: virtually none of his contem- poraries (except close associates such as Berg and Webern), even musically sophisticated ones, would have (or could have) heard these works in that category. But it seems to me that even the very first twelve-tone composi- tions are correctly heard as such, that the judgments one who hears them otherwise would make of them (for example, that they are chaotic, formless) are mistaken. I think this would be so even if Schoenberg had been working entirely alone, if none of his contemporaries had any inkling of the twelve-tone system. No doubt the first twelve-tone compositions are much better when heard in the category of twelve-tone works than when they are heard in any other way people might be likely to hear them. But as we have seen this cannot by itself account for the correctness of hearing them in the former way. The only other feature of the situation which could be relevant, so far as I can see, is Schoenberg's intention.

The above example is unusual in that Schoenberg was extraordinarily self-conscious about what he was doing, having explicitly formulated rules- that is, specified standard properties- for twelve-tone composition. Artists are of course not often so self-conscious, even when producing revolutionary works of art. Their intentions as to which categories their works are to be perceived in are not nearly as clear as Schoenberg's were, and often they change their minds considerably during the process of creation. In such cases (as well as ones in which the artists' intentions are unknown) the question of what categories a work is correctly perceived in is, I think, left by default to condition (iv), together with (i) and (in). But it seems to me that in almost all cases at least one of the historical conditions, (in) and (iv), is of crucial importance.

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My account of the rules governing decisions about what categories works are correctly perceived in leaves a lot undone. There are bound to be a large number of undecidable cases on my criteria. Artists' intentions are frequently unclear, variable, or undiscoverable. Many works belong to categories which are borderline cases of being well established in the artists' societies (perhaps, for example, the categories of rococo music-_for instance, C. P. E. Bach- of music in the style of early Mozart, and of very thin metal sculptured figures of the kind that Giacometti made). Many works fall between well-established categories (for example, between impressionist and cubist paintings), possessing some of the standard fea- tures relative to each, and so neither clearly qualify nor clearly fail to qualify on the basis of condition (i) to be perceived in either. There is, in addition, the question of what relative weights to accord the various conditions when they conflict.

It would be a mistake, however, to try to tighten up much further the rules for deciding how works are correctly perceived. To do so would be simply to legislate gratuitously, since the intuitions and precedents we have to go on are highly variable and often confused. But it is important to notice just where these intuitions and precedents are inconclusive, for doing so will expose the sources of many critical disputes. One such dispute might well arise concerning Giacometti's thin metal sculptures. To a critic who sees them simply as sculptures, or sculptures of people, they look frail, emaciated, wispy, or wiry. But that is not how they would strike a critic who sees them in the category of thin metal sculptures of that sort (just as stick figures do not strike us as wispy or emaciated). He would be impressed not by the thinness of the sculptures, but by the expressive nature of the positions of their limbs, and so forth, and so no doubt would attribute very different aesthetic properties to them. Which of the two ways of seeing these works is correct is, I suspect, undecidable. It is not clear whether enough such works have been made and have been regarded sufficiently often as constituting a category for that category to be deemed well established in Giacometti's society. And I doubt whether any of the other conditions settle the issue conclusively. So perhaps the dispute between the two critics is essentially unresolvable. The most that we can do is to point out just what sort of a difference of perception underlies the dispute, and why it is unresolvable.

The occurrence of such impasses is by no means something to be regretted. Works may be fascinating precisely because of shifts between equally permissible ways of perceiving them. And the enormous richness of some works is due in part to the variety of permissible, and worthwhile, ways of perceiving them. But it should be emphasized that even when my criteria do not clearly specify a single set of categories in which a work is

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CotTectly perceived, there are bound to be possible ways of perceiving it (which we may or may not have thought of) that they definitely rule out.

"The question posed at the outset of this section was how to determine what aesthetic properties a work has, given that which ones it seems to have depend on what categories it is perceived in, on which of its properties are standard, which variable, and which contra standard for us. P'have sketched in rough outline rules for deciding in what categories a Work is correcily perceived (and hence which of its features are absoluteig standard, variable, and contra-standard). The aesthetic properties it ac tually possesses are those that are to be found in it when it is perceived correctly.

V Conclusion

I return now to the issues raised in Section I. (I will adopt for the remainder of this paper the simplifying assumption that there is only one correct way of perceiving any work. Nothing important depends on this.) If a work's aesthetic properties are those that are to be found in it when it is perceived correctly, and the correct way to perceive it is determined partly by historical facts about the artist's intention and/ or his society, no examination of the work itself, however thorough, will by itself reveal those properties,? If we are confronted by a work about whose origins we know absolutely nothing (for example, one lifted from the dust at an as yet unexcavated archaeological site on Mars), we would simply not be in a position to judge it aesthetically. We could not possibly tell by staring at it, no matter how intently and intelligently, whether it is coherent, or serene, or dynamic, for by staring we cannot tell whether it is to be seen as a sculpture, a guernica, or some other exotic or mundane kind of work of art. (We could attribute aesthetic properties to it in the way we do to natural objects, which of course does not involve consideration of histori- cal facts about artists or their societies. [Cf. Section IV.] But to do this would not be to treat the object as a work of art.)

It should be emphasized that the relevant historical facts are not merely useful aids to aesthetic judgment; they do not simply provide hints concerning what might be found in the work. Rather they help to deter- mine what aesthetic properties a work has; they, together with the work's nonaesthetic features, make it a coherent, serene, or whatever. If the origin of a work which is coherent and serene had been different in crucial respects, the work would not have had these qualities; we would not merely have lacked a means for discovering them. And of two works which differ only in respect of their origins- that is, which are perceptually indistinguishable- one might be coherent or serene, and the other not.

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Thus, since artists' intentions are among the relevant historical considera- tions, the "intentional fallacy" is not a fallacy at all. I have of course made no claims about the relevance of artists' intentions as to the aesthetic properties that their works should have, and these intentions are among those most discussed in writings on aesthetics. I am willing to agree that whether an artist intended his work to be coherent or serene has nothing essential to do with whether it is coherent or serene. But this must not be allowed to seduce us into thinking that no intentions are relevant.

Aesthetic properties, then, are not to be found in works themselves in the straightforward way that colors and shapes or pitches and rhythms are. But I do not mean to deny that we perceive aesthetic properties in works of art. I see the serenity of a painting, and hear the coherence of a sonata, despite the fact that the presence of these qualities in the works depends partly on circumstances of their origin, which I cannot (now) perceive. Jones's marital status is part of what makes him a bachelor, if he is one, and we cannot tell his marital status just by looking at him, though we can thus ascertain his sex. Hence, I suppose, his bachelorhood is not a property we can be said to perceive in him. But the aesthetic properties of a work do not depend on historical facts about it in anything like the way Jones's bachelorhood depends on his marital status. The point is not that the historical facts (or in what categories the work is correctly perceived, or which of its properties are absolutely standard, variable, and contra-standard) function as grounds in any ordinary sense for aesthetic judgments. By themselves they do not, in general, count either for or against the presence of any particular aesthetic property. And they are not part of a larger body of information (also including data about the work derived from an examination of it) from which conclusions about the work's aesthetic properties are to be deduced or inferred. We must learn to perceive the work in the correct categories, as determined in part by the historical facts, and judge it by what we then perceive in it. The historical facts help to determine whether a painting is, for example, serene only (as far as my arguments go) by affecting what way of perceiving the painting must reveal this quality if it is truly attributable to the work.

We must not, however, expect to judge a work simply by setting ourselves to perceive it correctly, once it is determined what the correct way of perceiving it is. For one cannot, in general, perceive a work in a given set of categories simply by setting himself to do it. I could not possibly, merely by an act of will, see "Guernica" as a guernica rather than a painting, or hear a succession of street sounds in any arbitrary category one might dream up, even if the category has been explained to me in detail. (Nor can I imagine except in a rather vague way what it would be like, for example, to see "Guernica" as a guernica.) One cannot merely it

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decide to respond appropriately to a work-to be shocked or unnerved or Surprised by its (absolutely) contra-standard features, to find its standard Features familiar or mundane, and to react to its variable features in otter ways once he knows the correct categories. Perceiving a work in a certain Vategory or set of categories is a skill that must be acquired by training, and exposure to a great many other works of the category or categorien in question is ordinarily, I believe, an essential part of this training. (BU) an effort of will may facilitate the training, and once the skill is acquired one may be able to decide at will whether or not to perceive it in that or those categories.) This has important consequences concerning how best to approach works of art of kinds that are new to us contemporary works in new idioms, works from foreign cultures, or newly resurrected works from the ancient past. It is no use just immersing ourselves in a particular work, even with the knowledge of what categories it is correctly perceived in, for that alone will not enable us to perceive it in those categories. We must become familiar with a considerable variety of works of similar sorts.

When dealing with works of more familiar kinds it is not generally necessary to undertake deliberately the task of training ourselves to be able to perceive them in the correct categories (except perhaps when those categories include relatively subtle ones). But this is almost always, I think, only because we have been trained unwittingly. Even the ability to see paintings as paintings had to be acquired, it seems to me, by repeated exposure to a great many paintings. The critic must thus go beyond the work before him in order to judge it aesthetically, not only to discover what the correct categories are, but also to be able to perceive it in them. The latter does not require consideration of historical facts, or considera- tion of facts at all, but it requires directing one's attention nonetheless to things other than the work in question.

Probably no one would deny that some sort of perceptual training is necessary, in many if not all instances, for apprehending a work's serenity or coherence, or other aesthetic properties. And of course it is not only aesthetic properties whose apprehension by the senses requires training. But the kind of training required in the aesthetic cases (and perhaps some others as well) has not been properly appreciated. In order to learn how of the two sexes, or examples of that person's handwriting pointed out to him, practice recognizing them himself, and be corrected when he makes mistakes. But the training important for discovering the serenity of coherence of a work of art that I have been discussing is not of this sort (though this sort of training might be important as well). Acquiring the ability to perceive a serene or coherent work in the correct categories is

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not a matter of having had serene or coherent things pointed out to one, or having practiced recognizing them. What is important is not (or not merely) experience with other serene and coherent things, but experience with other things of the appropriate categories .

Much of the argument in this paper has been directed against the seemingly common-sense notion that aesthetic judgments about works of art are to be based solely on what can be perceived in them, how they look or sound. That notion is seriously misleading, I claim, on two quite different counts. I do not deny that paintings and sonatas are to be judged solely on what can be seen or heard in them-when they are perceived correctly. But examining a work with the senses can by itself reveal neither how it is correct to perceive it, nor how to perceive it that way.

Notes

...

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Piece: Contra Aesthetics

TIMOTHY BINKLEY

[orig. 1977]

I. What Is This Piece?

1. The term "aesthetics" has a general meaning in which it refers to the philosophy of art. In this sense, any theoretical writing about art falls within the realm of aesthetics. There is also a more specific and more important sense of the term in which it refers to a particular type of theoretical inquiry which emerged in the eighteenth century when the "Faculty of Taste" was invented. In this latter sense, "aesthetics" is the study of a specific human activity involving the perception of aesthetic qualities such as beauty, repose, expressiveness, unity, liveliness. Although frequently purporting to be a (or even the) philosophy of art, aesthetics so understood is not exclusively about art: it investigates a type of human experience (aesthetic experience) which is elicited by artworks, but also by nature and by nonartistic artifacts. The discrepancy is generally thought to be unimportant and is brushed aside with the assumption that if aesthetics is not exclusively about art, at least art is primarily about the aesthetic. This assumption, however, also proves to be false, and it is the purpose of this piece to show why. Falling within the subject matter of aesthetics (in the second sense) is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being art.

2. Robert Rauschenberg erases a DeKooning drawing and exhibits it as his own work, "Erased DeKooning Drawing." The aesthetic properties of the original work are wiped away, and the result is not a nonwork, but another work. No important information about Rauschenberg's piece is presented in the way it looks, except perhaps this fact, that looking at it is artistically inconsequential. It would be a mistake to search for aestheti-

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cally interesting smudges on the paper. The object may be bought and sold like an aesthetically lush Rubens, but unlike the Rubens it is only a souvenir or relic of its artistic meaning. The owner of the Rauschenberg has no privileged access to its artistic content in the way the owner of the Rubens does who hides the painting away in a private study. Yet the Rauschenberg piece is a work of art. Art in the twentieth century has emerged as a strongly self-critical discipline. It has freed itself of aesthetic parameters and sometimes creates directly with ideas unmediated by aesthetic qualities. An artwork is a piece: and a piece need not be an aesthetic object, or even an object at all.

3. This piece is occasioned by two works of art by Marcel Duchamp, L.H.0.0. Q. and L.H.O.O.Q.Shaved. How do I know they are works of art? For one thing, they are listed in catalogues. So I assume they are works of art. If you deny that they are, it is up to you to explain why the listings in a Renoir catalogue are artworks, but the listings in a Duchamp catalogue are not. And why the Renoir show is an exhibition of artworks, while the Duchamp show is not, and so forth. Anyway, whether the Duchamp pieces are works of art is ultimately inconsequential, as we shall see.

This piece is also, shall we say, about the philosophical significance of Duchamp's art. This piece is primarily about the concept "piece" in art; and its purpose is to reformulate our understanding of what a "work of art" is.

II What Is L.H.O.0.0.?

These are Duchamp's words:

This Mona Lisa with a moustache and a goatee is a combination readymade and iconoclastic Dadaism. The original, I mean the original readymade is a cheap chromo 8x5 on which I inscribed at the bottom four letters which pronounced like initials in French, made a very risqué joke on the Gioconda.

Imagine a similar description of the Mona Lisa itself. Leonardo took a canvas and some paint and put the paint on the canvas in such-and-such a way so that-presto-we have the renowned face and its environs. There is a big difference between this description and Duchamp's description. The difference is marked by the unspecified "such-and-such" left hanging in the description of Leonardo's painting. I could, of course, go on indefinitely describing the look of the Mona Lisa, and the fidelity with which your imagination reproduced this look would depend upon such things as how good my description is, how good your imagination is, and

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Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities chance. Yet regardless of how precise and vivid my description is, one thing it will never do is acquaint you with the painting. You cannot claim to know that work of art on the basis of reading the most exquisite description of it, even though you may learn many interesting things abou it. The way you come to know the Mona Lisa is by looking at it or by looking at a decent reproduction of it. The reason reproductions count is not that they faithfully reproduce the work of art, but rather because what the work of art is depends fundamentally upon how it looks. And reproductions can do a more or less acceptable job of duplicating (or replicating) the salient features of the appearance of a painting, This does not mean that a person is entitled to limit his or her aesthetic judgments to reproductions. What it means is that you can't say much about a painting until you know how it looks.

Now reconsider the description of Duchamp's piece: L.H.O.O.Q. is a reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a moustache, goatee, and letters added. There is no amorphous "such-and-such" standing for the most important thing. The description tells you what the work of art is; you now know the piece without actually having seen it (or a reproduction of it). When you do see the artwork there are no surprises: Yes, there is the reproduction of the Mona Lisa; there is the moustache, the goatee; there are the five letters. When you look at the artwork you learn nothing of artistic consequence which you don't already know from the description Duchamp gives, and for this reason it would be pointless to spend time attending to the piece as a connoisseur would savor a Rembrandt. Just the opposite is true of the Mona Lisa. If I tell you it is a painting of a woman with an enigmatic smile, I have told you little about the work of art since the important thing is how it looks; and that I can only show you, I cannot tell you.

This difference can be elucidated by contrasting ideas and appearances . Some art (a great deal of what is considered traditional art) creates primarily with appearances. To know the art is to know the look of it; and to know that is to experience the look, to perceive the appearance. On the other hand, some art creates primarily with ideas.? To know the art is to know the idea; and to know an idea is not necessarily to experience a particular sensation, or even to have some particular ex- perience. This is why you can know L.H.O.O.Q. either by looking at it of by having it described to you. (In fact, the piece might be better or more casily known by description than by perception.) The critical analysis of appearance, which is so useful in helping you come to know the Mona Lisa, bears little value in explaining I. H.O.O.Q. Excursions into the beauty with which the moustache was drawn or the delicacy with which the goatee was made to fit the contours of the face are fatuous attempts

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to say something meaningful about the work of art. If we do look at the piece, what is important to notice is that there is a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, that a moustache has been added, etc. It hardly matters exactly how this was done, how it looks. One views the Mona Lisa to see what it looks like, but one approaches Duchamp's piece to obtain infor- mation, to gain access to the thought being expressed.

III What is L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved?

Duchamp sent out invitations to preview the show called "Not Seen and/ or Less Seen of/ by Marcel Duchamp/ Rrose Selavy 1904-64: Mary Sisler Collection." On the front of the invitation he pasted a playing card which bears a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. Below the card is inscribed. in French, "L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved." This piece looks like the Mona Lisa and the Mona Lisa looks like it: since one is a reproduction of the other, their aesthetic qualities are basically identical.' Differences in how they look have little, if any, artistic relevance. We do not establish the identity of one by pointing out where it looks different from the other. This is due to the fact that Duchamp's piece does not articulate its artistic statement in the language of aesthetic qualities. Hence, its aesthetic properties are as much a part of L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved as a picture of a mathematician in an algebra book is part of the mathematics.

Appearances are insufficient for establishing the identity of a work of art if the point is not in the appearance. And if the point is in the appearance, how do we establish that? What is to keep a Duchamp from stealing the look for ulterior purposes? Here occurs the limit of the ability of aesthetics to cope with art, since aesthetics seeks out appearances. To see why and how, we need to examine the nature of aesthetics.

IV What Is Aesthetics? 1. The Word. The term "aesthetics" has come to denote that branch of philosophy which deals with art. The word originated in the eighteenth century when Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten adopted a Greek word for perception to name what he defined to be "the science of perception.'4 Relying upon a distinction familiar to "the Greek philosophers and the Church fathers," he contrasted things perceived (aesthetic entities) with things known (noetic entities), delegating to "aesthetics" the investigation of the former. Baumgarten then gathered the study of the arts under the aegis of aesthetics. The two were quickly identified and "aesthetics" became "the philosophy of art" in much the way "ethics" is the philosophy of morality.

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2. Aesthetics and Perception. From the outset aesthetics has been devoted to the study of "things perceived," whether reasoning from the "aesthetic attitude" which defines a unique way of perceiving, or from the 'aesthetic object" of perception. The commitment to perceptual experience was deepened with the invention of the Faculty of Taste , by eighteenth- century philosophers anxious to account for the human response to Beauty and to other aesthetic qualities. The Faculty of Taste exercises powers of discrimination in aesthetic experiences. A refined person with highly developed taste is enabled to perceive and recognize sophisticated and subtle artistic expressions which are closed to the uncultured person with poorly developed taste. This new faculty was characterized by its operation in the context of a special "disinterested" perception, a perception severed from self-interest and dissociated from so-called "practical concerns." The development of the concept of disinterestedness reinforced the perceptual focus of aesthetics, since removing "interest" from experience divests it of utility and invests its value in immediate awareness. An aesthetic ex- perience is something pursued "for its own sake." Eventually aesthetics came to treat the object of aesthetic perception as a kind of illusion since its "reality"_-i.e., the reality of disinterested perception--stands disconnected from the reality of practical interest. The two realities are incommen- surable: The cows in Turner's paintings can be seen, but not milked or heard.

It is important to note that aesthetics is an outgrowth of the ancient tradition of the philosophy of the Beautiful. Beauty is a property found in both art and nature. A man is beautiful; so is his house and the tapestries hung inside. Aesthetics has continued the tradition of investigat- ing a type of experience which can be had in the presence of both natural and created objects. As a result, aesthetics has never been strictly a study of artistic phenomena. The scope of its inquiry is broader than art since aesthetic experience is not an experience unique to art. This fact has not always been sufficiently emphasized, and as a result aesthetics frequently appears in the guise of philosophy-of-art-in-general.

As aesthetics and the philosophy of art have become more closely identified, a much more serious confusion has arisen. The work of art has come to be construed as an aesthetic object, an object of perception. Hence the meaning and essence of all art is thought to inhere in appearances, in the looks and sounds of direct (though not necessarily unreflective) aware- ness. The first principle of philosophy of art has become: all art possesses aesthetic qualities, and the core of a work is its nest of aesthetic qualities. This is why "aesthetics" has become just another name for the philosophy of art. Although it is sometimes recognized that aesthetics is not identical to the philosophy of art, but rather a complementary study, it is still

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commonly assumed that all art is aesthetic in the sense that falling within the subject matter of aesthetics is at least a necessary (if not a sufficient) condition for being art.' Yet as we shall see, being aesthetic is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being art.

Devotees of modern aesthetics may believe that Baumgarten's "science of perception" is a moribund enterprise befitting only pre-Modern aes- thetics rapt in pursuit of ideal Beauty. Yet a survey of contemporary aesthetic theory will prove that this part of philosophy still accepts its raison d'être to be a perceptual entity--an appearance-and fails to recognize sufficiently the distinction between "aesthetics" in the narrow sense and the philosophy of art. In his essay "Aesthetic and Non-Aesthetic," Frank Sibley has articulated this commitment to perception:

It is of importance to note first that, broadly speaking, aesthetics deals with a kind of perception. People have to see the grace of unity of a work, hear the plaintiveness or frenzy in a music, notice the gaudiness of a color scheme, feel the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone.... The crucial thing is to see, hear, or feel. To suppose indeed that one can make aesthetic judgments without aes- thetic perception. is to misunderstand aesthetic judgement.

Despite the many new directions taken by the philosophy of art in the twentieth century, it is still practised under the guidance of aesthetic inquiry, which assumes that the work of art is a thing perceived.

The reason aesthetic qualities must be perceived in order to be judged is that they inhere in what Monroe Beardsley has called the "perceptual object". "A perceptual object is an object some of whose qualities, at least, are open to direct sensory awareness."? This he contrasts with the "physical basis" of aesthetic qualities, which "consists of things and events describable in the vocabulary of physics."* Hence the work of art turns out to be an entity possessed of two radically different aspects, one aesthetic and the other physical:

When a critic... says that Titian's later paintings have a strong atmospheric quality and vividness of color,

Does ANYONE ELSE EVER say such things?

he is talking about aes- thetic objects. But when he says that Titian used a dark reddish underpainting over the whole canvas, and added transparent glazes to the painting after he laid down the pigment, he is talking about physical objects.

This "aesthetic object" is taken by the philosophy of art to be its subject of study. Appearances are paramount, from expressionist theories which

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construe the artwork as an "imaginary object" through which the artist has articulated his or her "intuition," to formalist theories which venerate perceptual form. Clive Bell's "significant form' » is clearly a perceptual form since it must be perceived and arouse the "aesthetic emotion" before it functions artistically.' Susanne Langer has christened aesthetic ap. pearances "semblances," and has undertaken what is probably the most extensive investigation of artistic semblance in her book Feeling and Form. Aesthetics perceives all the arts to be engaged in the creation of some kind of semblance or artistic "illusion" which presents itself to us for the sake of its appearance.

It has been difficult, however, to maintain a strictly perceptual inter. pretation of the aesthetic "appearance." Literature is the one major art form which does not easily accommodate the perceptual model of arthood. Although we perceive the printed words in a book, we do not actually perceive the literary work which is composed with intangible linguistic elements. Yet as Sibley points out, the reader will "feel the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone," so that its aesthetic qualities are at least experienced through reading if not actually perceived by one of the senses. There are various things we experience without perceiving them. Like an emotion, the power of a novel is "felt" without its being touched or heard or seen. Thus, although it will not be quite correct to say that one cannot know the aesthetic qualities of a novel without "direct perceptual access, " it is true that one cannot know them without directly experiencing the novel by reading it. This rules out the possibility of coming to know a literary work by having it described to you (as one may very well come to know L.H.O.O.Q.). Just as you must look at the particular object constituting a painting, you must read the particular words comprising a novel in order to judge it aesthetically. Hence, al- though perception is the paradigm of aesthetic experience, an accurate aesthetic theory will locate aesthetic qualities more generally in a particular type of experience (aesthetic experience) so that literature can be included.

3. The Theory of Media. What does it mean to have the requisite "direct experience" of an aesthetic object? How do you specify what it is that one must experience in order to know a particular artwork? Here we encounter a problem. Aesthetic qualities cannot be communicated except through direct experience of them. So there is no way of saying just what the aesthetic qualities of a work are independently of experiencing them. As Isabel Hungerland puts it, there are no intersubjective criteria for testing the presence of aesthetic qualities. I? This is why one cannot com- municate the Mona Lisa by describing it. It is impossible to establish criteria for identifying artworks which are based on their aesthetic qualities. And this is the point where aesthetics needs the concept of a

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medium. Media are the basic categories of art for aesthetics, and each work is identified through its medium. Let's see how this is done.

In recent aesthetics, the problem of the relationship between the aes- thetic and the nonaesthetic properties of an object has been much dis- cussed. Whatever the particular analysis given, it is generally conceded that aesthetic qualities depend in some way upon nonaesthetic qualities. I3 There is no guarantee that a slight change in color or shape will leave the aesthetic qualities of a painting unaffected, and this is why reproductions often have aesthetic qualities different from those of the original.' Chang. ing what Beardsley calls the "physical" properties, however slightly can alter those features of a work of art which are experienced in the "aesthetic experience" of the object. Aesthetic objects are vulnerable and fragile, and this is another reason why it is important to have identity criteria for them.

Since aesthetic qualities depend on nonaesthetic qualities, the identity of an aesthetic artwork can be located through conventions governing its nonaesthetic qualities. These conventions determine the nonaesthetic parameters which must remain invariant in identifying particular works. A medium is not simply a physical material, but rather a network of such conventions which delimits a realm over which physical materials and aesthetic qualities are mediated. For example, in the medium of painting there is a convention which says that the paint, but not the canvas, stretcher, or frame, must remain invariant in order to preserve the identity of the artwork. On the other hand, paint is not a conventional invariant in the art of architecture but is applied to buildings (at least on the inside) according to another art, interior decorating. The same architectural work could have white walls or pink walls, but a painting could not have its white clouds changed to pink and still remain the same painting. Similarly, the medium of painting is invariant through modifications of the frame holding a painting, while a building is not invariant through modifications in, say, the woodwork. Moving a Rubens from an elaborate Baroque frame into a modern Bauhaus frame will not change the work of art, but making a similar change in the woodwork of a building will change, however slightly, the architectural work.

In its network of conventions, each artistic medium establishes a non- aesthetic criteria for identifying works of art. By being told which medium a work is in, we are given the parameters within which to search for and experience its aesthetic qualities. As we watch a dance, we heed how the dancers move their bodies. As we watch a play on the same stage, we concentrate instead on what is being acted out. Treating a piece of writing as a poem will make us focus on different nonaesthetic features than if we approach it as a short story: when the type is set for a poem the individual lines are preserved, as they are not in a short story. Thus Susanne Langer's

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characterization of media in terms of the particular type of semblance they create is pointed in the wrong direction. She holds that painting creates the illusion of space, music the illusion of the passage of time, etc. Yet it is not the "content" of an aesthetic illusion which determines the medium Before we can tell whether something presents a semblance of space, we have to know where to look for the semblance; and this we know by understanding the conventions, i.e., the medium, within which the thing is proffered for aesthetic experience. Anything that can be seen can be seen aesthetically, i.e., it can be viewed for the sake of discerning its aesthetic qualities. The reason we know to look at the aesthetic qualities on the front of a painting is not because the back lacks aesthetic qualities, but rather because the conventions of painting tell us to look there. Even if the back of a painting looks more interesting than the front, the museum director is nevertheless required to hang the painting in the conventional way with the front out. The medium tells you what to experience in order to know the aesthetic artwork.

My note says:
Fire the
"museum director."

In the twentieth century we have witnessed a proliferation of new media. A medium seems to emerge when new conventions are instituted for isolating aesthetic qualities differently on the basis of new materials or machines. Film became an artistic medium when its unique physical structure was utilized to identify aesthetic qualities in a new way. The filmmaker became an artist when he or she stopped recording the creation of the playwright and discovered that film has resources for creation which theater lacks. The aesthetic qualities that can be presented by a film photographed from the orchestra and obedient to the temporal structure of the play are, basically, the aesthetic properties of the play itself. But when the camera photographs two different actions in two different places at two different times, and the images end up being seen at the same time and place, aesthetic properties can be realized which are inaccessible to theater. A new convention for specifying aesthetic properties has emerged. We say "See this film" instead of "See this play." In each case, what you look for is determined by the conventions of the medium.

The aesthetic theory of media has given rise to an analogy which seems to be gaining acceptance: a work of art is like a person. The dependence of aesthetic qualities on nonaesthetic ones is similar to the dependence of character traits on the bodily dispositions of persons. As Joseph Margolis has put it, works of art are embodied in a physical object (or physical event) in much the way a person is embodied in a human body:

To say that a work of art is embodied in a physical object is to say that its identity is necessarily linked to the identity of the physical

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object in which it is embodied, though to identify the one is not to identify the other; it is also to say that, qua embodied, a work of art must possess properties other than those ascribed to the physical object in which it is embodied, though it may be said to possess (where relevant) the properties of that physical object as well. Also, if in being embodied, works of art are, specifically, emergent entities, then the properties that a work of art possesses will include properties of a kind that cannot appropriately be ascribed to the object in which it is embodied.

The "emergent" entities of aesthetic art are aesthetic qualities which are accessible only through direct experience. The aesthetic and physical properties of the artwork fuse into a person-like whole, the former constituting the "mind," the latter the "body" of the work. When we want to locate a person we look for his or her body--likewise, when we want to locate an artwork we look for its "body," namely the physical material in which it is embodied, as delimited by the conventions of media.

Although not universally accepted, this person analogy appears fre- quently in aesthetic theory because it provides a suitable model for understanding the artwork as a single entity appealing to two markedly different types of interest. It explains, for example, the basis of the connection between Beauty and Money.

The analogy has recently been carried to the extent of claiming that works of art, like persons, have rights . To deface a canvas by Picasso or a sculpture by Michelangelo is not only to violate the rights of its owner, but also to violate certain rights of the work itself. The work is a person; to mar the canvas or marble is to harm this person. So we see that aesthetic works of art are also mortal. Like people, they age and are vulnerable to physical deterioration.

4. Art and Works. Aesthetics has used the conventions of media to classify and identify artworks, but its vision of the nature of art does not adequately recognize the thoroughly conventional structure within which artworks appear. This is because aesthetics tends to view a medium as a kind of substance (paint, wood, stone, sound, etc.) instead of as a network of conventions.

Its preoccupation with perceptual entities leads aesthetics to extol and examine the "work of art," " while averting its attention almost entirely from the myriad other aspects of that complex cultural activity we call "art." In other words, art for aesthetics is fundamentally a class of things called works of art which are the sources of aesthetic experience. To talk about art is to talk about a set of objects. To define art is to explain membership

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in this class. Thus we frequently find aesthetic discussions of the question "What is art?" immediately turning to the question "What is a work of art?" as though the two questions are unquestionably identical. Yet they are not the same.

What counts as a work of art must be discovered by examining the practice of art. Art, like philosophy, is a cultural phenomenon, and any particular work of art must rely heavily upon its artistic and cultura context in communicating its meaning. L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved looks as much like the Mona Lisa as any reproduction of it does, but their artistic meanings could hardly be more different. Just as I cannot tell you what the word "rot" means unless you say whether it is English or German, I cannot explain the meaning of a painting without viewing it immersed in an artistic milieu. The shock value of Manet's Olympia, for example, is largely lost on modern audiences, although it can be recovered by studying the society in which the painting emerged. Even so simple a question as what a painting represents cannot be answered without some reference to the conventions of depiction which have been adopted. Whether a smaller patch of paint on the canvas is a smaller person or a person farther away-or something else- is determined by conventions of representation. The moribund prejudice against much of the "unrealistic" art of the past comes from misjudging it according to standards which are part of the alien culture of the present.

Thus trying to define "art" by defining "work of art" is a bit like trying to define philosophy by saying what constitutes a philosophy book. A work of art cannot stand alone as a member of a set. Set membership is not the structure of that human activity called art. To suppose we can examine the problem of defining art by trying to explain membership in a class of entities is simply a prejudice of aesthetics, which underplays the cultural structure of art for the sake of pursuing perceptual objects. Yet even as paradigmatic an aesthetic work as the Mona Lisa is a thoroughly cultural entity whose artistic and aesthetic meanings adhere to the painting by cultural forces, not by the chemical forces which keep the paint intact for a period of time.

As media proliferated, the aesthetic imperatives implied in their conven- tons weakened. Art has become increasingly nonaesthetic in the twentieth century, straining the conventions of media to the point where lines between them blur. Some works of art are presented in "multimedia. others (such as Duchamp's) cannot be placed within a medium at all. The concept of a medium was invented by aesthetics in order to explain the identity of artworks which articulate with aesthetic qualities. As art questions the dictates of aesthetics, it abandons the conventions of media. Let us see why.

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V Art Outside Aesthetics

Art need not be aesthetic. L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved makes the point graphic by duplicating the appearance of the Mona Lisa while depriving it of its aesthetic import. The two works look exactly the same but are completely different. As the risqué joke is compounded by L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved, the Mona Lisa is humiliated. Though restored to its original appearance, it is not restored to its original state. Duchamp added only the moustache and goatee, but when he removed them the sacred aura of aesthetic qualities vanished as well--it had been a conventional artistic covering which ad- hered to the moustache and goatee when they were removed, like paint stuck to tape. The original image is intact but literalized; its function in Duchamp's piece is just to denote the Mona Lisa. L.H.O.0.Q. looked naughty, graffiti on a masterpiece. It relies upon our seeing both the aesthetic aura and its impudent violation. But as its successor reinstates the appearance, the masterpiece is ironically ridiculed a second time with the disappearance of the dignity which made L.H.O.O.Q. a transgression. The first piece makes fun of the Gioconda, the second piece destroys it in the process of "'restoring" it. L.H.O.0.Q. Shaved re-indexes Leonardo's artwork as a derivative of L.H.O.O.Q., reversing the temporal sequence while literalizing the image, i.e., discharging its aesthetic delights. Seen as "L.H.O.O.Q. shaved," the image is sapped of its artistic/ aesthetic strength-it seems almost vulgar as it tours the world defiled. This is because it is placed in a context where its aesthetic properties have no meaning and its artistic "person" is reduced to just another piece of painted canvas.

It has already been pointed out that one can know the work L.H.O.0.Q. without having any direct experience of it, and instead by having it described. This it shares with a great deal of recent art which eschews media. When Mel Bochner puts lines on a gallery wall to measure off the degrees of an arc, their purpose is to convey information, not to proffer aesthetic delights. The same is true of On Kawara's "I GOT UP" postcards, which simply note his time of rising each day. '7 What you need to see, to experience, in order to know this art is subject to intersubjective tests-unlike aesthetic art-_and this is why description will sometimes be adequate in communicating the artwork.

When Duchamp wrote "L.H.O.O.Q." beneath the image of the Mona Lisa, he was not demonstrating his penmanship. The beauty of a script depends upon aesthetic properties of its line. The meaning of a sentence written in the script, however, is a function of how the lines fit into the structure of an alphabet. Aesthetics assumes that artistic meaning must be construed according to the first type of relation between meaning and line,

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but not the second. It mistakes the experience of aesthetic qualities for the substance of art. Yet the remarkable thing about even aesthetic art is not its beauty (or any other of its aesthetic qualities), but the fact that it is human-created beauty articulated in a medium.

The flaw in aesthetics is this: how something looks is partly a function of what we bring to it, and art is too culturally dependent to survive in the mere look of things. The importance of Duchamp's titles is that they call attention to the cultural environment which can either sustain or suffocate the aesthetic demeanor of an object. Duchamp's titles do not name objects; they put handles on things. They call attention to the artistic framework within which works of art are indexed by their titles and by other means. The culture infects the work.

A great deal of art has chosen to articulate in the medium of an aesthetic space, but there is no a priori reason why art must confine itself to the creation of aesthetic objects. It might opt for articulation in a semantic space instead of an aesthetic one so that artistic meaning is not embodied in a physical object or event according to the conventions of a medium. Duchamp has proven this by creating nonaesthetic art, i.e., art whose meaning is not borne by the appearance of an object. In particular, the role of line in L.H.O.O.Q. is more like its role in a sentence than in a drawing or painting.'& This is why the appearance of the moustache and goatee are insignificant to the art. The first version of L.H.O.O.Q. was executed not by Duchamp, but by Picabia on Duchamp's instructions, and the goatee was left off. It would be an idle curiosity to speculate about whose version is better or more interesting on the basis of how each looks. The point of the artwork cannot be ascertained by scrutinizing its ap- pearance. It is not a person-like union of physical and perceptual qualities. Its salient artistic features do not depend upon nonaesthetic qualities in the sense of being embodied in them. The aesthetic qualities of L.H.O.0. Q., like the aesthetic qualities of Rauschenberg's erased DeKoon- ing, are not offered up by the artist for aesthetic delectation, but rather are incidental features of the work, like its weight or its age. Line is perceived in Duchamp's piece just as it is in a sentence in a book, and in both cases we can descry the presence of aesthetic qualities. But the point of neither can be read off its physiognomy. The lines are used to convey information, not to conjure up appearances; consequently the relationship of meaning to material is similar to what it is in a drawing of a triangle in a geometry book.

If an artwork is a person, Duchamp has stripped her bare of aesthetic aura. L.H.O.O.Q. treats a person as an object by means of the joke produced by reading the letters in French. It also treats an artwork as a "mere thing." The presence of the moustache violates the Mona Lisa's

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aesthetic rights and hence violates the artwork "person." In making fun of these persons, Duchamp's piece denies its own personhood.

Aesthetics is limited by reading the artwork on the model of a person Some person-like entities are works of art, but not all artworks are persons. If not a person, what is an artwork?

VI What Is an Artwork? An artwork is a piece. The concept "work of art" does not isolate a class of peculiar aesthetic personages. The concept marks an indexical function in the artworld. To be a piece of art, an item need only be indexed as an artwork by an artist. Simply recategorizing an unsuspecting entity will suffice. Thus "Is it art?" is a question of little interest. The question is "So what if it is?" Art is an epiphenomenon over the class of its works."

The conventions of titling works of art and publishing catalogues facilitate the practice of indexing art. However, it is important to distin- guish between the artist's act of indexing by creating and the curator's act of indexing by publishing the catalogue. It is the former act which makes art; the latter act usually indexes what is already art under more specific headings, such as works by a certain artist, works in a particular show, works owned by a person or a museum, etc. To make art is, basically, to isolate something (an object, an idea, ..) and say of it, "This is a work of art, » thereby cataloguing it under "Artworks." This may seem to devolve responsibility for arthood upon the official creators of art called artists, and the question of determining arthood turns into a question of determining who the artists are. But this wrongly places emphasis upon entities again, overshadowing the practice of art. Anyone can be an artist. To be an artist is to utilize (or perhaps invent) artistic conventions to index a piece. These might be the conventions of a medium which provide for the indexing of an aesthetic piece by means of nonaesthetic materials. But even the aesthetic artist has to stand back from the painting or play at a certain point and say "That's it. It's done." This is the point where the artist relies upon the basic indexing conventions of art. The fundamental art-making (piece-making) act is the specification of a piece: "The piece is- -." Putting paint on canvas-or making any kind of product- is just one way of specifying what the work of art is. When Duchamp wrote "L.H.0.0.Q. "below the reproduction, or when Rauschenberg erased the DeKooning, it was not the work (the labor) they did which made the art. A work of art is not necessarily something worked on; it is basically some- thing conceived. To be an artist is not always to make something, but rather to engage in a cultural enterprise in which artistic pieces are prof- fered for consideration. Robert Barry once had an exhibition in which nothing was exhibited:

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My exhibition at the Art & Project Gallery in Amsterdam in Decem. ber, '69, will last two weeks. I asked them to lock the door and nail my announcement to it, reading; "For the exhibition the gallery wil be closed.

The fact that someone could be an artist by just christening his or her radio or anxiety to be an artwork may seem preposterous. However, the case of the Sunday Painter who rarely shows his or her paintings to anvone is not substantially different. We need to beware of confusing issues about arthood with issues about good or recognized arthood. The amateur indexer may index trivially, and the effortlessness of the task will only seem to compound the artistic inconsequence. But things are not so different when the Sunday Painter produces a few terrible watercolors which are artistical)y uninierestine, Dre pies hejratis in da Where bai hihe produce are works of art, just as the economics student's term paper is a piece of economics, however naive or poorly done. Simply by making a piece, a person makes an artistic "'statement"; good art is distinguished by the interest or significance of what it says. Of course, interesting art, like interesting economics, is usually produced by people who, in some sense, are considered "professionals." Thus there are senses of "artist" and "economist" which refer to people who pursue their disciplines with special dedication. But what these "professionals" do is no different from what the amateurs do; it is just a difference in whether the activity is selected as a vocation. This shows that the question "Is that person an artist?" like the question "Is that thing an artwork?" is not a question with great artistic import.

A useful analogy is suggested. Art is a practised discipline of thought and action, like mathematics, economics, philosophy, or history. The major difference between art and the others is that doing art is simply employing indexing conventions defined by the practice. The reason for this is that the general focus of art is creation and conception for the sake of creation and conception, and consequently the discipline of art has devised a piece-making convention which places no limits on the content of what is created. In other words, art, unlike economics, has no general subject matter. The artworld develops and evolves through a complex network of interrelated interests, so it does have the general structure of "discipline." But part of the recent history of art includes the loosening of conventions on what can be art until they are purely "formal." The wider use of the term "piece" instead of "work" reflects this liberalization, as does the decreasing importance of media. "Work of art" suggests an object. "Piece" suggests an item indexed within a practice. There are many

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kinds of "pieces," differing according to the practices they are indexed within. A "piece" could be a piece of mathematics or economics or art; and some pieces may be addressed to several disciplines. An artwork is just a piece (of art), an entity specified by conventions of the practice of art.

This view of art has one very important point of difference with aesthetics. Media are set up to identify works extensionally. Joseph Margolis relies on this idea when he argues that the identity of an artwork depends upon the identity of the physical object in which it is embodied:

So works of art are said to be the particular objects they are, in intensional contexts, although they may be identified, by the linkage of embodiment, through the identity of what may be identified in extensional contexts. That is, works of art are identified extensionally, in the sense that their identity (whatever they are) is controlled by the identity of what they are embodied in.

Some difficulties for this view are already suggested by Duchamp' "double painting. 99 a single stretcher with Paradise painted on one side and The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes on the other. The decisive cases, however, are found among artworks which are produced merely by indexing, such as Duchamp's readymade. Indexes index their items inten- sionally: from the fact that "the morning star" occurs in an index, one cannot infer that "the evening star" occurs there also, even though the two expressions denote the same object. L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved could, for the sake of argument, be construed as residing in the same physical object as the Mona Lisa itself. Then there is one extensionally specified object, but two intensionally specified artworks. Rauschenberg has suggested this possibility since the only things of substance he changed by erasing the DeKooning drawing were aesthetic qualities. To complete the cycle in the way Duchamp did, Rauschenberg should buy a DeKooning painting and exhibit it in his next show: "Unerased DeKooning." The point is that artworks are identified intensionally, not- extensionally. The reason L.H. 0.0. Q. Shaved and the Mona Lisa are different artworks is not that they are different objects, but rather that they are different ideas. They are specified as different pieces in the art practice.

That an artwork is a piece and not a person was established by the Readymade. Duchamp selected several common objects and converted them into art simply by indexing them as artworks. Sometimes this was accomplished in conjunction with explicit indexing ceremonies, such as signing and dating a work, giving it a title, entering it in a show. But always what separates the readymade artwork from the "readymade" object it was ready-made from is a simple act of indexing. Duchamp says,

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"A point I want very much to establish is that the choice of these Readymades was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with a total absence of good or bad taste,")? The Readymade demonstrates the indexical nature of the concept "work of art" by showing that whether something is an artwork is not determined by its appearance but by how it is regarded in the artworld. The same shovel can be a mere hardware item at one time and an artwork at another depending upon how the artworld stands in relation to it. Even an old work of art can be converted into a new one without changing the appearance of the old work, but only "creating a new idea for it, " as Duchamp has said of the urinal readymade called Fountain, The significance of the title of this piece has not been fully appreciated. A urinal is a fountain; that is, it is an object designed for discharging a stream of water. The reason most urinals are not fountains, despite their designs, is that their locations and use differ from similar devices we do consider fountains. The objects are structurally similar, but their cultural roles are very different. Putting a urinal in a gallery makes it visible as a "fountain" and as a work of art because the context has been changed. Cultural contexts endow objects with special meanings; and they determine arthood.

It has been pointed out that Fountain was accepted as a work of art only because Duchamp had already established his status as an artist by producing works in traditional forms. This is probably true: not just anyone could have carried it off. You cannot revolutionize the accepted conventions for indexing unless you have some recognition in the artworld already. However, this does not mean that Duchamp's piece is only marginal art and that anyone desiring to follow his act of indexing has to become a painter first. When Duchamp made his first nonaesthetic work, the conventions for indexing artworks were more or less the media of aesthetics: to make an artwork was to articulate in a medium. Duchamp did not simply make an exception to these conventions, he instituted a new convention, the indexing convention which countenances nonaesthetic art, though perhaps it should be said rather that Duchamp uncovered the convention, since it lies behind even the use of media, which are specialized ways of indexing aesthetic qualities. In any event, once the new convention is instituted anyone can follow it as easily as he or she can follow the indexing conventions of aesthetics. The Sunday Indexer can have just as good a time as the Sunday Painter.

VI Duchamp's Legacy

Because of Duchamp's wit and humor, it was easy at first to dismiss his art, or maybe just to be confused by it. Yet it is not trivial because it is

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funny. With the art of Duchamp, art emerged openly as a practice. His Large Glass, whose meaning is inaccessible to anyone who merely ex- amines the physical object, stands as the first monument to an art of the mind.

This kind of art developed historically; it is not an anomaly. Probably it originates in what Clement Greenberg calls "Modernism," whose characteristic feature is self-criticism. Like philosophy, art developed to the point where a critical act about the discipline (or part of it) could be part of the discipline itself. Once embarked on self-scrutiny, art came to realize that its scope could include much more than making aesthetic objects. It is a practice, which is why jokes about art can be art in the way jokes about philosophy can be philosophy. Art is a practice which can be characterized about as well and as usefully as philosophy can be. Defining art is not likely to be a very interesting pursuit. An artwork is a piece indexed within conventions of this practice, and its being an artwork is determined not by its properties, but by its location in the artworld. Its properties are used to say what the particular work is.

If art must be aesthetic, the tools of the art indexer must be media, whether mixed or pure. To make a work of art is to use a medium to join together literal physical qualities and created aesthetic qualities. An aes- thetic person is born in the intercourse.

Aesthetics treats aesthetic experience, not art. Anything, from music to mathematics, can be seen aesthetically. This is the basis for the traditional preoccupation of aesthetics with Beauty, a quality found in both art and nature. Aesthetics deals with art and other things under the heading of aesthetic experience. Conversely, not all art is aesthetic. Seeing its marriage to aesthetics as a forced union, art reaches out to find meaning beyond skin-deep looks. The indexers create with ideas. The tools of indexing are the languages of ideas, even when the ideas are aesthetic.

Notes

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The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude

GEORGE DICKIE

Some recent articles' have suggested the unsatisfactoriness of the notion of the aesthetic attitude and it is now time for a fresh look at that encrusted article of faith. This conception has been valuable to aesthetics and criticism in helping wean them from a sole concern with beauty and related notions.? However, I shall argue that the aesthetic attitude is a myth and while, as G. Ryle has said, "Myths often do a lot of theoretical good while they are still new,»3 this particular one is no longer useful and in fact misleads aesthetic theory.

There is a range of theories which differ according to how strongly the aesthetic attitude is characterized. This variation is reflected in the language the theories employ. The strongest variety is Edward Bullough's theory of psychical distance, recently defended by Sheila Dawson." The central technical term of this theory is "distance" used as a verb to denote an action which either constitutes or is necessary for the aesthetic attitude. These theorists use such sentences as "He distanced (or failed to distance) the play." The second variety is widely held but has been defended most vigorously in recent years by Jerome Stolnitz and Eliseo Vivas. The central technical term of this variety is "disinterested" used either as an adverb or as an adjective. This weaker theory speaks not of a special kind of action (distancing) but of an ordinary kind of action (attending) done in a certain way (disinterestedly). These first two versions are perhaps not so different as my classification suggests. Hover, the language of the two is different enough to justify separate discussions. My discussion of this second variety will for the most part make use of Jerome Stolnitz's book° which is a thorough, consistent, and large-scale version of the attitude theory. The weakest version of the attitude theory can be found in Vincent

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Tomas's statement "If looking at a picture and attending closely to how it looks is not really to be in the aesthetic attitude, then what on earth is?? In the following I shall be concerned with the notion of aesthetic attitude and this notion may have little or no connection with the ordinary notion of an attitude.

I

Psychical distance, according to Bullough, is a psychological process by virtue of which a person puts some object (be it a painting, a play, or a dangerous fog at sea) "out of gear" with the practical interests of the self. Miss Dawson maintains that it is "the beauty of the phenomenon, which captures our attention, puts us out of gear with practical life, and forces us, if we are receptive, to view it on the level of aesthetic consciousness."&

Later she maintains that some persons (critics, actors, members of an orchestra, and the like) "distance deliberately.» Miss Dawson, following Bullough, discusses cases in which people are unable to bring off an act of distancing or are incapable of being induced into a state of being distanced. She uses Bullough's example of the jealous ("under-distanced") husband at a performance of Othello who is unable to keep his attention on the play because he keeps thinking of his own wife's suspicious behavior. On the other hand, if "we are mainly concerned with the technical details of its [the play's] presentation, then we are said to be over-distanced.»® There is, then, a species of action- distancing-_-which may be deliberately done and which initiates a state of consciousness--being distanced.

The question is: Are there actions denoted by "to distance" or states of consciousness denoted by "being distanced'? When the curtain goes up, when we walk up to a painting, or when we look at a sunset are we ever induced into a state of being distanced either by being struck by the beauty of the object or by pulling off an act of distancing? I do not recall committing any such special actions or of being induced into any special state, and I have no reason to suspect that I am atypical in this respect. The distance-theorist may perhaps ask, "But are you not usually oblivious to noises and sights other than those of the play or to the marks on the wall around the painting?" The answer is of course- "Yes." But if "to distance" and "being distanced" simply mean that one's attention is tocused, what is the point of introducing new technical terms and speaking as if these terms refer to special kinds of acts and states of consciousness? The distance-theorist might argue further, "But surely you put the play (painting, sunset) 'out of gear' with your practical interests?" This question seems to me to be a very odd way of asking (by employing the technical metaphor "out of gear") if I attended to the play rather than thought about my wife or wondered how they managed to move the scenery about. Why K as litern Iranian" ip" bitt ha A point Weird stell Coul) lat Lasch strumenta st practica

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not ask me straight out if I paid attention? Thus, when Miss Dawson says that the jealous husband under-distanced Othello and that the person with a consuming interest in techniques of stagecraft over-distanced the play, these are just technical and misleading ways of describing two different cases of inattention. In both cases something is being attended to, but in neither case is it the action of the play. To introduce the technical terms "distance,» "under-distance," and "over-distance" does nothing but send us chasing after phantom acts and states of consciousness.

Miss Dawson's commitment to the theory of distance (as a kind of mental insulation material necessary for a work of art if it is to be enjoyed aesthetically) leads her to draw a conclusion so curious as to throw suspicion on the theory.

One remembers the horrible loss of distance in Peter Pan--the moment when Peter says "Do you believe in fairies?. If you believe, clap your hands!" the moment when most children would like to slink out of the theatre and not a few cry-_not because Tinkerbell may die, but because the magic is gone. What, after all, should we feel like if Lear were to leave Cordelia, come to the front of the stage and say, "All the grown-ups who think that she loves me, shout 'Yes'."

It is hard to believe that the responses of any children could be as theory-bound as those Miss Dawson describes. In fact, Peter Pan's request for applause is a dramatic high point to which children respond enthusias- tically. The playwright gives the children a momentary chance to become actors in the play. The children do not at that moment lose or snap out of a state of being distanced because they never had or were in any such thing to begin with. The comparison of Peter Pan's appeal to the hypothetical one by Lear is pointless. Peter Pan is a magical play in which almost anything can happen, but King Lear is a play of a different kind. There are, by the way, many plays in which an actor directly addresses the audience (Our Town, The Marriage Broker. A Taste of Honey, for example) without causing the play to be less valuable. Such plays are unusual, but what is unusual is not necessarily bad; there is no point in trying to lay down rules to which every play must conform independently of the kind of play it is.

It is perhaps worth noting that Susanne Langer reports the reaction she had as a child to this scene in Peter Pan.'? As she remembers it, Peter Pan's appeal shattered the illusion and caused her acute misery. However, she reports that all the other children clapped and laughed and enjoyed themselves.

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II

The second way of conceiving of the aesthetic attitude--as the ordinary Hracion" action of attending done in a certain way (disinterestedly) is illustrated by the work of Jerome Stolnitz and Eliseo Vivas. Stolnitz defines "aesthetic attitude" as ' "disinterested and sympathetic attention to and contemplation of any object of awareness whatever, for its own sake alone.»13 Stolnitz defines the main terms of his definition: "disinterested" means "no concern for any ulterior purpose.", '* "sympathetic" means "accept the object on its own terms to appreciate it".IS and "contemplation" means "perception directed toward the object in its own right and the spectator is not concerned to analyze it or ask questions about it. »16

The notion of disinterestedness, which Stolnitz has elsewhere shown to be seminal for modern aesthetic theory, is the key term here. Thus, it is necessary to be clear about the nature of disinterested attention to the various arts. It can make sense to speak, for example, of listening disinterestedly to music only if it makes sense to speak of listening interestedly

My note says:
This is weird.
"Interestedly" could
mean what Lasch
calls Instrumental
as against practical.

to music. It would make no sense to speak of walking fast unless walking could be done slowly. Using Stolnitz's definition of "disinterestedness," the two situations would have to be described as "listening with no ulterior purpose" (disinterestedly) and "listening with an ulterior purpose" (interestedly). Note that what initially appears to be a perceptual distinction—listening in a certain way (interestedly or disinterestedly)—turns out to be a motivational or an intentional distinction—listening for or with a certain purpose. Suppose Jones listens to a piece of music for the purpose of being able to analyze and describe it on an examination the next day and Smith listens to the same music with no such ulterior purpose. There is certainly a difference between the motives and intentions of the two men: Jones has an ulterior purpose and Smith does not, but this does not mean Jones's listening differs from Smith's. It is possible that both men enjoy the music or that both be bored. The attention of either or both may flag and so on. It is important to note that a person's motive or intention is different from his action (Jones's listening to the music, for example). There is only one way to listen to (to attend to) music, although the listening may be more or less attentive and there may be a variety of motives, intentions, and reasons for doing so and a variety of ways of being distracted from the music.

In order to avoid a common mistake of aestheticians- drawing a conclu- sion about one kind of art and assuming it holds for all the arts-the question of disinterested attention must be considered for arts other than music. How would one look at a painting disinterestedly or interestedly? An example of alleged interested viewing might be the case in which a

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Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities painting reminds Jones of his grandfather and Jones proceeds to muse about or to regale a companion with tales of his grandfather's pioneer exploits. Such incidents would be characterized by attitude-theorists as examples of using a work of art as a vehicle for associations and so on, i.e., cases of interested attention. But Jones is not looking at (attending to) the painting at all, although he may be facing it with his eyes open Jones is now musing or attending to the story he is telling, although he had to look at the painting at first to notice that it resembled his grandfather. Jones is not now looking at the painting interestedly, since he is not now looking at (attending to) the painting. Jones's thinking or telling a story about his grandfather is no more a part of the painting than his speculating about the artist's intentions is and, hence, his musing, telling, speculating, and so on cannot properly be described as attending to the painting interestedly. What attitude-aestheticians are calling atten- tion to is the occurrence of irrelevant associations which distract the viewer from the painting or whatever. But distraction is not a special kind of attention, it is a kind of inattention.

Consider now disinterestedness and plays. I shall make use of some interesting examples offered by J. O. Urmson,'® but I am not claiming that Urmson is an attitude-theorist. Urmson never speaks in his article of aesthetic attitude but rather of aesthetic satisfaction. In addition to aes- thetic satisfaction, Urmson mentions economic, moral, personal, and intel- lectual satisfactions. I think the attitude-theorist would consider these last four kinds of satisfaction as "ulterior purposes" and, hence, cases of interested attention. Urmson considers the case of a man in the audience of a play who is delighted.' It is discovered that his delight is solely the result of the fact that there is a full house--the man is the impresario of the production. Urmson is right in calling this impresario's satisfaction economic rather than aesthetic, although there is a certain oddness about the example as it finds the impresario sitting in the audience. However, my concern is not with Urmson's examples as such but with the attitude theory. This impresario is certainly an interested party in the fullest sense of the word, but is his behavior an instance of interested attention as distinct from the supposed disinterested attention of the average citizen who sits beside him? In the situation as described by Urmson it would not make any sense to say that the impresario is attending to the play at all, since his sole concern at the moment is the till. If he can be said to be attending to anything (rather than just thinking about it) it is the size of the house. I do not mean to suggest that an impresario could not attend to his play if he found himself taking up a seat in a full house; I am challenging the sense of disinterested attention. As an example of personal satisfaction Urmson mentions the spectator whose daughter is in the play. per an ne C. 9 5 8, ). of

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Intellectual satisfaction involves the solution of technical problems of plays and moral satisfaction the consideration of the effects of the play on the viewer's conduct. All three of these candidates which the attitude-theorist would propose as cases of interested attention turn out to be just different ways of being distracted from the play and, hence, not cases of interested attention to the play. Of course, there is no reason to think that in any of these cases the distraction or inattention must be total, although it could be. In fact, such inattentions often occur but are so fleeting that nothing of the play, music, or whatever is missed or lost.

The example of a playwright watching a rehearsal or an out-of-town performance with a view to rewriting the script has been suggested to me is a case in which a spectator is certainly attending to the play (unlike our impresario) and attending in an interested manner. This case is unlike those just discussed but is similar to the earlier case of Jones (not Smith) listening to a particular piece of music. Our playwright--like Jones, who was to be examined on the music- has ulterior motives. Furthermore, the playwright, unlike an ordinary spectator, can change the script after the performance or during a rehearsal. But how is our playwright's attention (as distinguished from his motives and intentions) different from that of an ordinary viewer? The playwright might enjoy or be bored by the performance as any spectator might be. The playwright's attention might even flag. In short, the kinds of things which may happen to the playwright's attention are no different from those that may happen to an ordinary spectator, although the two may have quite different motives and intentions.

For the discussion of disinterested-interested reading of literature it is appropriate to turn to the arguments of Eliseo Vivas whose work is largely concerned with literature. Vivas remarks that "By approaching a poem in a nonaesthetic mode it may function as history, as social criticism, as diagnostic evidence of the author's neuroses, and in an indefinite number of other ways."20 Vivas further notes that according to Plato "the Greeks used Homer as an authority on war and almost anything under the sun, and that a certain poem "can be read as erotic poetry or as an account of a mystical experience."21 The difference between reading a poem as history or whatever (reading it nonaesthetically) and reading it aestheti- cally depends on how we approach or read it. A poem "does not come self-labelled,»22 but presumably is a poem only when it is read in a certain way-when it is an object of aesthetic experience. For Vivas, being an aesthetic object means being the object of the aesthetic attitude. He defines the aesthetic experience as "an experience of rapt attention which involves the intransitive apprehension of an object's immanent meanings and values in their full presentational immediacy."23 Vivas maintains that his defini- *ald LraC

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ton "helps me understand better what I can and what I cannot do when I read The Brothers (Karamazov)" and his definition "forces us to ack- nowledge that The Brothers Karamazov can hardly be read as art."24 This acknowledgment means that we probably cannot intransitively apprehend The Brothers because of its size and complexity.

"Intransitive" is the key term here and Vivas's meaning must be made clear. A number of passages reveal his meaning but perhaps the following is the best. "Heaving once seen a hockey game in slow motion, I am prepared to testify that it was an object of pure intransitive experience [attention] for I was not interested in which team won the game and no external factors mingled with my interest in the beautiful rhythmic Now of the slow-moving men.»»S It appears that Vivas's "intransitive attention» has the same meaning as Stolnitz's "disinterested attention, namely, "attending with no ulterior purpose."2 Thus, the question to ask is "How does one attend to (read) a poem or any literary work transitively?" One can certainly attend to (read) a poem for a variety of different purposes and because of a variety of different reasons, but can one attend to a poem transitively? I do not think so, but let us consider the examples Vivas offers. He mentions "a type of reader" who uses a poem or parts of a poem as a springboard for "loose, uncontrolled, relaxed day-dreaming, wool-gathering rambles, free from the contextual control" of the poem. But surely it would be wrong to say such musing is a case of transitively attending to a poem, since it is clearly a case of not attending to a poem. Another supposed way of attending to a poem transitively is by approach- ing it "as diagnostic evidence of the author's neuroses." Vivas is right if he means that there is no critical point in doing this since it does not throw light on the poem. But this is a case of using information gleaned from a poem to make inferences about its author rather than attending to a poem. If anything can be said to be attended to here it is the author's neuroses (at least they are being thought about). This kind of case is perhaps best thought of as a rather special way of getting distracted from a poem. Of course, such "biographical" distractions might be insignificant and momentary enough so as scarcely to distract attention from the poem (a flash of insight or understanding about the poet). On the other hand, such distractions may turn into dissertations and whole careers. Such an interest may lead a reader to concentrate his attention (when he does read a poem) on certain "informational" aspects of a poem and to ignore the remaining aspects. As deplorable as such a sustained practice may be, it is at best a case of attending to certain features of a poem and ignoring others.

Another way that poetry may allegedly be read transitively is by reading it as history. This case is different from the two preceding ones since poetry

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often contains history (makes historical statements or at least references) nut does not (usually) contain statements about the author's neuroses and so on nor does it contain statements about what a reader's free associations "distraction" ire about (otherwise we would not call them "free associations"). Reading a poem as history suggests that we are attending to (thinking about) 1 historical events by way of attending to a poem--the poem is a time-tele- scope.

My note says:
"reading it as history"
=
"distraction"
!

Consider the following two sets of lines:

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Someone might read both of these raptly and not know that they make historical references (inaccurately in one case)-might this be a case of intransitive attention? How would the above reading differ-_so far as attention is concerned--from the case of a reader who recognized the historical content of the poetic lines? The two readings do not differ as far as attention is concerned. History is a part of these sets of poetic lines and the two readings differ in that the first fails to take account of an aspect of the poetic lines (its historical content) and the second does not fail to do so. Perhaps by "reading as history" Vivas means "reading simply as history." But even this meaning does not mark out a special kind of attention but rather means that only a single aspect of a poem is being noticed and that its rhyme, meter, and so on are ignored. Reading a poem as social criticism can be analyzed in a fashion similar to reading as history. Some poems simply are or contain social criticism, and a complete reading must not fail to notice this fact.

The above cases of alleged interested attending can be sorted out in the following way. Jones listening to the music and our playwright watching the rehearsal are both attending with ulterior motives to a work of art, but there is no reason to suppose that the attention of either is different in kind from that of an ordinary spectator. The reader who reads a poem as history is simply attending to an aspect of a poem. On the other hand, the remaining cases--Jones beside the painting telling of his grandfather, the gloating impresario, daydreaming while "reading" a poem, and so on- are simply cases of not attending to the work of art.

In general, I conclude that "disinterestedness" or "intransitiveness" can- not properly be used to refer to a special kind of attention.' "Disinterested-

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ness" is a term which is used to make clear that an action has certain kinds of motives. Hence, we speak of disinterested findings (of boards of inquiry, disinterested verdicts (of judges and juries), and so on. Attending to an object, of course, has its motives but the attending itself is not interested or disinterested according to whether its motives are of the kind which motivate interested or disinterested action (as findings and verdicts might), although the attending may be more or less close.

I have argued that the second way of conceiving the aesthetic attitude is also a myth, or at least that its main content- disinterested attention-is; but I must now try to establish that the view misleads aesthetic theory.] shall argue that the attitude-theorist is incorrect about (1) the way in which he wishes to set the limits of aesthetic relevance; (2) the relation of the critic to a work of art; and (3) the relation of morality to aesthetic value.

Since I shall make use of the treatment of aesthetic relevance in Jerome Stolnitz's book, let me make clear that I am not necessarily denying the relevance of the specific items he cites but disagreeing with his criterion of relevance. His criterion of relevance is derived from his definition of "aesthetic attitude" and is set forth at the very beginning of his book. This procedure leads Monroe Beardsley in his review of the book to remark that Stolnitz's discussion is premature,28 Beardsley suggests "that relevance cannot be satisfactorily discussed until after a careful treatment of the several arts, their dimensions and capacities."29

First, what is meant by '"aesthetic relevance"? Stolnitz defines the problem by asking the question: "Is it ever 'relevant' to the aesthetic experience to have thoughts or images or bits of knowledge which are not present within the object itself?"30 Stolnitz begins by summarizing Bul- lough's experiment and discussion of single colors and associations." Some associations absorb the spectator's attention and distract him from the color and some associations "fuse" with the color. Associations of the latter kind are aesthetic and the former are not. Stolnitz draws the following conclusion about associations:

If the aesthetic experience is as we have described it, then whether an association is aesthetic depends on whether it is compatible with the attitude of "disinterested attention." If the association re-enforces the focusing of attention upon the object, by "fusing" with the object and thereby giving it added "life and significance, ," it is genuinely aesthetic. If, however, it arrogates attention to itself and away from the object, it undermines the aesthetic attitude.

It is not clear how something could fuse with a single color, but "fusion" is one of those words in aesthetics which is rarely defined. Stolnitz then

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makes use of a more fruitful example, one from 1. A. Richards's Practical Criticism." He cites the responses of students to the poem which begins:

Between the erect and solemn trees
I will go down upon my knees;
I shall not find this day
So meet a place to pray.

The image of a rugby forward running arose in the mind of one student- reader on reading the third verse of this poem. A cathedral was suggested to a second reader of the poem. The cathedral image "is congruous with both the verbal meaning of the poem and the emotions and mood which it expresses. It does not divert attention away from the poem.»»4 The rugby image is presumably incongruous and diverts attention from the poem.

It is a confusion to take compatibility with disinterested attention as a criterion of relevance. If, as I have tried to show, disinterested attention is a confused notion, then it will not do as a satisfactory criterion. Also, when Stolnitz comes to show why the cathedral image is, and the rugby image is not relevant, the criterion he actually uses is congruousness with the meaning of the poem, which is quite independent of the notion of disinterestedness. The problem is perhaps best described as the problem of relevance to a poem, or more generally, to a work of art, rather than aesthetic relevance.

A second way in which the attitude theory misleads aesthetics is its contention that a critic's relationship to a work of art is different in kind from the relationship of other persons to the work. H. S. Langfeld in an early statement of this view wrote that we may "slip from the attitude of aesthetic enjoyment to the attitude of the critic." He characterizes the critical attitude as "intellectually occupied in coldly estimating... merits" and the aesthetic attitude as responding "emotionally to" a work of art.35 At the beginning of his book in the discussion of the aesthetic attitude, Stolnitz declares that if a percipient of a work of art "has the purpose of passing judgment upon it, his attitude is not aesthetic."36 He develops this line at a later stage of his book, arguing that appreciation (perceiving with the aesthetic attitude) and criticism (seeking for reasons to support an evaluation of a work) are (1) distinct and (2) "psychologically opposed to each other.»37 The critical attitude is questioning, analytical, probing for strengths and weakness, and so on. The aesthetic attitude is just the opposite: "It commits our allegiance to the object freely and unquestion- ingly"; "the spectator 'surrenders' himself to the work of art.»38 "Just reduces aesthetic interest.»39 Stolnitz does not, of course, argue that * batt

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criticism is unimportant for appreciation. He maintains criticism plays an important and necessary role in preparing a person to appreciate the nuances, detail, form, and so on of works of art. We are quite right, he says, thus to rend and listen perceptively and acutely, but he questions, "Does this mean that we must analyze, measure in terms of value-criteria, etc., during the supposedly aesthetic experience?® His answer is "No" and he maintains that criticism must occur "prior to the aesthetic encounter,s or it will interfere with appreciation.

How does Stolmitz know that criticism will always interfere with ap- preciation? His conclusion sounds like one based upon the observations of actual cases, but I do not think it is. I believe it is a logical consequence of his definition of aesthetic attitude in terms of disinterested attention (no ulterior purpose). According to his view, to appreciate an object aestheti cally one has to perceive it with no ulterior purpose. But the critic has an ulterior purpose to analyze and evaluate the object he perceives--hence, insofar as à person functions as a critic he cannot function as an ap- preciator. But here, as previously, Stolnitz confuses a perceptual distinc- ton with a motivational one. If it were possible to attend disinterestedly or interestedly, then perhaps the critic (as percipient) would differ from other percipients. But if my earlier argument about attending is correct, the critic differs from other percipients only in his motives and intentions and not in the way in which he attends to a work of art.

Of course, it might just be a fact that the search for reasons is incompatible with the appreciation of art, but I do not think it is. Several years ago I participated in a series of panel discussions of films. During the showing of each film we were to discuss, I had to take note of various aspects of the film (actor's performance, dramatic development, organiza- tion of the screen-plane and screen-space at given moments, and so on) in order later to discuss the films. I believe that this practice not only helped educate me to appreciate subsequent films but that it enhanced the appreciation of the films I was analyzing. I noticed and was able to appreciate things about the films I was watching which ordinarily out of laziness I would not have noticed. I see no reason why the same should not be the case with the professional critic or any critical percipient. If many professional critics seem to appreciate so few works, it is not because they are critics, but perhaps because the percentage of good works of art is fairly small and they suffer from a kind of combat fatigue.

I am unable to see any significant difference between "perceptively and acutely" attending to a work of art (which Stolnitz holds enhances ap- preciation) and searching for reasons, so far as the experience of a work of art is concerned. If I attend perceptively and acutely, I will have certain standards and/or paradigms in mind (not necessarily consciously) and will

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be keenly aware of the elements and relations in the work and will evaluate hem to some degree. Stolnitz writes as if criticism takes place and then Hover and done with, but the search for and finding of reasons (noticing his fits in with that, and so on) is continuous in practiced appreciators. I practiced viewer does not even have to be looking for a reason, he may just notice a line or an arca in a painting, for example; and the line of area becomes a reason why he thinks the painting better or worse. A person may be a critic (not necessarily a good one) without meaning to be or without even realizing it.

There is one final line worth pursuing. Stolnitz's remarks suggest that one reason he thinks criticism and appreciation incompatible is that they compete with one another for time (this would be especially bad in the cases of performed works). But seeking and finding reasons (criticism) does not compete for time with appreciation. First, to seek for a reason means to be ready and able to notice something and to be thus ready and able as one attends does not compete for time with the attending. In fact, I should suppose that seeking for reasons would tend to focus attention more securely on the work of art. Second, finding a reason is an achieve- ment, like winning a race. (It takes time to run a race but not to win it.) Consider the finding of the following reasons. How much time does it take to "see" that a note is off key (or on key)? How long does it take to notice that an actor mispronounces a word (or does it right)? How much time does it take to realize that a character's action does not fit his already established personality? (One is struck by it.) How long does it take to apprehend that a happy ending is out of place? It does not take time to find any of these reasons or reasons in general. Finding a reason is like coming to understand--it is done in a flash. I do not mean to suggest that one cannot be mistaken in finding a reason. What may appear to be a fault or a merit (a found reason) in the middle of a performance (or during one look at a painting and so forth) may turn out to be just the opposite when seen from the perspective of the whole performance (or other looks at the painting).

A third way in which the attitude theory misleads aesthetic theory is its contention that aesthetic value is always independent of morality. This view is perhaps not peculiar to the attitude theory, but it is a logical consequence of the attitude approach. Two quotations from attitude- theorists will establish the drift of their view of morality and aesthetic value.

We are either concerned with the beauty of the object or with some other value of the same. Just as soon, for example, as ethical con- siderations occur to our mind, our attitude shifts.

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Any of us might reject a novel because it seems to conflict with our moral beliefs.... When we do so... we have not read the book aesthetically, for we have interposed moral. responses of our own which are alien to it. This disrupts the aesthetic attitude. We cannot then say that the novel is aesthetically bad, for we have not permitted ourselves to consider it aesthetically. To maintain the aesthetic at. titude, we must follow the lead of the object and respond in concert with it.

This conception of the aesthetic attitude functions to hold the moral aspects and the aesthetic aspects of the work of art firmly apart. Presumably, although it is difficult to see one's way clearly here, the moral aspects of a work of art cannot be an object of aesthetic attention because aesthetic attention is by definition disinterested and the moral aspects are somehow practical (interested). I suspect that there are a number of confusions involved in the assumption of the incompatibility of aesthetic attention and the moral aspects of art, but I shall not attempt to make these clear, since the root of the assumption-_disinterested attention--is a confused notion. Some way other than in terms of the aesthetic attitude, then, is needed to discuss the relation of morality and aesthetic value.

David Pole in a recent article# has argued that the moral vision which a work of art may embody is aesthetically significant. It should perhaps be remarked at this point that not all works of art embody a moral vision and perhaps some kinds of art (music, for example) cannot embody a moral vision, but certainly some novels, some poems, and some films and plays do. I assume it is unnecessary to show how novels and so on have this moral aspect. Pole notes the curious fact that while so many critics approach works of art in "overtly moralistic terms, it is a "philosophical commonplace ... that the ethical and the aesthetic modes. form different categories.»S I suspect that many philosophers would simply say that these critics are confused about their roles. But Pole assumes that philosophical theory "should take notice of practice» and surely he is right. In agreeing with Pole's assumption I should like to reserve the right to argue in specific cases that a critic may be misguided. This right is especially necessary in a field such as aesthetics because the language and practice of critics is so often burdened with ancient theory. Perhaps all moralistic criticism is wrong, but philosophers should not rule it out of order at the very beginning by use of a definition.

Pole thinks that the moral vision presented by a particular work of art will be either true or false (perhaps a mixture of true and false might occur). If a work has a false moral vision, then something "is lacking within the work itself. But to say that is to say that the [work] is internally

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incoherent; some particular aspect must jar with what- on the strength of the rest--we claim a right to demand. And here the moral fault that we have found will count as an aesthetic fault too,'? Pole is trying to show that the assessment of the moral vision of a work of art is just a special case of coherence or incoherence, and since everyone would agree that coherence is an aesthetic category, the assessment of the moral vision is an aesthetic assessment.

I think Pole's conclusion is correct but take exception to some of his arguments. First, I am uncertain whether it is proper to speak of a moral vision being true or false, and would want to make a more modest claim--that a moral vision can be judged to be acceptable or unacceptable. (I am not claiming Pole is wrong and my claim is not inconsistent with his.) Second, I do not see that a false (or unacceptable) moral vision makes a work incoherent. I should suppose that to say a work is coherent or incoherent is to speak about how its parts fit together and this involves no reference to something outside the work as the work's truth or falsity does.

In any event, it seems to me that a faulty moral vision can be shown to be an aesthetic fault independently of Pole's consideration of truth and coherence. As Pole's argument implies, a work's moral vision is a part of the work. Thus, any statement--descriptive or evaluative-_-about the work's moral vision is a statement about the work; and any statement about a work is a critical statement and, hence, falls within the aesthetic domain. To judge a moral vision to be morally unacceptable is to judge it defective and this amounts to saying that the work of art has a defective part. (Of course, a judgment of the acceptability of a moral vision may be wrong, as a judgment of an action sometimes is, but this fallibility does not make any difference.) Thus, a work's moral vision may be an aesthetic merit or defect just as a work's degree of unity is a merit or defect. But what justifies saying that a moral vision is a part of a work of art? Perhaps "part" is not quite the right word but it serves to make the point clear enough. A novel's moral vision is an essential part of the novel and if it were removed (I am not sure how such surgery could be carried out) the novel would be greatly changed. Anyway, a novel's moral vision is not like its covers or binding. However, someone might still argue that even though a work's moral vision is defective and the moral vision is part of the work, that this defect is not an aesthetic defect. How is "aesthetic" being used here? It is being used to segregate certain aspects or parts of works of art such as formal and stylistic aspects from such aspects as a work's moral vision. But it seems to me that the separation is only nominal. "Aesthetic" has been selected as a name for a certain subset of characteristics of works of art. I certainly cannot object to such a stipula-

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tion, since an underlying aim of this essay is to suggest the vacuousness or the term "aesthetie." My concern at this point is simply to insist that a work's moral vision is a part of the work and that, therefore, a critic can lepitimately describe and evaluate it. I would call any defect or merit Which a critic can legitimately point out an aesthetic defect or merit, but what we call it does not matter.

It would, of course, be a mistake to judge a work solely on the basis of its moral vision (it is only one part). The fact that some critics have judged works of art in this way is perhaps as much responsible as the theory of aesthetic attitude for the attempts to separate morality from the aesthetic. In fact, such criticism is no doubt at least partly responsible for the rise of the notion of the aesthetic attitude.

If the foregoing arguments are correct, the second way of conceiving the aesthetic attitude misleads aesthetic theory in at least three ways.

III

In answer to a hypothetical question about what is seen in viewing a portrait with the aesthetic attitude, Tomas in part responds "If looking at a picture and attending closely to how it looks is not really to be in the aesthetic attitude, then what on earth is?"48 I shall take this sentence as formulating the weakest version of the aesthetic attitude. (I am ignoring Tomas's distinction between appearance and reality. See footnote 7. My remarks, thus, are not a critique of Tomas's argument; I am simply using one of his sentences.) First, this sentence speaks only of "looking at a picture, » but "listening to a piece of music," "watching and listening to a play, " and so on could be added easily enough. After thus expanding the sentence, it can be contracted into the general form: "Being in the aesthetic attitude is attending closely to a work of art (or a natural object)."

But the aesthetic attitude ("the hallmark of modern aesthetics") in this formulation is a great letdown-it no longer seems to say anything sig- nificant. Nevertheless, this does seem to be all that is left after the aesthetic attitude has been purged of distancing and disinterestedness. The only thing which prevents the aesthetic attitude from collapsing into simple attention is the qualification closely. One may, I suppose, attend to a work of art more or less closely, but this fact does not seem to signify anything very important. When "being in the aesthetic attitude" is equated with "attending (closely)," the equation neither involves any mythical element nor could it possibly mislead aesthetic theory. But if the definition has no vices, it seems to have no virtues either. When the aesthetic attitude finally not be called turns out to be simply attending (closely), the final version should perhaps "the weakest" but rather aesthetic attitude. "the vacuous version" of the

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Stolnitz is no doubt historically correct that the notion of the aesthetic attitude has played an important role in the freeing of aesthetic theory from an overweening concern with beauty. It is easy to see how the slogan, Anything can become an object of the aesthetic attitude," could help accomplish this liberation. It is worth noting, however, that ine same goal could have been (and perhaps to some extent was) realized by simply noting that works of art are often ugly or contain ugliness, or have features which are difficult to include within beauty. No doubt, in more recent times people have been encouraged to take an aesthetic antitude toward a painting as a way of lowering their prejudices, say, against abstract and honobjective art. So if the notion of aesthetic attitude has turned out to have no theoretical value for aesthetics, it has had practical value for the appreciation of art in a way similar to that of Clive Bell's suspect notion of significant form.

Notes

...

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Artistic and Aesthetic Values

ROMAN INGARDEN

de A pist In this lecture I shall be concerned mainly with the differentiation of artistic and aesthetic values. With this in view it will be necessary for me to make various other distinctions: first that between the work of art and the aesthetic object, and also a distinction between an aesthetically valu- able quality on the one hand and value and its further determinations on the other. These distinctions have been elaborated in my various writings on aesthetics and theory of art, beginning with the book Das literarische Kunstwerke (1931), but I shall here try to take further than before the differentiation between artistic and aesthetic values. In contrasting the work of art and the aesthetic object I shall omit for the sake of brevity discussion of the manner in which the work of art exists, whether as a real object or in some other way. But I will mention shortly the question whether a work of art is a physical object having a specific form or whether it is rather something which is constructed on the basis of a physical object as an entirely new creation brought into being by the creative activity of the artist. The essence of this activity consists of specific acts of consciousness in an artist, but these invariably manifest themselves in certain physical operations directed by the artist's creative will which bring into being or transform a certain physical object-the material- bestowing upon it that form whereby it becomes the existential substrate of the work of art itself, for example a work of literature or music, a picture, a piece of architecture, etc., and at the same time assuring to it relative durability and accessibility to a multiplicity of observers. Nevertheless in its structure and properties a work of art always extends beyond its material substrate, the real 'thing' which ontologically supports it, although the properties of the substrate are not irrelevant to From British Journal of Aesthethics, IV (1964), 198-213. Reprinted with permission of the British Society of Aesthetics. 118 Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities the properties of the work of art which depends upon it. The work of are is the true object to the formation of which the creative acts of the artist are directed, while the fashioning of its existential substrate is a subsidiary operation ancillary to the work of art itself which is to be brought into being by the artist. Every work of art of whatever kind has the distinguishing feature that it is not the sort of thing which is completely determined in every respect by the primary level varieties of its qualities; in other words, it contains within itself characteristic lacunae in definition, areas of indeterminateness: it is a schematic creation. Furthermore, not all its determinants, com- ponents, or qualities are in a state of actuality, but some of them are potential only. In consequence of this a work of art requires an agent existing outside itself, that is an observer, in order--as I express it--to render it concrete. Through his co-creative activity in appreciation the observer sets himself as is commonly said to "interpret' the work or, as I prefer to say, to reconstruct it in its effective characteristics, and in doing this as it were under the influence of suggestions coming from the work itself he fills out its schematic structure, plenishing at least in part the areas of indeterminacy and actualizing various elements which are as yet only in a state of potentiality. In this way there comes about what I have called a 'concretion' of the work of art. The work of art then, is the product of the intentional activities of an artist; the concretion of the work is not only the reconstruction thanks to the activity of an observer of what was effectively present in the work, but also a completion of the work and the actualization of its moments of potentiality. It is thus in a way the common product of artist and observer. In the nature of things a concre- ton goes beyond the schematic structure of a work of art, but at the same time it is-or at any rate it can be--that for the emergence of which the work serves or rather that in which the work achieves its full and complete image-or at any rate a more complete image than in any likeness which is at variance with the work itself. Empirically a work is always manifested to an observer in some concretion. But this does not prevent the observer's trying to apprehend the work in its pure schematic structure together with all its characteristic potentialities. But this mode of apprehending a work of art demands a special attitude and exertions in the observer if he is to withhold himself from all arbitrary completion of qualitative indeter- minacies while at the same time taking full account of the special character of its every moment of potentiality. Such apprehension of a work of art is rather rare and is not realized in the everyday consumer's' attitude in his commerce with works of art. As the joint product of artist and observer a concretion will differ to a greater or less extent from one instance to another, but the nature and extent of the variations depend both on the character of the work Artistic and Aesthetic Values 119 (particularly the type of art to which it belongs) and on the competence of the observer as also on the empirical nature of his observation and the particular conditions in which it takes place. There are two possible ways in which a work of art may be perceived. The act of perception may occur within the context of the aesthetic attitude in the pursuit of aesthetic experience or it may be performed in the service of some extra-aesthetic preoccupation such as that of scientific research or a simple consumer's concern, either with the object of obtaining the maximum of pleasure from commerce with the work or-as frequently happens in the reading of literature- with the object of informing oneself about the vicissitudes of the characters depicted in the work or some other matter of extra-literary fact about which a reader can obtain information on the basis of the work of art (as, for example, by reading Homer, classical scholars seek to inform themselves about the life of the ancient Greeks, their customs, dress, etc.). Within the context of both attitudes either of two perceptive aims may predominate. Either the observer will seek in commerce with the work to realize the concretion most authentic to it or this will not be a matter of particular concern or he may even seek to give free rein to phantasy and up to a point to concretize the work in accordance with personal whim (for example, a stage manager). If a concretion occurs within the aesthetic attitude, there emerges what I call an aesthetic object. This object will resemble or be congenial to what was present to the mind of the artist when creating the work if the concretion is carried through with the endeavor to conform to the effective characteristics of the work and to respect the indications it gives as to the limits of permitted fulfilment. But even if he tries to remain true to the work itself, the aesthetic object actually produced by the observer often differs in many details of articula- tion from what is permitted or-if one may use the term- -demanded by the work itself. Because of this the basic character of the whole is changed or at the least a mass of details will conflict in different reconstructions of the same work of art--which is one source of quarrels and controversy. To every work of art there pertains a limited number of possible aesthetic objects- possible in various senses: In the broad sense we are concerned with concretions which are achieved genuinely within the context of an aesthetic attitude taken up by the observer but without consideration whether the effective reconstruction is faithful to the work of art or whether the plenishing and actualization of its moments of potentiality accord with its effective aspects, or to some extent deviate from it. In the narrower sense we speak of possible aesthetic objects only where both the concretions of a given work involve faithful reconstructions of it and also the plenishing of the work and the actualization of its moments of potentiality lie within the boundaries indicated by its effective qualities. These concretions may still differ among themselves in various respects apt bIH vaa nriit 120 Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities because a work of art always admits of diverse ways in which its areas of indeterminacy may be filled out and completed: some of these plenishings harmonize better and some worse with the fully articulated moments of the work and with the rest of the implementations of its indeterminacies. The effective emergence of the 'possible' concretions of a work of art-in either of the above senses of the word-_obviously depends not only on the work itself but also on the presence of competent observers and on its being apprehended by them in one way rather than another. This in turn depends on various historical conditions. Hence any work of art (and this operates differently for the different arts) passes through various periods of brilliance, that is, periods in which it attracts frequent and correct aesthetic concretions, and other periods when its attractiveness is weakened or even disappears if it is no longer 'legible' to its public. Or again it may meet with observers who have a completely different manner of emotional reaction, who have become insensitive to certain values of the work or frankly hostile to them, and who therefore are unqualified to produce the sort of concretion in which these values shine forth and act upon the observer. When this happens a work of art is not only unreadable but, as it were, dumb. The alternate periods of brilliance and obscurity and the variations in the number of potential observers which are bound up with them- the fact that at different times one and the same work of art appears in differently moded concretions and that it changes as it were its features and linea- ments, loses its power of acting upon observers and is able only imperfectly to display its potential values- all this explains why the theory of the relativity and subjectivity of aesthetic and artistic values is so popular and seems so plausible. The sense of the words 'subjective' and 'relative' in this context depends on the nature of the philosophic background against which they are intended to be understood. I cannot go more closely into this matter here but in connection with the question whether or in what sense the theory may be entertained I would like to suggest certain preliminary considerations. The first step is the distinction between a work of art and an aesthetic object and the next is the differentiation of artistically valuable from aesthetically valuable qualities. Without these distinctions it is impossible to reach agreement about the subjectivity or relativity of aesthetic (or artistic) values. There exists, however, a sense of 'subjective'_-usually not formulated precisely-in which the theory of the subjectivity of aesthetic (or artistic) values ought to be rejected outright, despite its popularity. This is the view that the value of a work of art (or an aesthetic object, which is usually confused with it) is nothing else but pleasure (or, in the case of negative value, disagreeableness) understood as a specific psychical state or ex- Artistic and Aesthetic Values 121 perience, lived through by an observer in contact with a given work of art. The greater the pleasure he obtains the greater the value the observer attributes to the work of art. In truth, however, on this theory the work of art possesses no value. The observer indeed announces his pleasure by valuing' the work of art, but strictly speaking he is valuing his own pleasure: his pleasure is valuable to him and this he uncritically transfers to the work of art which arouses his pleasure. But the same work evokes different pleasures in different subjects or perhaps none at all and even in one and the same subject it may evoke different pleasure at different times. Hence the so-called value of the work of art would be not merely subjective but relative to the observer and his states. The relativity of the value of a work of art so understood is a simple consequence of its subjectivity in the foregoing sense. He who would embrace the theory so elucidated has in his support the obvious fact that some works of art cause us pleasure, a pleasure which may vary with the circumstances, and others either do not evoke pleasure or may even cause displeasure of one sort or another. This fact, banal as it is, admits of no doubt--as also the other fact that in general people prize their pleasures and shun what is disagreeable. Acknowledging this fact we would only complain at the failure to recognize the kind of pleasure which is imparted to us by works of art and how its varieties are related to the varieties of value inherent in the work of art. By recognizing that these pleasures have a special character of their own and exist in a different manner from the pleasures deriving from a good meal or fresh air or a good bath we should carry our affair a little forward although it would contribute nothing to the question whether or how values inhere in works of art themselves. For it seems certain that these pleasures, being either actual states of mind or qualities of mental states and experiences, are not included in the work of art or tied to it. But if these pleasures constituted the sole value which is manifested in our commerce with works of art, it would not be possible to attribute value to the work itself. For the pleasure remains entirely outside the work of art. The work is something which transcends the sphere of our experiences and their contents, it is something completely transcendent in relation to ourselves. And the same can be said of the aesthetic objects constructed on its basis. It is precisely in the sphere of the work of art and its concretions, a sphere beyond that of our experiences and their content, that we must look to see whether it is or is not possible to find something which can be recognized as specifically and truly valuable. Neither can this value be found in the work of art itself (or in its aesthetic concretion) so long as it is conceived as a kind of reflection of the instrumental value attributed to the work on account of the several 122 Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities pleasures which we experience in contact with it, or if the work of art is treated as a tool for evoking this or that sensation of delight. The experiencing of such pleasures is of course often the occasion for their appearing to the experient as a delusive mirage of value in the work of art. It is especially with naive people who, lacking education in the arts, are particularly susceptible to their emotional influences that this kind of delusion arises and for this reason those of little experience are inclined to be carried away by enthusiasm for works of art which lack genuine value. The emergence of such mirages of value is not identical with genuine worth whether artistic or aesthetic and cannot provide an argument that value depends solely on this type of reflected pleasures and is therefore subjective or relative. The value of a work of art is not to be sought in such qualities but can be expected to be found only in some self-subsistent * characteristic. As regards the instrumental values of works of art as tools for arousing pleasures and delights in those who observe them, this kind of value can be attributed but only in a derivative sense as a consequence of the fact that states of pleasure are themselves valuable for the subject, not in the sense that the work of art is itself endowed with some attribute and strictly speaking without regard to the attributes it has. This derivative type of value is usually ascribed to tools in almost complete disregard for the nature and structure of the object they are used to produce. If the consumer is subjected to an emotionally pleasant influence from a certain work, this is enough for him to attribute to the source of his delight the instrumental value of a tool causing that delight. This instrumental value is obviously relational: by virtue of its determination as a value-type such value is related on the one hand to the object which serves as tool and on the other hand to the effect for which the tool serves. The stamp or seal of this value lies wholly in its relation to the quite different, non-relational value ascribed to the delight or pleasure. Moreover, the value of an instrument is relative in another sense too: it is in its very occurrence dependent and mutable, changing its qualitative determination according to the nature and the value of whatever the tool serves to produce. And finally it is dependent on the observer and the state in which he happens to be at a given moment. When an observer ceases to react emotionally to it or is no longer sensitive to it as a work of art, so far as it is treated as an instrument of enjoyment, it is not valued by him either positively or negatively but becomes an object of indifference. But the work of art itself undergoes no change in its properties during these modifications of sub- jective mood and response. It remains something finished, complete for itself, through the changing forms of contact, unaffected by the multiform appreciations of different observers. Yet those values or value qualities Artistic and Aesthetic Values 123 which I am here searching for are able to manifest themselves to the observer only at the moment when the latter achieves some apprehension of the work itself, even though a partial and as yet imperfect one, when his commerce with the work achieves an unveiling of the intrinsic features of the work (features which seldom obtrude themselves at first contact), and when an apprehension of its structure and properties enables him to descry its essential values, those which are peculiar to any work, which give witness and in fact are the evidence for its claim to be a work of artistic value. The observer must of course succeed in achieving this apprehension and appreciative commerce: if his skill in perceiving or responding to the work is fallacious, neither its properties nor its values will reveal themselves to him. But this does not mean that the work is then deprived of value, only that the observer is in one way or another inefficient- either through a general lack of artistic culture or because he is unequipped or at that particular moment unable to appreciate the particular work. This is to say, if we are seeking what I want to call the 'artistic value' of a work of art, it must conform to the following requirements: (1) It is neither a part nor an aspect of any of our empirical ex- periences or mental states during commerce with a work of art and therefore does not belong to the category of pleasure or enjoyment. (2) It is not something attributed to the work in virtue of being regarded as an instrument for arousing this or that form of pleasure. (3) It reveals itself as a specific characteristic of the work itself. (4) It exists if and only if the necessary conditions for its existence are present in the qualities of the work itself. (5) It is such a thing that its presence causes the work of art to partake of an entirely special form of being distinct from all other cultural products. In other words, if any object lacks this thing which I here call artistic value, it ceases in consequence to be a work of art. If on the other hand it appears in its negative form--as an imperfection rather than a merit--then the work is to some degree abortive, i.e., it can only be counted as a work of art at all if some positive values (that is, values in the narrower, and strictly correct, sense of the word) are manifested in addition to negative ones. It behooves now to indicate some examples of this kind of value. But first I must distinguish between qualities (i.e., determinants of value) which ups har a pist 124 Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities are valuable in the artistic or aesthetic or moral sense and a value which appears in an object as a necessary consequence of its possessing a particular aggregate of valuable qualities in a given category. In other words, value emerges on the foundation of a specific aggregate of valuable qualities and it is dependent inter alia on this aggregation both for the degree of its value and for its type. Values differ from one another only in virtue of having their specific determinants and qualifying properties. Some of these qualities determine the general type of value (i.e., whether it is aesthetic or moral or economic or utilitarian), while others determine the specific variety within the general type, as for example 'beauty, 'prettiness' or 'ugliness' within the general range of aesthetic values. And to these variants within a general type belongs what I have called the 'degree' or 'elevation' of any value. As will be seen, we are confronted with many different distinctions and it is only by analyzing them and elaborat- ing them in detail that it is possible to make any progress in the little studied field of general theory of value. The examples to follow will enable readers to grasp what I intend when I speak for instance of qualities as opposed to values themselves and their closer determinations (or qualities of value). For the moment we will simply state. Artistic value-_if we are to acknowledge its existence at all- is something which arises in the work of art itself and has its existential ground in that. Aesthetic value is something which manifests itself only in the aesthetic object and as a particular moment which determines the character of the whole. The ground of aesthetic value consists of a certain aggregation of aesthetically valuable qualities, and they in turn rest upon the basis of a certain aggregate of properties which render possible their emergence in an object. Both the one and the other kind of value assumed the existence of a complete work of art (or aesthetic object). It is not important here how the constitution of both types of object has been arrived at. What is indubitable is the fact that for the constitution of an aesthetic object the co-creative activity of an observer is necessary and therefore several aesthetic objects may emerge on the basis of one and the same work of art and that these may differ among themselves in their aesthetic value. But, as has been said, this is not an argument in support of the subjectivity of that value. This genetic way of considering the whole matter cannot be repudiated or disparaged and yet it is not this which is decisive as to the existential character of aesthetic values themselves. Irrespective of what its origin may be and the part taken by the observer in constituting it, the aesthetic object in the moment of being constituted is something with which the observer is in direct contact however he may apprehend it or respond to it. And for all that this object is something Artistic and Aesthetic Values 125 standing in relation to the observer and his experiences, it is at the same time transcendent (a separate self-subsistent whole) just as much as is the work of art or any other existentially independent natural object which exists of its own right. This transendence extends not only to those properties of a work of art or aesthetic object which are neutral in point of value but also to its valuable qualities and to the values which are constituted on their basis. We will now return to the work of art. We distinguish two aspects, aspects which are neutral as regards value and those which are axiologi- cally potent, using the latter term to cover both valuable qualities and the values themselves and their particular determinations. To the first category belong primarily those attributes which determine the type of art with which we have to do, whether it is a work of literature, painting, music, etc. So, for example, a work of literature is a construct of multiple strata and has a quasi-temporal structure, since its parts follow one another in temporal sequence, and this enables it to present events in the time of its presented world. A painting is not quasi-temporal in this sense, i.e., its parts do not follow each other in sequence, and therefore if a painting is representational it can present only a single incident at a particular moment of occurrence. On the other hand, unlike a literary work, a painting is characterized by two or three dimensional extension in visual space. A literary work is first and foremost a linguistic construct. Its basic structure comprises a twofold linguistic stratification: on the one hand the layer of phonemes and linguistic sound-phenomena; on the other hand the meanings of the words and sentences, in virtue of which the higher-level units of meaning emerge and from them the representational content of the work and the aspects in which the subject matter is presented. Although a painting lacks the dual stratification of language, it has its own proper means of presenting aspects of objects and through the objects presented and the manner of their representation may be con- structed higher-level elements such as situation or narrative. All the features which belong in a painting to the representation of the actual world are absent to non-figurative painting; and still another situation with regard to the axiologically indifferent features of a work of art arises in connection with music or architecture. Besides these axiologically neutral features which determine the basic type of a work of art, there occur in all types of art other axiologically neutral features which together combine to constitute an artistic "in- dividual' in its absolute uniqueness. Thus in a literary work there are completely determinate sentences arranged in a definite order possessing an established sense and precise syntactical formation. These are composed of words which possess a fixed sound and which belong to a given have a print. 126 Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities language and are chosen out of the vocabulary of that language in such a way as to create an individual linguistic style peculiar to the author or even to the particular work. There are many other axiologically neutral properties, all of which together with the general features which determine its type form what I shall call the axiologically neutral skeleton of the work, without which the work would not exist as just this unique work of art and no other. It is clear, however, that this skeleton does not constitute the whole work of art irrespective of whether we are concerned with it in its purely schematic form or with one of its concretions. Despite their axiological neutrality the features which belong to the skeleton of a work are not without bearing for a whole range of axiologically significant features. On the contrary, so long as the skeleton is appropriately en- dowed, its properties lead to the emergence of entirely new features which belong just as intimately to the work of art but differ in that they are axiologically significant, artistically valuable qualities which emerge in this or that aggregation and endow the work with various artistic values. They are basically of two kinds: there are those which are allied to the excel- lences or defects of 'artistic craftsmanship'~-that is, virtues of artistic technique-_and next there are various sorts of competence possessed by a work of art in virtue of its having certain properties and components and not others. We will first give examples. In literary work the individual sentences may be simple or complex, their structure may be paratactic or hypotactic. Such features are in themselves axiologically neutral and belong to the axiologically neutral skeleton of the work. Similarly when we find in one work a preponderance of nouns and in another of verbs, or a preponderance of general, abstract names in one while another is so constructed that even intricate concepts are expressed through names of particular things. We do not attach value to such features in themselves. But if we say of a sentence (irrespective of whether it is simple or compound) that it is clear and transparent in structure while another is intricate in a sense which precludes clarity, or if we say that it is obscure or incomprehensible, we are in such case indicating characteristic features of the sentences which are not artistically indifferent. They are, or at any rate they may be, valuable and particularly so if their occurrence is no longer sporadic or if a casual occurrence is not justified by the manner in which the sentence is used or the situation in which it occurs. When obscure sentences become a mass phenomenon which cannot be explained by the necessity of using such sentences in order to express certain objective situations or to evoke a certain artistic effect (by which we mean something not indifferent as regards aesthetic value), then we are alleging, whether for the work as a whole or for certain parts of it, characteristics which carry positive or negative significance for its Artistic and Aesthetic Values 127 artistic value. There may, of course, be various sources for the obscurity of particular sentences or of a text, but with the exception of one case which will be mentioned later unclarity, obscurity, unintelligibility, are a defect in a given sentence or work while lucidity, clarity of expression, and precision of construction are a virtue. These properties of linguistic com- ponents then become value qualities characterizing the literary work itself. It might be objected that this is not a matter of artistic value but simply à value of a general natural kind which appears when the work is not purely an artistic creation but, for example, has a scientific aim as well. But all we are concerned with at the moment is the fact that it is an emergent feature of the work positively or negatively significant in regard to value.) In the field of literary art this lucidity (or its opposite), occurring along with other similar value qualities, may acquire a special character, a special role in the structured organic whole which is the work of art, and harmonizing with other artistic value qualities it may induce the emergence of new features of value either in the work of art or in its concretions. Indeed, the above-mentioned features of sentences or of the language generally may entail some properties of the presented world in a given work. If the language is unclear, ambiguous, difficult to under- stand, then the presented objects take on a characteristic imprecision. Both particular details and the relations between them become blurred in their outlines; one might say that their constitution becomes incompletely articulated, disorganized, and does not give a clear impression of the thing presented. Obscurity, imprecision, partial or complete unintelligibility, and the like, are not only blemishes in themselves but are signs of bad workmanship, defects of literary technique, betraying inadequate mastery of language or ineptitude in its employment. Such shortcomings in the creative powers of an author bring in their train blemishes in the work which is the fruit of his activity and these blemishes in their turn constitute a negative value in the work of art. Of course the above negative value-characteristics of sentences or whole sentence-aggregates may on occasion be introduced into a literary work of set purpose by the author. But when this is done the purpose must be apparent from the work itself. Vagueness in the meaning of a sentence may be utilized for some artistic effect; or the feature of a badly con- structed and defective sentence may form part of the presented material of the work, being spoken or written by one of the characters in it. In this way an author could represent the incompetence of an inexperienced writer whose vicissitudes form the theme of his book. In these circumstances obscurity is not a defect of the work itself but a feature of one of the objects represented in the work, a feature which is directly shown instead ap" ha DIt Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities 128 of being indirectly described. Obscurity in a sentence or some larger section of a work may be intentional, lastly, for the sake of contrast in order that the contrary virtues of the remainder may be enhanced to greater prominence the more vaguely, clumsily, or otherwise defectively those parts are constructed which function merely to serve as contrast. in such case defectiveness is merely a means of reinforcing merits which otherwise might not strike us. Intentional faultiness which fulfils a special Function within the work as a whole is not evidence of any lack of literary skill in a writer and is not a technical fault in the work itself. On the contrary, it is a sign of technical skill; it is as it were a simulation of unskillfulness whose purpose is the better to display technical proficiency and craftsmanship in the art product. By analogy certain regional features of composition of a work, whether literature, music, or painting, are in themselves axiologically neutral properties of the organic structural whole and can be indicated by a purely objective analysis of the work. For example, such and such a disposition of the parts whether serially or in spatial order, a particular way of arranging the elements of one part of a whole so as to contrast with the freer or looser dissemination of elements in other parts of the same work-are structural features in themselves neutral as regards value. One may affirm their presence in a work quite objectively without any implied judgment of value. But these structural properties again, in themselves neutral in respect of value, may entail other properties which do have a positive or negative value significance. For example a too harmonious arrangement of details or parts may reveal itself as an excess of pedantry, overmuch solicitude for creating the impression of orderliness which becomes obtrusive in its uniformity, a certain affectation in ascribing a predominant role to compositional qualities as if correctness of composi- tion were sufficient of itself to determine the final value of a work of art. A certain type of perfection in composition when it goes along with perceptible defects of another kind, that is of content, becomes a source of monotony, tediousness and so on. Compositional irregularity which serves no obviously intended artistic purpose in the work is a plain defect, upsetting the balance of forces within the whole. Again it may be evidence of inexperience in the author, a technical shortcoming in the work, which has negative value as such irrespective of what negative value qualities it entails. On the other hand it may happen that in a particular work disorder in the composition may be seen on the basis of the other qualities of the work to be intentional and to fulfil definite functions within the whole. It does not cease thereby to be disorder but its role as a factor of disvalue may nevertheless ultimately conduce to the emergence of a moment of positive value in the organic whole. It may, but it need not. For the fact Artistic and Aesthetic Values 129 that a certain irregularity of composition was intended does not of itself guarantce that the intention was correct or that it was successfully realized So that in the final outcome it gave rise to some positive value in the structure of the whole. For example, the narration of the fortunes of the characters in a novel may not accord with the temporal sequence of the events--a well-known and frequently used technique of novelists. One may doubt, however, whether this device as used for example by Aldous Huxley really conduces to the intended artistically valuable effect. In this connection, in order to discover whether a certain aspect of a work has positive or negative value it is not enough to examine the value charac teristics of that aspect in isolation; it is necessary to extend one's survey to the whole work, since various qualities of this kind may, and sometimes must, exercise a mutual influence on each other in regard to their value characteristics, and it is only in the whole organic unity of the work (where both its neutral and its value-significant features are taken into account) that their final form is revealed. This is in agreement with the earlier statement that the real function of artistically valuable moments is revealed only on the basis of an appreciation of the work, which is not possible so long as we confine ourselves to the enjoyment of these or the other empirical pleasures mediated by it. To give one more example of an artistic value quality I will refer to features of certain of Rodin's sculptures in marble. What strikes us in them is the extraordinary precision and at the same time the softness in the working of the surfaces, reproducing the softness of a woman's body represented by the statue. This method of working the surface of the marble plays here an essential role in the function of representing an object--a woman's body-different in character from the material from which the sculpture is formed in such a way that the observer is to some extent put under the impression that he is in visual contact not with marble but with human flesh. This is an artistic function, and its virtue consists in the skillful representation of an object whose qualities are basically unlike the material of the sculpture. But this skill is not the only merit here, not the only artistic value in the work. The perfection which consists in technical mastery displayed in the shaping of the surface of the stone may also contribute something of artistic value to a work, something detectable in the work itself and not to be identified with any subjective experience or psychological state of admiration or pleasure. Indeed, admiration presup- poses that we have successfully apprehended the feature of which I am speaking in the work itself and is something separate superadded to what is visibly present in the work. One could multiply examples of artistic values and disvalues at will. One might speak for instance of the unsuitably chosen material of some works • bi AH have A Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities 130 of art-e.g., the neo-Gothic university buildings at Chicago made of con- crete instead of stone- or we might contrast 'noble' baroque with one which is cheap and tawdry, overloaded with ornament. But I believe that the examples I have already given will be sufficient to indicate what I have in mind when I speak of artistically valuable qualities in a work of art, though it would be less easy to convey a correct notion of qualities of this kind or that of the artistic value quality whose notion emerges on their basis as their final resultant. I will therefore now proceed to give in contrast some examples of aesthetic value qualities, positive and negative, leading on to the exemplification and determination of aesthetic value and its potential varieties. A very great variety of aesthetically valuable qualities is exhibited in constituted aesthetic objects. All of them are characterized by being something given directly to perception, or if one prefers the expression they are directly presented phenomena not something indirectly deducible from other data or something whose existence can only be inferred on the basis of the apprehension of the whole work. They are concretely present to experience. In order that aesthetically valuable qualities may be con- stituted, an aesthetic experience must be achieved since it is only in this kind of experience that these qualities come to realization. (The difficulty of distinguishing them from artistically valuable qualities may lie partly in the fact that it does not seem impossible that some of the properties which we have treated as artistically valuable qualities may also enter into experience- as valuable--within the context of a given aesthetic object. In such cases do we have to do with artistically valuable or aesthetically valuable qualities? But to avoid complicating the matter in advance I will proceed to give a certain number of examples.) There first come to mind various emotional qualities such as those suggested by the expressions 'sad,' "threatening,' 'serene,' 'festive,' 'sublime, "pathetic, "dramatic, ; "tragic,' etc. But there also, such qualities as in contrast with the foregoing, one might call intellectual, as for example 'witty,' "clever, "acute, "interesting,' "profound. "boring, "dull,' "trite,' 'pedestrian,' and so on. There are also aspects of a formal character, such as uniformity and variety, harmony and disharmony, awkwardness, com- pactness, coherence, expressiveness, dynamism, and so on. Another class are "artificial,' 'affected,' 'natural.* 'simple and unaffected,' 'exaggerated, "genuine,' 'false, ;' 'insincere, lacking in integrity,' and so on. We may distinguish these qualities into two main types: (1) those which are aesthetically valuable in a positive or negative sense both in themselves (when they emerge in an aesthetic object) and also when they are as- sociated with other qualities of this class; (2) qualities which are in themselves neutral as regards aesthetic value but which acquire an aesthetic Artistic and Aesthetic Values 131 value when they are exhibited in association with other aesthetically valuable qualities. We call the first type unconditionally valuable and the second conditionally valuable (aesthetically), although even the former are not entirely independent of the context in which they are manifested. To the class of conditional aesthetic values belong at least some of the emotional qualities. If someone is sad in everyday life on account of some grievous loss, this sadness which imposes itself on his ordinary life- experience is aesthetically neutral. But the character of sadness which arises for example in the music of Chopin, a sadness be it noted which is uniquely produced by musical means, is in a given work (that is in a particular performance and audition, i.e., an aesthetic concretion) in- dubitably a feature relevant to aesthetic value, an element in the complete set of determinant qualities of a given work (e.g., Étude Op. 25, No. T). similarly the dramatic tension of some quotidian human conflict may be entirely devoid of aesthetic value, but in the Revolutionary Study (Op. 10, No. 12) such dramatic tension is an aesthetically valuable feature. On the other hand the qualities which we name by such words as "solemn; 'profound,' 'tedious,' or "banal' belong to the category of unconditionally aesthetically valuable qualities. Why it is that approximately the same emotional quality at one time has an aesthetic value and another time has none, constitutes a vast theme in itself connected on the one hand with the unique function of the aesthetic experience by which the aesthetic object is brought into being and on the other hand with a peculiar modification which characterizes the mode of existence of the content of an aesthetic object--matters which I have tried to elucidate elsewhere' but which are too complex to deal with here. The question [of] which aesthetically valuable qualities can co-exist in a single aesthetic object in such a way as not to diminish but strengthen their own valuableness while leading to other higher-level qualities which are themselves aesthetic value determinants; which qualities are mutually exclusive or bring about a diminution or conflict of qualities; which finally exert a mutual attenuation in respect of aesthetic value--these are matters whose theoretical analysis has barely been begun. Their investigation must begin with analysis designed to clarify this or that particular aesthetically valuable quality by bringing about their intuitive elucidation, more par- ticularly as the names we generally use to refer to them are for the most part ambiguous and too vague. This kind of research is likely to succeed only when we make constant use of concrete examples of works of art, or their corresponding aesthetic objects, where we have reached agreement that a specific quality is manifested in them and are at the same time in a position to point to some allied qualities which are exhibited in com- bination with different sets of associated qualities so that we can directly aps bitt have a print 132 Aesthetic Interests and Aesthetic Qualities grasp the way in which particular qualities are modified in accordance with their context. There is no doubt that the practical study of pos- sible (and necessary) relations among aesthetically valuable qualities has existed for a very long time in art. Every truly creative artist, musician, poet, painter, etc., in creating new works carries out certain experiments in this field. In composing his work the artist as it were sees ahead by creative intuition into possible complexes of aesthetically valuable qualities and how they will conduce to the emergence of an overall aesthetic value in the work as a whole. At the same time, he tries to find the technical means to realize a particular complex by his choice of those aesthetically neutral qualities (colors, sounds, shapes, etc.) which by forming the skeleton of a work create the objective conditions (i.e., those on the side of the work of art) necessary for the realization of the subjective condi- tions: that is, the existence of a suitable observer and the achievement of an aesthetic experience, without which neither these neutral qualities could be exhibited, nor [could] the aesthetically valuable qualities which together cause the emergence of a particular complex of qualities and the constitu- tion of a corresponding aesthetic value determined by this whole complex substrate It will be apparent from what has been said that aesthetic value, made concrete on the basis of a given work of art, is nothing else but a particular quality determination marked by a selection of interacting aesthetically valuable qualities which manifest themselves on the basis of the neutral skeleton of a work of art reconstructed by a competent observer. Note 1. Cp. Das literarische Kunstwerk, § 25 and O poznawaniu dziala literackiego (Concerning the cognition of a literary work), § 24: also in English 'Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object,' Journal of Philosophical and Phenomenological Research, vol. 21, no. 3, 1961.

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Part Two

The Definition of Art

Aestheticians are perennially trying to define what a work of art is. The variety of answers advanced is itself worth noting, because it suggests that the question may be irregular in some way. Still, there is perhaps no quicker introduction to classical discussions of art than to summarize the master definitions that have been provided, say, from Plato to Clive Bell. It should be noticed that "work of art" is used in two entirely different ways, at the very least. For one, it is a value-laden term applied to things in virtue of certain alleged excellences. And for a second, it is one of the most basic category-terms in aesthetics, designating the principal objects that are to be examined from a certain point of view-objects possibly, though not necessarily, entitled to be characterized as "works of art" on the first use of the phrase. This distinction is often overlooked, though it would appear to affect decisively the nature of any effort to define "work of art."

The trouble with any effort to fix the basic category-term, "work of art," is that it will depend on what counts as an aesthetic point of view. But what counts as an aesthetic point of view cannot itself be decided by some simple inspection of actual usage. Philosophers seem to decide, more than to find, what the boundaries of aesthetic interest are (see Part One). And the definition of "work of art" may vary according to the varying boun- dares assigned to the aesthetic. This means that at least some apparent incompatibilities in definition may reflect the shifting decisions of philosophers regarding the definition of the aesthetic. Furthermore, as already remarked, the "aesthetic" tends to ignore the distinction of art as such- whatever we may choose to feature in speaking of art: even its history as a specialized term has only an uncertain linkage, systematically, with the nature and appreciation of art. To make the definition of "art" depend on how we specify the meaning of "aesthetic," then, is inevitably to invite a measure of conceptual disorder.

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Comparatively recently, the question had been raised whether (following the lead of Wittgenstein) it is at all possible to isolate the essential and distinctive properties of works of art. It has been argued, for instance, that works of art exhibit only "family resemblances" or "strands of similarities" but not essential and distinctive properties common to all admitted in- stances. The question is a vexed one, because it is not entirely clear what sort of initial restrictions may properly be placed on the collection of things for which this claim, or the counterclaim, could be confirmed Hence, if no restriction is allowed, it would seem trivially true that no definition of the required sort could be put forward, since an expression like "work of art" is probably used in a great variety of somewhat unrelated ways. (Is a sunset a work of art, for instance? Is life a work of art? Is driftwood art?) And if an initial restriction is allowed, will it be a logical or an empirical matter that a definition of the required sort cannot be found? The question at stake is not, specifically, the definition of art but the eligibility of the effort to define art. Though if "art" be definable, we surely would want to know what the best formulation is.

Still, if "work of art" is a basic category-term, its importance probably is to be located elsewhere than in the presumed effort to discover its essential conditions (which may, nevertheless, remain legitimate). Because to identify such essential conditions is to summarize the findings of other primary investigations--for instance, the nature and orientation of criticism upon the fine arts. That is, the definition probably serves to indicate the focus of a systematic account of other questions of aesthetics more directly concerned with the professional and amateur examination of works of art themselves.

Morris Weitz's Matchette Prize essay (1955) has undoubtedly been responsible for a lively reconsideration of what are perhaps the best-known theories in aesthetics, which have regularly been advanced in the form of definitions of art. It represents a turning point in aesthetic theory precisely by raising a "'meta-aesthetic" question. But as with so many parallel efforts in other fields, it proves to be extremely difficult to separate sharply "object"-level questions and "meta"-level questions, that is, questions about the status of "object"-level questions- in particular, the question, What is art? In effect an entire industry has developed canvassing the force of Weitz's challenge.

Intuitively, it seems preposterous to deny that it is possible to say, and worth saying, what fine art is. The nature of Weitz's demurrer is rather less obvious than may at first appear. Weitz seems to press the point that if it is to be provided, a definition of art should identify what is really essential to it, what its necessary and sufficient conditions are. Apparently, a definition can be provided "for a special purpose, "but this, Weitz believes, is not the same thing.

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We are bound to raise several questions here. Are there any definitions that do not serve a special purpose? Do definitions, if they serve a special purpose- for instance, facilitating reference and focus for a set of compet- ing theories about art-_fail for that reason to capture the essence of art? And is it the case that serviceable definitions must, and must be supposed to, capture the real essence of what they characterize? It is in fact a feature of the more recent, changed reception of definitional requests (for instance, in the account provided by Hilary Putnam) that we may characterize the distinctive traits or conditions of art without pretending to fix its essence or without insisting that empirical definitions be addressed to real essences.

One of the most notable recent discussions of the peculiar nature of works of art is Arthur Danto's paper "The Artworld" (1964). In effect, Danto does not disqualify definitions but rather shows why it is that, particularly with regard to art, the inventive possibilities oblige us to keep adjusting our antecedently stabilized characterizations. In doing so, Danto clearly links the treatment of the definition of art with the deeper question of the metaphysical status of a work of art. He hints at a difference between physical nature and human culture and he introduces, without development, what he calls the "'is' of artistic identification." What we may suggest, here, without pursuing that issue (see Part Three) is that definitions may serve only to fix the properties of what, in accord with the prevailing current of competing theories, are thought to be the normal or central instances. In this sense, as we say, definitions fix only the nominal, not the real, essences of things; that is, definitions are practical and alterable instruments servicing developing theories that cover at least certain undeniable specimens. It is entirely possible, therefore, that works of art that are somewhat deviant relative to the standard cases can be admitted as works of art and can be admitted to have properties quite different from those focused by our definition, without contradiction at all. It is only when such discrepancies begin to take on a systematic importance that earlier serviceable definitions will have to give way: then, the meaning of "art" will have to change, whereas it need not have changed in accommodating our changing beliefs about what a work of art could be like. This explains in a sense the tolerance that is possible in speaking of driftwood, readymades, l'art trouvé, machine art, the art of chim- panzees, and so-called conceptual or idea art. It also suggests the sense in which we may proceed by genus and difference, by necessary and sufficient conditions, or by characteristic conditions, without in the least violating any logical constraints on the formulation of empirical definitions. The definitions of empirical terms in the sciences are intended to facilitate discourse that is primarily explanatory (in the causal sense) and predictive. Where art is concerned, no such constraints obtain, though there is a clear sense in which definitions must be brought into fair agreement with the Pai

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general sorts of theories and activities that characterize our aesthetic concern with the arts themselves. The concession, it may be admitted, points as well to the possible vacuity of definitional disputes. But, more important, it signifies a refinement in the theory of definition and a sense of the function and validity of particular definitions of art.

Danto has, more recently, pursued (1981) some of the intentional complexities of art, characteristically ignored in aesthetic theory particularly of the Anglo-American sort. It would not be amiss to say that, as with the "Artworld" paper, he is benignly influenced, here, by a reading of Jean-Paul Sartre' phenomenologically oriented account of imagination (1984). Nevertheless, he does not return to clarity the "is" of artistic identification.

Sartre himself, of course, has--in a deliberately paradoxical but also conceptually troublesome way-raised art to a higher status than the "merely" real by dubbing it "unreal." (This use of "mere" is itself not merely accidental in Danto's papers on art.) Sartre's intention, here, is to dramatize the intentional, imaginative complexity of what is said to be represented in painting and the other arts. But his account obliges us, admitting his generic thesis about art, to consider what we may usefully say about the definition of art. And Danto, in a lively and even more recent paper, "The End of Art" (1984), has usefully collected the histori- cally unfolding record of the art tradition in a way that confirms the conceptual puzzle of what we take ourselves to be doing in defining art-_both with respect to his claim that art has "become transmuted into philosophy" and that the boundaries between the various arts have "become radically unstable." Still, what we should understand by the definitional question remains for others to examine (for instance, Robert Matthews, 1979), particularly if there is no final or essential theoretical discovery about the nature of art (see for instance Francis Sparshott, 1982).

Nelson Goodman (1977) has, for reasons rather different from Danto's, eschewed the definition of art. In speaking of the "symptoms" of art as opposed to its "defining properties, " however, he does actually consider a set of disjunctively necessary and conjunctively sufficient conditions that tempt us--against his demurrer--to view his thesis as definitional. These are linked to symbolic functioning; to features of symbols, to features sym- bolized, and to functioning at least by way of exemplification. One may perhaps say that, effectively, Goodman favors a functional essentialism with regard to art rather than a substantive essentialism--which is both subtler than the latter and also not entirely congruent with his own more recent commitment to a proliferation of "made" worlds. But if he were to concede that much, artworks might be shown not to exhibit the salient

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symbolic functions he favors and yet remain significant artworks for all that, Goodman might well be obliged to curb considerably his semiotic orientation, both in general and in detail. The theory that works of art are symbols or symbolic forms is perennially of interest, of course. Goodman introduces a particularly subtle version of it, by means of which he is able to expose certain anomalies in formalist theories of art. But in doing so, he obliges us to consider once again how minimal the basis may be on which to construe an object as functioning symbolically —hence, the vulnerability of the theory that art exhibits in some strong sense a symbolic function.

My note says:
Perhaps both
of them have a point.

The key to Goodman's entire theory of art rests with the concept of exemplification. Granted that to exemplify is to symbolize; the question remains whether in possessing whatever properties it does possess (non-symbolic properties), a work of art must be said to refer to or symbolize any or all such properties. Goodman's account, therefore, suggests a possible asymmetry between validating and invalidating definitions of art or, more informally, characterizations of what serves as strong (or even decisive) evidence of the presence of art. It also suggests the variety of strategies by which we may recover some of the purposes of definition without conceding that the specification of "salient," "characteristic," "symptomatic,' » and similar traits are to count as actually definitional in nature.

Jack Glickman (1976) adopts another strategy. Instead of challenging what is normally thought to be a defining property of art, namely, being an artifact, Glickman attempts to show that being an artifact does not entail having been made by anyone. He explores, in passing, the notion of creativity and centers on the kind of art that is thought to be creative in nature. By this strategy, Glickman shows the possibility of dispute even about what is entailed by admittedly defining properties. And his claim that "particulars are made, types created" draws us on to the profound ontological problem of how a work of art can be a particular and combine concrete and abstract properties (see Part Three).

Perhaps the so-called "institutional" theory of art advanced by George Dickie (1969) is the most recently debated of standard attempts at defining art. Ted Cohen's criticism of it (1973) both introduces the thesis in a convenient and fair-minded way and musters the principal objections to it. There is no question that some sense of the institutional or societal complexities of art is essential to our theorizing. But Dickie's thesis has puzzled his readers primarily because, as Cohen very clearly shows, we cannot sort out satisfactorily whether the prior achievements of some putative artwork are marked as such by a knowledgeable clientele or whether some (somehow) authorized public body fixes the pertinent properties of a would-be artwork by selecting some artifact for artwork Perhaps bitt of them have a point

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status. Questions both about how to legitimate those who legitimate the art status of artifacts and about the dubious (and parasitic) function of status-fixing itself have been raised against Dickie's view (for instance, by Beardsley, 1982; and by Wartofsky, 1980). Cohen's own emphasis rests chiefly with the performative feature of Dickie's defining conditions: both with respect to "conferring" (in Dickie's account) a status that must already obtain before the would-be enabling act itself and with respect to the difficulty of supposing that relevant conferring moves need be (or can be) directly linked with what Dickie has in mind in speaking of apprecia- tion. But all these challenges pale somewhat in the face of the fact that we generally lack a sustained account of the institutional, societal, and historical nature of art itself.

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The Role of Theory in Aesthetics

MORRIS WEITZ

Theory has been central in aesthetics and is still the preoccupation of the philosophy of art. Its main avowed concern remains the determination of the nature of art which can be formulated into a definition of it. It construes definition as the statement of the necessary and sufficient properties of what is being defined, where the statement purports to be a true or false claim about the essence of art, what characterizes and distinguishes it from everything else. Each of the great theories of art--Formalism, Voluntarism, Emotionalism, Intellectualism, Intuitionism, Organicism-converges on the attempt to state the defining properties of art. Each claims that it is the true theory because it has formulated correctly into a real definition the nature of art; and that the others are false because they have left out some necessary or sufficient property. Many theorists contend that their enterprise is no mere intellectual exercise but an absolute necessity for any understanding of art and our proper evaluation of it. Unless we know what art is, they say, what are its necessary and sufficient properties, we cannot begin to respond to it adequately or to say why one work is good or better than another. Aesthetic theory, thus, is important not only in itself but for the founda- tions of both appreciation and criticism. Philosophers, critics, and even artists who have written on art agree that what is primary in aesthetics is a theory about the nature of art.

Is aesthetic theory, in the sense of a true definition or set of necessary and sufficient properties of art, possible? If nothing else does, the history of aesthetics itself should give one enormous pause here. For, in spite of the many theories, we seem no nearer our goal today than we were in Plato's time. Each age, each art-movement, each philosophy of art, tries From The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XV (1956), 27-35. Reprinted with permission of the author and the editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

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over and over again to establish the stated ideal only to be succeeded by a new or revised theory, rooted, at least in part, in the repudiation of preceding ones. Even today, almost everyone interested in aesthetic matters is still deeply wedded to the hope that the correct theory of art is forthcoming. We need only examine the numerous new books on art in which new definitions are proffered; or, in our own country especially, the basic textbooks and anthologies to recognize how strong the priority of a theory of art is.

In this essay I want to plead for the rejection of this problem. I want to show that theory- in the requisite classical sense- is never forthcoming in aesthetics, and that we would do much better as philosophers to supplant the question, "What is the nature of art?" by other questions, the answers to which will provide us with all the understanding of the arts there can be. I want to show that the inadequacies of the theories are not primarily occasioned by any legitimate difficulty such as, e.g., the vast complexity of art, which might be corrected by further probing and research. Their basic inadequacies reside instead in a fundamental miscon- ception of art. Aesthetic theory--all of it--is wrong in principle in thinking that a correct theory is possible because it radically misconstrues the logic of the concept of art. Its main contention that "art" is amenable to real or any kind of true definition is false. Its attempt to discover the necessary and sufficient properties of art is logically misbegotten for the very simple reason that such a set and, consequently, such a formula about it, is never forthcoming. Art, as the logic of the concept shows, has no set of necessary and sufficient properties; hence a theory of it is logically impossible and not merely factually difficult. Aesthetic theory tries to define what cannot be defined in its requisite sense. But in recommending the repudiation of aesthetic theory I shall not argue from this, as too many others have done, that its logical confusions render it meaningless or worthless. On the contrary, I wish to reassess its role and its contribution primarily in order to show that it is of the greatest importance to our understanding of the arts.

Let us now survey briefly some of the more famous extant aesthetic theories in order to see if they do incorporate correct and adequate statements about the nature of art. In each of these there is the assumption that it is the true enumeration of the defining properties of art, with the implication that previous theories have stressed wrong definitions. Thus, to begin with, consider a famous version of Formalist theory, that propounded by Bell and Fry. It is true that they speak mostly of painting in their writings but both assert that what they find in that art can be generalized for what is "art" in the others as well. The essence of painting, they maintain, is the plastic elements in relation. Its defining property is significant form, i.e., certain combinations of lines, colors, shapes,

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volumes- everything on the canvas except the representational ele- ments-which evoke a unique response to such combinations. Painting is definable as plastic organization, The nature of art, what it really is, so their theory goes, is a unique combination of certain elements (the specifi- able plastic ones) in their relations. Anything which is art is an instance of significant form; and anything which is not art has no such form. To this the Emotionalist replies that the truly essential property of art has been left out. Tolstoy, Ducasse, or any of the advocates of this theory, find that the requisite defining property is not significant form but rather the expression of emotion in some sensuous public medium. Without projection of emotion into some piece of stone or words or sounds, etc., there can be no art. Art is really such embodiment. It is this that uniquely characterizes art, and any true, real definition of it contained in some adequate theory of art, must so state it.

The Intuitionist disclaims both emotion and form as defining properties. In Croce's version, for example, art is identified not with some physical, public object but with a specific creative, cognitive, and spiritual art. Art is really a first stage of knowledge in which certain human beings (artists) bring their images and intuitions into lyrical clarification or expression. As such, it is an awareness, non-conceptual in character, of the unique individuality of things; and since it exists below the level of conceptualiza- tion or action, it is without scientific or moral content. Croce singles out as the defining essence of art this first stage of spiritual life and advances its identification with art as a philosophically true theory or definition.

The Organicist says to all of this that art is really a class of organic wholes consisting of distinguishable, albeit inseparable, elements in their causally efficacious relations which are presented in some sensuous medium. In A. C. Bradley, in piecemeal versions of it in literary criticism, or in my own generalized adaptation of it in my Philosophy of the Arts, what is claimed is that anything which is a work of art is in its nature a unique complex of interrelated parts-in painting, for example, lines, colors, volumes, subjects, etc., all interacting upon one another on a paint surface of some sort. Certainly, at one time at least it seemed to me that this organic theory constituted the one true and real definition of art.

My final example is the most interesting of all, logically speaking. This is the Voluntarist theory of Parker. In his writings on art, Parker persis- tently calls into question the traditional simpleminded definitions of aes- thetics. "The assumption underlying every philosophy of art is the exis- tence of some common nature present in all the arts." "All the so popular brief definitions of art-'significant form, "expression,' "intuition,' 'objec- tified pleasure'-all fallacious, either because, while true of art, they are also true of much that is not art, and hence fail to differentiate art from other things; or else because they neglect some essential aspect of art."2

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But instead of inveighing against the attempt at definition of art itself, Parker insists that what is needed is a complex definition rather than a simple one. "The definition of art must therefore be in terms of a complex of characteristics. Failure to recognize this has been the fault of all the well -known definitions.» His own version of Voluntarism is the theory that art is essentially three things: embodiment of wishes and desires imaginatively satisfied, language, which characterizes the public medium of art, and harmony, which unifies the language with the layers of imaginative projections. Thus, for Parker, it is a true definition to say of art that it is "the provision of satisfaction through the imagination, social significance, and harmony. I am claiming that nothing except works of art possesses all three of these marks.'

Now, all these sample theories are inadequate in many different ways. Each purports to be in a complete statement about the defining features of all works of art and yet each of them leaves out something which the others take to be central. Some are circular, e.g., the Bell-Fry theory of art as significant form which is defined in part in terms of our response to significant form. Some of them, in their search for necessary and sufficient properties, emphasize too few properties, like (again) the Bell- Fry definition, which leaves out subject-representation in painting, or the Croce theory, which omits inclusion of the very important feature of the public, physical character, say, of architecture. Others are too general and cover objects that are not art as well as works of art. Organicism is surely such a view since it can be applied to any causal unity in the natural world as well as to art." Still others rest on dubious principles, e.g., Parker's claim that art embodies imaginative satisfactions, rather than real ones; or Croce's assertion that there is nonconceptual knowledge. Consequently, even if art has one set of necessary and sufficient properties, none of the theories we have noted or, for that matter, no aesthetic theory yet proposed has enumerated that set to the satisfaction of all concerned.

Then there is a different sort of difficulty. As real definitions, these theories are supposed to be factual reports on art. If they are, may we not ask, Are they empirical and open to verification or falsification ? For example, what would confirm or disconfirm the theory that art is sig- nificant form or embodiment of emotion or creative synthesis of images? There does not even seem to be a hint of the kind of evidence which might be forthcoming to test these theories; and indeed one wonders if they are perhaps honorific definitions of "art," that is, proposed redefinitions in terms of some chosen conditions for applying the concept of art, and not true or false reports on the essential properties of art at all.

But all these criticisms of traditional aesthetic theories--that they are circular, incomplete, untestable , pseudo-factual, disguised proposäls to

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change the meaning of concepts-- have been made before .

Oh?

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 the concept of art as closed when its very use reveals and demands its openness,

The problem with which we must begin is not "What is art?" but "What sort of concept is 'art'?" Indeed, the root problem of philosophy itself is to explain the relation between the employment of certain kinds of concepts and the conditions under which they can be correctly applied. If I may paraphrase Wittgenstein, we must not ask, What is the nature of any philosophical x? or even, according to the semanticist, What does "x" mean?, a transformation that leads to the disastrous interpretation of "art" as a name for some specifiable class of objects; but rather, What is the use or employment of "x"? What does "x" do in the language? This, I take it, is the initial question, the begin-all if not the end-all of any philosophi- cal problem and solution. Thus, in aesthetics, our first problem is the elucidation of the actual employment of the concept of art, to give a logical description of the actual functioning of the concept, including a description of the conditions under which we correctly use it or its correlates.

My model in this type of logical description or philosophy derives from Wittgenstein. It is also he who, in his refutation of philosophical theorizing in the sense of constructing definitions of philosophical entities, has furnished contemporary aesthetics with a starting point for any future progress. In his new work, Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein raises as an illustrative question, What is a game? The traditional philosophical, theoretical answer would be in terms of some exhaustive set of properties common to all games. To this Wittgenstein says, let us consider what we call "games": "I mean board-games, card-games, ball- games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?_-Don't say: "there must be something common, or they would not be called "games" but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that..

Card games are like board games in some respects but not in others. Not all games are amusing, nor is there always winning or losing or competition. Some games resemble others in some respects- that is all. What we find is no necessary and sufficient properties, only "a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing, " such that we can say of games that they form a family with family resemblances and no common trait. If one asks what a game is, we pick out sample games,

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describe these, and add, "This and similar things are called 'games.' This is all we need to say and indeed all any of us knows about games. Knowing what a game is is not knowing some real definition or theory but being able to recognize and explain games and to decide which among imaginary and new examples would or would not be called "games."

The problem of the nature of art is like that of the nature of games, at least in these respects: If we actually look and see what it is that we call "art," we will also find no common properties- only strands of similarities. Knowing what art is is not apprehending some manifest or latent essence but being able to recognize, describe, and explain those things we call "art» in virtue of these similarities.

But the basic resemblance between these concepts is their open texture. In elucidating them, certain (paradigm) cases can be given, about which there can be no question as to their being correctly described as "art" or "game," but no exhaustive set of cases can be given. I can list some cases and some conditions under which I can apply correctly the concept of art but I cannot list all of them, for the all-important reason that unforesee- able or novel conditions are always forthcoming or envisageable.

A concept is open if its conditions of application are emendable and corrigible; i.e., if a situation or case can be imagined or secured which would call for some sort of decision on our part to extend the use of the concept to cover this, or to close the concept and invent a new one to deal with the new case and its new property. If necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a concept can be stated, the concept is a closed one. But this 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.

I can illustrate this open character of "art" best by examples drawn from its sub-concepts. Consider questions like "Is Dos Passos' U.S.A. a novel?" "Is V. Woolf's To the Lighthouse a novel?" "Is Joyce's Finnegans Wake a novel?" On the traditional view, these are construed as factual problems to be answered yes or no in accordance with the presence or absence of defining properties. But certainly this is not how any of these questions is answered. Once it arises, as it has many times in the development of the novel from Richardson to Joyce (e.g., "Is Gide's The School for Wives a novel or a diary?"), what is at stake is no factual analysis concerning necessary and sufficient properties but a decision as to whether the work under examination is similar in certain respects to other works, already called "novels, and consequently warrants the extension of the concept to cover the new case. The new work is narrative, fictional, contains character delineation and dialogue but (say) it has no regular time-se-

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quence in the plot or is interspersed with actual newspaper reports. It is like recognized novels, A, B, C. ., in some respects but not like them in others. But then neither were B and C like A in some respects when it was decided to extend the concept applied to A to B and C. Because work N + 1 (the brand new work) is like A, B, C, . .. N in certain respects- has strands of similarity to them--the concept is extended and a new phase of the novel engendered. "Is N + 1 a novel?," then, is no factual, but rather a decision problem, where the verdict turns on whether or not we enlarge our set of conditions for applying the concept.

What is true of the novel is, I think, true of every sub-concept of art: "tragedy," "comedy, "painting," "opera," etc., of "art" itself. No "Is X a novel, painting, opera, work of art, etc.?" question allows of a definitive answer in the sense of a factual yes or no report. "Is this collage a painting or not?" does not rest on any set of necessary and sufficient properties of painting but on whether we decide- -as we did! to extend "painting' cover this case.

"Art," itself, is an open concept. New conditions (cases) have constantly arisen and will undoubtedly constantly arise; new art forms, new move- ments will emerge, which will demand decisions on the part of those interested, usually professional critics, as to whether the concept should be extended or not. Aestheticians may lay down similarity conditions but never necessary and sufficient ones for the correct application of the concept. With "art" its conditions of application can never be exhaustively enumerated since new cases can always be envisaged or created by artists, or even nature, which would call for a decision on someone's part to extend or to close the old or to invent a new concept. (E.g.,' "It's not a sculpture, it's a mobile.")

What I am arguing, then, is that the very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and novel creations, make it logically impossible to ensure any set of defining properties. We can, of course, choose to close the concept. But to do this with "art" or "tragedy" Or "portraiture,' " etc., is ludicrous since it forecloses on the very conditions of creativity in the arts.

Of course there are legitimate and serviceable closed concepts in art. But these are always those whose boundaries of conditions have been drawn for a special purpose. Consider the difference, for example, between "tragedy" and "(extant) Greek tragedy." The first is open and must remain so to allow for the possibility of new conditions, e.g., a play in which the hero is not noble or fallen or in which there is no hero but other elements that are like those of plays we already call "tragedy." The second is closed. The plays it can be applied to, the conditions under which it can be correctly used are all in, once the boundary, "Greek," is drawn. Here the

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critic can work out a theory or real definition in which he lists the common properties at least of the extant Greek tragedies. Artistotle's definition, false as it is as a theory of all the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, since it does not cover some of them, properly called "tragedies," can be interpreted as a real (albeit incorrect) definition of this closed concept; although it can also be, as it unfortunately has been, conceived as a purported real definition of "tragedy," in which case it suffers from the logical mistake of trying to define what cannot be defined-_of trying to squeeze what is an open concept into an honorific formula for a closed concept.

What is supremely important, if the critic is not to become muddled, is to get absolutely clear about the way in which he conceives his concepts; otherwise he goes from the problem of trying to define "tragedy," etc., to an arbitrary closing of the concept in terms of certain preferred conditions or characteristics which he sums up in some linguistic recommendation that he mistakenly thinks is a real definition of the open concept. Thus, many critics and aestheticians ask, "What is tragedy?," choose a class of samples for which they may give a true account of its common properties, and then go on to construe this account of the chosen closed class as a true definition or theory of the whole open class of tragedy. This, I think, is the logical mechanism of most of the so-called theories of the sub-con cepts of art: "tragedy," "comedy,» "novel," etc. In effect, this whole procedure, subtly deceptive as it is, amounts to a transformation of correct criteria for recognizing members of certain legitimately closed classes of works of art into recommended criteria for evaluating any putative mem- ber of the class.

The primary task of aesthetics is not to seek a theory but to elucidate the concept of art. Specifically, it is to describe the conditions under which we employ the concept correctly. Definition, reconstruction, patterns of analysis are out of place here since they distort and add nothing to our understanding of art. What, then, is the logic of "X is a work of art"?

As we actually use the concept, "Art" is both descriptive (like "chair") and evaluative (like "'good'); i.e., we sometimes say, ' "This is a work of art," to describe something and we sometimes say it to evaluate something. Neither use surprises anyone.

What, first, is the logic of "X is a work of art," when it is a descriptive utterance? What are the conditions under which we would be making such an utterance correctly? There are no necessary and sufficient conditions but there are the strands of similarity conditions, i.e., bundles of properties, none of which need be present but most of which are, when we describe things as works of art. I shall call these the "criteria of recognition" of works of art. All these have served as the defining criteria

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of the individual traditional theories of art; so we are already familiar with them. Thus, mostly, when we describe something as a work of art, we do so under the conditions of there being present some sort of artifact, made by human skill, ingenuity, and imagination, which embodies in its sen- suous, public medium -stone, wood, sounds, words, etc, certain distin- guishable elements and relations. Special theorists would add conditions like satisfaction of wishes, objectification or expression of emotion, some act of empathy, and so on; but these latter conditions seem to be quite adventitious, present to some but not to other spectators when things are described as works of art. "X is a work of art and contains no emotion, expression, act of empathy, satisfaction, etc.," is perfectly good sense and may frequently be true. "X is a work of art and . .. was made by no one," Or .. exists only in the mind and not in any publicly observable thing," Or 66 . was made by accident when he spilled the paint on the canvas, 99 in each case of which a normal condition is denied, are also sensible and capable of being true in certain circumstances. None of the criteria of recognition is a defining one, either necessary or sufficient, because we can sometimes assert of something that it is a work of art and go on to deny any one of these conditions, even the one which has traditionally been taken to be basic, namely, that of being an artifact: Consider, "This piece of driftwood is a lovely piece of sculpture." Thus, to say of anything that it is a work of art is to commit oneself to the presence of some of these conditions. One would scarcely describe X as a work of art if X were not an artifact, or a collection of elements sensuously presented in a medium, or a product of human skill, and so on. If none of the conditions was present, if there were no criteria present for recognizing something as a work of art, we would not describe it as one. But, even so, no one of these or any collection of them is either necessary or sufficient.

The elucidation of the descriptive use of "Art" creates little difficulty. But the elucidation of the evaluative use does. For many, especially theorists, "This is a work of art" does more than describe; it also praises. Its conditions of utterance, therefore, include certain preferred properties or characteristics of art. I shall call these "criteria of evaluation." Consider a typical example of this evaluative use, the view according to which to say of something that it is a work of art is to imply that it is a successful harmonization of elements. Many of the honorific definitions of art and its sub-concepts are of this form. What is at stake here is that "Art" is construed as an evaluative term which is either identified with its criterion or justified in terms of it. "Art" is defined in terms of its evaluative property, e.g., successful harmonization. On such a view, to say "X is a work of art" is (1) to say something which is taken to mean "X is a successful harmonization" (e.g., "Art is significant form") or (2) to say something praiseworthy on the basis of its successful harmonization.

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Theorists are never clear whether it is (1) or (2) which is being put forward, Most of them, concerned as they are with this evaluative use, formulate (2), i.e., that feature of art that makes it art in the praise-sense, and then go on to state (1), i.e., the definition of "Art" in terms of its art-making feature. And this is clearly to confuse the conditions under which we say something evaluatively with the meaning of what we say. "This is a work of art," said evaluatively, cannot mean "This is a successful harmonization of elements" except by stipulation-_but at most is said in virtue of the art-making property, which is taken as a (the) criterion of "Art," when "Art" is employed to assess. "This is a work of art," used evaluatively, serves to praise and not to affirm the reason that it is said.

The evaluative use of "Art," although distinct from the conditions of its use, relates in a very intimate way to these conditions. For, in every instance of "This is a work of art" (used to praise), what happens is that the criterion of evaluation (e.g., successful harmonization) for the employ- ment of the concept of art is converted into a criterion of recognition. This is why, on its evaluative use, "This is a work of art" implies "This has P, where "P» is some chosen art-making property. Thus, if one chooses to employ "Art" evaluatively, as many do, so that "This is a work of art and not (aesthetically) good" makes no sense, he uses "Art" in such a way that he refuses to call anything a work of art unless it embodies his criterion of excellence.

There is nothing wrong with the evaluative use; in fact, there is good reason for using "Art" to praise. But what cannot be maintained is that theories of the evaluative use of "Art" are true and real definitions of the necessary and sufficient properties of art. Instead they are honorific definitions, pure and simple, in which "Art" has been redefined in terms of chosen criteria.

But what makes them-_these honorific definitions- so supremely valuable is not their disguised linguistic recommendations; rather it is the debates over the reasons for changing the criteria of the concept of art which are built into the definitions. In each of the great theories of art, whether correctly understood as honorific definitions or incorrectly accepted as real definitions, what is of the utmost importance is the reasons proffered in the argument for the respective theory, that is, the reasons given for the chosen or preferred criterion of excellence and evaluation. It is this perennial debate over these criteria of evaluation which makes the history of aesthetic theory the important study it is. The value of each of the theories resides in its attempt to state and to justify certain criteria which are either neglected or distorted by previous theories. Look at the Bell-Fry theory again. Of course, "Art is significant form" cannot be accepted as a true, real definition of art; and most certainly it actually functions in their

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aesthetics as a redefinition of art in terms of the chosen condition of significant form. But what gives it its aesthetic importance is what lies behind the formula: In an age in which literary and representational elements have become paramount in painting, return to the plastic ones since these are indigenous to painting. Thus, the role of theory is not to define anything but to use the definitional form, almost epigrammatically, to pinpoint a crucial recommendation to turn our attention once again to the plastic elements in painting.

Once we, as philosophers, understand this distinction between the for- mula and what lies behind it, it behooves us to deal generously with the traditional theories of art; because incorporated in every one of them is a debate over and argument for emphasizing or centering upon some par- ticular feature of art which has been neglected or perverted. If we take the aesthetic theories literally, as we have seen, they all fail; but if we reconstrue them, in terms of their function and point, as serious and argued-for recommendations to concentrate on certain criteria of excel- lence in art, we shall see that aesthetic theory is far from worthless. Indeed, it becomes as central as anything in aesthetics, in our understanding of art, for it teaches us what to look for and how to look at it in art. What is central and must be articulated in all the theories are their debates over the reasons for excellence in art--debates over emotional depth, profound truths, natural beauty, exactitude, freshness of treatment, and so on, as criteria of evaluation--the whole of which converges on the perennial, problem of what makes a work of art good. To understand the role of aesthetic theory is not to conceive it as definition, logically doomed to failure, but to read it as summaries of seriously made recommendations to attend in certain ways to certain features of art.

Notes

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The Artworld

ARTHUR DANTO

Hamlet:

Do you see nothing there?

The Queen:

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4

Hamlet and Socrates, though in praise and depreciation respectively, spoke of art as a mirror held up to nature. As with many disagreements in attitude, this one has a factual basis. Socrates saw mirrors as but reflecting what we can already see; so art, insofar as mirrorlike, yields idle accurate duplications of the appearances of things, and is of no cognitive benefit whatever. Hamlet, more acutely, recognized a remarkable feature of reflecting surfaces, namely that they show us what we could not otherwise perceive-_our own face and form--and so art, insofar as it is mirrorlike, reveals us to ourselves, and is, even by Socratic criteria, of some cognitive utility after all. As a philosopher, however, I find Socrates' discussion defective on other, perhaps less profound grounds than these. If a mirror image of o is indeed an imitation of o, then, if art is imitation, mirror images are art. But in fact mirroring objects no more is art than returning weapons to a madman is justice; and reference to mirrorings would be just the sly sort of counterinstance we would expect Socrates to bring forward in rebuttal of the theory he instead uses them to illustrate. If that theory requires us to class these as art, it thereby shows its inadequacy: "is an imitation" will not do as a sufficient condition for "is art." Yet, perhaps because artists were engaged in imitation, in Socrates' time and after, the insufficiency of the theory was not noticed until the invention of photog-

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raphy. Once rejected as a sufficient condition, mimesis was quickly dis- carded as even a necessary one; and since the achievement of Kandinsky, mimetic features have been relegated to the periphery of critical concern, so much so that some works survive in spite of possessing those virtues, excellence in which was once celebrated as the essence of art, narrowly escaping demotion to mere illustrations,

It is, of course, indispensable in Socratic discussion that all participants he masters of the concept up for analysis, since the aim is to match a real defining expression to a term in active use, and the test for adequacy presumably consists in showing that the former analyzes and applies to all and only those things of which the latter is true. The popular disclaimer notwithstanding, then, Socrates' auditors purportedly knew what art was as well as what they liked; and a theory of art, regarded here as a real definition of 'Art', is accordingly not to be of great use in helping men to recognize instances of its application. Their antecedent ability to do this is precisely what the adequacy of the theory is to be tested against, the problem being only to make explicit what they already know. It is our use of the term that the theory allegedly means to capture, but we are supposed able, in the words of a recent writer, "to separate those objects which are works of art from those which are not, because.. we know how correctly to use the word 'art' and to apply the phrase 'work of art'." Theories, on this account, are somewhat like mirror images on Socrates' account, showing forth what we already know, wordy reflections of the actual linguistic practice we are masters in.

But telling artworks from other things is not so simple a matter, even for native speakers, and these days one might not be aware he was on artistic terrain without an artistic theory to tell him so. And part of the reason for this lies in the fact that terrain is constituted artistic in virtue of artistic theories, so that one use of theories, in addition to helping us discriminate art from the rest, consists in making art possible. Glaucon and the others could hardly have known what was art and what not: otherwise they would never have been taken in by mirror images.

I

Suppose one thinks of the discovery of a whole new class of artworks as something analogous to the discovery of a whole new class of facts anywhere, viz., as something for theoreticians to explain. In science, as elsewhere, we often accommodate new facts to old theories via auxiliary hypotheses, a pardonable enough conservatism when the theory in ques- tion is deemed too valuable to be jettisoned all at once. Now the Imitation Theory of Art (IT) is, if one but thinks it through, an exceedingly powerful theory, explaining a great many phenomena connected with the causation and evaluation of artworks, bringing a surprising unity into a complex

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domain. Moreover, it is a simple matter to shore it up against many purported counterinstances by such auxiliary hypotheses as that the artist who deviates from mimeticity is perverse, inept, or mad. Ineptitude, chicanery, or folly are, in fact, testable predications. Suppose, then, tests reveal that these hypotheses fail to hold, that the theory, now beyond repair, must be replaced. And a new theory is worked out, capturing what it can of the old theory's competence, together with the heretofore recal- citrant facts. One might, thinking along these lines, represent certain episodes in the history of art as not dissimilar to certain episodes in the history of science, where a conceptual revolution is being effected and where refusal to countenance certain facts, while in part due to prejudice, inertia, and self-interest, is due also to the fact that a well-established, or at least widely credited theory is being threatened in such a way that all coherence goes.

Some such episode transpired with the advent of Postimpressionist paintings. In terms of the prevailing artistic theory (IT), it was impossible to accept these as art unless inept art: otherwise they could be discounted as hoaxes, self-advertisements, or the visual counterparts of madmen's ravings. So to get them accepted as art, on a footing with the Transfigura- tion (not to speak of a Landseer stag), required not so much a revolution in taste as a theoretical revision of rather considerable proportions, involv- ing not only the artistic enfranchisement of these objects, but an emphasis upon newly significant features of accepted artworks, so that quite dif- ferent accounts of their status as artworks would now have to be given. As a result of the new theory's acceptance, not only were Postimpressionist paintings taken up as art, but numbers of objects (masks, weapons, etc.) were transferred from anthropoligical museums (and heterogeneous other places) to musées des beaux arts, though, as we would expect from the fact that a criterion for the acceptance of a new theory is that it account for whatever the older one did, nothing had to be transferred out of the musée des beaux arts-even if there were internal rearrangements as be- tween storage rooms and exhibition space. Countless native speakers hung upon suburban mantelpieces innumerable replicas of paradigm cases for teaching the expression work of art' that would have sent their Edwardian forebears into linguistic apoplexy.

To be sure, I distort by speaking of a theory: historically, there were several, all, interestingly enough, more or less defined in terms of the IT. Art-historical complexities must yield before the exigencies of logical exposition, and I shall speak as though there were one replacing theory, partially compensating for historical falsity by choosing one which was actually enunciated. According to it, the artists in question were to be understood not as unsuccessfully imitating real forms but as successfully

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creating new ones, quite as real as the forms which the older art had been thought, in its best examples, to be creditably imitating. Art, after all, had long since been thought of as creative (Vasari says that God was the first artist), and the Postimpressionists were to be explained as genuinely creative, aiming, in Roger Fry's words, "not at illusion but reality." This theory (RT) furnished a whole new mode of looking at painting, old and new. Indeed, one might almost interpret the crude drawing in Van Gogh and Cézanne, the dislocation of form from contour in Rouault and Dufy, the arbitrary use of color planes in Gauguin and the Fauves, as so many ways of drawing attention to the fact that these were non-imitations, specifically intended not to deceive. Logically, this would be roughly like printing "Not Legal Tender" across a brilliantly counterfeited dollar bill, the resulting object (counterfeit cum inscription) rendered incapable of deceiving anyone. It is not an illusory dollar bill, but then, just because it is non-illusory it does not automatically become a real dollar bill either. It rather occupies a freshly opened area between real objects and real facsimiles of real objects: it is a non-facsimile, if one requires a word, and a new contribution to the world. Thus, Van Gogh's Potato Eaters, as a consequence of certain unmistakable distortions, turns out to be a non- facsimile of real-life potato eaters; and inasmuch as these are not facsimiles of potato eaters, Van Gogh's picture, as a non-imitation, had as much right to be called a real object as did its putative subjects. By means of this theory (RT), artworks reentered the thick of things from which Socratic theory (IT) had sought to evict them: if no more real than what carpenters wrought, they were at least no less real. The Post-Impressionist won a victory in ontology.

It is in terms of RT that we must understand the artworks around us today. Thus Roy Lichtenstein paints comic-strip panels, though ten or twelve feet high. These are reasonably faithful projections onto a gigan- tesque scale of the homely frames from the daily tabloid, but it is precisely the scale that counts. A skilled engraver might incise The Virgin and the Chancellor Rollin on a pinhead, and it would be recognizable as such to the keen of sight, but an engraving of a Barnett Newman on a similar scale would be a blob, disappearing in the reduction. A photograph of a Lichtenstein is indiscernible from a photograph of a counterpart panel from Steve Canyon; but the photograph fails to capture the scale, and hence is as inaccurate a reproduction as a black-and-white engraving of Botticelli, scale being essential here as color there. Lichtensteins, then, are not imitations but new entities, as giant whelks would be. Jasper Johns, by contrast, paints objects with respect to which questions of scale are irrelevant. Yet his objects cannot be imitations, for they have the remark- able property that any intended copy of a member of this class of objects

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is automatically a member of the class itself, so that these objects are logically inimitable. Thus, a copy of a numeral just is that numeral. painting of 3 is a 3 made of paint. Johns, in addition, paints targets, lags, and maps. Finally, in what i hope are not unwitting footnotes to Plato, two of our pioneers- Robert Räuschenberg and Claes Oldenburg- have made genuine beds.

Rauschenberg's bed hangs on a wall, and is streaked with some desul- tory housepaint. Oldenburg's bed is a rhomboid, narrower at one end than the other, with what one might speak of as a built-in perspective: ideal for small bedrooms. As beds, these sell at singularly inflated prices, but one could sleep in either of them: Rauschenberg has expressed the fear that someone might just climb into his bed and fall asleep. Imagine, now, a certain Testadura- a plain speaker and noted philistine- who is not aware that these are art, and who takes them to be reality simple and pure. He attributes the paint streaks on Rauschenberg's bed to the slovenliness of the owner, and the bias in the Oldenburg bed to the ineptitude of the builder or the whimsy, perhaps, of whoever had it "custom-made." These would be mistakes, but mistakes of rather an odd kind, and not terribly different from that made by the stunned birds who pecked the sham grapes of Zeuxis. They mistook art for reality, and so has Testadura. But it was meant to be reality, according to RT. Can one have mistaken reality for reality? How shall we describe Testadura's error? What, after all, prevents Oldenburg's creation from being a misshapen bed? This is equivalent to asking what makes it art, and with this query we enter a domain of conceptual inquiry where native speakers are poor guides: they are lost themselves.

II

To mistake an artwork for a real object is no great feat when an artwork is the real object one mistakes it for. The problem is how to avoid such errors, or to remove them once they are made. The artwork is a bed, and not a bed-illusion; so there is nothing like the traumatic encounter against a flat surface that brought it home to the birds of Zeuxis that they had been duped. Except for the guard cautioning Testadura not to sleep on the artworks, he might never have discovered that this was an artwork and not a bed; and since, after all, one cannot discover that a bed is not a bed, how is Testadura to realize that he has made an error? A certain sort of explanation is required, for the error here is a curiously philosophi- cal one, rather like, if we may assume as correct some well-known views of P. F. Strawson, mistaking a person for a material body when the truth is that a person is a material body in the sense that a whole class of

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predicates, sensibly applicable to material bodies, are sensibly, and by appeal to no different criteria, applicable to persons. So you cannot discover that a person is not a material body.

We begin by explaining, perhaps, that the paint streaks are not to be explained away, that they are part of the object, so the object is not a mere bed with--as it happens--streaks of paint spilled over it, but a complex object fabricated out of a bed and some paint streaks: a paint-bed. similarly, a person is not a material body with-as it happens- some thoughts superadded, but is a complex entity made up of a body and some conscious states: a conscious-body. Persons, like artworks, must then be taken as irreducible to parts of themselves, and are in that sense primitive. Or, more accurately, the paint streaks are not part of the real object--the bed- which happens to be part of the artwork, but are, like the bed, part of the artwork as such. And this might be generalized into a rough characterization of artworks that happen to contain real objects as parts of themselves: not every part of an artwork A is part of a real obiect R when R is part of A and can, moreover, be detached from A and seen merely as R. The mistake thus far will have been to mistake A for part of itself, namely R, even though it would not be incorrect to say that A is R, that the artwork is a bed. It is the 'is' which requires clarification here.

There is an is that figures prominently in statements concerning artworks which is not the is of either identity or predication; nor is it the is of existence, of identification, or some special is made up to serve a philosophic end. Nevertheless, it is in common usage, and is readily mastered by children. It is the sense of is in accordance with which a child, shown a circle and a triangle and asked which is him and which his sister, will point to the triangle saying "That is me"; or, in response to my question, the person next to me points to the man in purple and says "That one is Lear", or in the gallery I point, for my companion's benefit, to a spot in the painting before us and say "That white dab is Icarus." We do not mean, in these instances, that whatever is pointed to stands for, or represents, what it is said to be, for the word 'Icarus' stands for or represents Icarus: yet I would not in the same sense of is point to the word and say "That is Icarus." The sentence "That a is b" is perfectly compatible with "That a is not b'" when the first employs this sense of is and the second employs some other, though a and b are used nonambigu- ously throughout. Often, indeed, the truth of the first requires the truth of the second. The first, in fact, is incompatible with "That a is not b" only when the is is used nonambiguously throughout. For want of a word I shall designate this the is of artistic identification; in each case in which it is used, the a stands for some specific physical property of, or physical part

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of, an object; and, finally, it is a necessary condition for something to be an artwork that some part or property of it be designable by the subject of a sentence that employs this special is. It is an is, incidentally, which has near relatives in marginal and mythical pronouncements. (Thus, one is Quetzal- coati; those are the Pillars of Hercules.)

Let me illustrate. Two painters are asked to decorate the east and west walls of a science library with frescoes to be respectively called Newton's First Law and Newton's Third Law. These paintings, when finally un- veiled, look, scale apart, as follows:

[[FIGURES]]

As objects I shall suppose the works to be indiscernible: a black, horizontal line on a white ground, equally large in each dimension and element. B explains his work as follows: a mass, pressing downward, is met by a mass pressing upward: the lower mass reacts equally and oppositely to the upper one. A explains his work as follows: the line through the space is the path of an isolated particle. The path goes from edge to edge, to give the sense of its going beyond. If it ended or began within the space, the line would be curved: and it is parallel to the top and bottom edges, for if it were closer to one than to another, there would have to be a force accounting for it, and this is inconsistent with its being the path of an isolated particle.

Much follows from these artistic identifications. To regard the middle line as an edge (mass meeting mass) imposes the need to identify the top and bottom half of the picture as rectangles, and as two distinct parts (not necessarily as two masses, for the line could be the edge of one mass jutting up-or down--into empty space). If it is an edge, we cannot thus take the entire area of the painting as a single space: it is rather composed of two forms, or one form and a non-form. We could take the entire area as a single space only by taking the middle horizontal as a line which is not an edge. But this almost requires a three-dimensional identification of the

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whole picture; the area can be a flat surface which the line is above (Jer-flight), or below (Submarine-path), or on (Line), or in (Fissure), or through (Newton's First Law) though in this last case the area is not a flat surface but a transparent cross section of absolute space. We could make all these prepositional qualifications clear by imagining perpen- dicular cross sections to the picture plane. Then, depending upon the applicable prepositional clause, the area is (artistically) interrupted or not by the horizontal element. If we take the line as through space, the edges of the picture are not really the edges of the space: the space goes beyond the picture if the line itself does; and we are in the same space as the line is. As B, the edges of the picture can be part of the picture in case the masses go right to the edges, so that the edges of the picture are their edges. In that case, the vertices of the picture would be the vertices of the masses, except that the masses have four vertices more than the picture itself does: here four vertices would be part of the artwork which were not part of the real object. Again, the faces of the masses could be the face of the picture, and in looking at the picture, we are looking at these faces: but space has no face, and on the reading of A the work has to be read as faceless, and the face of the physical object would not be part of the artwork. Notice here how one artistic identification engenders another artistic identification, and how, consistently with a given identification, we are required to give others and precluded from still others: indeed, a given identification determines how many elements the work is to contain. These different identifications are incompatible with one another, or generally so, and each might be said to make a different artwork, even though each artwork contains the identical real object as part of itself- or at least parts of the identical real object as parts of itself. There are, of course, senseless identifications: no one could, I think, sensibly read the middle horizontal as Love's Labour's Lost or The Ascendency of St. Erasmus. Finally, notice how acceptance of one identification rather than another is in effect to exchange one world for another. We could, indeed, enter a quiet poetic world by identifying the upper area with a clear and cloudless sky, reflected in the still surface of the water below, whiteness kept from whiteness only by the unreal boundary of the horizon.

And now Testadura, having hovered in the wings throughout this discussion, protests that all he sees is paint: a white painted oblong with sees or that anybody can, we aesthetes included. So, if he asks us to show him what there is further to see, to demonstrate through pointing that this is an artwork (Sea and Sky), we cannot comply, for he has overlooked nothing and it would be absurd to suppose he had, that there was something tiny we could point to and he, peering closely, say "So it is! A

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work of art after all!"). We cannot help him until he has mastered the is of artistic identification and so constitutes it a work of art. If he cannot achieve this, he will never look upon artworks: he will be like a child who sees sticks as sticks.

But what about pure abstractions, say something that looks just like A but is entitled No. 7? The 10th Street abstractionist blankly insists that there is nothing here but white paint and black, and none of our literary identifications need apply. What then distinguishes him from Testadura, whose philistine utterances are indiscernible from his? And how can it be an artwork for him and not for Testadura, when they agree that there is nothing that does not meet the eye? The answer, unpopular as it is likely to be to purists of every variety, lies in the fact that this artist has returned to the physicality of paint through an atmosphere compounded of artistic theories and the history of recent and remote painting, elements of which he is trying to refine out of his own work; and as a consequence of this his work belongs in this atmosphere and is part of this history. He has achieved abstraction through rejection of artistic identifications, returning to the real world from which such identifications remove us (he thinks), somewhat in the mode of Ching Yuan, who wrote:

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got the very substance I am at rest. For it is just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.

His identification of what he has made is logically dependent upon the theories and history he rejects. The difference between his utterance and Testadura's "This is black paint and white paint and nothing more" lies in the fact that he is still using the is of artistic identification, so that his use of «That black paint is black paint" is not a tautology. Testadura is not at that stage. To see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry-an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.

III

Mr. Andy Warhol, the Pop artist, displays facsimiles of Brillo cartons, piled high, in neat stacks, as in the stockroom of the supermarket. They happen to be of wood, painted to look like cardboard, and why not? To paraphrase the critic of the Times, if one may make the facsimile of a

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human being out of bronze, why not the facsimile of a Brillo carton out of plywood? The cost of these boxes happens to be 2 X 103 that of their homely counterparts in real life--a differential hardly ascribable to their advantage in durability. In fact the Brillo people might, at some slight increase in cost, make their boxes out of plywood without these becoming artworks, and Warhol might make his out of cardboard without their ceasing to be art. So we may forget questions of intrinsic value, and ask why the Brillo people cannot manufacture art and why Warhol cannot but make artworks. Well, his are made by hand, to be sure. Which is like an insane reversal of Picasso's strategy in pasting the label from a bottle of Suze onto a drawing, saying as it were that the academic artist, concerned with exact imitation, must always fall short of the real thing: so why not just use the real thing? The Pop artist laboriously reproduces machine- made objects by hand, e.g., painting the labels on coffee cans (one can hear the familiar commendation "Entirely made by hand" falling painfully out of the guide's vocabulary when confronted by these objects). But the dif- ference cannot consist in craft: a man who carved pebbles out of stones and carefully constructed a work called Gravel Pile might invoke the labor theory of value to account for the price he demands; but the question is, What makes it art? And why need Warhol make these things anyway? Why not just scrawl his signature across one? Or crush one up and display it as Crushed Brillo Box ("A protest against mechanization. . .") or simply dis- play a Brillo carton as Uncrushed Brillo Box "A bold affirmation of the plastic authenticity of industrial ...")? Is this man a kind of Midas, turning whatever he touches into the gold of pure art? And the whole world con- sisting of latent artworks waiting, like the bread and wine of reality, to be transfigured, through some dark mystery, into the indiscernible flesh and blood of the sacrament? Never mind that the Brillo box may not be good, much less great art. The impressive thing is that it is art at all. But if it is, why are not the indiscernible Brillo boxes that are in the stockroom? Or has the whole distinction between art and reality broken down?

Suppose a man collects objects (readymades), including a Brillo carton; we praise the exhibit for variety, ingenuity, what you will. Next he exhibits nothing but Brillo cartons, and we criticize it as dull, repetitive, self- plagiarizing-_or (more profoundly) claim that he is obsessed by regularity and repetition, as in Marienbad. Or he piles them high, leaving a narrow path; we tread our way through the smooth opaque stacks and find it an unsettling experience, and write it up as the closing in of consumer prod- ucts, confining us as prisoners: or we say he is a modern pyramid builder. True, we don't say these things about the stockboy. But then a stockroom is not an art gallery, and we cannot readily separate the Brillo cartons from the gallery they are in, any more than we can separate the Rauschenberg

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bed from the paint upon it. Outside the gallery, they are pasteboard car. tons. But then, scoured clean of paint, Rauschenberg's bed is a bed, just what it was before it was transformed into art. But then if we think this matter through, we discover that the artist has failed, really and of neces. sity, to produce a mere real object. He has produced an artwork, his use of real Brillo cartons being but an expansion of the resources available to artists, a contribution to artists' materials, as oil paint was, or tuche.

What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the rea object which it is (in a sense of is other than that of artistic identification), Of course, without the theory, one is unlikely to see it as art, and in order to see it as part of the artworld, one must have mastered a good deal of artistic theory as well as a considerable amount of the history of recent New York painting. It could not have been art fifty years ago. But then there could not have been, everything being equal, flight insurance in the Middle Ages, or Etruscan typewriter erasers. The world has to be ready for certain things, the artworld no less than the real one. It is the role of artistic theories, these days as always, to make the artworld, and art, possible. It would, I should think, never have occurred to the painters of Lascaux that they were producing art on those walls. Not unless there were neolithic aestheticians.

IV

The artworld stands to the real world in something like the relationship in which the City of God stands to the Earthly City. Certain objects, like certain individuals, enjoy a double citizenship, but there remains, the RT notwithstanding, a fundamental contrast between artworks and real ob- jects. Perhaps this was already dimly sensed by the early framers of the IT who, inchoately realizing the nonreality of art, were perhaps limited only in supposing that the sole way objects had of being other than real is to be sham, so that artworks necessarily had to be imitations of real objects. This was too narrow. So Yeats saw in writing "Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing." It is but a matter of choice; and the Brillo box of the artworld may be just the Brillo box of the real one, separated and united by the is of artistic identification. But I should like to say some final words about the theories that make artworks possible, and their relationship to one another. In so doing, I shall beg some of the hardest philosophical questions I know. "opposites,"

I shall now think of pairs of predicates related to each other as conceding straight off the vagueness of this demodé term.

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Contradictory predicates are not opposites, since one of each of them must apply to every object in the universe, and neither of a pair of opposites need apply to some objects in the universe. An object must first be of a certain kind before either of a pair of opposites applies to it, and then at most and at least one of the opposites must apply to it. So opposites are not contraries, for contraries may both be false of some objects in the universe, but opposites cannot both be false; for of some objects, neither of a pair of opposites sensibly applies, unless the object is of the right sort. Then, if the object is of the required kind, the opposites behave as contradictories. If F and non-F are opposites, an object o must be of a certain kind K before either of these sensibly applies; but if o is a member of K, then o either is For non-F, to the exclusion of the other. The class of pairs of opposites that sensibly apply to the (8) o I shall designate as the class of K-relevant predicates. And a necessary condition for an object to be of a kind K is that at least one pair of K-relevant opposites be sensibly applicable to it. But, in fact, if an object is of kind K, at least and at most one of each K-relevant pair of opposites applies to it.

I am now interested in the K-relevant predicates for the class K of artworks. And let F and non-F be an opposite pair of such predicates. Now it might happen that, throughout an entire period of time, every artwork is non-F. But since nothing thus far is both an artwork and F, it might never occur to anyone that non-F is an artistically relevant predicate. The non-F-ness of artworks goes unmarked. By contrast, all works up to a given time might be G, it never occurring to anyone until that time that something might be both an artwork and non-G; indeed, it might have been thought that G was a defining trait of artworks when in fact some- thing might first have to be an artwork before G is sensibly predicable of it-in which case non-G might also be predicable of artworks, and G itself then could not have been a defining trait of this class.

Let G be 'is representational' and let F be 'is expressionist. At a given time, these and their opposites are perhaps the only art-relevant predicates in critical use. Now letting '+' stand for a given predicate P and '-' for its opposite non-P, we may construct a style matrix more or less as follows:

F  G
十 十
十 —
— 十
— —

The rows determine available styles, given the active critical vocabulary: representational expressionistic (e.g., Fauvism); representational nonex-

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pressionistic (Ingres); nonrepresentational expressionistie (Abstract Ex- pressionism); nonrepresentational nonexpressionist ( hard-edge

My note says:
?!

abstraction). Plainly, as we add art-relevant predicates, we increase the number of available styles at the rate of 2". It is, of course, not easy to see in advance which predicates are going to be added or replaced by their opposites, but suppose an artist determines that H shall henceforth be artistically relevant for his paintings. Then, in fact, both H and non-H become artistically relevant for all painting, and if his is the first and only painting that is H, every other painting in existence becomes non-H, and the entire community of paintings is enriched, together with a doubling of the available style opportunities. It is this retroactive enrichment of the entities in the artworld that makes it possible to discuss Raphael and De Kooning together, or Lichtenstein and Michelangelo. The greater the variety of artistically relevant predicates, the more complex the individual members of the artworld become; and the more one knows of the entire population of the artworld, the richer one's experience with any of its members.

In this regard, notice that, if there are m artistically relevant predicates, there is always a bottom row with m minuses. This row is apt to be occupied by purists. Having scoured their canvases clear of what they regard as inessential, they credit themselves with having distilled out the essence of art. But this is just their fallacy: exactly as many artistically relevant predicates stand true of their square monochromes as stand true of any member of the Artworld, and they can exist as artworks only insofar as "impure" paintings exist. Strictly speaking, a black square by Reinhardt is artistically as rich as Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. This explains how less is more.

Fashion, as it happens, favors certain rows of the style matrix: museums, connoisseurs, and others are makeweights in the Artworld. To insist, or seek to, that all artists become representational, perhaps to gain entry into a specially prestigious exhibition, cuts the available style matrix in half: there are then 2" | 2 ways of satisfying the requirement, and museums then can exhibit all these "approaches" to the topic they have set. But this is a matter of almost purely sociological interest: one row in the matrix is as legitimate as another. An artistic breakthrough consists, I suppose, in adding the possibility of a column to the matrix. Artists then, with greater or less alacrity, occupy the positions thus opened up: this is a remarkable feature of contemporary art, and for those unfamiliar with the matrix, it is hard, and perhaps impossible, to recognize certain positions as occupied by artworks. Nor would these things be artworks without the theories and the histories of the Artworld.

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Brillo boxes enter the artworld with that same tonic incongruity the commedia dell'arte characters bring into Ariadne auf Naxos. Whatever is the artistically relevant predicate in virtue of which they gain their entry, the rest of the Artworld becomes that much the richer in having the opposite predicate available and applicable to its members. And, to return to the views of Hamlet with which we began this discussion, Brillo boxes may reveal us to ourselves as well as anything might: as a mirror held up to nature, they might serve to catch the conscience of our kings.

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Creativity in the Arts

JACK GLICKMAN

What is it to be creative?' The answer usually given is that there is a "creative process, » and most writers on creativity have taken their task to be a description of the kind of activity that takes place when one is acting creatively. In the first part of this paper I will argue that that is the wrong way to go about characterizing creativity, that one must attend to the artistic product rather than to the process. In Part Il, I argue that their failure to properly distinguish creating from making has led some to suppose, erroneously, that some recent trends in art have celebrated the end of artistic creation. Douglas Morgan, in reviewing a large number of writers on creativity, provides a convenient account of what I'll call the Creative-Process Theory. He finds that the "classic" theory of the creative process breaks it down into various stages. From two to five stages are usually thought necessary to describe the process, but the various descriptions bear a revealing community, and I think we may take the "four-step" interpretation as reflecting the consensus: 1. A period of "preparation" during which the creator becomes aware of a problem or difficulty, goes through trial-and- error random movement in unsuccessful attempts to resolve a felt conflict . . . 2. A period of "incubation," renunciation, or recession, during which the difficulty drops out of consciousness. The attention is totally redirected . . From Culture and Art, copyright © 1976 by Lars Aagaard-Mogensen. Reprinted with permission of the author and of Eclipse Books. Creativity in the Arts 169 3. A period or event of "inspiration" or "insight". . the "aha!" phenomenon, characterized by a flood of vivid imagery, an emotional release, a feeling of exultation, adequacy, finality . 4. A period of "elaboration" or "verification" during which the "idea" is worked out in detail, fully developed.? According to Morgan, not only is it "complacently assumed by nearly all investigators that there is such a thing as the creative process-_or a class of processes sharing important sets of characteristics, [it is assumed also] that creative processes in art and in science are identical or very nearly SO, »3 The theory has serious inadequacies. It excludes many instances of creative activity-improvizations in the performing arts, for example, and other instances in which the creating has taken place in a single unreflec- tive burst of energy, as when poets have had a poem come to them all at once. The most objectionable inadequacy of the Creative-Process theory, though, is that what it describes is not at all limited to creative activity. The pattern described fits equally well many instances of genuine creativity and many instances of inept, bungling attempts at creativity. It also fits activities that are not even attempts at creativity: Suppose someone mentions a name that sounds familiar, and I try to recall the person mentioned. Someone asks me, "Do you remember George Spelvin?" '"George Spelvin, George Spelvin," I repeat, mulling over the name (step 1-aware of a problem). I can't remember, so I put the problem aside, no longer consciously concerned with it (step 2- incubation). After a while it suddenly comes to me, "Sure, I remember George Spelvin; he's an actor!" (step 3-the "'aha"! phenomenon). Then I begin to remember more, "I saw him as the Chorus in Romeo and Juliet" (step 4-filling in details). Recalling who a person is, given his name, hardly seems an instance of creative activity; yet it fits the description of the creative process. In criticizing the Creative-Process theory, I might be accused of flogging a dead horse. Most psychologists seem to have abandoned this sort of account of creativity, as have many philosophers. Yet, as I will argue, in many subsequent accounts of creativity the same crucial error persists--the assumption that creativity consists in some distinctive pattern of thought and/or activity. It persists, for example, in Vincent Tomas's theory of creativity in the arts. Tomas puts the problem this way: when one asks what's meant in saying that an artist is creative or that something is a work of creative art, "'one is asking for a clarification or analysis of the concept of creativity as applied to art. One wants to know explicitly the nature of artistic crea- tion-to be given a description of the conditions an activity must satisfy if it is to be an instance of artistic creation rather than of something else." 170 The Definition of Art This last sentence quoted makes it clear that he wants a set of conditions that are not only necessary but also sufficient for an instance of artistic activity to be creative activity. Tomas begins with the example of a rifleman aiming and firing at a target: the rifleman knows what he wants to do- hit the bull's-eye-and he knows that if a hole appears in the bull's-eye after he fires, he has succeeded. The rifleman knows what he should do to hit the bull's- eye--what position to assume and how to hold the rifle, get the correct sight picture, and squeeze off the shot. If the rifleman fails, Tomas says, he has not obeyed all the rules, and if he succeeds and is congratulated, he is congratulated for being able to learn and obey all the rules. But when we congratulate an artist for being creative, Tomas says, it is not because he was able to obey rules and thereby do what had been done before. "We congratulate him because he embodied in colors or in language something the like of which did not exist before." Unlike the rifleman, "the creative artist does not initially know what his target is.... Creative activity in art...is not... activity engaged in and con- sciously controlled so as to produce a desired result. »6 Yet, Tomas says, the creative artist has a sense that his activity is directed--that it is heading somewhere Despite the fact that he cannot say precisely where he is going. he can say that certain directions are not right. After writing a couplet or drawing a line, he will erase it because it is "wrong" and try again. Creative activity in art, then, is activity subject to critical control by the artist, although not by virtue of the fact that he foresees the final result of the activity. That this way of construing creativity reflects part of what we have in mind when we speak of creative art can be shown if we contrast what results from creative activity so construed with what results from other activities that we do not call creative. Thus we do not judge a painting, poem, or other work to be a work of creative art unless we believe it to be original. If it strikes us as being a repetition of other paintings or poems, if it seems to be the result of a mechanical application of a borrowed technique or style to novel subject matter, to the degree that we apprehend it as such, to the same degree we deny that it is creative.' It is fairly clear, then, how Tomas relates the following three questions: (1) What characterizes an artist as a creative artist? (2) What characterizes a poem, painting, or other work as a creative work of art? (3) What characterizes an activity as artistic creation? Tomas would answer the first two of these questions in terms of his answer to the third: artists, when Creativity in the Arts 171 they work in the manner described, are engaged in artistic creation; a creative artist is one who is able to achieve artistic creation, and a creative work of art is one that results from artistic creation. Tomas claims that although we judge a poem or painting to be a creative work on the basis of qualities of the work itself, such a judgment is possible because the work reveals features of the activity that produced it. So far, then, Tomas has set forth two conditions an activity must satisfy to be artistic creation: (1) the artist does not envisage the final result of his work, but (2) the artist exercises "critical control." The first condition, I think, contains a conceptual truth--that if someone knows just what the product of his labors will be, then that product is, in a sense, already created. I'll have more to say about this later. For the present, though, I want to point out only that this first condition does not distinguish the artist who is creative from the one who is not. Tomas allows that a sculptor might know exactly what his sculpture will look like before he begins to work his material, and might even hire someone else to execute his plan. Tomas says that in such a case the creative act is finished: it is the production of the idea, and all that remains is to "objectify the idea" in some material-a matter of skill or work. But for any artist at work, either he does not envisage the result, in which case his activity fulfills one of the conditions of artistic creation, or else he does envisage the result, in which case he may be objectifying an idea that is the product of a creative act, and so in this case too he may have been creative. Tomas's second condition raises difficulties, for artists at times produce a work in a single unreflective outpouring of energy. Tomas considers what is supposedly such a case-_Nietzsche's writing of Thus Spake Zarathustra. Even if Nietzsche didn't deliberately change a thing, even if all came out just right from the very first line, was there not a relatively cool hour when Nietzsche and the same goes for Coleridge and Kubla Khan) read what he had written and judged it to be an adequate expression of his thought?. If there was such a cool hour and such a critical judgment in Nietzsche's case, this is all that is needed to have made him create Zarathustra on the view of creation presented above. Undoubtedly there was a cool moment when Nietzsche and Coleridge looked over their work, but that was after the work was created. Accord- ing to Tomas, had either Nietzsche or Coleridge not looked over his work after it was finished it would not be a creative work, but since he did look it over it is a creative work. This is paradoxical: the work is the same in either case. And think of a jazz musician improvizing a performance; whether he later happens to judge it adequate after listening to a recording The Definition of Art 172 seems totally irrelevant to whether his performance was creative. At any rate, if critical control can amount to no more than looking over the work, it is certainly an easy condition for any artist, creative or not, to fulfill, but it hardly seems necessary. Tomas sees one other essential factor in artistic creation- inspiration. In the creative process, two moments may be distinguished, the moment of inspiration, when the new suggestion appears in conscious- ness, and the moment of development or elaboration. The moment of inspiration is sometimes accompanied by exalted feelings. Inspiration seems to be the sort of thing Morgan called the "aha!» phenomenon; in fact, it becomes quite clear at this point that Tomas's iheory is simply a more elaborate version of the Creative-Process theory. Tomas introduces the notion of inspiration to explain the "critical controj» in creative activity. Whenever the artist goes wrong, he feels himself being kicked, and tries another way which, he surmises, trusts, or hopes, will not be followed by a kick. What is kicking him is "inspiration," which is already there. What he makes must be adequate to his inspiration. If it isn't, he feels a kick.'O Tomas comments: "admittedly, the concept of inspiration we have been making use of is in need of clarification."' I agree. Ordinarily there is no distinction between a good inspiration and a poor one: to say an idea is an inspiration is to say it is a good idea or the right idea; if the idea is a poor one, it is not called an inspiration. But then there can be no characterization of inspiration in terms of the agent's feelings, for on that basis alone one cannot differentiate having an inspiration and having what seems to be an inspiration. It is likely that an artist might think he is being creative when he is not. Tomas says that "whenever the artist goes wrong, he feels himself being kicked." Maybe some artists feel such a kick when they think they have gone wrong, but surely there have been a lot of kickless goings wrong in the history of artistic activity. Each of two artists may work in the way Tomas describes, each having feelings of inspiration, each critically controlling his work according to the "kicks" he feels, yet one artist may be creative and the other not be creative at all. The three conditions of artistic creation that Tomas lays down--not envisaging the result, exercising critical control, and undergoing feelings of inspiration-do not help to distinguish the creative artist from the uncreative one. In what follows, I will try to show that the Creative- Process theory rests on a fundamental misconception about creating. Creativity in the Arts 173 Tomas realizes that "in discourse about art, we use 'creative' in an honorific sense, in a sense in which creative activity always issues in something that is different in an interesting, important, fruitful, or other valuable way."2 This I think is correct and crucially important. It is precisely because we do not call an activity creative unless its product is new and valuable, that no characterization of creating simply in terms of the artist's actions, thoughts, and feelings can be adequate, for such a characterization cannot distinguish activity that results in a valuably new product from that which does not. Let's take a closer look, then, at what it is that one "does" when one is creative. In the arts one might create by composing music, writing, painting-_i.e. we might say that someone was not only painting but also creating, or not only writing but also creating. It is not that he is doing two things at the same time. If we say that someone is doing two things at the same time-riding a bicycle and viewing the countryside, for example, or reading and drinking coffee- we can imagine our subject doing one of these things without the other. Creating, however, is not an isolable activity. The creator cannot be just creating; he has to be doing something we could describe as writing, painting, composing, or whatever. One does not always create when one paints, writes, or composes; these are means by which one might create. A number of activities sometimes, qualify as "creating." To know whether someone has created, we have to see (or be told about) the results of his work. And the creator himself knows he has created only by seeing what he has done. It is unusual to say "I am creating"; "create" is seldom used in the continuous present tense. I suppose we can imagine a painter, say, who after a bit of especially satisfying work explains "I am creating!" but in such a case the creating is not something he is doing at the moment, it is something he has done. If we ask "How do you know you're creating?" he might answer "Just look at what I've painted." Notice that it makes sense to ask "How do you know you're creating?" whereas it would be silly to ask "How do you know you're painting?" Similarly one might be surprised that he has created, but not surprised that he has painted. We say an activity such as painting, writing, or composing is creating if it achieves new and valuable results; no specific isolable activity creating corresponds to the verb "create" as painting corresponds to the verb "paint." These considerations suggest that "create" is one of that class of verbs Gilbert Ryle has labeled "achievement verbs." The verb "win," for ex- ample, signifies not an activity but an achievement. Winning a race requires some sort of activity, such as running, but winning is itself not an activity. One big difference between the logical force of a task verb and that of a corresponding achievement verb is that in applying an achieve- The Definition of Art 174 ment verb we are asserting that some state of affairs obtains over and above that which consists in the performance, if any, of the subser. vient task activity. For a runner to win, not only must he run but Also his rivals must be at the tape later than he; for a doctor to effect a cure, his patient must both be treated and be well again. ... An autobiographical account of the agent's exertions and feelings does not by itself tell whether he has brought off what he was trying to bring off." For a painter, conposer, or writer to create, not only must he paint, compose, or write, he also must achieve new and valuable results; there. fore, no description of just the artist's "exertions and feelings" will tell us whether he has created. If creating were a specific process or activity we would expect that one could decide to create. But artists often try unsuccessfully to create. Given the technical knowledge, one can decide to write, paint, or compose, but not create. If creating were a specific process or activity we would expect the possibility of error. It is easy to make something wrong. But one cannot create something wrong; either one creates or one does not. But just as winning is not an infallible kind of running, creating is not an infallible kind of making; it is an achievement. To say that someone created x is often to say that x was, upon being produced, absolutely new-i.e., new to everyone. To say that someone has been creative, though, is to say that the product is new to the agent. Someone may be creative in solving a math problem, for example, if he devises a solution more elegant and ingenious than the standard way of solving such a problem, even though others may have devised the same solution before. I do not think, though, that ordinary usage supports a hard and fast distinction between creating, implying the product is new to everyone, and being creative, implying the product is new to the agent. One might say, "Horticulturist A thought he had created a new hybrid, but B had developed the same hybrid years before." But one might as well say, "A and B, independently, both created the same hybrid." In neither case, though, is there any implication that A was less creative than B. To say, then, that someone created x, or that in producing * someone was being creative, is to imply that y was new to the agent. As Kennick points out, if a contemporary of Cézanne working in Siberia and wholly unac- quainted with what was going on elsewhere in the art world, produced canvases just like the late canvases of Cézanne, we would have no reason not to describe his work as creative. Creativity in the Arts 175 Judgments of creativity are implicitly comparative, like saying that a man is tall or short. But the comparison is not unrestricted. A work of art is creative only in comparison with works with which it is properly comparable, i.e., with what the artist might reasonably be expected to have been acquainted with. 14 Although whether we ascribe the verb "create" depends on the product, not on the activity that produced it, it does not follow that the praise conferred by "create" and "creative" applies only to the product; but in saying that the agent is creative, one is praising him for what he has accomplished, not for having gone through some special process in ac- complishing it. This brings us to a crucial difference between the conse- quences of my view and those of a theory such as Tomas's for answering the following three questions: (1) What characterizes an artist as creative? (2) What characterizes a poem, painting or other work as a creative work? and (3) What characterizes an activity as artistic creation? For Tomas, the third question is primary, and the first two are answered in terms of its answer. On my view the answer to all three depends on the product; it is the product that determines whether we call the activity creating, and also whether we call the agent and the work creative. The Creative-Process theory has been the dominant theory of creativity during the last half century, and it is hardly surprising that it has been the dominant theory of artistic creation, since as such it is a variation on a main theme in the expression theory of art, which because of the influence of Croce, Collingwood, Dewey, and others, has been the dominant theory of art. As the expression theory is usually formulated, good art, or "art proper," comes about only as the result of a certain sort of process "artistic expression. » But as critics of the expression theory have emphasized, an examination of the process is irrelevant to an evaluation of the product. 'S This, essentially, has been my criticism of the Creative-Process theory. "Creative" is a term of praise, but there is no specific sort of activity necessary or sufficient for producing things of value. Tomas argued that we judge a work of art to be creative on the basis of properties of the work itself, but only because we take those properties as evidence that the creator went through a certain sort of process. I think Kennick is correct, though, in insisting that we do nothing of the kind. Rather, we determine whether a work of art is creative by looking at the work and by comparing it with previously produced works of art in the same or in the nearest comparable medium or genre. 176 The Definition of Art Anyone can tell at a glance whether two paintings or two poems are different, but not just anyone can tell at a glance which of two paintings or poems is the more creative. To tell this, one must be acquainted with properly comparable works of art and be able to appreciate the aesthetic significance of any artistic innovation, see how it enlarges the range of viable artistic alternatives and thereby "place,» what has already been done by putting it, so to speak, in a new light. is It might be objected that Kennick's view, which I am endorsing, confuses evidence of creativity with what it means to say that someone is creative. But the answer to this objection is clear, I think, when we realize that "create" is an achievement verb and so applies only when something besides the performance of some action is the case. Although a patient's recovering his health is evidence that the doctor cured him, it is also the criterion for ascribing the verb "cure" to what the doctor did. To cure someone means to make him well as a result of treatment. I suppose that in some sense a valuably new artwork is "evidence" of creativity, but more than that, we apply the verb "create" only when the results are new and valuable, since creating means producing what is valuably new. Tomas considers the possibility that being creative is simply producing what is valuably new, but he dismisses that possibility with the following argument. Do we want to mean by creation in art merely the production of a work that not only is different but is different in a valuable way? In that case, it would follow that a computer would be no less creative than Beethoven was, if it produced a symphony as original and as great as one of his, or that a monkey could conceivably paint pictures which were no less works of creative art than Picasso's.... So con- ceived, artistic creation is not necessarily an action, in the sense of this word that involves intention and critical control, and the tradi- tional distinction between action and mere movement is obliterated. "7 Concerning Tomas's claim that if monkeys and machines create works of art, then "[1] artistic creation is not necessarily in action.. and [2] the traditional distinction between action and mere movement is obliterated," the first conjunct of the conclusion seems to follow from the premise, but the second one does not. If machines can create artworks then it seems true that artistic creation is not necessarily an action, but it does not follow that there is no distinction between action and mere movement. But more to the point, to say that someone is creative is to say that he is creative in some specific way. There are creative painters, creative Creativity in the Arts 177 teachers, creative businessmen, creative mathematicians. We might say of someone creative in a number of ways that he is a creative person, or creative in general, but we can in such instances enumerate the various ways in which he is creative. Now can a monkey be as creative as Picasso? The proper reply is "As creative a what as Picasso?" As creative an artist? Only if it is allowed that a monkey can be an artist. Similarly, if we are to make any sense of the question "Is a monkey at a typewriter who produces a sonnet identical with one of Shakespeare's as creative as Shakespeare?" it must mean "Is the monkey as creative a poet as Shakespeare?" and the answer is clearly No unless it is allowed that a monkey can be a poet. I would think that being a poet at least encompasses (1) knowing a language, and (2) producing and/ or selecting an arrangement of "sentences" of that language as meant to be taken in a certain way: hence a monkey cannot be a poet. 18 I am not concerned to argue this point here, however. I am concerned only to make clear that on the view I am advancing, if one allows that a monkey can be an artist or poet, then it is in principle possible for a monkey to be as creative an artist as Picasso or as creative a poet as Shakespeare. If monkeys cannot be artists or poets, then neither can they be creative artists or creative poets, no matter what they produce. The same argument applies mutatis mutandis to machine behavior. I think the problem that Tomas raises here is not so much a problem about creativity as about art--whether what is produced by monkey or machine can properly be called art. If it can, then no doubt some such artworks and "artists" are more creative than others. Even if monkeys are not creative artists, however, it doesn't follow that it would never make sense to say that a monkey was creative. After all, ascriptions of creativity implicitly compare what's been created to other things of similar kind and provenance. To say that little Johnny is creative is perhaps to say that for a five-year-old he is creative, and it is not to compare him with Picasso. Similarly one might want to say that Bonzo is more creative than the other chimps if he does paintings with a far greater variety of colors and configurations. But to say this would be only to say that he is a more creative chimp; it is not to put him in a class with Picasso, or even with little Johnny. IT To construe creating, as many have, as a kind of making, is to overlook crucial differences between the concepts making and creating. Consider the following examples of "make" and "create" in sentences with the same direct object. - Ps J. J. Gibson The Definition of Art 178 The chef made a new soup today. The chef created a new soup today. The seamstress made a new dress. The fashion designer created a new dress. Although the same noun occurs as direct object in both sentences of each pair, with "make" the noun designates a particular thing, but with "create» the noun is generic. If the chef created a new soup, he created a new kind of soup, a new recipe; he may not have made the soup. But if we say "He made a new soup today,» "soup" refers to some particular pot of soup he prepared. The seamstress made some particular dress, but the fashion designer created a new design." Particulars are made, types created. Suppose a potter makes a vase and creates a new design on the surface. It may seem that the design is a particular thing, but what was created is a particular design only in that it is a particular type of design. If I say he created a new design, I do not mean that what he created are just those lines he put on the surface of the vase. Suppose I make a thousand copies of that vase; I could then show the potter any of the copies and ask, "Did you create the design on this vase?" The answer in all cases would be Yes. The answer would be No if I asked, "Did you make the design on this vase?" With "make," "design" refers to an individual; with "create," "design" refers to a type. The use of "create" or "make"-one word rather than the other--does not indicate a different sort of process, but a different sort of product (individual or type). Someone might in the same process both make a design (individual) and also thereby create a design (type). When we talk about what is created we are not primarily concerned with some particular individual object and its fabrication, rather we are con- cerned primarily with the idea, conception, or design that that individual object embodies. If I serve you a dish and say it was created by Brillat- Savarin, I do not mean that he has been resurrected and put to work in my kitchen; he developed the recipe. At this point it might be objected that the choice between "create" and "make" does not always indicate a different sort of object: we do not distinguish the kind of "product" (individual or type) when, for example, we say, "He created a disturbance" rather than, "He made a disturbance." True, but I am concerned only with creating that is creative. One can create all sorts of things; before lighting a fire in the fireplace, we heat the chimney to create a draft; we can create a disturbance, or create a nuisance; we create difficulties, impressions, opinion. If someone creates a certain impression, it is no reason to call him creative; he may create the impression of himself that he is uncreative. If someone creates a draft, or a menace, or difficulties, or a stir, it is usually no reason to call him

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creative. But if a chef creates a new dish, a businessman creates a new way of merchandising, or a painter creates a work of art, these often are reasons to call that person creative. My remarks about the verb "create" which, like "creative," is honorific. The object of "create" when the creating is noncreative is some specific state of affairs rather than some new conception.

I said earlier that there is a conceptual truth contained in Tomas's claim that in creative activity the artist does not envisage the final result of his work. I have argued similarly that creating is producing what is new to the agent. Also when we consider that what is of primary importance in talk of creativity is not the fabrication of some particular object but rather the idea or conception it embodies, this explains Tomas's example of the sculptor. It is now commonplace for sculptors to send the plans for their sculptures to foundries to be executed; in such a case, the sculptor is clearly the creator of the artwork though the foundry makes the work. In the analogous case of an artist who is executing his work himself from a finished plan, the creative part of the work is done, as Tomas says, and what remains is to objectify the idea. (But of course it is not only in being creative that one does not foresee the product of one's efforts.)

An issue that's been debated recently is whether natural objects, such as pieces of driftwood, can be works of art. If they can, a curious question arises: who is the creator of such artworks? When Morris Weitz argued in an oft-quoted passage that a piece of driftwood could be a sculpture, and Joseph Margolis vigorously denied this, they put the issue this way: is being an artifact a necessary condition of something's being a work of art?? But what really seems at issue in their dispute is whether a work of art must have been made by someone, and that is another matter. I will now argue that although (1) being an artifact is a necessary condition of something's being a work of art, (2) there is no conclusive reason to insist that a work of art must have been made by someone, and so (3) an artist may create a work of art that no one has made.

Most often the term "artifact" is used to refer to an object of archeological or historical interest, such as an ornament, weapon, or utensil; obviously something need not be an artifact in this sense, a relic of some defunct culture, before it can be considered a work of art. But "artifact" is used also to refer to contemporary objects; without stretching the term one can speak of automobile hubcaps and plastic dishes as artifacts of our present-day culture. Practically any sort of alteration of the material environment might count as an artifact--a pile of rocks serving as a marker, for example, or a circle of trees planted to demarcate a certain area. Also a single natural object can be an artifact if it has been invested with some important function. Suppose that a stick—one that has not been materially altered, has not been carved or smoothed by any one—takes on magical

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significance in some culture. The stick, let's suppose, is believed by everyone in the culture to have certain magical properties; it may be handled only by the high priest, and by him only in accordance with certain rituals. Surely such a stick would count as an artifact of that culture; one can casily imagine it, if its use were known, on display centuries later along with the bowls, spears, and jewelry of that culture.

Now let's take a hypothetical case. Suppose an artist exhibits pieces of driftwood; perhaps the gallery announces a new conception, Beach Art. The pieces of driftwood are materially unaltered- i.e., they have not been sanded, smoothed, carved, or reshaped by anyone. Suppose further that this exhibit is warmly accepted by the artworld, and so the pieces of driftwood acquire the status of artworks. The very fact that the pieces of driftwood would have acquired the status of artworks in our culture would qualify them as artifacts of our culture; i.e., any object accepted as a work of art in our culture would thereby automatically qualify as an artifact of our culture. And since being a work of art of a culture is a sufficient condition of something's being an artifact of that culture, it follows that being an artifact is a necessary condition of something's being a work of art, a logically necessary condition though. Just as the stick's being a magic wand would qualify it as an artifact of its culture, the driftwood's being an artwork would qualify it as an artifact of its culture. The argument so far, then, is that being an artifact is a logically necessary condition of something's being a work of art. The question that remains is: can a piece of driftwood (or some other natural object) qualify as an artwork?

As was mentioned earlier, an artist need not make the work of art he creates. A sculptor might send the plans for a steel sculpture to a foundry there to be fabricated, and in various other ways an artist may have other craftsmen execute the work of art he creates. What is central to the notion of creating something is the new design, idea, or conception, not fabrica- tion; most often one creates a work of art in the process of executing it, but this is not necessary. But the artist need not even design the art object. Duchamp displayed as art a urinal and entitled it Fountain: he did not make the object nor did he design it, yet he created the artwork Fountain. Among Duchamp's other "readymades" was a bottlerack, which became an artwork ap- propriately entitled Bottlerack; it is acknowledged by many as an artwork, and as one created by Duchamp. So in many cases the creator of a work of art has not fabricated the art object, and in other cases the artist has not only not made the art object, he has not designed it either. And if the artist need not have made and need not even have designed the art object, then I see no conclusive conceptual block to allowing that the artwork be a natural object. Creativity in the Arts 181 As far as I know, neither pieces of driftwood nor other natural objects are now universally accepted as artworks. So besides separating the question of artifactuality from that of whether an artwork need have been made, what I have been arguing is that there is no conceptual absurdity in the idea of a work of art created by someone but made by no one. There are not sufficient grounds for ruling a priori that pieces of driftwood or other natural objects cannot be works of art, and if they are accepted as such, they would not be that much different from objects already widely accepted as artworks. Already we have artworks that were neither made nor designed by the artist who created them. The direction of the present argument has been influenced by Arthur Danto's paper' "The Artworld." Also influenced by Danto's argument that '"to see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry. -an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld,»2' George Dickie has argued that art's institutional setting makes possible a definition of art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Dickie argues that a work of art can be defined as "1) an artifact 2) upon which some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institu- tion (the artworld) has conferred the status of candidate for apprecia- tion.»22 This is not the place to discuss Dickie's theory in detail, but in order to raise some pertinent issues I'll briefly register some doubts about it. First, for the reasons given above, the condition of artifactuality seems to me superfluous. Also, it is doubtful that the definition sets forth conditions sufficient for something's being a work of art. Consider the tools, tableware, textiles, office equipment, and other functional objects in the Museum of Modern Art's Design Collection. Arthur Drexler, director of the department, says that "an object is chosen for its quality because it is thought to achieve, or to have originated, those formal ideals of beauty which have become the major stylistic concepts of our time. It applies to objects not necessarily works of art but which, nevertheless, have contributed importantly to the development of design."23 Here we have objects- not necessarily works of art-upon which someone acting in behalf of the artworld has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation. And granting what Danto says, that to see something as a work of art--or, at least, that to see some things as works of art--required an atmosphere of artistic theory, it doesn't follow, given such an atmosphere, that even in the artworld everyone will see it as art. The artworld is not monolithic. Some painters and sculptors still balk at calling pieces of driftwood works of art. Their hesitation to call such objects works of art does not stem from a reluctance to value such objects: no matter how exquisite such objects may be, they would say, they are no more works of art than is a d; The Definition of Are 182 magnificent sunset. They know, moreover, the intent with which such objects have been proffered as art, they understand fully the theory of objers trouvés; their reluctance to call such objects works of art is thejr reluctance to accept that theory. For them the theory does not establish a sufficiently strong link between found natural objects and the body of acknowledged works of art so that they are willing to classify the natural objects as artworks. I do not wish to discuss the question how widely accepted as art an object must be before it can be said unequivocally to be art. I am not even sure that that is the right question to raise. I want only to register a doubt about Dickie's claim that anything proffered as art is to be classified unequivocally as art no matter the extent of its acceptance. Nowadays it would be simply false to claim that a Jackson Pollock painting is not a work of art; similarly, I think, with Duchamp's ready-mades. And perhaps not even pieces of driftwood are a borderline case, although I think they are. In any case, the driftwood dispute is illuminating because it shows that although on Danto's view anything might become a work of art, that doesn't mean anything goes: rational argument has a place in formulating and assessing the theory that would extend the concept of art to some new kind of object. In mentioning Duchamp' ready-mades I claimed that although Duchamp did not make or design the bottlerack, he created the artwork Bottlerack. He brought into existence a new work of art (although he did not make a new object). It might be objected that if an art museum director decides to put on display a collection of, say, bottles, or doorknobs or shipping bags, objects not generally considered works of art, and they come to be generally considered artworks, it is not the museum director who is credited as the artist who created them, rather it is the person who designed the objects. And if, in general, the person responsible for bringing about acceptance of x as an artwork is not considered the artist who created y, why should we say it is Duchamp, and not the person who designed the bottlerack, who created Bottlerack? But there is a difference between the two cases: Duchamp is creating art and the museum director is only displaying it. Presumably when the museum director decides to put on display doorknobs, shopping bags, or whatever, his gesture is one of calling attention to objects he considers to be already works of art, but ones that have gone unrecognized. But Duchamp and subsequent artists who have transformed mere objects into artworks by signing their names to them have not supposed that there were all these objects, already artworks, lying around unnoticed; they have created those objects artworks. (I purposely choose this locution to parallel the locution "The Monarch created him an Earl.") (I am not, by the way, assuming that all such creatings are creative.) Creativity in the Arts 183 The Duchamp case I think supports Danto's contention that "it is the role of artistic theories, these days as always, to make the artworld, and art, possible."24 It is not the case, as I take Dickie to be saying, that it is simply the right institutional setting that confers the status "work of art.» but rather it is, as Danto emphasizes, the artistic theory which relates the new object to the existing body of acknowledged artworks. And, I would think, it is because of the specific theory in the context of which Duchamp's ready-mades appeared that they are artworks. In writing about the Museum of Modern Art's mammoth Duchamp retrospective, Harold Rosenberg points out that "since their first public appearance, [Duchamp's] creations have possessed an inherent capacity to stir up conflict. Sixty years ago, he entered the art world by splitting it, and he still stands in the cleft, »25 "[HJe remains the primary target to those critics and artists whose interest lies in restoring art to a 'normal' con- tinuity with the masterpieces of the past. "2 Rosenberg then sketches the case against Duchamp, one argument of which is the following. In adopting the ready-made, Duchamp has introduced the deadly rival of artistic creation- an object fabricated by machine and available everywhere, an object chosen, as he put it, on the basis of pure "visual indifference," in order to "reduce the idea of aesthetic consideration to the choice of the mind, not the ability of cleverness of the hand." In the world of the ready-made, anything can become a work of art through being signed by an artist... The title "artist, » no longer conferred in recognition of skill in conception and execution, is achieved by means of publicity.? To repeat a point I've already belabored, skill in execution cannot be considered necessary for artistic creation since works of art are so often not executed by their creators. To exclude readymades on that account would entail excluding too much else. And ingenuity, wit, and insight of conception are not necessarily excluded either. Just as some artworks of great technical skill embody the most banal conceptions and others, brilliant conceptions, is there not a range of conceptual skill exhibited in ready-mades, objets trovés, and works of conceptual art? Such art does exclude "ability or cleverness of the hand," but it does not on that account preclude artistic creation.

Notes

The Possibility of Art; Remarks on a Proposal by Dickie TED COHEN Among recent efforts to say what art is, one of the most salubrious is George Dickie's "Defining Art." Like much of Dickie's best work, this essay is brief, direct, and convincing in the way it uncomplicates what philosophers have made murky. This time, however, I think he has tried to make things more simple and ingenuous than they can be. The defini- tion Dickie presents and argues for is this: A work of art in the descriptive sense is (1) an artifact (2) upon which some society or some sub-group of a society has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation [p. 254b]. This definition is introduced early in Dickie's essay, and the rest of the essay is given to elucidating and defending it. Instead of summarizing here all Dickie has to say, I will quote relevant passages in the course of my criticism. At the beginning, however, it may be helpful to note three special features of Dickie's thesis. (1) The somewhat checkered history of attempts to define art is usually seen as a series of specifications of art-making properties. These properties, though subtle and sometimes relational, have been understood to be properties the eye can descry. The definitions which require these properties of artworks are widely thought to have been discredited, if not by earlier examples, by the onslaught of problematic cases and coun- terexamples supplied by twentieth-century art. Each definition (for ex- ample, "Art is imitation, or expression, or significant form, or symbolic feeling") seems either to founder straightway, since many obvious artworks do not display the allegedly necessary property, or to retreat into insig- nificance, since the property it cites cannot be seen and is presumed to be From Philosophical Review, LXXXII (1973), 69-82. Reprinted with permission of the author and Philosophical Review. The Possibility of Art 187 present only because the objects are artworks. Dickie aims from the outset to specify a property which cannot be found merely by inspecting a putative artwork. He says: What the eye cannot descry is a complicated non-exhibited charac- teristic of the artifacts in question [p. 254a]. The idea is that the property required by the second condition of the definition is to be, as Dickie calls it, a social property, a non-exhibited status obtained within an institution. (2) Since the eighteenth century there have been a number of definitions of art in terms of something like appreciation. Conceptions of appreciation have varied and so has the strategy of the definition. Usually some minimal requirement is given- for instance, that a thing be an artifact- and then it is held that appreciation of the thing is a necessary or sufficient condition of its being an artwork. The principal refinements have consisted in making the condition more subtle- requiring that a thing be likely to be appreciated, or that it be intended to be appreciated, or that it should be appreciated. Dickie's second condition is subtle enough to transform the character of this kind of definition. All questions of actual appreciation are waived. What is required is that a thing be a candidate for apprecia- tion, and actually being appreciated is neither necessary nor sufficient for that. (3) Dickie agrees with Morris Weitz in distinguishing two senses- or uses, as he sometimes says-of the term 'work of art,' an evaluative sense and a descriptive sense. Thus the initial qualification in the definition. Dickie is interested in the expression 'work of art' only in its descriptive sense, and he has little to say about its evaluative sense. He does invoke the evaluative sense as an explanation of the propriety of remarks like "This driftwood is a work of art" which precludes their being counterexamples to the requirement that works of art be artifacts. Dickie holds that the descriptive and evaluative senses are distinct at least to this extent, that both artifacts and nonartifacts can be works of art in the evaluative sense, while only artifacts can be works of art in the descriptive sense. Furthermore, works of art in the descriptive sense need not be works of art in the evaluative sense. So being a work of art in one sense is neither necessary nor sufficient for being so in the other sense. The third feature of the definition is less novel than the others. I mention it because I will claim, toward the end of my criticism, that Dickie's determination to keep out of the definition everything he takes to be a matter of merit has left his conception of art too spare. The definition falls short, so to speak, both formally and materially, and it is the second condition which is defective. Despite the careful reference 188 The Definition of Art to candidacy for appreciation, and not to appreciation itself, we must be told something about appreciation- enough at least to give content to the notion of candidacy. Materially, what Dickie says about appreciation is too strong, even though very general; formally, it lacks a dimension without which it is not acute enough to discriminate art from other things. What Appreciation Is Dickie first says: The kind of appreciation I have in mind is simply the kind charac- teristic of our experiences of paintings, novels, and the like [p. 255a]. One may wonder whether there is such a kind of appreciation, and I believe there is not. It seems to me it is already too much to suppose that there is a kind of appreciation characteristic of our experiences of, say, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Pollock, Olitski, "and the like." But Dickie thinks this can be overcome. Indeed, if we mean by 'appreciation" something like "in experiencing the qualities of a thing one finds them worthy or valuable," then there is no problem about the similarity of the various appreciations [p. 255a]. This suggestion fails to meet the one case Dickie speaks much about, that of Duchamp. Dickie calls Duchamp's "Fountain" a work of art with no hesitation, and I think he believes it a substantial achievement of his definition that it easily accommodates things like the works of Dada. But does it? I agree that whatever Dada's practitioners thought, their ac- complishment was not simply the creation of Un-art. It was, however, the creation of something different. In understanding this I am inclined to follow Michael Fried, who has said this: the situation has been complicated still further by the calling into question, first by Dada and within the past decade by Neo-Dada figures such as Cage, Johns and Rauschenberg, of the already some- what dubious concept of a "work of art.". .. It would, however, be mistaken to think of Dada--the most precious of movements--as op- posed to art. Rather, Dada stands opposed to the notion of value or quality in art, and in that sense represents a reaction against the unprecedented demands modernist painting makes of its practitioners. (It is, I think, significant that Duchamp was a failed modernist-more - The Possibility of Art 189 exactly, a failed Cubist--before he turned his hand to the amusing inventions by which he is best known.) But there is a superficial similarity between modernist painting and Dada in one important respect: namely, that just as modernist painting has enabled one to see a blank canvas, a sequence of random spatters or a length of colored fabric as a picture, Dada and Neo-Dada have equipped one to treat virtually any object as a work of art--though it is far from clear exactly what this means,? Whether or not one agrees with Fried, it seems clear that the "apprecia- tion" of Dada was and is novel. If Fried is right, then to speak of Dada in terms of experiencing qualities one finds worthy or valuable is exactly wrong. Even if Fried is wrong, surely the one obvious point about Dada is that it is not the occasion for appreciation of the "kind characteristic of our experiences of paintings, novels, and the like." Of course Dickie has not said that Dada is, or is to be, appreciated in this way, but that it has acquired the status of being a candidate for such appreciation. But Dada in general, and certainly Duchamp's urinal, is virtually accompanied by an announcement that traditional appreciation (if there is such a thing) cannot occur. This suggests two things: (1) that being a candidate for appreciation in any but the emptiest sense of "appreciation' (where it signifies any kind of apprehension appropriate to anything which is an artwork) is not part of what it is to be an artwork, at least not for some works, and (2) that possibilities concerning what can be appreciated have some bearing on what can be made a candidate for appreciation. The second point is not considered by Dickie, and this is responsible for what I think of as a formal gap in his definition. What Can Be a Work of Art The second condition Dickie calls a "social property" of art (p. 253b). This idea, that part of what makes a thing a work of art is, so to speak, an institutionalized property, is the genuinely novel feature of Dickie's defini- tion. The idea is present in recent works by Danto and Wollheim,' but I find it clearest in Dickie's essay and I shall confine myself to his definition. There are two broad areas for questions about how a thing acquires the social property which makes it art (in what circumstances and by whom can this property be bestowed, and what qualifies a thing to receive this bestowal. In the first area I have some more or less standard questions which are not altogether rhetorical for I, at least, do not see how to answer them on the basis of Dickie's remarks. The second area is more important since there I think Dickie does not see any questions to be answered. 190 The Definition of Art If part of what makes a thing a work of art issues from an "institution" or "social practice." then we need to be told something of the details of the institution. There is merit enough in articulating the claim that art-ness is partly an institutional property- if that is true, and I do not mean to badger Dickie about the details. As he says, lines of authority in the politico-legal world are by and large explicitly defined and incorporated into law, while lines of authority (or some- thing like authority) in the artworld are nowhere codified. The artworld carries on its business at the level of customary practice Ip. 255a]. What Dickie says about this customary practice, however, leaves things more confusing than they might have been if he had simply referred to such a practice and left it at that. Dickie sees a difference between a plumbing equipment salesman displaying his wares and Duchamp exhibit- ing his urinal, which he elucidates in this way: The difference is analogous to the difference between my uttering "I declare this man to be a candidate for alderman" and the head of the election board uttering the same sentence while acting in his official capacity [p. 255a]. But there is an ambiguity here: whose enfranchisement are we concerned with, some museum director's or Duchamp's? That Dickie means the former, or at least that he does not mean Duchamp, is suggested by this- The point is that Duchamp's act took place within a certain institu- tional setting and that makes all the difference. Our salesman of plumbing supplies could do what Duchamp did [p. 255b]- and by his remark concerning a different case, "It all depends on the institutional setting ." (p. 256a). If Dickie is read this way, then his analogy is strikingly inept, for it is precisely not the case that our Dickie could do what the head of the election board did (make someone an aldermanic candidate). What the analogy suggests is that to make something art, one first must be an artmaker. I suspect that the analogy appeals to Dickie because it sets making-a-candidate-for-election beside making-a-candidate-for-apprecia- tion. But it is clear that one needs status to bestow status in the political case. What about the case of art? What about the interchangeability of Duchamp and the plumbing supplier? What if a urinal merchant or a junk The Possibility of Art 191 collector had attempted to carry out Duchamp's act, say with the very object Duchamp used, and had been turned away by the organizers of the show? Is that all there is to it; the urinal did not become art because it did not receive the requisite social property, though it received it later when Duchamp brought it around; and the only way in which Duchamp's being Duchamp figures is contingently (since the organizers knew him they accepted his urinal)? Well, then what if Duchamp had been rejected as well? If he had then just sulked, that might be an end to it. But what if he displayed the rejected urinal in his own flat, set it out on a roped-off rug in the living room? Does that turn the trick? Then could the merchant do the same? These are bewildering questions, and they become more annoying if we switch Duchamp and the salesman in the other direction. Suppose it is Duchamp who comes to your home, where perhaps you are in need of plumbing fixtures, and sets before you a number of objects, including the urinal. Now what? Dickie's account of appreciation does not help. Dickie notes (p. 255a) that the ordinary salesman is presenting his wares for appreciation, but insists that he is not conferring on them the status of candidate for appreciation. But he could be doing both things, couldn't he? Couldn't Duchamp? Suppose that Picasso came to your house hawk- ing his paintings, and didn't care what you did with them. Or better, since you may believe that Picasso's paintings were already art before he got to your house, suppose that he came and was commissioned by you to do a sketch directly on the wall in order to disguise some cracks in the plaster. That would be art, wouldn't it? And if it is when Picasso does it, why not when the neighborhood painter and plasterer do it? And if Duchamp's urinal is art just as readily for having been brought to your house as for having gotten into the show, why not the salesman's? Before his discussion of Duchamp and the salesman, Dickie offers an adroit remark to help in accepting the notion of a' "conferral of status" when it is clear that for much art this cannot be said to occur overtly (some artists never exhibit). What I want to suggest is that, just as two persons can acquire the status of common-law marriage within a legal system, an artifact can acquire the status of a candidate for appreciation within the system which Danto has called "the artworld" [p. 254b]. Then how is it that Picasso's merest scribble and, perhaps, Duchamp's urinal have a status not possessed by just anyone's mere scribble or spare urinal? Perhaps it is like this: one of the ways the "artworld" breeds Art is by way of enfranchising Artmakers. Anyone who did "Nude Descending 192 The Definition of Art a Staircase" and the rest would be an Artmaker (however good), but only an Artmaker could make that urinal Art (if it is art). It is because he did "Nude" that Duchamp is an artist; it is because he is Duchamp that "Fountain" is not just a misplaced urinal.* This idea suggests that art and its institutions are inbred and self-jus- tifying in ways that are hard to untangle, and I think that is plausible though I will not argue for it. It seems clear that Dickie does not agree with this. He says, after all, that the salesman could do what Duchamp did, and there is no suggestion that to do this the salesman must first acquire a power Duchamp already has. And, as noted, on this count the creation of an aldermanic candidate is a poor analogue (even Mayor Daley cannot make a man a candidate for alderman: he must make the election board make the man a candidate). The creation of a political candidate, like the act of christening, which Dickie refers to and which I will discuss later, seems an apt analogue of artmaking only so long as only one aspect is considered. In both artmaking and candidate-making there exist con- straints in terms of the objects. The head of the election board cannot make just anyone a candidate. Typically there will be a minimum age, a residence requirement, a stipulation that there be no criminal record, a requirement that there be nominating petitions signed by some number of registered voters, and so on. Perhaps Dickie supposes his account of artmaking supplies an analogue for all this in the first condition, that the object be an artifact. But something is missing. There is nothing to match the connection between the qualifications imposed on a would-be alder- man and the point in making someone a candidate for alderman. The qualifications, which the election board is bound to impose, derive from considerations of what aldermen do or are supposed to do. There is no doubt a blending together of considerations of what aldermen do and what they do well, but that need not be gone into. What connection of any kind is there between being an artifact and being appreciated? Why is it that only artifacts can be made candidates for appreciation, and, more impor- tant, why suppose that every artifact can be made such a candidate? This problem, and the failure of analogy in Dickie's failure to say anything about constraints in terms of the artmaker (about who can make some- thing art as only a deputized official can make someone a political can- didate), lead me to abandon Dickie's own analogy. If we are to get to the subtleties implicit in Dickie's suggestion, we need a different analogue for the act of making something art, one in which a distinction appears, not between having a power and not having it (as the head of the election board has a power not possessed by others), but between exercising a power we all have and not exercising it (like Duchamp's act which Dickie thinks anyone could have carried out). I believe that Dickie thinks we are The Possibility of Art 193 all, or nearly all, in the artworld and that in the artworld everyone is empowered to make art. A suitable analogue may illuminate what limits the exercise of this power. I take the act of conferring the status of candidate for appreciation to be (or to be like) what Austin called an illocution, or what he earlier might have called a performative." The analogue chosen by Dickie, declaring someone a candidate in the uttering of certain words, is an illocution. To improve on it, we need a different illocution. I will use the act of promising, though it too is an imprecise analogue in some respects. There are a number of obscurities in our understanding of the mechanics of promising, but that is a help here, for it exposes the complexities that arise when we move from formalized rituals and ceremonial acts like christening and political licensing to less canonical ones like promising and, as Dickie thinks, making things art. Before getting back to the definition of art, I need to use promising to illustrate a point about illocutions which is not reflected in Dickie's conception of what is required to make art. The act of promising accomplished in the saying of "I promise. appropriate circumstances is an illocution. Characteristically, this illocu- ton precipitates various effects and consequences Austin calls perlocu- tions. Among possible perlocutions are, for instance, the recipient's feeling gratified in some way, his attributing to the speaker an intention to do what is promised, his acting in ways commensurate with or dependent on the speaker's doing what is promised. Though it oversimplies things, I ask you to think of all these consequences or effects as one perlocution, a kind of generic response I will call "accepting" a promise. Promising is an illocution; having a promise accepted is a perlocution. In the case of promising and securing acceptance, the illocution and the perlocution are associated, I think, on two levels: as a relation between promising and acceptance in general, and as a constraint on promising in particular instances. In general, the perlocution is something like the rationale, or part of the rationale, for the illocution. It constitutes a general reason, a reason überhaupt, for performing the illocution-it gives the act a point. As Kant noted, if there is no acceptance of promises, then the act of promising becomes not merely a vain effort, but it ceases to be that kind of act-it ceases to be promising. This is not to say that there must be acceptance in every case, that there is no such thing as an unaccepted promise. The perlocution is detachable from the illocution in particular cases. But something does follow with regard to individual cases. In any particular case it must be possible, or at least appear to those concerned to be possible, that the perlocution transpire. It is, so to speak, ..... The Definition of Art 194 in the nature of the illocution to effect the perlocution, and if it is obvious to those involved that this effect cannot occur, then the illocution is in some way and to some degree abortive. That is why I cannot promise you something we both know, and know one another knows that I cannot deliver. There may be some point in my giving my word knowing you know that I cannot keep it, but it cannot be a point usual in cases of giving one's word, and so I am not simply "giving my word-period.»6 Sometimes I cannot do an illocution because the illocutionary act is not open to do. I cannot christen a ship I have already christened nor marry you if you are already my wife. The illocution has been preempted. The preempting need not have been done by me: I cannot hire you if my partner has already signed you on, or arrest you if the sheriff has just booked you. But sometimes the illocution is no longer open because the associated perlocution has already been effected, whether or not by means of an illocution. For instance, I cannot argue the point with you if you are already persuaded, or warn you of a danger to which you are already alerted, or point out something you already see. Whether I can do these things is, perhaps, problematic if I am ignorant of what has already happened, but it seems clear that I cannot do them if I know that you are already persuaded, alert, or aware. I take it as a kind of rule of thumb that the availability of at least some illocutions requires the openness of their associated perlocutions. The perlocution must be neither known to be already effected nor known to be clearly out of the question. Let me import these points about perlocutions into Dickie's definition. I construe the act of conferring the status of a candidate for appreciation to be like an illocution, and I take the actual appreciation of a thing with this status to be like an associated perlocution. Being appreciated is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for something's being a candidate for appreciation, just as having what I say (about what I will do) accepted is neither necessary nor sufficient for its being a promise. But if what I say is a promise, then it must seem possible that it be accepted. And (supposing Dickie's definition correct), if I am to succeed in conferring the status of art on an object, it must seem possible that it be appreciated. My utterance is not a promise just because I say so, just because it has the form 'I promise. . (I cannot promise that I was on time yesterday, or that it will rain tomorrow.) And neither, I think, is × a work of art just because I say so. There are substantive constraints on what I can promise (however difficult it may be to formulate them), and there must be constraints on what I can make art. But what are they? Dickie names one-× must be an artifact." But this is not enough. What of an artifact The Possibility of Art 195 which clearly cannot be appreciated (in Dickie's sense)? I say that there are such things--for instance, ordinary thumbtacks, cheap white envelopes, the plastic forks given at some drive-in restaurants--and that if Dickie's definition were correct then these things could not be artworks because they could not receive the requisite status. Duchamp's urinal is like that. Things like that cannot acquire the status required by Dickie's second condition because it would be pointless or bizarre to give it to them. Dickie's concrete mistake has been to suppose that Duchamp's "Foun- tain" has anything whatever to do with what Dickie calls appreciation. If such eccentric works are art, then if that requires that they have something in common with traditional art, it is not a candidacy for what they were designed to forestall and disdain. This material error is a symptom of a more formal, conceptual gap-namely, supposing that making something a candidate for appreciation can be altogether unilateral, so that anything whatever could become a candidate upon someone's say-so. In fact, the untoward consequence of Dickie's suggestion is that it will rule out the very items Dickie is eager to accommodate. But then what about «Foun- tain"? Is Duchamp's "Fountain" a work of art, and Dickie's definition wrong because it misses this work, or is Dickie right and so "Fountain" not art? Neither of these choices is a healthy one. I am not clear about whether "Fountain" is a work of art, just like that. I am not as confident as either Dickie or Fried about this. If Fried is right, in the aftermath of Dada we are able to count nearly anything a work of art--but, he says, this leaves unclear what it means to count something as a work of art. What is wrong with Dickie's definition, I think, is that as Dickie takes it, it is clear and it clearly applies to "Fountain." No definition should fit "Fountain' " so comfortably. Why not takes some explaining. To say that an illocution must be' "pointless" if its associated perlocution is not open is not quite right. There can be a point in saying "I promise to love you forever" or "I promise never to feel anger again." Indeed, saying these things can be splendid ways, perhaps the only ways, of saying and doing some things. But that does not make these sayings promises (I think they cannot be promises because these things cannot be promised). Similarly, there can be a point, I suppose, in invoking a formula for bestowing the status of candidate for appreciation on a thing which cannot be an object of appreciation. But that will not give these things that status. In both kinds of cases, as with "pointless" illocutions in general, the effect is to draw attention from the thing said (or the putative object of appreciation) to the act of saying it (or the act of exhibiting it). If Austin is right, we cannot entirely separate the saying and the said without distortion, but we can identify, so to speak, the locus of significance and import: if the situation is normal and altogether unproblematic, the thing 196 The Definition of Ar uttered (or the object of appreciation) engages us; if the situation is in 'ertain ways remarkable, then however canonical the thing uttered seems, we will pass behind it to its genesis. What signiticance We can find in "Fountain" we find not in the urinal but in Duchamp's gesture. It is not that "Fountain" is simply a candidate for appreciation which cannot be appreciated (nor is "I promise to love you forever" simply a promise which cannot be accepted); its transparent resistance to appreciation is the sign that it is not simply a candidate for appreciation (as the fact that love cannot be promised is the sign that this utterance is not simply a promise). It is not only the questionable conception of appreciation which under. mines Dickie's definition. Let us ignore that for a while. At the end of his essay Dickie says: Now what I have been saying may sound like saying, "a work of art is an object of which someone has said, 'I christen this object a work of art.» And I think it is rather like that. So one can make a work of art out of a sow's ear, but of course that does not mean that it is a silk purse [p. 256b]. What I have been arguing is that it cannot be this simple: even if in the end it is successful christening which makes an object art, not every effort at christening is successful. There are bound to be conditions to be met both by the namer and the thing to be named, and if they are completely unsatisfied, then saying "I christen..." will not be to christen. If making a thing art is like an ordinary illocution, then there are prior constraints. Austin's characteristic way of describing a kind of act or thing was to catalogue the dimensions in which it can be irregular. Thus a promise might be untoward, gauche, imprudent, impractical, ineffective, or unac- cepted. As we move through various departures from the normal, pedestrian cases, passing through all the gross irregularities Austin called "infelicities," we come eventually to cases which are no longer promises. The boundary between non-promises and more or less failed promises is hard to locate, but (1) it exists, and (2) it is not identical with the boundary between utterances of the form "I promise ..." and those without it, for this form is neither necessary nor sufficient. If artmaking is like an illocution, then a similar catalogue is in order, an account of the ways in which artmaking can be irregular. I do not blame Dickie for not yet supplying such a catalogue. I do complain that he has not noted the importance of such a catalogue, for if artmaking is simply a matter of informal illocutions, then the catalogue may be the only substantial definition we can get or need. There must be a boundary, however hard to chart, between making art, and trying but failing to make art. Dickie The Possibility of Art 197 cannot account for this, because the difference is not simply the difference between objects which have been called art (or candidates for appreciation) and those which have not. Duchamp's "Fountain" is a difficult case. It is difficult in the adjustment it demands of us, but neither of the two adjustments likely to be suggested is in order. One is to give up defining art, pointing to "Fountain" as an illustration of the inevitable failure of any definition. The other is to formulate a definition which covers "Fountain" as neatly as "Nude." Perhaps the most helpful part of Dickie's view is the implicit suggestion of a way to avoid this choice. Instead of either of these responses, I think we must give up the compulsion to decide about "Fountain," to rule it in or out; and I think we can do this by taking seriously the suggestion that whether "Fountain" is art depends upon whether and how a certain kind of act was performed. Succeeding in getting "Fountain" under, or out from under, the term "art" is a delusive achievement: for the sake of a kind of ontological tidiness, most of what is interesting and instructive about "Fountain" is ignored. What we need to discuss are the ways in which "Fountain" is very much like normal art and the ways in which it is altogether unlike normal art, and then how this bears on the character of Duchamp's act of putting it forward and having it called art. When that discussion is done, nothing may be left to do. So it is with promising. Some cases are clearly promises, some clearly are not. Some are unclear. The unclear cases illuminate the clear ones as they bring out parts of the conception according to which the clear cases are clear. "I promise to wring your neck." Not a promise: I cannot promise what you do not want, knowing you do not want it. "I promise to keep all cigarettes out of your reach." This is not clear. Can I promise you something we agree you need even if we both know you do not want it? The hard thing to do is to hold onto the conviction that we know what art and promises are while refusing to suppose that we always can decide or need to decide. Dickie and others have criticized earlier theories for having lost the good art/ bad art distinction, often, as with Collingwood, willfully absorbing it into the very distinction between art and non-art. Ironically, Dickie has effectively reversed this: he has provided for room on the bad art side of the good art/ bad art distinction for much of what is normally taken to be non-art. He says: Please remember that when I say "Fountain" is a work of art, I am not saying it is a good one. And in making this last remark I am not insinuating that it is a bad one either [p. 255b]. 198 The Definition of Ar This is the view Diokie proposes, Notabhia. anguish oN, whatever. From This jow'"he Teal dificulty. ihe phidasophi caneshe:) will arise anein ¡his WilY OT art has been settied, and thnt, bicatist *; never more whate nominine"Nike authority) in the artwnether the twine n codified- (P. 2358 sin] st It may be hard to discover whether it inline has been christense) and view Obseures t00 much. The works of athe majntess Fried discuid, Thilla?, Noland, Olitski) are clearly works of art, and the serious questioes {stell' hem concern what kinds of paintines, they are, and whelher d why they are good. But there are very few such questions about "Fold. lain. " most Dada works, and many contempotary works; The questions daldue them concern exactly whether and why they are art, and how they alcame anything like art. To make these questions easy is both to mistake The nature of these objects and to refuse to take seriously the question e the possibility of the creation of art. Notes 1. George Dickie, "Defining Art," American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1969), 253-256. All references to Dickie are to this essay and I will give page numbers parenthetically in the body of the text, using 'a' and "b' to refer to the left and right columns of the pages. 2. Michael Fried, the catalogue essay for Three American Painters, an exhibi- tion of Noland, Olitski, and Stella, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1965, p. 47. 3. Arthur Danto, "The Artworld," Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964), 571-584; Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (New York, 1968), especially sec. 46, and 'Minimal Art," Arts Magazine 39 (1965), 26-32. Dickie cites Danto's paper as a stimulus to his own view. 4. This suggestion, I suspect, would be much more agreeable to Danto than to Dickie. I say this only on the basis of some remembered remarks of Danto's made during discussions at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Aesthetics Institute, May 1971. Despite Dickie's accurate recognition in Danto of a view broadly similar to his own in the matter of saying what art is, there are acute differences. S. The outlines of Austin's conceptions of illocutions and perlocutions are, I hope, familiar enough not to need rehearsing here, and it is only, a general accoun that I am concerned with. For Austin's detailed account see his William James Lectures, published as How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), especially pp. 98 ff. 6. I leave some principal questions concerning the relations between illocutions and perlocutions untreated here, trusting that i have said enough to clarify the point I will make about Dickie's definition. These questions- for instance, why The Possibility of Art 199 ought not simply to separate promises from non-promises, warnings from non- warnings, etc., without reference to perlocutions, whether every illocution is associated with some perlocution in the way promising is associated with securing acceptance, whether Austin was sufficiently acute in distinguishing illocutions from perlocutions by declaring only the former to be "conventional"_are taken up in my "Illocutions and Perlocutions," forthcoming in Foundations of Language. 7. I have completely recast Dickie's formulation, so that it calls for an illocution to be done and imposes one constraint on the circumstances appropriate to that kind of illocution. I should point out that Dickie has a different model in mind. He takes himself to be giving a definition by genus (artifactuality) and differentia (candidacy for appreciation). 8. In Danto's "The Artworld" (op. cit.) I find a suggestion of a way to treat artmaking as an extraordinary illocution, one whose constraints are always emen- dable. In the last section of the essay, Danto ventures some remarks which, in rough summary, are to this effect: there is a set of pairs of artwork-relevant predicates. Each pair consists of two "opposite" predicates (e.g., "'representa- tional"/"nonrepresentational," "expressionist"/"nonexpressionist"). Opposites, un- like contradictories as usually construed, do not sensibly apply to all objects; but with regard to any artwork they behave as contradictories. (It is not true that anything is either representational or nonrepresentational; it is true that any artwork is either representational or nonrepresentational.) A necessary condition for an object to be an artwork is that at least one pair of artwork-relevant predicates be sensibly applicable to it. Danto remarks that an artistic breakthrough may consist in adding a pair of artwork-relevant predicates. Then we might try to think of artmaking in this way: the constraints on what can be christened art are given by the condition that some artwork-relevant predicate pair be sensibly applicable to the object. But it is possible to make art of an unqualified object not by altering the object but by adding to the set of predicate pairs a pair already sensibly applicable to the object. In order to work out the details of this suggestion, one will have to say something about how a predicate pair can be made a member of the set. The project is complicated by Danto's ingenious observation that once an object is an artwork all artwork-relevant predicate pairs apply. This means that after the fact, the new pair will be as definitive as the older ones of earlier artworks, and the older pairs will sensibly apply to the new work. I should make clear that Danto's remarks are made in an altogether different context, and their adaptability to a discussion of the illocutionary act of making art is my own tentative suggestion. In any case, the suggestion is of no use to Dickie, who seems to conceive the act as an ordinary illocution. Indeed, whereas Danto's idea might at last give content to Morris Weitz's somewhat dogmatic claim that the conditions for a thing to be art are indefinitely corrigible ("The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 [1956], 27-35), Dickie's essay is offered as an explicit refutation of Weitz. J. J. bib son “ Gmail kac attac Marg -> 228 kac attac Tue, Jun 6, 2023 at 1:45 PM To: Stefan Kac “ Part Three The Ontology of Art Theorizing about what kind of entity a work of art is cannot but be initially baffling. If, on the one hand, we insist that it is some sort of self-contained entity that exists independently of being appreciated, we have difficulty accommodating literature at least. If, on the other, we insist that a work of art exists only insofar as an aesthetic percipient interacts with some other object--an object less than the work of art that emerges from the putative interaction- we have difficulty fixing a work of art as a public object that may attract critical exchange capable of a measure of objectivity (see Part One). Some works of art, notably in the plastic arts, either are or are quite closely linked to physical objects--or so it seems; and other art works--notably where notations are readily accessible, as in music, literature, drama- seem hardly to be physical objects at all. In some of the arts, we are inclined to think that particular works are uniquely manifested, paintings for instance, or medieval cathedrals- though the qualification suggests a mere contingency. In other of the arts, etchings and music for instance, we are quite prepared to speak of particular printings of the same etching and particular performances of the same sonata. Hence, we are tempted to think that some works of art are particular objects and that some are not particulars of any sort at all. Finally, in this regard, there is good reason to think that the metaphysical peculiarities of art are bound to be matched by every other kind of entity that can be distinguished in the context of human culture--persons, for instance, or words and sentences, even actions of an institutionalized sort. So the ontology of art promises to be a pecularily strategic inquiry, in terms of which, briefly, the relationship between human culture and physical nature may be perspicuously sketched. Broadly speaking, the central issues tend to cluster around the question of how to identify and reidentify a particular work of art and around the 204 The Ontology of Art question of how to specify the nature of the entity thus identified. These questions are not entirely separable, of course, because a favored answer to one will affect the eligibility of answers to the other. And the answers to either are bound to reflect larger strategies concerning a comprehensive philosophy. Thus, for example, an adherence to materialism is likely to encourage the view that works of art are physical objects or at least intimately "associated" in some way with physical objects. The difficulty of maintaining that thesis may incline one toward a form of idealism or at least to an idealistically skewed account; and with that may come support for the claim that works of art are actually not particulars at all. but universals. There is no tightly linear history of the theory of art. Nevertheless, one can excerpt the views of a number of leading contemporary discussants about the ontology of art that yield a strong sense of continuity and of the pointed and deliberate refinement of the central questions. In this regard, though he cannot rightly be said to have written in the analytic style favored by the Anglo-American tradition, Roman Ingarden (Part One) has, perhaps uniquely, provided a clear picture of the phenomenological aspects of our aesthetic interest in art and of the inescapable ontological complexities that that engenders. Ingarden appreciated the dependence of aesthetically relevant remarks on the public identification of a work of art, but he also wished to accommodate the variety of sensitive discriminations that different percipients differently placed might defensibly be led to make, on the basis (he supposed) of the somewhat schematic structure of actual art works. Ingarden was led, therefore, to think of a work of art as, somehow, the developing construction of a historically changing com- munity of sensitive respondents. In order to fix the identity of particular works, he was attracted to the view that, although a work of art was made up of a number of "levels" of elements, some were more fundamental than others (relative to identity) and perhaps also less amenable to the variable flowering of interpretive and appreciative responses. There is a sense in which Ingarden fixes the field to be analyzed without providing an entirely explicit and coherent analysis of the entities of the field. For we are left with the problem of the precise conditions under which works of art are actually identified and of the precise sense in which a work of art is an object of some particular kind. What one wants to know is, how can the variety of properties attributed to works of art actually be the properties of some particular thing? Ingarden indicates well enough the range of such properties that must be accounted for; but he does not tell us how to collect them in the ontologically relevant sense. The papers included in Part Three attempt to sort the different kinds of art- given the rather different properties that poems, paintings, sonatas, The Ontology of Art 205 etchings, and the like exhibit-in a way that will permit us to say whether there is some general rubric that could cover all the arts and, if so, what it might be. Richard Wollheim (1968), for example, is inclined to contrast those arts that either involve performance or depend on notation (the two being quite closely linked, as in music, or, more ambiguously, as in literature) with those arts (chiefly, the plastic arts) that directly involve composition with physical materials. His conclusions are somewhat tenta- tive. He cannot altogether reject a physicalist account of certain of the arts, since on his view, expressive and representational properties may be ascribed to physical objects (see Parts Four and Five); but, on the other hand, he cannot fit such a view to other of the arts and is therefore attracted to the possibility that (some) works of art are universals. What Wollheim makes clear is that the type/token distinction, explored earlier in the literature, is absolutely central to the clarification of the ontology of art. In this regard he attempts to sort out the differences between the class/ member distinction, the kind / instance distinction and the type /token distinction. Ironically, it is his adherence to the phenomenological aspects of aesthetic appreciation that complicates his ontology, for it is his attention to the complexities of performance and interpretation that lead him to theorize about art works as universals. We are, however, bound to raise questions about how particular (token) works could conceivably share properties with abstract entities (types) thought somehow to be the works of art. For example, if music uses sound, then how is it that an abstract entity, a sonata, could possibly have temporal or spatial or sensory properties? And if the entities favored fail to exhibit such properties, then how can they be the works we attend to in the usual way? Nicholas Wolterstorff (1975), in effect, presses these difficulties against Wollheim, preserving the latter' distinction between "objects" and "per- formances. » Wolterstorff rejects the view that types and tokens can share properties, opting instead for the ingenious view that they share predicates. He therefore finds no difficulty in viewing works of art as universals, in conformity with a more general defense of his, favoring the reality of universals (in On Universals [1970]. But Wolterstorff's solution raises difficulties of its own: first of all because it is not clear how types and tokens can ' "share" predicates or what that entails; secondly because the special difficulties confronting Wollheim's view confront Wolterstorff's as well. In particular, Wolterstorff must face the problem of explaining how it is that works of art can be created and destroyed- even if that involves destroying a notation--as well as the problem of explaining how an abstract entity can be said to have sensory or physical properties of any sort. The puzzle persists, therefore, that, say, a sonata can be heard but heard in different performances in different places at different or the same times. J. T. bid sen 206 The Ontology of Art How to interpret the type/token relationship still presents difficulties. And of course, more fundamentally, Wolterstorff's thesis rests entirely on the plausibility of a Platonist picture of reality. For example, it is not clear in what sense, following Wolterstorff, we may suppose that the "world» of Gogol's Dead Souls may be said to be real prior to the historical events of Gogol's Russia. It does look as if Wolterstorff's account could not survive the defeat of Platonism or the denial of or agnostic response to the claim that the whole of nature falls within God's providential order. Joseph Margolis (1977) has attempted to link the problems of numerical identity and of metaphysical nature together. By insisting on the ontologi- cal distinction of culturally emergent entities--in particular, works of art-he interprets tokens as tokens-of-types and construes what is thus in- dividuated as an "embodied" entity of a certain complex sort. There are, therefore, no types distinct from tokens that could be compared or that could be said to share either properties or predicates. Tokens simply are tokens-of-types; and reference to types is heuristically introduced solely for the purpose of facilitating the individuation of particular objects as tokens of one and the same type. Correspondingly, the notion of an embodied entity is intended to facilitate the collection of the entire range of relevant properties--both physical and intentional--that Ingarden and others have insisted may be ascribed to works of art. The solution offered is charac- terized as a form of nonreductive materialism and suggests something of the ontological oddity of works of art in particular and of cultural entities in general. That solution, however, does not countenance a dualism of substances, only a nonreducible plurality of kinds of properties. Art works, embodied entities in general, are complex (emergent)-not compound or additive- entities, exhibiting properties that obtain only in the indissolubly embodied form in which they exist in the world of human culture. Nelson Goodman (1976) has focused in a useful way the general problem between what he calls autographic and allographic arts, which the question of art fakes and forgeries dramatizes. For, on Goodman's view, forgeries of musical works, for example, are impossible- in general, forgeries of allographic works. Goodman's account has started a considerable industry (see Dutton, ed., 1983). Because of his nominalism, however, Goodman would be entirely unwilling to construe the autographic/allographic dis- tinction in terms of the strong reading of the type/token distinction favored by Wollheim and Wolterstorff, as opposed, say, to that favored by Margolis. Nevertheless, it may be argued both that so-called allographic works may be forgeries, without boarding the realism/ nominalism issue, and (more importantly) that there is no principled distinction to be had between autographic and allographic arts--that all art works are identified and characterized in terms of their history of production and that any art The Ontology of Art 207 work can, reasonably, in accord with the contingencies of technology and social tolerance, be authentically duplicated or rendered in plural in- stances. Furthermore, notations or scores for art works must themselves be suitably read in autographically relevant terms (see Margolis, 1984). All these papers, however, force us to consider whether an adequate ontology can be formulated that declines to take into consideration the special products of human culture. In this respect, the philosophy of art serves strategically as an introduction to the largest conceptual issue that confronts us all, namely, that of the relationship between physical nature and human culture. What, we want to know, must be added to our account of nature in order to accommodate the existence of persons, of works of art, of language itself? 11. Art and Its Objects RICHARD WOLLHEIM 4 Let us begin with the hypothesis that works of art are physical objects. I shall call this for the sake of brevity the "physical-object hypothesis." Such a hypothesis is a natural starting point: if only for the reason that it is plausible to assume that things are physical objects unless they very obviously aren't. Certain things very obviously aren't physical objects. Now though it may not be obvious that works of art are physical objects, they don't seem to belong among these other things. They don't, that is, immediately group themselves along with thoughts, or periods of history, or numbers, or mirages. Furthermore, and more substantively, this hypothesis accords with many traditional conceptions of Art and its objects and what they are. 5 Nevertheless the hypothesis that all works of art are physical objects can be challenged. For our purposes it will be useful, and instructive, to divide this challenge into two parts; the division conveniently corresponding to a division within the arts themselves. For in the case of certain arts the argument is that there is no physical object that can with any plausibility be identified as the work of art: there is no object existing in space and time (as physical objects must) that can be picked out and thought of as a piece of music or a novel. In the case of other arts--most notably painting and sculpture- the argument is that, though there are physical objects of a From Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), sections 4-10, 15-16, 18-20, 35-38. Reprinted with permission of the author and Harper and Row. 11. Art and Its Objects RICHARD WOLLHEIM 4 Let us begin with the hypothesis that works of art are physical objects. I shall call this for the sake of brevity the "physical-object hypothesis." Such a hypothesis is a natural starting point: if only for the reason that it is plausible to assume that things are physical objects unless they very obviously aren't. Certain things very obviously aren't physical objects. Now though it may not be obvious that works of art are physical objects, they don't seem to belong among these other things. They don't, that is, immediately group themselves along with thoughts, or periods of history, or numbers, or mirages. Furthermore, and more substantively, this hypothesis accords with many traditional conceptions of Art and its objects and what they are. 5 Nevertheless the hypothesis that all works of art are physical objects can be challenged. For our purposes it will be useful, and instructive, to divide this challenge into two parts; the division conveniently corresponding to a division within the arts themselves. For in the case of certain arts the argument is that there is no physical object that can with any plausibility be identified as the work of art: there is no object existing in space and time (as physical objects must) that can be picked out and thought of as a piece of music or a novel. In the case of other arts--most notably painting and sculpture- the argument is that, though there are physical objects of a From Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), sections 4-10, 15-16, 18-20, 35-38. Reprinted with permission of the author and Harper and Row. Art and Its Objects 209 standard and acceptable kind that could be, indeed generally are, identified as works of art, such identifications are wrong. The first part of this challenge is, as we shall see, by far the harder to meet. However it is, fortunately, not it, but the second part of the chal- lenge, that potentially raises such difficulties for aesthetics. 6 That there is a physical object that can be identified as Ulysses or Der Rosenkavalier is not a view that can long survive the demand that we should pick out or point to that object. There is, of course, the copy of Ulysses that is on my table before me now, there is the performance of Der Rosenkavalier that I will go to tonight, and both these two things may (with some latitude, it is true, in the case of the performance) be regarded as physical objects. Furthermore, a common way of referring to these objects is by saying things like "Ulysses is on my table," 'I shall see Rosenkavalier tonight": from which it would be tempting (but erroneous) to conclude that Ulysses just is my copy of it, Rosenkavalier just is tonight's performance. Tempting, but erroneous; and there are a number of very succinct ways of bringing out the error involved. For instance, it would follow that if I lost my copy of Ulysses, Ulysses would become a lost work. Again, it would follow that if the critics disliked tonight's performance of Rosenkavalier, then they dislike Rosenkavalier. Clearly neither of these inferences is acceptable. We have here two locutions or ways of describing the facts: one in terms of works of art, the other in terms of copies, performances, etc., of works of art. Just because there are contexts in which these two locutions are interchangeable, this does not mean that there are no contexts, moreover no contexts of a substantive kind, in which they are not interchangeable. There very evidently are such contexts, and the physical-object hypothesis would seem to overlook them to its utter detriment. 7 But, it might not be maintained, of course it is absurd to identify Ulysses with my copy of it or Der Rosenkavalier with tonight's performance, but nothing follows from this of a general character about the wrongness of identifying works of art with physical objects. For what was wrong in these two cases was the actual physical object that was picked out and with which the identification was then made. The validity of the physical-object hypothesis, like that of any other hypothesis, is quite unaffected by the consequences of misapplying it. For instance, it is obviously wrong to say that Ulysses is my copy of it. 210 The Ontology of Art Nevertheless, there is a physical object, of precisely the same order of being as my copy, though significantly not called a "copy" with which such an identification would be quite correct. This object is the author's manuscript: that, in other words, which Joyce wrote when he wrote Ulysses. On the intimate connection, which undoubtedly does exist, between a novel or a poem on the one hand and the author's manuscript on the other, I shall have something to add later. But the connection does not justify us in asserting that one just is the other. Indeed, to do so seems open to objections not all that dissimilar from those we have just been considering. The critic, for instance, who admires Ulysses does not neces- sarily admire the manuscript. Nor is the critic who has seen or handled the manuscript in a privileged position as such when it comes to judgment on the novel. And--here we have come to an objection directly parallel to that which seemed fatal to identifying Ulysses with my copy of it-it would be possible for the manuscript to be lost and Ulysses to survive. None of this can be admitted by the person who thinks that Ulysses and the manuscript are one and the same thing. To this last objection someone might retort that there are cases (e.g., Love's Labour Won, Kleist's Robert Guiscard) where the manuscript is lost and the work is lost, and moreover the work is lost because the manuscript is lost. Of course there is no real argument here, since nothing more is claimed than that there are some cases like this. Nevertheless the retort is worth pursuing, for the significance of such cases is precisely the opposite of that intended. Instead of reinforcing, they actually diminish, the status of the manuscript. For if we now ask, When is the work lost when the manuscript is lost? the answer is, When and only when the manuscript is unique: but then this would be true for any copy of the work were it unique. Moreover, it is significant that in the case of Rosenkavalier it is not even possible to construct an argument corresponding to the one about Ulysses. To identify an opera or any other piece of music with the composer's holograph, which looks the corresponding thing to do, is implausible because (for instance), whereas an opera can be heard, a holograph cannot be. In consequence it is common at that stage of the argument, when music is considered, to introduce a new notion, that of the ideal performance, and then to identify the piece of music with this. There are many difficulties here: in the present context it is enough to point out that this step could not conceivably satisfy the purpose for which it was intended; that is, that of saving the physical-object hypothesis. For an ideal performance cannot be, even in the attenuated sense in which we have extended the term to ordinary performances, a physical object. Art and Its Objects 211 8 A final and desperate expedient to save the physical-object hypothesis is to suggest that all those works of art which cannot plausibly be identified with physical objects are identical with classes of such objects. A novel, of which there are copies, is not my or your copy but is the class of all its copies. An opera, of which there are performances, is not tonight's or last night's performance, nor even the ideal performance, but is the class of all its performances. (Of course, strictly speaking, this suggestion doesn't save the hypothesis at all: since a class of physical objects isn't necessarily, indeed is most unlikely to be, a physical object itself. But it saves something like the spirit of the hypothesis.) However, it is not difficult to think of objections to this suggestion. Ordinarily we conceive of a novelist as writing a novel, or a composer as finishing an opera. But both these ideas imply some moment in time at which the work is complete. Now suppose (which is not unlikely) that the copies of a novel or the performances of an opera go on being produced for an indefinite period: then, on the present suggestion, there is no such moment, let alone one in their creator's lifetime. So we cannot say that Ulysses was written by Joyce, or that Strauss composed Der Rosenkavalier. Or, again, there is the problem of the unperformed symphony, or the poem of which there is not even a manuscript: in what sense can we now say that these things even exist? But perhaps a more serious, certainly a more interesting, objection is that in this suggestion what is totally unexplained is why the various copies of Ulysses are all said to be copies of Ulysses and nothing else, why all the performances of Der Rosenkavalier are reckoned performances of that one opera. For the ordinary explanation of how we come to group copies or performances as being of this book or of that opera is by reference to something else, something other than themselves, to which they stand in some special relation. (Exactly what this other thing is, or what is the special relation in which they stand to it is, of course, something we are as yet totally unable to say.) But the effect, indeed precisely the point, of the present suggestion is to eliminate the possibility of any such reference: if a novel or opera just is its copies or its performances, then we cannot, for purposes of identification, refer from the latter to the former. The possibility that remains is that the various particular objects, the copies or performances, are grouped as they are, not by reference to some other thing to which they are related, but in virtue of some relation that holds between them: more specifically, in virtue of resemblance. But, in the first place, all copies of Ulysses, and certainly all perfor- mances of Der Rosenkavalier, are not perfect matches. And if it is now 212 The Ontology of Art said that the differences do not matter, either because the various copies or performance resemble each other in all relevant respects, or because they resemble each other more than they resemble the copies or perfor- mances of any other novel or opera, neither answer is adequate. The first answer begs the issue, in that to talk of relevant respects presupposes that we know how, say, copies of Ulysses are grouped together: the second answer evades the issue, in that thought it may tell us why we do not, say, reckon any of the performances of Der Rosenkavalier as performances of Arabella, it gives us no indication why we do not set some of them up separately, as performances of some third opera. Secondly, it seems strange to refer to the resemblance between the copies of Ulysses or the performances of Rosenkavalier as though this were a brute fact: a fact, moreover, which could be used to explain why they were copies or performances of what they are. It would be more natural to think of this so-called "fact" as something that itself stood in need of explanation: and, moreover, as finding its explanation in just that which it is here invoked to explain. In other words, to say that certain copies or performances are of Ulysses or Rosenkavalier because they resemble one another seems precisely to reverse the natural order of thought: the resemblance, we would think, follows from, or is to be understood in terms of, the fact that they are of the same novel or opera. 9 However, those who are ready to concede that some kinds of works of art are not physical objects will yet insist that others are. Ulysses and Der Rosenkavalier may not be physical objects, but the Donna Velata and Donatello's Saint George most certainly are. I have already suggested (Section 5) that the challenge to the physical object hypothesis can be divided into two parts. It will be clear that I am now about to embark on the second part of the challenge: namely, that which allows that there are (some) physical objects that could conceivably be identified as works of art, but insists that it would be quite erroneous to make the identification. (To some, such a course of action may seem superfluous. For enough has been said to disprove the physical-object hypothesis. That is true; but the argument that is to come has its intrinsic interest, and for that reason is worth developing. Those for whom the interest of all philosophical argument is essentially polemical, and who have been convinced by the preceding argument, may choose to think of that which is to follow as bearing upon a revised or weakened version of the physical-object hypothesis: namely, that some works of art are physical objects.) Art and Its Objects 213 10 In the Pitti there is a canvas (No. 245) 85 cm X 64 cm: in the Museo Nazionale, Florence, there is a piece of marble 209 cm high. It is with these physical objects that those who claim that the Donna Velata and the Saint George are physical objects would naturally identify them. This identification can be disputed in (roughly) one or other of two ways. It can be argued that the work of art has properties which are incompatible with certain properties that the physical object has, alterna- tively it can be argued that the work of art has properties which no physical object could have: in neither case could the work of art be the physical object. An argument of the first kind would run: We say of the St. George that it moves with life (Vasari). Yet the block of marble is inanimate. Therefore the St. George cannot be that block of marble. An argument of the second kind would run: We say of the Donna Velata that it is exalted and dignified (Wölfflin). Yet a piece of canvas in the Pitti cannot conceivably have these qualities. Therefore the Donna Velata cannot be that piece of canvas. These two arguments, I suggest, are not merely instances of these two ways of arguing, they are characteristic instances. For the argument that there is an incompatibility of property between works of art and physical objects characteristically concentrates on the representational properties of works of art. The argument that works of art have properties that physical objects could not have characteristically concentrates on the expressive properties of works of art. The terms "representational" and "expressive" are used here in a very wide fashion, which, it is hoped, will become clear as the discussion proceeds. 15 We might begin by considering two false views of how works of art acquire their expressiveness: not simply so as to put them behind us, but because each is in its way a pointer to the truth. Neither view requires us to suppose that works of art are anything other than physical objects. The first view is that works of art are expressive because they have been produced in a certain state of mind or feeling on the part of the artist: and to this the rider is often attached, that it is this mental or emotional condition that they express. But if we take the view first of all with the rider attached, its falsehood is apparent. For it is a common happening that a painter or sculptor modifies or even rejects a work of his because he finds that it fails to correspond to what he experienced at the time. If, valln 15 ipht 214 The Ontology of Art however, we drop the rider, the view now seems arbitrary or perhaps incomplete. For there seems to be no reason why a work should be expressive simply because it was produced in some heightened condition if it is also admitted that the work and the condition need not have the same character. (It would be like trying to explain why a man who has measles is ill by citing the fact that he was in contact with someone else who was also ill when that other person was not ill with measles or anything related to measles.) It must be understood that I am not criticis- ing the view because it allows an artist to express in his work a condition other than that which he was in at the time: my case is rather that the view does wrong both to allow this fact and to insist that the expressive- ness of the work can be accounted for exclusively in terms of the artist's condition. However, what is probably the more fundamental objection to this view, and is the point that has been emphasized by many recent philosophers, is that the work's expressiveness now becomes a purely external feature of it. It is no longer something that we can or might observe, it is something that we infer from what we observe: it has been detached from the object as it manifests itself to us, and placed in its history, so that it now belongs more to the biography of the artist than to criticism of the work. And this seems wrong. For the qualities of gravity, sweetness, fear, that we invoke in describing works of art seem essential to our under- standing of them; and if they are, they cannot be extrinsic to the works themselves. They cannot be, that is, mere attributes of the experiences or activities of Masaccio, of Raphael, of Grünewald- they inhere rather in the Brancacci frescoes, in the Granduca Madonna, in the Isenheim Altarpiece. The second view is that works of art are expressive because they produce or are able to produce a certain state of mind or feeling in the spectator; moreover and in the case of this view it is difficult to imagine the rider ever detached), it is this mental or emotional condition that they express. This view is open to objections that closely parallel those we have just considered. For, in the first place, it seems clearly false. Before works even of the most extreme emotional intensity, like Bernini's St. Teresa or the black paintings of Goya, it is possible to remain more or less unexcited to the emotion that it would be agreed they express. Indeed, there are many theories that make it a distinguishing or defining feature of art that it should be viewed with detachment, that there should be a distancing on the part of the spectator between what the work expresses and what he experiences although it is worth noting, in passing, that those theorists who have been most certain that works of art do not arouse emotion have also been uncertain, in some cases confused, as to how this comes about: Art and Its Objects 215 sometimes attributing it to the artist, sometimes to the spectator; some- times, that is, saying that the artist refrains from giving the work the necessary causal power, sometimes saying that the spectator holds himself back from reacting to this power. However, the main objection to this view, as to the previous one, is that it removes what we ordinarily think of as one of the essential characteris- tics of the work of art from among its manifest properties, locating it this time not in its past but in its hidden or dispositional endowment. And if it is now argued that this is a very pertinent difference, in that the latter is, in principle at least, susceptible to our personal verification in a way in which the former never could be, this misses the point. Certainly we can actualize the disposition, by bringing it about that the work produces in us the condition it is supposed to express: and there is clearly no corresponding way in which we can actualize the past. But though this is so, this still does not make the disposition itself--and it is with this, after all, that the work's expressiveness is equated--any the more a property that we can observe. 16 And yet there seems to be something to both these views: as an examina- tion of some hypothetical cases might bring out. For let us imagine that we are presented with a physical object-we shall not for the moment assume that it either is or is supposed to be a work of art- and the claim is made on its behalf, in a way that commands our serious attention, that it is expressive of a certain emotion: say, grief. We then learn that it had been produced quite casually, as a diversion or as part of a game: and we must further suppose that it arouses neither in us nor in anyone else anything more than mild pleasure. Can we, in the light of these facts, accept the claim? It is conceivable that we might; having certain special reasons. But now let us imagine that the claim is made on behalf not of a single or isolated object, but of a whole class of objects of which our original example would be a fair specimen, and it turns out that what was true of it is true of all of them both as to how they were produced and as to what they produce in us. Surely it is impossible to imagine any circumstances in which we would allow this claim. But what are we to conclude from this? Are we to say that the two views are true in a general way, and that error arises only when we think of them as applying in each and every case? The argument appears to point in this direction, but at the same time it seems an unsatisfactory actually Seeny 216 The Ontology of Art state in which to leave the matter. (Certain contemporary moral phil- sophers, it is true, seem to find a parallel situation in their own area perfectly congenial, when they say that an individual action can be right even though it does not satisfy the utilitarian criterion, provided that that sort of action, or that that action in general, satisfies the criterion: the utilitarian criterion, in other words, applies on the whole, though not in each and every case.) The difficulty here is this: Suppose we relax the necessary condition in the particular case because it is satisfied in general, with what right do we continue to regard the condition that is satisfied in general as necessary? Ordinarily the argument for regarding a condition as necessary is that there could not be, or at any rate is not, anything of the requisite kind that does not satisfy it. But this argument is not open to us here. Accordingly, at the lowest, we must be prepared to give some account of how the exceptions arise: or, alternatively, why we are so insistent on the condition in general. To return to the example: it seems unacceptable to say that a single object can express grief though it was not produced in, nor is it productive of, that emotion, but that a class of objects cannot express grief unless most of them, or some of them, or a fair sample of them, satisfy these conditions--unless we can explain why we discriminate in this way. At this point what we might do is to turn back and look at the special reasons, as I called them, which we might have for allowing an individual object to be expressive of grief though it did not satisfy the conditions that hold generally. There seem to be roughly two lines of thought which if followed might allow us to concede expressiveness. We might think, "Though the person who made this object didn't feel grief when he made it, yet this is the sort of thing I would make if I felt grief. .." Alternatively we might think, "Though I don't feel grief when I look at this here and now, yet I am sure that in other circumstances I would. .." Now, if I am right in thinking that these are the relevant considerations, we can begin to see some reason for our discrimination between the particular and the general case. For there is an evident difficulty in seeing how these con- siderations could apply to a whole class of objects: given, that is, that the class is reasonably large. For our confidence that a certain kind of object was what we would produce if we experienced grief would be shaken by the fact that not one (or very few) had actually been produced in grief: equally, our confidence that in other circumstances we should feel grief in looking at them could hardly survive the fact that no one (or scarcely anyone) ever had. The special reasons no longer operating, the necessary conditions reassert themselves. Art and Its Objects 217 18 The question, however, might now be raised, Suppose the two criteria, which hitherto have been taken so closely together, should diverge: for they might: how could we settle the issue? And the difficulty here is not just that there is no simple answer to the question, but that it looks as though any answer given to it would be arbitrary. Does this, therefore, mean that the two criteria are quite independent, and that the whole concept of expression, if, that is, it is constituted as I have suggested, is a contingent conjunction of two elements, which could as easily fall apart as together? I shall argue that the concept of expression, at any rate as this applies to the arts, is indeed complex, in that it lies at the intersection of two constituent notions of expression. We can gain some guidance as to these notions from the two views of expression we have been considering, for they are both reflected in, though also distorted by, these views. But, whereas the two views seem quite contingently connected, and have no clear point of union, once we understand what these notions are we can see how and why they interact. Through them we can gain a better insight into the concept of expression as a whole. In the first place, and perhaps most primitively, we think of a work of art as expressive: that is to say, we conceive of it as coming so directly and immediately out of some particular emotional or mental state that it bears unmistakable marks of that state upon it. In this sense the word remains very close to its etymology: ex-primere, to squeeze out or press out. An expression is a secretion of an inner state. I shall refer to this as "natural expression." Alongside this notion is another, which we apply when we think of an object as expressive of a certain condition because, when we are in that condition, it seems to us to match, or correspond with, what we experience inwardly: and perhaps when the condition passes, the object is also good for reminding us of it in some special poignant way, or for reviving it for us. For an object to be expressive in this sense, there is no requirement that it should originate in the condition that it expresses, nor indeed is there any stipulation about is genesis: for these purposes it is simply a piece of the environment which we appropriate on account of the way it seems to reiterate something in us. Expression in this sense I shall (following a famous nineteenth-century usage) call "correspondence 99 We may now link this with the preceding discussion by saying that the preoccupation with what the artist felt, or might have felt, reflects a concern with the work of art as a piece of natural expression: whereas the preoccupation with what the spectator feels, or might feel, reflects a concern with the work of art as an example of correspondence. But though these two notions are logically distinct, in practice they are J. J. Gibson 218 The Ontology of Art bound to interact: indeed, it is arguable that it goes beyond the limit of legitimate abstraction to imagine one without the other. We can see this by considering the notion of appropriateness, or fittingness, conceived as a relation holding between expression and expressed. We might think that such a relation has a place only in connection with correspondences. For in the case of natural expression, the link between inner and outer is surely too powerful or too intimate to allow its mediation. It is not because tears seem like grief that we regard them as an expression of grief: nor does a man when he resorts to tears do so because they match his condition. So we might think. But in reality, at any level above the most primitive, natural expression will always be colored or influenced by some sense of what is appropriate; there will be a feedback from judgment, however inchoate or unconscious this may be, to gesture or exclamation. Again, when we turn to correspondence, it might seem that here we are guided entirely by appropriateness or the fit: that is to say, we appeal uniquely to the appearances or characteristics of objects, which hold for us, in some quite unanalyzed way, an emotional significance. We do not (we might think) check these reactions against observed correlations. But once again this is a simplification. Apart from a few primitive cases, no physiognomic perception will be independent of what is for us the supreme example of the relationship between inner and outer: that is, the human body as the expression of the psyche. When we endow a natural object or an artifact with expressive meaning, we tend to see it corporeally: that is, we tend to credit it with a particular look which bears a marked analogy to some look that the human body wears and that is constantly conjoined with an inner state. 10 To the question, Can a work of art be a physical object if it is also expressive? it now looks as though we can, on the basis of the preceding account of expression, give an affirmative answer. For that account was elaborated with specifically in mind those arts where it is most plausible to think of a work of art as a physical object. But it may seem that with both the two notions of expression that I have tried to formulate, there remains an unexamined or problematic residue. And in the two cases the problem is much the same. It may be stated like this: Granted that in each case the process I have described is perfectly comprehensible, how do we come at the end of it to attribute a human emotion to an object? In both cases the object has certain characteristics. In one case these characteristics mirror, in the other case they are caused by, certain inner states of ours. Why, on the basis of this, do the names of the inner states get transposed to the objects? Art and Its Objects 219 The difficulty with this objection might be put by saying that it treats a philosophical reconstruction of a part of our language as though it were a historical account. For it is not at all clear that, in the cases where we attribute emotions to objects in the ways that I have tried to describe, we have any other way of talking about the objects themselves. There is not necessarily a prior description in nonemotive terms, on which we super- impose the emotive description. Or, to put the same point in nonlinguistic terms, it is not always the case that things that we see as expressive, we can or could see in any other way. In such cases what we need is not a justification, but an explanation, of our language. That I hope to have given. 20 We have now completed our discussion of the physical-object hypothesis, and this would be a good moment at which to pause and review the situation. The hypothesis, taken literally, has been clearly shown to be false: in that there are arts where it is impossible to find physical objects that are even candidates for being identified with works of art (Sections 6-8). However, as far as those other arts are concerned where such physical objects can be found, the arguments against the identification--namely, those based on the fact that works of art have properties not predicable of physical objects- seemed less cogent (Sections 9-19). I have now to justify the assertion that I made at the very beginning of the discussion (Section 5), that it was only insofar as it related to these latter arts that the challenge to this hypothesis had any fundamental significance for aesthetics. The general issue raised, whether works of art are physical objects, seems to compress two questions: the difference between which can be brought out by accenting first one, then the other, constituent word in the operative phrase. Are works of art physical objects? Are works of art physical objects? The first question would be a question about the stuff or constitution of works of art, what in the broadest sense they are made of: more specifically, are they mental? or physical? are they constructs of the mind? The second question would be a question about the category to which works of art belong, about the criteria of identity and individua- tion applicable to them: more specifically, are they universals, of which there are instances? or classes, of which there are members? are they par- ticulars? Roughly speaking, the first question might be regarded as meta- physical, the second as logical. And, confusingly enough, both can be put in the form of a question about what kind of thing a work of art is. Applying this distinction to the preceding discussion, we can now see 220 The Ontology of Art that the method of falsifying the hypothesis that all works of art are physical objects has been to establish that there are some works of art that are not objects (or particulars) at all: whereas the further part of the case, which depends upon establishing that those works of art which are objects are nevertheless not physical, has not been made good. If my original assertion is to be vindicated, I am now required to show that what is of moment in aesthetics is the physicality of works of art rather than their particularity. 35 .. [I want to] go back and take up an undischarged commitment: which is that of considering the consequences of rejecting the hypothesis that works of art are physical objects, insofar as those arts are concerned where there is no physical object with which the work of art could be plausibly identified. This will, of course, be in pursuance of my general aim- -which has also directed the preceding discussion- of establishing that the rejection of the hypothesis has serious consequences for the philosophy of art only insofar as those arts are concerned where there is such an obiect. I have already stated (sections 5, 20) that, once it is conceded that certain works of art are not physical objects, the subsequent problem that arises, which can be put by asking, What sort of thing are they? is essentially a logical problem. It is that of determining the criteria of identity and individuation appropriate to, say, a piece of music or a novel. I shall characterize the status of such things by saying that they are (to employ a term introduced by Peirce) types. Correlative to the term "type" is the term "token." Those physical objects which (as we have seen) can out of desperation be thought to be works of art in cases where there are no physical objects that can plausibly be thought of in this way, are tokens. In other words, Ulysses and Der Rosenkavalier are types; my copy of Ulysses and tonight's performance of Rosenkavalier are tokens of those types. The question now arises, What is a type? The question is very difficult, and, unfortunately, to treat it with the care and attention to detail that it deserves is beyond the scope of this essay. We might begin by contrasting a type with other sorts of thing that it is not. Most obviously we could contrast a type with a particular: this I shall take as done. Then we could contrast it with other various kinds of non-particulars: with a class (of which we say that it has members), and a universal (of which we say that it has instances). An example of a class would be the class of red things: an example of a universal would be Art and Its Objects 221 redness: and examples of a type would be the word "red" and the Red Flag-where this latter phrase is taken to mean not this or that piece of material, kept in a chest or taken out and flown at a masthead, but the flag of revolution, raised for the first time in 1830 and that which many would willingly follow to their death. Let us introduce as a blanket expression for types, classes, universals, the term generic entity, and, as a blanket expression for those things which fall under them, the term element. Now we can say that the various generic entities can be distinguished according to the different ways or relation- ships in which they stand to their elements. These relationships can be arranged on a scale of intimacy or intrinsicality. At one end of the scale we find classes, where the relationship is at its most external or extrinsic: for a class is merely made of, or constituted by, its members which are extensionally conjoined to form it. The class of red things is simply a construct out of all those things which are (timelessly) red. In the case of universals the relation is more intimate: in that a universal is present in all its instances. Redness is in all red things. With types we find the relationship between the generic entity and its elements at its most in- timate: for not merely is the type present in all its tokens like the universal in all its instances, but for much of the time we think and talk of the type as though it were itself a kind of token, though a peculiarly important or preeminent one. In many ways we treat the Red Flag as though it were a red flag (ct. «We'll keep the Red Flag flying high"). These varying relations in which the different generic entities stand to their elements are also reflected (if, that is, this is another fact) in the de- gree to which both the generic entities and their elements can satisfy the same predicates. Here we need to make a distinction between sharing prop- erties and properties being transmitted. I shall say that when A and B are both I, f is shared by A and B. I shall further say that when A is f because B is f, or B is f because A is f, f is transmitted between A and B. (I shall ignore the sense or direction of the transmission, i.e., I shall not trouble, even where it is possible, to discriminate between the two sorts of situation I have mentioned as instances of transmission.) First, we must obviously exclude from consideration properties that can pertain only to tokens (e.g., properties of location in space and time) and equally those which pertain only to types (e.g., "was invented by"). When we have done this, the situation looks roughly as follows: Classes can share properties with their members (e.g., the class of big things is big), but this is very rare: moreover, where it occurs it will be a purely contingent or fortuitous affair, i.e., there will be no transmitted properties. In the cases of both universals and types, there will be shared properties. Red things may be said to be exhilarating, and so also redness. Every red flag is 222 The Ontology of Art rectangular, and so is the Red Flag itself. Moreover, many, if not all, the shared properties will be transmitted. Let us now confine our attention to transmitted properties because it is only they which are relevant to the difference in relationship between, on the one hand, universals and types and, on the other hand, their elements. Now there would seem to be two differences in respect of transmitted properties which distinguish universals from types. In the first place, there is likely to be a far larger range of transmitted properties in the case of types than there is with universals. The second difference is this: that in the case of universals no property that an instance of a certain universal has necessarily, i.e., that it has in virtue of being an instance of that universal, can be transmitted to the universal. In the case of types, on the other hand, all and only those properties that a token of a certain type has necessarily, i.e., that it has in virtue of being a token of that type, will be transmitted to the type. Examples, would be: Redness, as we have seen, may be exhilarating, and, if it is, it is so for the same reason that its instances are, i.e., the property is transmitted. But redness cannot be red or colored, which its instances are necessarily. On the other hand, the Union Jack is colored and rectangular, properties which all its tokens have necessarily: but even if all its tokens happened to be made of linen, this would not mean that the Union Jack itself was made of linen. To this somewhat negative account of a type--concentrated largely on what a type is not-we now need to append something of a more positive kind, which would say what it is for various particulars to be gathered together as tokens of the same type. For it will be appreciated that there corresponds to every universal and to every type a class: to redness the class of red things, to the Red Flag the class of red flags. But the converse is not true. The question therefore arises, What are the characteristic circumstances in which we postulate a type? The question, we must appreciate, is entirely conceptual: it is a question about the structure of our language. A very important set of circumstances in which we postulate types- perhaps a central set, in the sense that it may be possible to explain the remaining circumstances by reference to them--is where we can corre- late a class of particulars with a human invention: these particulars may then be regarded as tokens of a certain type. This characterization is vague, and deliberately so: for it is intended to comprehend a considerable spectrum of cases. At one end we have the case where a particular is produced, and is then copied: at the other end, we have the case where a set of instructions is drawn up which, if followed, give rise to an indefinite number of particulars. An example of the former would be the Brigitte Bardot looks: an example of the latter would be the Minuet. Intervening cases are constituted by the production of a particular which was made in Art and Its Objects 223 order to be copied, e.g., the Boeing 707, or the construction of a mold or matrix which generates further particulars, e.g., the Penny Black. There are many ways of arranging the cases-according, say, to the degree of human intention that enters into the proliferation of the type, or according to the degree of match that exists between the original piece of invention and the tokens that flow from it. But there are certain resemblances between all the cases: and with ingenuity one can see a natural extension of the original characterization to cover cases where the invention is more classificatory than constructive in nature, e.g., the Red Admiral. 36 It will be clear that the preceding characterization of a type and its tokens offers us a framework within which we can (at any rate roughly) under- stand the logical status of things like operas, ballets, poems, etchings, etc.: that is to say, account for their principles of identity and individua- tion. To show exactly where these various kinds of things lie within this framework would involve a great deal of detailed analysis, more than can be attempted here, and probably of little intrinsic interest. I shall touch very briefly upon two general sets of problems, both of which concern the feasibility of the project. In this section I shall deal with the question of how the type is identified or (what is much the same thing) how the tokens of a given type are generated. In the next section I shall deal with the question of what properties we are entitled to ascribe to a type. These two sets of questions are not entirely distinct: as we can see from the fact that there is a third set of questions intermediate between the other two, concerning how we determine whether two particulars are or are not tokens of the same type. These latter questions, which arise for instance sharply in connection with translation, I shall pass over. I mention them solely to place those which I shall deal with in perspective. First, then, as to how the type is identified. In the case of any work of art that it is plausible to think of as a type, there is what I have called a piece of human invention: and these pieces of invention fall along the whole spectrum of cases as I characterized it. At one end of the scale, there is the case of a poem, which comes into being when certain words are set down on paper or perhaps, earlier still, when they are said over in the poet's head (cf. the Croce-Collingwood theory). At the other end of the scale is an opera which comes into being when a certain set of instructions, i.e., the score, is written down, in accordance with which performances can be produced. As an intervening case we might note a film, of which different copies are made: or an etching or engraving, where different sheets are pulled from the same matrix, i.e., the plate. There is little difficulty in all this, so long as we bear in mind from the J. J. Gibson upainst 224 The Ontology of Art beginning the variety of ways in which the different types can be identified, or (to put it another way) in which the tokens can be generated from the initial piece of invention. It is if we begin with too limited a range of examples that distortions can occur. For instance, it might be argued that. if the tokens of a certain poem are the many different inscriptions that occur in books reproducing the word order of the poet's manuscript, then "strictly speaking" the tokens of an opera must be the various pieces of sheet music or printed scores that reproduce the marks on the composer's holograph. Alternatively, if we insist that it is the performances of the opera that are the tokens, then, it is argued, it must be the many readings or "voicings" of the poem that are its tokens. Such arguments might seem to be unduly barren or pedantic, if it were not that they revealed something about the divergent media of art: moreover, if they did not bear upon the issues to be discussed in the next section. 37 It is, we have seen, a feature of types and their tokens, not merely that they may share properties, but that when they do, these properties may be transmitted. The question we have now to ask is whether a limit can be set upon the properties that may be transmitted: more specifically, since it is the type that is the work of art and therefore that with which we are expressly concerned, whether there are any properties-always of course excluding those properties which can be predicated only of particulars-that belong to tokens and cannot be said ipso facto to belong to their types. It might be thought that we have an answer, or at least a partial answer, to this question in the suggestion already made, that the properties transmitted between token and type are only those which the tokens possess necessarily. But a moment's reflection will show that any answer along these lines is bound to be trivial. For there is no way of determining the properties that a token of a given type has necessarily, independently of determining the properties of that type: accordingly, we cannot use the former in order to ascertain the latter. We cannot hope to discover what the properties of the Red Flag are by finding out what properties the various red flags have necessarily: for how can we come to know that, e.g., this red flag is necessarily red, prior to knowing that the Red Flag itself is red? There are, however, three observations that can be made here on the basis of our most general intuitions. The first is that there are no properties or sets of properties that cannot pass from token to type. With the usual reservations, there is nothing that can be predicated of a performance of Art and Its Objects 225 a piece of music that could not also be predicated of that piece of music itself. This point is vital. For it is this that ensures what I have called the harmlessness of denying the physical-object hypothesis in the domain of those arts where the denial consists in saying that works of art are not physical objects. For though they may not be objects but types, this does not prevent them from having physical properties. There is nothing that prevents us from saying that Donne's Satires are harsh on the ear, or that Dürer's engraving of Saint Anthony has a very differentiated texture, or that the conclusion of "Celeste Aida" is pianissimo. The second observation is that, though any single property may be transmitted from token to type, it does not follow that all will be: or to put it another way, a token will have some of its properties necessarily, but it need not have all of them necessarily. The full significance of this point will emerge later. Thirdly, in the case of some arts it is necessary that not all properties should be transmitted from token to type: though it remains true that for any single property it might be transmitted. The reference here is, of course, to the performing arts--to operas, plays, symphonies, ballet. It follows from what was said above that anything that can be predicated of a performance of a piece of music can also be predicated of the piece of music itself: to this we must now add that not every property that can be predicated of the former ipso facto belongs to the latter. This point is generally covered by saying that in such cases there is essentially an element of interpretation, where for these purposes interpretation may be regarded as the production of a token that has properties in excess of those of the type. "Essentially" is a word that needs to be taken very seriously here. For, in the first place, there are certain factors that might disguise from us the fact that every performance of a work of art involves, or is, an interpreta- tion. One such factor would be antiquarianism. We could--certainly if the evidence were available--imagine a Richard IlI produced just as Burbage played it, or Das Klagende Lied performed just as Mahler conducted it. But though it would be possible to bring about in this way a replica of Burbage's playing or Mahler's conducting, we should none the less have interpretations of Richard III and Das Klagende Lied, for this is what Burbage's playing and Mahler's conducting were, though admittedly the first. Secondly, it would be wrong to think of the element of interpreta- tion-assuming that this is now conceded to be present in the case of all performances--as showing something defective. Suzanne Langer, for in- stance, has characterized the situation in the performing arts by saying that, e.g., the piece of music the composer writes is "an incomplete work": "the performance, " she says, "is the completion of a musical work. " But 226 The Ontology of Art this suggests that the point to which the composer carries the work is one which he could, or even should, have gone beyond. To see how radical a reconstruction this involves of the ways in which we conceive the perform- ing arts, we need to envisage what would be involved if it were to be even possible to eliminate interpretation. For instance, one requirement would be that we should have for each performing art what might be called, in some very strong sense, a universal notation: such that we could designate in it every characteristic that now originates at the point of performance. Can we imagine across the full range of the arts what such a notation would be like? With such a notation there would no longer be any executant arts: the whole of the execution would have been anticipated in the notation. What assurance can we have that the reduction of these arts to mere mechanical skills would not in turn have crucial repercussions upon the way in which we regard or assess the performing arts? 38 However, if we no longer regard it as a defect in certain arts that they require interpretation, it might still seem unsatisfactory that there should be this discrepancy within the arts: that, for instance, the composer or the dramatist should be denied the kind of control over his work that the poet or the painter enjoys. In part, there just is a discrepancy within the arts. And this discrepancy is grounded in very simple facts of very high generality, which anyhow lie outside art: such as that words are different from pigments; or that it is human beings we employ to act and human beings are not all exactly alike. If this is the source of dissatisfaction, the only remedy would be to limit art very strictly to a set of processes or stuffs that were absolutely homogeneous in kind. In part, however, the dissatisfaction comes from exaggerating the dis- crepancy, and from overlooking the fact that in the nonperforming arts there is a range of ways in which the spectator or audience can take the work of art. It is, I suggest, no coincidence that this activity, of taking the poem or painting or novel in one way rather than another, is also called "interpretation." For the effect in the two cases is the same, in that the control of the artist over his work is relaxed. Against this parallelism between the two kinds of interpretation, two objections can be raised. The first is that the two kinds of interpretations differ in order or level. For whereas performative interpretation occurs only within certain arts, critical interpretation pertains to all: more specifi- cally, a critical interpretation can be placed upon any given performative interpretation-so the point of the parallelism vanishes, in that the perform- ing arts still remain in a peculiar or discrepant situation. Now I do not Art and Its Objects 227 want to deny that any performance of a piece of music or a play can give rise to a critical interpretation: the question, however, is, When this happens, is this on the same level as a performative interpretation? I want to maintain that we can fruitfully regard it as being so. For insofar as we remain concerned with the play or the piece of music, what we are doing is in the nature of suggesting or arguing for alternative performances, which would have presented the original work differently: we are not suggesting or arguing for alternative ways in which the actual performance might be taken. Our interpretation is on the occasion of a performance, not about it. The situation is, of course, complicated to a degree that cannot be unraveled here by the fact that acting and playing music are also arts, and in criticizing individual performances we are sometimes conversant about those arts: which is why I qualified my remark by saying "insofar as we remain concerned with the play or piece of music." The second and more serious objection to the parallelism between the two kinds of interpretation is that they differ as to necessity. For whereas a tragedy or a string quartet has to be interpreted, a poem or a painting need not be. At any given moment it may be necessary to interpret them, but that will be only because of the historical incompleteness of our comprehension of the work. Once we have really grasped it, further interpretation will no longer be called for. In other words, critical inter- pretation ultimately eliminates itself: whereas a piece of music or a play cannot be performed once and for all. On this last argument I wish to make two preliminary observations: First, the argument must not draw any support (as the formulation here would seem to) from the indubitable but irrelevant fact that a performance is a transient, not an enduring, phenomenon. The relevant fact is not that a piece of music or a play must always be performed anew but that it can always be performed afresh, i.e., that every new performance can involve a new interpretation. The question then is, Is there not in the case of the nonperforming arts the same permanent possibility of new interpretations? Secondly, the argument seems to be ambiguous between two formulations, which are not clearly, though in fact they may be, equivalent: the osten- sibly stronger one, that in the case of a poem or painting all interpretations can ultimately be eliminated; and the ostensibly weaker one, that in these cases all interpretations save one can ultimately be eliminated. Against the eliminability of interpretation, the only decisive argument is one drawn from our actual experience of art. There are, however, supplementary considerations, the full force of which can be assessed only as this essay progresses, which relate to the value of art. Allusions to both can be found in a brilliant and suggestive work, Valéry's "Réflexions sur l'Art." In the first place the value of art, as has been traditionally recognized, J. J. Gibson apainst 228 The Ontology of Art does not exist exclusively, or even primarily, for the artist. It is shared equally between the artist and his audience. One view of how this sharing is effected, which is prevalent but implausible, is that the artist makes something of value, which he then hands on to the audience, which is thereby enriched. Another view is that in art there is a characteristic ambiguity, or perhaps better plasticity, introduced into the roles of activity and passivity: the artist is active, but so also is the spectator, and the spectator's activity consists in interpretation. "A creator," Valéry puts it, "is one who makes others create." Secondly- and this point too has received some recognition--the value of art is not exhausted by what the artist, or even by what the artist and the spectator, gain from it: it is not contained by the transaction between them. The work of art itself has a residual value. In certain "subjectivist» views- as, e.g., in the critical theory of I. A. Richards- the value of art is made to seem contingent: contingent, that is, upon there being found no better or more effective way in which certain experiences assessed to be valuable can be aroused in, or transmitted between, the minds of the artist and his audience. Now it is difficult to see how such a conclusion can be avoided if the work of art is held to be inherently exhaustible in inter- pretation. [Earlier] the view was considered that works of art are translucent; the view we are now asked to consider would seem to suggest that they are transparent, and as such ultimately expendable or "throw- away. " It is against such a view that Valéry argued that we should regard works of art as constituting "a new and impenetrable element" which is interposed between the artist and the spectator. The ineliminability of interpretation he characterizes, provocatively, as 'the creative misun- derstanding. “

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Toward an Ontology of Artworks

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

What sort of entity is a symphony? A drama? A dance? A graphic art print? A sculpture? A poem? A film? A painting?

Are works of art all fundamentally alike in their ontological status?

These are the questions to be discussed in this paper.

I A Phenomenology of the Distinctions Among Works of Art

In several of the arts there is application for the distinction between a performance of something and that which is performed. In music, for example, one can distinguish between a performance of Verklaerte Nacht and that which is thereby performed, namely, Arnold Schoenberg's work Verklaerte Nacht. Similarly, in dance one can distinguish between a performance of Swan Lake and that which is thereby performed, namely, the ballet Swan Lake.

Some people will be skeptical as to whether, in the cases cited and others of the same sort, we really do have two distinct entities--a performance and that which is performed. But assuming it to be true that the concept of a performance of something and the concept of something performed both have application to the arts, there are two sorts of considerations which force one to the conclusion that that which is performed on a given occasion is distinct from the performance of it.

In the first place, a thing performed and a performance thereof will always diverge in certain of their properties. For example, having been composed by Schoenberg is a property of Verklaerte Nacht but not of any performance of Verklaerte Nacht. On the other hand, taking place at a certain time and place is a property of every performance of Verklaerte Nacht but not of Verklaerte Nacht itself. It is worth noting that a work pertormed may diverge from performances thereof not only in 'ontological'

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properties but also in 'aesthetic' properties. For example, it may be that having the voice part begin on A natural is not a property of any performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, though it is a property of the work itself, indeed, an essential one.

A second sort of consideration, one which is actually a specific applica- tion of the first, also leads to the conclusion that in certain of the arts one must distinguish between those entities which are performances and those entities which are works performed. This second sort of consideration hinges on applications of the concepts of identity and diversity. That which is performed on one occasion may be identical with that which is per- formed on another; George Sell, for example, may twice over have conducted a performance of Verklaerte Nacht. Thus, there may be two distinct performances of one single musical work. But two distinct things cannot each be identical with some one thing. Thus, the two distinct performances cannot both be identical with the work performed. But if one of them, call it A, was identified with the work performed, then the other, call it B, would, by virtue of being a performance of the work performed, be a performance of performance A. Not only that, but performance A would be capable of being performed on many other occasions as well. Both of these consequences, however, seem impossible.

Let us henceforth call a work of art which can be performed, a performance-work. Most if not all performance-works are universals, in that they can be multiply performed.

It would seem that performances in the arts are as correctly called "works of art" as are performance-works. The ontological status of per- formances is relatively clear, however, while that of performance-works is immensely perplexing. Performances are occurrences or events. They take place at a certain time and place, begin at a certain time and end at a certain time, last for a certain stretch of time, and have temporal parts in the sense that each performance is half over at a certain time, three-quar- ters over at a certain time, one-eighth over at a certain time, etc. But what sort of entity is a performance-work? That is something which we shall have to discuss in considerable detail. What should already be clear, though, is that performance-works are not occurrences (events). Thus, already we can answer one of our opening questions. Works of art are not all alike in their ontological status.

In certain of the nonperforming arts distinctions similar to the perfor- mance/ performance-work distinction have application. Consider, for ex- ample, graphic-art prints. Here, a commonly applied distinction is that between a particular impression and the work of which it is an impression; between, for example, the tenth impression of Obedient unto Death and the print of which it is an impression, namely, George Rouault's Obedient

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unto Death. And consider those cases in which sculpture is produced from a mold. Here, a commonly applied distinction is that between a particular casting of, say, The Thinker and the sculptural work of which it is a casting, namely, Rodin's The Thinker. And consider thirdly those cases in the field of architecture in which many different buildings are produced according to one set of specifications. Here, a commonly applied distinc- ton is that between a given example of, say, the Tech-Bilt House No. and that of which it is an example, namely, the Tech-Bilt House No. 1.

It may be noticed that an impression of a work of graphic art, a casting of a work of sculptural art, and an example of a work of architectural art particular arts together. In order to have a convenient terminology, let us call the entities of which there can be impressions, castings, or ex- amples, object-works. And let us say that impressions, castings, and examples are objects of object-works. Thus, as a counterpart to the performance-performance-work distinction, we have the distinction be- tween impressions, castings, and examples on the one hand and object- works on the other.

The considerations which impel us to distinguish between an object- work and those entities which are objects thereof are parallel to those which impel us to distinguish between an entity which is a performance- work and those entities which are performances thereof. One consideration is again that of divergence in properties. For example, having a thumb- print in the lower left corner may be a property of a given impression of Rouault's print Obedient unto Death, or even of all impressions thereof, though it is not a property of the print Obedient unto Death. A second consideration is again to be derived from applications of the concepts of identity and diversity. For example, there can be two different castings of the same sculptural work; and neither both of these castings together nor either one singly can be identified with the work. In the case of object- works there is yet a third sort of consideration which may be adduced. one hinging on applications of the concepts of existence and nonexistence. Any one of the several objects of an object-work can be destroyed without the object-work thereby being destroyed. I could, for example, perform the horrifying operation of burning my impression of Rouault's Obedient unto Death, but I would not thereby put the print itself out of existence. Nor could I put the print out of existence by destroying any one of the other impressions, nor even by destroying the original etched plate.

It would seem that both object-works and the objects thereof are entitled to being called "works of art." Further, the ontological status of the latter is relatively unproblematic: They are physical objects. Of course, plenty of things about the nature of physical objects remains unclear. Yet we know

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what they are, and it is clear that impressions, castings, and examples are to be numbered among them. But what is an object-work? What is its ontological status? That is something which we shall have to discuss in detail.

There remain literary works, films, and paintings to consider. A literary work can be both written down and sounded out. There can be both copies of it and utterances of it. Now, a copy is a physical object, whereas an uttering of something is a certain sort of event. Further, the copy of relation seems closely similar to the example of, the impression of, and the casting of relations. Accordingly, I shall say that a copy of a literary work is an object of it; and I shall add literary works to the group of entities to be called object-works. Furthermore, an utterance of a literary work is an event, very much like a performance. Accordingly, in the class of things to be called performance-works I shall include also literary works. Literary works, then, are both performance-works and object- works.

Saying this, however, makes one want to look back to see whether we do not have good ground for saying that works of music and drama are also both performance-works and object-works. In the case of dramatic works I think it is clear that we must say "No." A dramatic performance is a pattern of actions. The actions will in all but the most unusual cases include speech actions. But in all but the most unusual cases they will include other sorts of actions as well. More importantly, that pattern of actions which is a dramatic performance will always include actions of role-playing. For these reasons, a reading aloud or a recitation of the script of a drama is not yet a performance of the drama. A copy of the script for a drama is not a copy of the drama but instructions for proper performances thereof. The script may of course be a literary work in its own right. And that work can have both readings aloud and copies. But the drama is not the script. And a copy of the script is not a copy of the drama. The drama has no copies. All it has is performances. Dramas are only performance-works.

Music presents a somewhat less clear situation. The crucial question is this: Does a copy of the score stand to a work of music in a relationship similar enough to that in which a copy stands to a work of literature to justify us in calling the score-copy an object of the work? It seems to me not decisively clear one way or the other. What does seem clear is that a word can be both written down and uttered aloud, whereas a sound cannot be written down but only sounded out. The marks in a copy of a score are not instances of sounds but rather instructions for producing sounds. Of course, an instance of some sequence of words can also be treated as instructions for the utterance of that sequence; yet at the same time it is

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genuinely an instance of those worlds. Some words, especially those in primitive cultures, are never written down; some, especially those in technical languages, are never sounded out. Yet most words have a dual manifestation. The same is not true of sounds. But suppose someone suggests that music should be thought of as being composed of notes rather than sounds, and then goes on to argue that notes, like words, can he both sounded out and written down. Obviously, this is a suggestion worthy of further investigation. Whether it is true or false is not at once clear. But nothing that is said hereafter will depend essentially on whether or not it is true. So I shall continue to suppose that music consists of sounds.

The film seems to have a dual status similar to that of words. One and the same film may have many copies, a copy being a physical object; and it may also have many showings, a showing being an occurrence (event). Thus, a film, like a literary work, has claim to being regarded as both an object-work and a performance-work. There is this difference worth not- ing, though: A showing of a film will always occur by way of the showing of a certain copy of the film, whereas the utterance of a literary work need not occur by way of the reading of some copy of the work. One can recite it from memory.

As for paintings, it seems that neither the object/ object-work distinction nor the performance/performance-work distinction has application, nor does it seem that any close counterpart to these distinctions has applica- tion. There is, of course, the distinction between the work and reproduc- tions of the work. But this is a quite different distinction, as can be seen from the fact that one can also have reproductions of each of the various impressions of a print. What is lacking in painting is any counterpart to the print/impression distinction. All one has is a counterpart to the impression/ reproduction distinction. The point may be put by saying that all the impressions of a print are originals, none is a reproduction. The conclusion must be that a painting is a physical object. But more will be said on this matter later in our discussion.

To say this is not, of course, to deny that reproductions of paintings along with reproductions of sculpture are, in some cases at least, entitled to being called "works of art" in their own right. So too are films, though they are for the most part 'reproductive' of performances and of visible events and objects. And so too are recordings, though most recordings are 'reproductive' of sounds and of audible performances. It is interesting to note, however, that in the case of visual-art reproductions and sculpture reproductions one again often has application for the print/ impression or the work/casting distinction, and that in the case of recordings (records) one can distinguish between the recording on the one hand and the various

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discs of the recording on the other and, in turn, between a given disc on the one hand and various playings of the disc on the other.

Though I have called what we have done thus far phenomenology, what I have said is of course not free from ontological commitment. In saying that the distinction between performances and that which is performed can be applied to the arts, I said something which entails that there are performance-works. And I said that of most if not all of these it is true that they can be multiply performed. A thorough nominalist would deny that there are any multiply performable entities. Similarly, he would deny the existence of multiply-objectible*entities. I think it would be worthwhile to consider how the nominalist conviction that there are no such entities might most plausibly be developed; and I also think it would be worthwhile to consider whether any decisive arguments against such nominalism can be offered. But I shall not on this occasion attempt either of these. Rather, the question which I wish to discuss in detail is this; What is the ontological status of performance-works and object-works?

To simplify our terminology, I shall henceforth in this paper call only performance-works and object-works art works. And both performances of art works and objects of art works will be called examples of art works. I shall continue to use "work of art" to cover both art works and their examples, along with such things as paintings which are neither. Perhaps here is also a good place to remark that the fact that the perfor- mance/ performance-work distinction or the object/ object-work distinction applies to a certain art does not imply that it applies throughout that art. There may be works of that art which are neither. Those works of music, for example, which are total improvisations (as distinguished from those which are improvisations on a theme) are neither performances nor performance-works.

II The Sharing of Predicates and Properties Between Art Works and Examples

We cannot here discuss all competitors to the theory proposed in the following pages. But for an understanding of the theory, it will be usetul briefly to consider and put behind us the view that performance-works and object-works are sets of their examples. The untenability of this suggestion can be seen by noticing that whatever members a set has it has necessarily, whereas a performance-work or object-work might always have had different and more or fewer performances or objects than it does have; and by noticing that if set a has no members and set B has no members, then a is identical with B, whereas it is not the case that if art work y has no instances and art work & has no instances, then y is identical with 8.

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That there is but one null set is clear enough. But that a set cannot have had a different membership from what it does have is a fact apt to be confused with related but different facts. The property, having been a disciple of Saint Francis, is a property shared in common by all and only the members of a certain set, that one, namely, whose members are all and only the disciples of Saint Francis. Let us for convenience name this set D. Now, whoever has the property of having been a disciple of Saint Francis has it only contingently. Accordingly, that set which is D might have been such that some of its members lacked this property; indeed, all might have lacked it. Alternatively, persons who are not members of D might have had this property. Thus, some other set than D might have been such that all and only its members have the property of having been a disciple of Saint Francis. But all these facts pertaining to what might have been in place of what is, are thoroughly compatible with the fact that D has its membership essentially.

To begin, consider some logical predicate which in normal usage can be predicated of two different things in such a way as to assert something true in both cases. Let us say that in such a case those two things share that predicate. One striking feature of the relationship between an art work and its examples is the pervasive sharing of predicates between the art work on the one hand and its examples on the other. "Is in the key of C minor" can be predicated truly of Beethoven's Opus 111 and also of most if not all performances of Beethoven's Opus III. "Has the figure slightly off-center to the right" can be predicated truly of Rouault's Obedient unto Death and likewise of most if not all impressions of Obedient unto Death. And so on, and on.

Of course, not every predicate which can be predicated truly of an art work or which can be predicated truly of examples of some art work, is shared by the work and its examples. "Is a performance" and "is an occurrence" are never shared, nor are "can be repeatedly performed" and "can repeatedly occur." Nor is "composed by Hindemith" ever shared. "Is thought about by me" is in some cases shared between a certain art work and all its examples, in other cases it is shared between a certain artwork and only some of its examples, while in yet other cases it is not shared between an art work and any of its examples. And "has 'no' as its third word" is unshared between the poem Sailing to Byzantium and my particular copy of it, whereas it is shared between the poem and most copies of it.

One naturally wonders, at this point, whether when a predicate is shared between an art work and some one or more of its examples, there is normally also a sharing of some property for which the predicate stands. If so, then the predicate is used univocally . On the other hand, if the predicate stands for two different properties but if there is some systematic

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relation between these, then the predicate is used analogically . If not even this is true, the predicate is used equivocally . Shortly, we shall discuss this issue pertaining to properties. Meanwhile, without yet committing our. selves on it. let us see whether we can find some pattern in this pervasive sharing of predicates. (See also Wolterstorff [9]: 250-254.)

From the start, one feels that there is some connection between a predicate's being true of the examples of an art work and its being true or the work. Can this feeling be substantiated? The example we have already used provides us with evidence for concluding that the following formula will not do: A predicate P is true of some art work W if P is true of every example of W. For "is a performance" is true of all the examples of performance-works but cannot be true, in its normal sense, of any of those art works themselves.

So suppose that from here on we discard from consideration those predicates which are true of one or more of the examples of some art work but which, in their normal meaning, cannot be true of the work itself. (When a predicate P used with normal meaning cannot be true of W, P will be said to be excluded by W. Likewise, when a property p cannot be possessed by W, P will be said to be excluded by W.) What then about the formula: For any predicate P which is not excluded by W, P is true of W if P is true of every example of W? One objection to this formula is that it is far more constricted in its application than what we were looking for. For we saw that "has a G sharp in its seventh measure" may be true of Bartok's First Quartet even though of many of its performances it is not true. Indeed, it may be true of none of the performances.

A clue to a better formula can be gotten by looking more closely at this example. Is it not the case that "has a G sharp in its seventh measure" is true of Bartok's First Quartet in case it is impossible that something should be a correct performance of Bartok's First and lack the property of having a G sharp in its seventh measure? Is it not the case that has 'no' as its third word" is true of Sailing to Byzantium in case it is impossible that something should be a correct copy of Sailing to Byzantium and lack the property of having "no" as its third word?

These examples naturally suggest to us the following formula: For any predicate P which is not excluded by W, if there is some property being P which P expresses in normal usage and is such that it is impossible that something should be a correctly formed example of W and lack being P, then P is true of W.

But to this general formula as well, there are counterexamples. Consider for instance the predicate "is a performance or was highly thought of by Beethoven." There will be many works such that this predicate used in its

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normal sense will not be excluded by the work. Likewise, it is impossible that something should be a correctly formed example of some such work and lack the property of being either a performance or highly thought of by Beethoven; for it is impossible that that thing should lack the property of being a performance. Yet the predicate in question may very well not he true of the work. For the work cannot be a performance, and it may not have been highly thought of by Beethoven. And in general, take a predicate of the form "is either A or anti-W," where "is anti-W» represents à predicate such that (i) it is excluded by W and (ii) when predicated of examples of W it stands for a property such that necessarily if something is an example of W, then it has that property, and where "is A" represents any predicate whatsoever which is not excluded by W. Then the disjunc- tive predicate' represented by "is either A or anti-W» is itself not excluded by W and is itself such that when predicated of some example of W, it stands for a property such that it is impossible that something should be a correct example of W and lack it. Yet obviously the predicate may very well not be true of W.

The essence of the difficulty here would seem to be that some predicates stand for properties such that it is impossible that something should be an example of W at all, correct or incorrect, and lack the property. Such properties might be said to be necessary to examples of W. If we could eliminate from consideration predicates standing for such properties, then counterexamples of the sort suggested will be forestalled. So let us say that a predicate P is acceptable with respect to W if and only if P is neither excluded by W nor is such that any property for which it stands when truly predicated of examples of W is one which is necessary to examples of W. Then our proposed formula becomes this: For any predicate P which is acceptable with respect to W, if there is some property being P which P expresses in normal usage and is such that it is impossible that something should be a correctly formed example of W and lack being P, then P is true of W. (It should be noticed that the claim here is not if and only if, but just if.)

The core feature of this proposal is the suggestion that what is true of correctly formed examples of an art work plays a decisive role in deter- mining what can be predicated truly of the work. Or, to put it yet more indefinitely, the core feature is the suggestion that the concept of an art work is intimately connected with the concept of a correctly formed example of the work.

Perhaps if we considered the matter in detail, we could find still more pattern to the sharing of predicates between artworks and examples than what we have thus far uncovered. But enough has been uncovered for our subsequent purposes. So let us now move from the level of language to

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the level of ontology and consider whether, when predicates are shared according to the general pattern uncovered, there is also a sharing of properties designated by those predicates.

One is naturally inclined to think that there is. Our dictionaries do not, after all, tell us that a certain word standardly ineans one thing when truly predicated of an art work and something else when truly predicated of an example of the work. Yet I think that we must in fact come to the conclusion that predicates shared between art works and their examples do not function univocally when the sharing follows the general pattern we have uncovered. For what one means, in truthfully predicating "has 'no' as its third word" of some copy of Sailing to Byzantium is that the third word-occurrence is "no." But when one truthfully predicates "has no as its third word" of Sailing to Byzantium itself, one cannot mean this. For the poem does not consist of word-occurrences. Similarly, what one means in truthfully predicating "has a G sharp in its seventh measure? of some performance of Bartok's Fifth is that in its seventh measure there was an occurrence of the G-sharp pitch. But the Quartet itself does not consist of sound-occurrences. So I think it must be admitted that we have not discovered a systematic identity but only a systematic relation between the property designated by some predicate when it is truthfully predicated of some art examples and the property designated by that same predicate when truthfully predicated of the art work. Our conclusion must be that the sharing of predicates between art works and their examples pervasively exhibits analogical predication.

The situation is as follows. Suppose that P is a predicate which can be shared between an art work W and its examples, and suppose further that a property for which P stands when truthfully predicated of examples of W is being P. Then for those cases in which the sharing of P fits the general pattern which we formulated, P when truthfully predicated of W stands for the property of being such that something cannot be a correct example of it without having the property of being P.

III Art Works Are Kinds

We have seen some of the fundamental relations which hold between an art work and its examples. But we have not yet gained much insight into the ontological status of art works. We are left so far without any satisfying answer to our question: What is an art work? We must take a next step.

The proposal I wish to make is that performance-works and object- works are kinds (types, sorts)-kinds whose examples are the performances performance; an object-work is a certain kind of object.

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A phenomenon which tends at once to confirm us in the suggestion that art works are kinds whose examples are the examples of those works is the fact that kinds which are not art works are like art works in just the ways that (as we saw earlier) sets of their examples are unlike art works. Just as an art work might have had different and more or fewer perfor- mances and objects than it does have, so too the kind Man, for example, might have had different and more or fewer examples than it does have. If Napoleon had not existed, it would not then have been the case that Man did not exist. Rather, Man would then have lacked one of the examples which in fact it had. And secondly, just as there may be two distinct unperformed symphonies, so too may there be two distinct unex- ampled kinds e.g., the Unicorn and the Hippogriff.

Not only does it seem that art works are kinds. What is even more striking is their many close similarities to those special kinds of kinds familiarly known as natural kinds.

It has long been noticed by philosophers that in the case of natural kinds there is a pervasive sharing of predicates and/ or properties between kinds and their examples. Let us look at the pattern of such sharing, beginning with a proposal made by Richard Wollheim. Having excluded from consideration those properties which cannot be shared between kinds, and examples, his suggestion is that the following is necessarily true: The K shares a certain property with all Ks if and only if it is impossible that something should be an example of the K and lack the property ([8]:64-65).

What must be clearly perceived about this formula is that it speaks of properties, not of predicates. And in many if not most cases, a sharing of a predicate does not have, underlying it, a sharing of a property for which the predicate stands. That property which a grizzly possesses, of being something that growls, is not a property which the Grizzly could possess. Once one sees this, it becomes clear that the formula has an extremely limited application. Cases of shared predicates are common. Cases in which those predicates stand for properties which can be shared are relatively uncommon. Thus, the formula gives very little insight into the relation between kinds and their examples. Perhaps it's true that all grizzlies growl. And certainly it is true that the Grizzly growls (though at the same time it's true that something can be an example of the Grizzly while being mute). Yet this is not a counterexample to the formula; because what the Grizzly's growling consists of cannot be identical with what a grizzly's growling consists of. The tenability of the formula with respect to such cases is bought at the price of giving us no illumination with respect to them.

Even so, however, there are rather obvious counterexamples of other

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sorts to the formula, It could happen that a certain kind would share with al its examples the property of having been referred to by someone or other. Yet most kinds are such that something could be an example o them and still lack this property.

But now consider once again the sentence The Grizzly growls." Is it not the case that "growls" is true of the Grizzly if it is impossible that something should be a properly formed grizzly and not grow? A grizay muted is a malformed grizzly, and so also is grizzly born without a growi What makes "growls" true of the Grizzly is that something cannot be a properly formed grizzly unless it growls. In botanical and zoological taxonomy books, one is not told about the features shared by all examples of a certain kind, nor about the essential features shared by all examples of a certain kind, but about the features which a thing cannot lack if it is to be a properly formed example of the kind. So already we have for natural kinds the same pattern which we earlier uncovered for art works- For any predicate P which is acceptable with respect to the K, if there is some property being P which P expresses in normal usage and which is such that it is impossible that something should be a properly formed example of the K and lack being P, then P is true of the K.

As in the case of art works, we must raise the question whether when we have a sharing of some predicate between a kind and its examples, we also have a sharing of some property for which that predicate stands. With respect to those cases which fit our general formula, I think the answer must be, "No, we do not." Predications in such cases are not univocal. But neither are they equivocal. They are analogical. When grizzlies growl, they emit from their throats certain characteristic sound-patterns which we English-speaking people call "growling." But the kind, Grizzly, does not do that. Its sound-emission cannot be caught on some record. Yet-the Grizzly growls. "Growls," when truly predicated of the Grizzly, would seem to stand for the property of being such that something cannot be a properly formed example of its unless it growls. Thus, there is a systematic non-univocality about "growls." The predicate "growls" stands naturally for two quite different properties, one holding of the Grizzly and one holding of at least every properly formed example thereof. In general, for those cases in which the sharing of predicates between a kind and its examples follows the general pattern which we have formulated, the predicates are used analogically in exactly the way in which they were seen to be used analogically in the corresponding cases for art works.

In concluding this section of our discussion, let us articulate an impor tant assumption which we have been making throughout. Consider the kind: Red Thing. This does seem to be a genuine kind; it differs from the class of all red things in that it might have had different and more of

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fewer members than it does have. But now notice that there cannot be a distinction, among examples of this kind, between improperly formed examples and properly formed examples of the kind. For it is not possible that some of the examples of the Red Thing should be improperly formed examples of this kind (i.e., things improperly red), nor is it possible that some should be properly formed examples of the kind (i.e., things properly red). Or consider the two kinds: Properly Formed Orchid and Malformed Orchid. There seems no reason to doubt that there are such kinds as these. But neither of these can have properly formed examples, nor can either have improperly formed examples.

When a kind, the K, is such that it is possible that it should have properly formed examples and also possible that it should have improperly formed examples, let us say that the K is a norm-kind. We have assumed throughout our discussion that art works and natural kinds are both norm-kinds.

IV What Kind of Kinds Are Art Works?

Having suggested that art works are kinds, we must now take the next step of considering which kind a given art work is to be identified with. For the sake of convenience, I shall conduct the discussion by referring exclusively to music. But I shall have an eye throughout on the application to artworks generally.

In performing a musical work, one produces an occurrence of a certain sound-sequence, the sound-sequence itself being capable of multiple occur- rences. Accordingly, that particular kind which is some musical work has as its examples various occurrences of sound-sequences. It is a kind whose examples are sound-sequence-occurrences.

But now more specifically, with which of those many kinds whose examples are sound-sequence-occurrences is a given musical work to be identified? An answer which comes immediately to mind is this:

(1) A musical work W is identical with that kind whose examples are occurrences of that sound-sequence which correct performances of Ware occurrences.?

About this it must be said, however, that for most if not all musical works there is no such sound-sequence. This is so, for one reason, because standards of correctness by no means wholly determine which sound-se- quence must occur if W is to be performed correctly. Performances of a given work can all be correct in every detail--yet differ significantly. The musical works which come closest to permitting no divergence among their

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correct performances are those "totally serialized' works of the last quarter century. Yet even these permit some divergence.

So 1) must be discarded. And the revised suggestion we should consider is this:

(2) A musical work W is identical with that kind whose examples are occurrences of members of that set of sound-sequences which correct performances of W are occurrences of.

But this suggestion, though it is better than (1), is also not satisfactory. On this view, an incorrect performance of some work W would not be an example thereof. Yet an incorrect performance of some work is, in spite of its incorrectness, a performance thereof. And is it not on that account an example of the work? Are not all performances of W to be counted among the examples of the kind with which W is identical?

So (2) must be revised by dropping the reference to correct performance, this:

(3) A musical work W is identical with that kind whose examples are occurrences of members of that set of sound-sequences which performances of W are occurrences of.3

But now we must in turn raise a question concerning the satisfactoriness of (3), a question which plunges us into a whole nest of subtle matters. In performing a musical work one produces an occurrence of a certain sound- sequence. It is clear, however, that that very same sound-sequence can in principle occur in other ways than by way of someone performing that work-or indeed, any work. It can be made to occur, for example, by the blowing of the wind, or by someone's doodling on a piano, or by an elec- tronic organ's going berserk. Performing is one way of producing occur- rences of sound-sequences. But the very same sound-sequence which can be produced by the activity of performing can be produced in other ways as well. So a performance is not merely an occurrence of a certain sound- sequence. It is an occurrence produced by the activity of performing.

The question to consider now is whether a musical work is just a certain kind of sound-sequence-occurrence, no matter how produced, or whether a musical work is a certain kind of performance. Is (3) the formula we want, or the following:

(4) A musical work W is identical with that kind whose examples are performances of W (or, more simply stated, with the kind: Per- formance of W)?

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To answer this question we shall have to look a bit into the nature of performing.

Performing is clearly an intentional act. But what is the nature of the intention involved? When someone performs Beethoven's Opus 111, what is it that he intends? Does he perhaps intend to follow the directions of the score in producing a sound-sequence-occurrence? Well, often he does indeed have this intent. But even success in this intent is seldom a sufficient condition for having performed the work. For though scores do, among their other functions, provide specifications for producing examples of the work, seldom are all the matters pertaining to correct performance specified in a score. Naturally, many are simply presupposed by the composer as part of the style and tradition in which he is working, and others are suggested without ever being specified. If the performer limits himself to following the specifications in the score, not even attempting in other respects to produce a correct example of the work, it is at the very least doubtful that he has performed the work.

An even more decisive objection is that one can perform some work without at all intending to follow the specifications of the score for the work. For there may be no score. If Beethoven had composed his Opus 111 before scoring it, it would have been possible for him to perform the work without being guided by the score for that or any other work. That is, it would have been possible for him not merely to produce an occur- rence of a sound-sequence which could also occur as a performance of Opus 111, but actually to perform the work. In fact, of course, there now is a score for Opus 111. But the vast bulk of indigenous folk music remains unscored. So in that case performers are never guided by the scores for the works. Yet those works can be performed.

It is true that specifications can be laid down to performers by means other than scores. The folk-music performer can be told verbally how some passage is to be performed. Or the rhythm can be stomped out for him by foot. But quite clearly it is no significant improvement over our first thought to say that the intention involved in performing a work is the intention to follow the specifications for producing examples of that work. For of most works it is true that even when we include all specifications, whether expressed in score notation or otherwise, these specifications are woefully insufficient for determining correct examples. Bartok, in his early career, set about scoring various Hungarian folk songs. His work did not consist of taking specifications which were expressed in something other than the Western scoring system and expressing them in score notation. On the contrary, his work consisted of providing those works, for the first time in their careers, with specifications for performance. And by and large our Western scores contain all the specifications we have for our musical

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works. But these are not enough. Correct performance requires knowledge of more matters than these.

What emerges from all this is that to perform a work one must have knowledge of what is required for a correct example of the work; and one must then try to act on such knowledge in producing an occurrence of a sound-sequence. It is the producer's acting on his knowledge of the requirements that makes of some sound-sequence-occurrences a perfor. mance of the work, instead of merely an occurrence of a sound-sequence that might also have occurred in a performance of the work. Such knowledge may be gained in many ways--for example, from scores or other specifications. But seldom will it be gained wholly from specifications which have been expressed. And sometimes it may not be gained from these at all.

It is not necessary, though, if one is to perform a work, that one succeed in one's attempt to act on one's knowledge of what is required of a sound-sequence-occurrence if it is to be a correct example of the work Even if one makes mistakes and so does not actually produce a correct example, still one may have performed the work. Of course there are limits, albeit rather indefinite ones, on how seriously one can fail and still have performed the work.

So my suggestion concerning the nature of performing is this: To perform a musical work W is to aim to produce a sound-sequence-occur- rence in accord with one's knowledge of what is required of something if it is to be a correct example of W, and to succeed at least to the extent of producing an ample of W.5

An implication of this understanding of the nature of performing is that when a performer deliberately departs from the requirements for a correct performance of some work W, he is then not performing W. Sometimes such departures are motivated by the performer's inability to negotiate some passage. In other cases they are motivated by the performer's belief that he can thereby produce an aesthetically better performance. But whatever the motive, if Anthony Newman, say, deliberately departs trom what is necessary for a correct example of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D minor, then (strictly speaking) he is not performing that work. He is probably instead performing Newman's variation on Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D minor.

We have been discussing at some length the concept of performing. It is time now to return to the question which led us into this discussion, namely, which is the correct view as to the nature of the musical work, (3) or (4)? Is a musical work just a certain kind of sound-sequence-occur- rence, or is it a certain kind of performance?

What is worth noticing first is that on both (3) and (4), art works can

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be viewed as norm-kinds. That is evident in (4), but probably not so on (3). For on (3), W is just a kind whose examples are the occurrences of a certain set of sound-sequences. And sound-sequence-occurrences just are or are not occurrences of that sequence of which they are occurrences. It makes no sense to speak of some as correct occurrences thereof and some as incorrect occurrences. However, there seems to be nothing against thinking of certain of the 'member' sound-sequences as correct ones, and the rest as incorrect ones. Then correct examples of the work will be those which are occurrences of the former; incorrect examples will be those which are occurrences of the latter. Thus, the fact that art works are norm-kinds is as compatible with (3) as with (4).

What is also worth noting is that on both (3) and (4) those properties which a work has by virtue of what counts as correctness in examples belong to it essentially. A work which has a G natural in its seventh measure cannot fail to have had a G natural there, on pain of not being that work.

But in addition to the similarities, there are significant differences between the kinds which (3) proposes to identify with art works and those which (4) proposes to identify with them. So let us contrast some of the implications of each of these views. If (3) were true, then one would have to distinguish between examples and performances of works. As a matter of contingent fact, it might be that only performances of W were examples of W. But there would be no necessity in this. And as a corollary, on (3) one could hear Bartok's Second Sonata without anyone performing it. For, presumably, by hearing an example of the work one can hear the work; and on (3) a work can have nonperformance examples. Also, on (3) one could hear a work W without hearing a performance of W, by hearing a performance (correct or incorrect) of a distinct work W'. Further, one could hear several different musical works by listening to a performance of just one work. On (4), however, none of these results obtain.

Furthermore, if (3) were true, it would be possible for W to have among its examples sound-occurrences which are also examples of W'. For a sound-sequence which could occur as a correct (or indeed incorrect) per- formance of W might also occur as an incorrect performance of W'. One's first inclination is to say that on this point too, (3) and (4) differ. On (4), it Would seem, distinct works cannot share any examples. But in fact this is false. On either view, musical works W and W' are identical if and only if whatever is necessary for something to be a correct example of W is also necessary for something to be a correct example of W', and vice versa. And on either view, something is a performance of a work W only if its pro- duction is guided by W's requirements for correct examples. But it seems clear that a given performance can be a performance of two distinct works;

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and so also it seems clear that the production of a given performance can be guided by the requirements for correct examples of two works at once. This can happen in two sorts of ways. If works W and W' are related in such a way that whatever W requires for correct performance W' also does, but not vice versa (there being matters which W settles in terms of cor- rectness but which W' leaves optional), then, though W and W' are distinct works, whatever is a performance of W will also be one of W'. But even when works do not 'overlap' in this way, a group of performers, or even a single performer, can perform two works at once. This indeed is required by some of the works of Charles Ives. To perform them, hymns, folk songs, and patriotic songs must all be performed concurrently. Thus, on (4) as well as on (3), distinct works can share some, and even all, examples. However, on (4) the only cases of shared examples between two works W and W' will be those in which a performance is guided both by the criteria for correct examples of W and by those for correct examples of W'. And this limitation does not hold on (3).

But though there are a number of significant differences between the conception of a musical work offered us by (3) and that offered us by (4), none of the differences thus far pointed out seem to provide a solid reason for preferring either of (3) or (4) to the other. On some issues, (3) may give us a more 'natural' understanding; on others, (4). But on none of these issues does either seem to give us a clearly mistaken understanding. And though the implications of the two views diverge on more issues than we have cited. I do not think that these other divergent implications yield any more decisive reason for preferring one view to the other. Though the kinds with which each view proposes to identify a given musical work both exist and are definitely distinct from each other, yet it is simply not clear which of these different kinds is identical with the work. The situation seems to be that when we refer to and speak of what we regard as art works, we, in all likelihood, do not with definiteness mean to pick out entities of either sort as opposed to those of the other. For on most matters entities of these two sorts do not differ. And the matters where they do differ are so far off on the edge of our normal concern in the arts that we have never had to make up our minds as to which of these sorts of entities we intend to be dealing with.

It is possible, of course, that future developments in the arts will force us to make up our minds. And perhaps those developments are already upon us. For example, John Cage's work 4 feet 33 inches requires no particular sorts of sounds, or sound-sequences whatsoever. There are requirements for a correct performance of the work; namely that the pianist keep his hands poised above a piano keyboard for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. And there are sounds to be listened to, namely, the sounds

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produced by the audience as they gradually realize what is being per- petrated. But the requirements include no specifications concerning sounds whatsoever. Thus, it is obvious that (3) simply lacks application to this case. (4), though, is still relevant. And if works such as this are eventually regarded as works of music, a decisive shift away from (3) toward (4) will have occurred.6

V What Is It to Compose?

On either of the two views we have been considering, a composer of a musical work can be thought of as one who determines what constitutes correctness of performances of the work. And such determination of correctness has in turn two phases. The composer must think of, or consider, the correctness-conditions in question. And in addition, since in the course of composing a work he normally considers a great many more such than he actually settles on, he must certify these as those he wants. This much is essential to being a composer.

But normally a composer does more than determine what constitutes correctness of performance. Normally he also produces a score. Now, as we remarked earlier, a typical function of a score is to provide specifica- tions for producing (correct) examples of the work associated with the score. Yet it does seem possible for a composer to determine a set of correctness-conditions which he knows to be impossible of being followed by any present performers on any extant or anticipated instruments. And it does seem possible for the composer to score such a work. Of course, he would not expect to hear it, and neither would he think of his score as providing specifications for performances. The score would just be the composer's record of his determination. It seems in fact that this is what every score is. Most scores function and are meant to function to guide performances. But what is true of every score is that it is a record of the artist's determination of correctness-conditions. If the record is in addition publicly legible, then it can also serve to communicate to others a knowledge of the conditions, and thus of the work. Musical afficionados can then become acquainted with the work by reading the score, and some may even thereby get some enjoyment from it.

Typically, then, there are at least these two activities involved in com- posing a work of music: The artist determines what constitutes correctness of performance, and he makes a record of his determination. Normally, of course, these two activities do not take place in neat separation. But sometimes they do. Mozart said that he imagined whole symphonies in his head. Housman said that he imagined poems while shaving. And concerning such cases, a question to consider is whether thereby an art

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work has been composed. Can one compose "in one's head'? Well, one can determine correctness-conditions in one's head, but one cannot in one's head record the determination. Thus, depending on whether one regards recording one's determination as necessary for composing a musical or literary work, different answers will be given.

A consequence of what we have been saying is that two people car compose the same work. For surely it is possible for two people to determine and record the same correctness-conditions. Thus, Beethoven's Opus 111 is not necessarily just an opus of Beethoven. Indeed, it is not necessarily an opus of Beethoven at all. So also, the same musical work can in principle be known and performed in two different and independent cultures.

Does the artist, by composing his musical work, thereby also create it That is, does he bring it into existence? If (4) is the correct theory as to the nature of the musical work, so that a musical work is a performance- kind, then it certainly seems plausible to hold that he does, at least if composing is understood as consisting just in the determination of cor. rectness-conditions. For on (4) there can be no examples of a work which are not performances thereof. And to perform the work, one must know what is required of something if it is to be a correct example. But no one can know what these correctness-conditions are until they have been determined by someone or other. And for someone to determine the correctness-conditions is just to compose the work. On the other hand, composing the work would seem sufficient for bringing it into existence. Certainly it does not seem necessary that it also be performed. For there seems nothing contradictory in the notion of unperformed musical works.

But if (3) is the correct theory as to the nature of a musical work, it is not plausible to hold that in composing one creates. For on (3) a work may have examples which are not performances. And so there is nothing to prevent its having examples before performances have been made possible by the determination of correctness-conditions. But, surely, if there are examples of a work at a given time, then the work exists at that time. Thus, if (3) is correct, composing a work cannot in general be viewed as bringing it into existence.

But what, then, on (3), are the existence criteria for musical works? One possible view is that there exists such a work as W at time t if and only if W is being exemplified at t. But this view has the implausible conse- quence that musical works not only come into existence and go out, but that most of them exist intermittently. For on this view, the work exists when and only when it is being exemplified. And rare is the musical work which has no pair of exemplifications such that there is some time, between the occurrence of members of the pair, when the work is not being exemplified.

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An alternative view would be that there exists such a work as W if and only if W is being exemplified or has been exemplified. But this view has the consequence that there cannot be a musical work which has not been exemplified. In fact, however, the contemporary literature concerning music is filled with the laments of composers whose works go unex- emplified.

So perhaps the best view is that a musical work W exists just in case it is possible that there be an exemplification of W. For this view has none of the untoward consequences of the other views. On this view, it would not be possible for a work to be composed but not exist; on this view, a work would not cease to exist when all exemplifications ceased; and on this view, there could be unexemplified works.

It should be noticed, though, that on this view musical works exist everlastingly. For if it is ever possible that there be something which is an example of Opus 111, then it is always possible. Neither by composing nor by any other activity on his part does a composer bring his work into existence. Rather, if (3) is correct, the composer should be thought of as a selector rather than as a creator. To compose would be to select a certain kind of sound-occurrence. The only thing a composer would normally bring into existence would be a token (copy) of his score. Creation would be confined to token creation. Furthermore, since the selection of the work occurs in the process of determining its correctness-conditions, such deter- mination would have to be viewed as consisting in discovering the condi- tions. By contrast, on the view that the artist brings his work into existence by composing it, determination of the conditions for correctness can best be thought of as consisting in devising the conditions.

It must be admitted that there is something odd in thinking of musical works as existing everlastingly, waiting to be selected and recorded. But perhaps the correct view is that though the entity which is a musical work exists everlastingly, it is not a musical work until some composer does something to it. If so, then in answer to the question, "What must be done to a kind in order to make it a musical work?" one can take one's stand at at least two different points. One can hold that it is not a musical work until someone has determined its correctness-conditions, or one can hold that it is not a musical work until its correctness-conditions have been recorded as well as determined.

VI How to Tell Correctness

Our discussion concerning the ontological status of art works has con- centrated on music. The detailed application to the other arts of the points we have made can be left to the reader. But two final matters must be considered. One is this: Why can paintings and sculptures not be viewed

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as single-exampled kinds rather than as physical objects, thereby giving us as sinied theory" of art works? P. F. Strawson, after saying that in"i Pertain sense, paintings and works of sculpture" are types, adds Thi footnote:

The mention of paintings and works of sculpture may seem absurd Are they not particulars? But this is a superficial point. The things the dealers buy and sell are particulars. But it is only because of the empirical deficiencies of reproductive techniques that we identify these with the works of art. Were it not for these deficiencies, the original of a painting would have only the interest which belongs to the original manuscript of a poem. Different people could look at exactly the same painting in different places at the same time, just as different people can listen to exactly the same quartet at different times in the same place ([6];231.)

The situation is not quite as Strawson represents it, however. Of course there is nothing impossible in a certain object-work's having but one object. But object-works are norm-kinds, and being such they have as- sociated with them certain requirements for something's being a correct example of the work. What is different in the case of paintings is that there are no such associated requirements. There simply are no require- ments for something's being a correct example of some kind of which The Odalesque is the premier example. Of course, one can pick out things which to a certain close degree resemble this painting. There is a kind corresponding to them, and the painting is an example of it. But this is not a norm-kind, and none of our names of paintings are names of such entities.

Secondly, a question which has been pressing for a long time is this: How do we tell what constitutes a correct example of some art work? By now, however, the question has almost answered itself. In the case of works produced by some artist, the answer is that we try to discover the relevant features of that artifact which the artist produced (or which he arranged to have produced) as a record of his selection and as a guide or production-item for the making of examples. Of course, we will often discover that we cannot find out with any surety what the relevant features of that artifact were (are). We may no longer have the poet's original copy of the poem nor any very reliable evidence as to what it was like in crucial respects. Or we may have several copies from the poet's hand and not know which he authenticated. Or we may have an original authenticated copy but it may contain mistakes made by the poet, and we may find it impossible to determine which of various possibilities he had in mind. Or

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we may have an original, authenticated, and correct copy, but we may no longer know how to interpret all the symbols. In all such cases and many others we simply have to acknowledge that we are to some extent uncer- tain as to what constitutes a correct example. To that extent, we are also uncertain as to the character of the work. Yet it is clear what we must look for: the features of that original artifact.

In the case of those art works sustained in the memory of a culture and for which there is no artifact functioning as guide or production-item, we simply have to find out what the culture would regard as a correct and what it would regard as an incorrect example of the work-which is the same as finding out what the culture takes the art work to be like in those respects.?

References

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Notes

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13. The Ontological Peculiarity of Works of Art JOSEPH MARGOLIS In the context of discussing the nature of artistic creativity, Jack Glickman offers the intriguing comment, "Particulars are made, types created."' The remark is a strategic one, but it is either false or misleading; and its recovery illuminates in a most economical way some of the complexities of the creative process and of the ontology of art. Glickman offers as an instance of the distinction he has in mind, the following: "If the chef created a new soup, he created a new kind of soup, a new recipe; he may not have made the soup [that is, some particular pot of soup]."? If, by kind,' Glickman means to signify a universal of some sort, then, since universals are not created (or destroyed), it could not be the case that the chef "created" a new soup, a new kind of soup.' It must be the case that the chef, in making a particular (new) soup, created (to use Glickman's idiom) a kind of soup; otherwise, of course, that the chef created a new (kind of) soup may be evidenced by his having formulated a relevant recipe (which locution, in its own turn, shows the same ambiguity between type and token). What is important, here, may not meet the eye at once. But if he can be said to create (to invent) a (new kind of) soup and if universals cannot be created or destroyed, then, in creating a kind of soup, a chef must be creating something other than a universal. The odd thing is that a kind of soup thus created is thought to be individuated among related creations; hence, it appears to be a particular of some sort. But it also seems to be an abstract entity if it is a particular at all. Hence, although it may be possible to admit abstract particulars in principle,* it is difficult to concede that what the chef created is an abstract particular if one may be said to have tasted what the chef created. The analogy with art is plain. If Picasso From The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XXXVI (1977), 45-50. Reprinted with permission of the author and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 254 The Ontology of Art created a new kind of painting, in painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, it would appear that he could not have done so by using oils. There is only one solution if we mean to speak in this way. It must be possible to instantiate particulars (of a certain kind or of certain kinds) as well as to instantiate universals or properties. I suggest that the term "type' in all contexts in which the type/token ambiguity arises-signifies abstract particulars of a kind that can be instantiated. Let me offer a specimen instance. Printings properly pulled from Dürer's etching plate for Melancholia I are instances of that etching; but bona fide instances of Melancholia I need not have all their relevant properties in common, since later printings and printings that follow a touching up of the plate or printings that are themselves touched up may be genuine instances of Melancholia I and still differ markedly from one another- at least to the sensitive eye. Nothing, however, can instantiate a property without actually instantiating that property.S So to think of types as particulars (of a distinctive kind) accommodates the fact that we individuate works of art in unusual ways- performances of the same music, printings of the same etching, copies of the same novel--and that works of art may be created and destroyed. If, further, we grant that, in creating a new soup, a chef stirred the ingredients in his pot and that, in creating a new kind of painting, in painting Les Demoiselles, Picasso applied paint to canvas, we see that it is at least normally the case that one does not create a new kind of soup or a new kind of painting without (in Glickman's words) making a particular soup or a particular painting. A great many questions intrude at this point. But we may bring this much at least to bear on an ingenious thesis of Glickman's. Glickman wishes to say that, though driftwood may be construed as a creation of "beach art," it remains true that driftwood was made by no one, is in fact a natural object, and hence that "the condition of artifactuality" so often claimed to be a necessary condition of being a work of art, is simply "superfluous.» "I see no conclusive conceptual block," says Glickman, "to allowing that the artwork [may] be a natural object."7 Correspondingly, Duchamp's "ready-mades" are created out of artifacts, but the artist who created them did not actually make them. Glickman's thesis depends on the tenability of his distinction between making and creating; and as We have just seen, one does not, in the normal case at least, create a new kind of art (type) without making a particular work of that kind (that is, an instance of that particular, the type, not merely an instance of that kind, the universal). In other words, when an artist creates (allowing Glickman's terms) "beach art," a new kind of art, the artist makes a particular instance (or token) of a particular type- much as with wood sculpture, this unique token of this driftwood composition. He cannot create the universals that are newly instantiated since universals cannot be created. He can create a The Ontological Peculiarity of Works of Art 255 new type-particular, a particular of the kind "beach art" but he can do so only by making a token-particular of that type. What this shows is that we were unnecessarily tentative about the relation between types and tokens. We may credit an artist with having created a new type of art; but there are no types of art that are not instantiated by some token-instances or for which we lack a notation by reference to which (as in the performing arts) admissible token-instances of the particular type-work may be generated. The reason for this strengthened conclusion has already been given. When an artist creates his work using the materials of his craft, the work he produces must have some perceptible physical properties at least; but it could not have such properties if the work were merely an abstract particular (or, of course, a universal). Hence, wherever an artist produces his work directly, even a new kind of work, he cannot be producing an abstract particular. Alternatively put, to credit an artist with having created a new type of art- a particular art-type-_we must (normally) be thus crediting him in virtue of the particular (token) work he has made. In wood sculpture, the particular piece an artist makes is normally the unique instance of his work; in bronzes, it is more usually true that, as in Rodin's peculiarly industrious way, there are several or numerous tokens of the very same (type) sculpture. But though we may credit the artist with having created the type, the type does not exist except instantiated in its proper tokens. We may, by a kind of courtesy, say that an artist who has produced the cast for a set of bronzes has created an artwork-type; but the fact is: (i) he has made a particular cast, and (in) the cast he's made is not the work created. Similar considerations apply to an artist's preparing a musical notation for the sonata he has created: (i) the artist makes a token instance of a type notation; and (i) all admissible instances of his sonata are so identified by reference to the notations. The result is that, insofar as he creates a type, an artist must make a token. A chef's assistant may actually make the first pot of soup- of the soup the chef has created, but the actual soup exists only when the pot is made. Credit to the chef in virtue of his recipe is partly an assurance that his authorship is to be acknowledged in each and every pot of soup that is properly an instance of his creation, whether he makes it or not; and it is partly a device for individuating proper token instances of particular type objects. But only the token instances of a type actually exist and aesthetic interest in the type is given point only in virtue of one's aesthetic interest in actual or possible tokens--as in actual or contemplated performances of a particular sonata. But if these distinctions be granted, then, normally, an artist makes a token of the type he has created. He could not create the type unless he made a proper token or, by the courtesy intended in notations and the 256 The Ontology of Art like, he provided a schema for making proper tokens of a particular type. Hence, what is normally made, in the relevant sense, is a token of a type. It must be the case, then, that when Duchamp created his Bottlerack, although he did not make a bottlerack-that is, although he did not manufacture a bottlerack, although he did not first bring it about that an object instantiate being a bottlerack- nevertheless, he did make a token of the Bottlerack. Similarly, although driftwood is not a manufactured thing, when an artist creates (if an artist can create) a piece of "beach art," he makes a token of that piece of "beach art." He need not have made the driftwood. But that shows (i) that artifactuality is not superfluous, though it is indeed puzzling (when displaying otherwise untouched driftwood in accord with the developed sensibilities of a society can count as the creation of an art-work); and (ii) it is not the case (contrary to Glickman's claims) that a natural object can be a work of art or that a work can be created though nothing be made. We may summarize the ontological peculiarities of the type/token distinction in the following way: (i) types and tokens are individuated as particulars; (il) types and tokens are not separable and cannot exist separately from one another; (in) types are instantiated by tokens and 'token' is an ellipsis for 'token-of-a-type', (iv) types and tokens may be generated and destroyed in the sense that actual tokens of a novel type may be generated, the actual tokens of a given type may be destroyed, and whatever contingencies may be necessary to the generation of actual tokens may be destroyed or disabled; (v) types are actual abstract par- ticulars in the sense only that a set of actual entities may be individuated as tokens of a particular type; (vi) it is incoherent to speak of comparing the properties of actual token- and type-particulars as opposed to com- paring the properties of actual particular tokens-of-a-type; (vi) reference to types as particulars serves exclusively to facilitate reference to actual and possible tokens-of-a-type. These distinctions are sufficient to mark the type/token concept as different from the kind/instance concept and the set/ member concept. Here, a second ontological oddity must be conceded. The driftwood that is made by no one is not the (unique) token that is made of the "beach art" creation; and the artifact, the bottlerack, that Duchamp did not make is not identical with the (probably but not necessarily unique) token that Duchamp did make of the creation called Bottlerack. What Duchamp made was a token of Bottlerack; and what the manufacturer of bottleracks made was a particular bottlerack that served as the material out of which Duchamp created Bottlerack by making a (probably unique) instance of Bottlerack. For, consider that Duchamp made something when he created Bottlerack but he did not make a bottlerack; also, that no one made the The Ontological Peculiarity of Works of Art 257 driftwood though someone (on the thesis) made a particular composition of art using the driftwood. If the bottlerack were said to be identical with Duchamp' Boulerack (the token or the type), we should be contradicting ourselves; the same would be true of the driftwood case. Hence, in spite of appearances, there must be an ontological difference between tokens of artwork-types and such physical objects as bottleracks and driftwood that can serve as the materials out of which they are made. My own suggestion is that (token) works of art are embodied in physical objects, not identical with them. I should argue, though this is not the place for it, that persons, similarly, are embodied in physical bodies but not identical with them.° The idea is that not only can one particular instantiate another particular in a certain way (tokens of types) but one particular can embody or be embodied in another particular with which it is (necessarily) not identical. The important point is that identity cannot work in the anomalous cases here considered (nor in the usual cases of art) and that what would otherwise be related by way of identity are, obviously, particulars. Furthermore, the embodiment relationship does not invite dualism though it does a require a distinction among kinds of things and among the kinds of properties of things of such kinds. For example, a particular printing of Dürer's Melancholia I has the property of being a particular token of Melancholia I (the artwork type), but the physical paper and physical print do not, on any familiar view, have the property of being a token of a type. Only objects having such intentional properties as that of "being created" or, as with words, having meaning or the like can have the property of being a token of a type.? What is meant in saying that one particular is embodied in another is: (i) that the two particulars are not identical; (ii) that the existence of the embodied particular presupposes the existence of the embodying par- ticular; (ji) that the embodied particular possess some of the properties of the embodying particular; (iv) that the embodied particular possesses properties that the embodying particular does not possess; (v) that the embodied particular possesses properties of a kind that the embodying particular cannot possess; (vi) that the individuation of the embodied particular presupposes the individuation of the embodying particular. The 'is' of embodiment, then, like the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of composi- tion' is a logically distinctive use. On a theory, for instance a theory about the nature of a work of art, a particular physical object will be taken to embody a particular object of another kind in such a way that a certain systematic relationship will hold between them. Thus, for instance, a sculptor will be said to make a particular sculpture by cutting a block of marble: Michelangelo's Pietà will exhibit certain of the physical properties of the marble and certain representational and purposive properties as 05929 riI 258 The Ontology of Art well; it will also have the property of being a unique token of the creation Pietà. The reason for theorizing thus is, quite simply, that works of ar are the products of culturally informed labor and that physical objects are not. So seen, they must possess properties that physical objects, qua physical objects, do not and cannot possess. Hence, an identity thesis leads to palpable contradictions. Furthermore, the conception of embodiment promises to facilitate a nonreductive account of the relationship between physical nature and human culture, without dualistic assumptions. What this suggests is that the so-called mind/ body problem is essentially a special form of a more general culture/ nature problem. But that is anoiher story. A work of art, then, is a particular. It cannot be a universal because it is created and can be destroyed; also, because it possesses physical and perceptual properties. But it is a peculiar sort of particular, unlike physical bodies, because (i) it can instantiate another particular; and (in) it can be embodied in another particular. The suggestion here is that all and only culturally emergent or culturally produced entities exhibit these traits. So the ontological characteristics assigned are no more than the most generic characteristics of art: its distinctive nature remains unanalyzed. Neverthe- less, we can discern an important difference between these two properties, as far as art is concerned. For, the first property, that of being able to instantiate another particular, has only to do with individuating works of art and whatever may, contingently, depend upon that; while the second property has to do with the ontologically dependent nature of actual works of art. This is the reason we may speak of type artworks as particulars. They are heuristically introduced for purposes of individuation, though they cannot exist except in the sense in which particular tokens of particular type artworks exist. So we can never properly compare the properties of a token work and a type work." What we may compare are alternative tokens of the same type- different printings of the same etching or different performances of the same sonata. In short, every work of art is a token-of-a-type; there are no tokens or types tout court. Again, this is not to say that there are no types or that an artist cannot create a new kind of painting. It is only to say that so speaking is an ellipsis for saying that a certain set of particulars are tokens of a type and that the artist is credited with so working with the properties of things, instantiated by the members of that set, that they are construed as tokens of a particular type. So the dependencies of the two ontological traits mentioned are quite different. There are no types that are separable from tokens because there are no tokens except tokens-of-a-type. The very process for individuating tokens entails individuating types, that is, entails individuating different sets of particulars as the alternative tokens of this or that type. There is The Ontological Peculiarity of Works of Art 259 nothing left over to discuss. What may mislead is this: the concept of different tokens of the same type is intended, in the arts, to accommodate the fact that the aesthetically often decisive differences among tokens of the same type (alternative performances of a sonata, for instance) need not matter as far as the individuation of the (type) work is concerned 12 But particular works of art cannot exist except as embodied in physical objects. This is simply another way of saying that works of art are culturally emergent entities; that is, that works of art exhibit properties that physical objects cannot exhibit, but do so in a way that does not depend on the presence of any substance other than what may be ascribed to purely physical objects. Broadly speaking, those properties are what may be characterized as functional or intentional properties and include design, expressiveness, symbolism, representation, meaning, style, and the like. Without prejudice to the nature of either art or persons, this way of viewing art suggests a very convenient linkup with the functional theory of mental traits."3 Be that as it may, a reasonable theory of art could hold that when physical materials are worked in accord with a certain artistic craft then there emerges, culturally, an object embodied in the former that possesses a certain orderly array of functional properties of the kind just mentioned. Any object so produced may be treated as an artifact. Hence, works of art exist as fully as physical objects but the condition on which they do so depends on the independent existence of some physical object itself. Works of art, then, are culturally emergent entities, tokens-of-a-type that exist embodied in physical objects. Notes 1. Jack Glickman, 'Creativity in the Arts," in Lars Aagaard-Mogensen, ed. Culture and Art (Nyborg and Atlantic Highlands, N.J: F. Lokkes Forlag and Humanities Press, 1976), p. 140. 2. Loc. cit. 3. Difficulties of this sort undermine the recent thesis of Nicholas Wolterstorff's, namely, that works of art are in fact kinds. Cf. Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Toward an Ontology of Art Works," Nous IX (1975), 115-142. Also, Joseph Margolis, Art and Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978), ch. 5. 4. Cf. Nelson Goodman, The Structure of Appearance (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill, 2nd ed., 1966). S. The subtleties of the type/token distinction are discussed at length in Mar- golis, loc. cit. 6. Op. cit., p. 144. 7. Ibid., p. 143. 8. A fuller account of the concept of embodiment with respect to art is given in Art and Philosophy, ch. 1. I have tried to apply the notion to all cultural 260 The Ontology of Art entities-that is, persons, works of art, artifacts, words and sentences, machines, institutionalized actions, and the like- in Persons and Minds (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1977). Cf. also "On the Ontology of Persons," New Scholasticism X (1976), 73-84. 9. This is very close in spirit to Peirce's original distinction between types and tokens. Cf. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), vol. 4, par. 537. 10. Cf. David Wiggins, Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967). 11. This is one of the signal weaknesses of Wolterstorff's account, loc. cit., as well as of Richard Wollheim's account; cf. Art and Its Objects (New York: Harper, 1968). 12. This counts against Nelson Goodman's strictures on the individuation of artworks. Cf. Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968) and Joseph Margolis, "Numerical Identity and Reference in the Arts," British Journal of Aesthetics X (1970), 138-146. 13. Cf. for instance Hilary Putnam, "Minds and Machines, » in Sidney Hook, ed., Dimensions of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960), and Jerry Fodor, Psychological Explanation (New York: Random House, 1968). 14. Art and Authenticity NELSON GOODMAN ... the most tantalizing question of all: If a fake is so expert that even after the most thorough and trustworthy examination its authenticity is still open to doubt, is it or is it not as satisfactory at work of art as if it were unequivocally genuine? Aline B. Saarinen* 1 The Perfect Fake Forgeries of works of art present a nasty practical problem to the collector, the curator, and the art historian, who must often expend taxing amounts of time and energy in determining whether or not particular objects are genuine. But the theoretical problem raised is even more acute. The hardheaded question why there is any aesthetic difference between a deceptive forgery and an original work challenges a basic premise on which the very functions of collector, museum, and art historian depend. A philosopher of art caught without an answer to this question is at least as badly off as a curator of paintings caught taking a Van Meegeren for a Vermeer. The question is most strikingly illustrated by the case of a given work and a forgery or copy or reproduction of it. Suppose we have before us, on the left, Rembrandt's original painting Lucretia and, on the right, a superlative imitation of it. We know from a fully documented history that the painting on the left is the original; and we know from X-ray photographs and microscopic examination and chemical analysis that the painting on the right is a recent fake. Although there are many differences *New York Times Book Review, July 30, 1961, p. 14. From Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1976), Pp. 99-123. Reprinted with permission of the author. 262 The Ontology of Art between the two- -c.g., in authorship, age, physical and chemical charac. teristics, and market value--we cannot see any difference between them; and if they are moved while we sleep, we cannot then tell which is which. by merely looking at them. Now we are pressed with the question whether there can be any aesthetic difference between the two pictures; and the questioner's ton often intimates that the answer is plainly no, that the only differences here are aesthetically irrelevant. We must begin by inquiring whether the distinction between what can and what cannot be seen in the pictures by 'merely looking at them' is entirely clear. We are looking at the pictures, but presumably not 'merely looking' at them, when we examine them under a microscope or fluoro- scope. Does merely looking, then, mean looking without the use of any instrument? This seems a little unfair to the man who needs glasses to tell a painting from a hippopotamus. But if glasses are permitted at all, how strong may they be, and can we consistently exclude the magnifying glass and the microscope? Again, if incandescent light is permitted, can violet- ray light be ruled out? And even with incandescent light, must it be of medium intensity and from a normal angle, or is a strong raking light permitted? All these cases might be covered by saying that 'merely looking' is looking at the pictures without any use of instruments other than those customarily used in looking at things in general. This will cause trouble when we turn, say, to certain miniature illuminations or Assyrian cylinder seals that we can hardly distinguish from the crudest copies without using a strong glass. Furthermore, even in our case of the two pictures, subtle differences of drawing or painting discoverable only with a magnifying glass may still, quite obviously, be aesthetic differences between the pictures. If a powerful microscope is used instead, this is no longer the case; but just how much magnification is permitted? To specify what is meant by merely looking at the pictures is thus far from easy; but for the sake of argument,' let us suppose that all these difficulties have been resolved and the notion of 'merely looking' made clear enough. Then we must ask who is assumed to be doing the looking. Our questioner does not, I take it, mean to suggest that there is no aesthetic difference between two pictures if at least one person, say a cross-eyed wrestler, can see no difference. The more pertinent question is whether there can be any aesthetic difference if nobody, not even the most skilled expert, can ever tell the pictures apart by merely looking at them. But notice now that no one can ever ascertain by merely looking at the pictures that no one ever has been or will be able to tell them apart by merely looking at them. In other words, the question in its present form concedes that no one can ascertain by merely looking at the pictures that there is no aesthetic difference between them. This seems repugnant to our ques- Art and Authenticity 263 toner's whole motivation. For if merely looking can never establish that two pictures are aesthetically the same, something that is beyond the reach of any given looking is admitted as constituting an aesthetic difference. And in that case, the reason for not admitting documents and the results of scientific tests becomes very obscure. The real issue may be more accurately formulated as the question whether there is any aesthetic difference between the two pictures for me (or for *) if I (or *) cannot tell them apart by merely looking at them. But this is not quite right either. For I can never ascertain merely by looking at the pictures that even I shall never be able to see any difference between them. And to concede that something beyond any given looking at the pictures by me may constitute an aesthetic difference between them for me is, again, quite at odds with the tacit conviction or suspicion that activates the questioner. Thus the critical question amounts finally to this: is there any aesthetic difference between the two pictures for x at t, where t is a suitable period of time, if y cannot tell them apart by merely looking at them at 1? Or in other words, can anything that x does not discern by merely looking at the pictures at + constitute an aesthetic difference between them for x at t? 2 The Answer In setting out to answer this question, we must bear clearly in mind that what one can distinguish at any given moment by merely looking depends not only upon native visual acuity but upon practice and training.? Americans look pretty much alike to a Chinese who has never looked at many of them. Twins may be indistinguishable to all but their closest relatives and acquaintances. Moreover, only through looking at them when someone has named them for us can we learn to tell Joe from Jim upon merely looking at them. Looking at people or things attentively, with the knowledge of certain presently invisible respects in which they differ, increases our ability to discriminate between them--and between other things or other people- upon merely looking at them. Thus pictures that look just alike to the newsboy come to look quite unlike to him by the time he has become a museum director. Although I see no difference now between the two pictures in question, I may learn to see a difference between them. I cannot determine now by merely looking at them, or in any other way, that I shall be able to learn. But the information that they are very different, that the one is the original and the other the forgery, argues against any inference to the conclusion that I shall not be able to learn. And the fact that I may later be able to make a perceptual distinction between the pictures that I cannot make 264 The Ontology of Art now constitutes an aesthetic difference between them that is important to me now. Nithermore, to look at the pictures now with the knowledge that the left one is the original and the other the forgery may help develop the ability to tell which is which later by merely looking at them. Thus, wilf information not derived from the present or any past looking at the pictures, the present looking may have a quite different bearing upon Future looking from what it would otherwise have. The way the pictures in fact differ constitutes an aesthetic difference between them for me now because my knowledge of the way they differ bears upon the role of the present looking in training my perceptions to discriminate between these pictures, and between others. But that is not all. My knowledge of the difference between the two pictures, just because it affects the relationship of the present to future lookings, informs the very character of my present looking. This knowledge instructs me to look at the two pictures differently now, even if what I see is the same. Beyond testifying that I may learn to see a difference, it also indicates to some extent the kind of scrutiny to be applied now, the comparisons and contrasts to be made in imagination, and the relevant associations to be brought to bear. It thereby guides the selection, from my past experience, of items and aspects for use in my present looking. Thus not only later but right now, the unperceived difference between the two pictures is a consideration pertinent to my visual experience with them. In short, although I cannot tell the pictures apart merely by looking at them now, the fact that the left-hand one is the original and the right-hand one a forgery constitutes an aesthetic difference between them for me now because knowledge of this fact (1) stands as evidence that there may be a difference between them that I can learn to perceive, (2) assigns the present looking a role as training toward such a perceptual discrimination, and (3) makes consequent demands that modify and differentiate my present experience in looking at the two pictures. Nothing depends here upon my ever actually perceiving or being able to perceive a difference between the two pictures. What informs the nature and use of my present visual experience is not the fact or the assurance that such a perceptual discrimination is within my reach, but evidence that it may be; and such evidence is provided by the known factual differences between the pictures. Thus the pictures differ aesthetically for me now even if no one will ever be able to tell them apart merely by looking at them. But suppose it could be proved that no one ever will be able to see any difference? This is about as reasonable as asking whether, if it can be proved that the market value and yield of a given U.S. bond and one of a certain nearly bankrupt company will always be the same, there is any Art and Authenticity 265 financial difference between the two bonds. For what sort of proof could be given? One might suppose that if nobody- not even the most skilled expert--has ever been able to see any difference between the pictures, then the conclusion that I shall never be able to is quite safe; but, as in the case of the Van Meegeren forgeries* (of which, more later), distinctions not visible to the expert up to a given time may later become manifest even to the observant layman. Or one might think of some delicate scanning device that compares the color of two pictures at every point and registers the slightest discrepancy. What, though, is meant here by "at every point"? At no mathematical point, of course, is there any color at all; and even some physical particles are too small to have color. The scanning device must thus cover at each instant a region big enough to have color but at least as small as any perceptible region. Just how to manage this is puzzling since "perceptible" in the present context means "discernible by merely looking," and thus the line between perceptible and nonperceptible regions seems to depend on the arbitrary line between a magnifying glass and a microscope. If some such line is drawn, we can never be sure that the delicacy of our instruments is superior to the maximal attainable acuity of unaided perception. Indeed, some experimen- tal psychologists are inclined to conclude that every measurable difference in light can sometimes be detected by the naked eye.' And there is a further difficulty. Our scanning device will examine color--that is, reflected light. Since reflected light depends partly upon incident light, illumination of every quality, of every intensity, and from every direction must be tried. And for each case, especially since the paintings do not have a plane surface, a complete scanning must be made from every angle. But of course we cannot cover every variation, or even determine a single absolute correspondence, in even one respect. Thus the search for a proof that I shall never be able to see any difference between the two pictures is futile for more than technological reasons. Yet suppose we are nevertheless pressed with the question whether, if proof were given, there would then be any aesthetic difference for me between the pictures. And suppose we answer this farfetched question in the negative. This will still give our questioner no comfort. For the net result would be that if no difference between the pictures can in fact be perceived, then the existence of an aesthetic difference between them will rest entirely upon what is or is not proved by means other than merely looking at them. This hardly supports the contention that there can be no aesthetic differences without a perceptual difference. Returning from the realm of the ultra-hypothetical, we may be faced with the protest that the vast aesthetic difference thought to obtain between the Rembrandt and the forgery cannot be accounted for in terms of the search for, or even the discovery of, perceptual differences so slight 266 The Ontology of Art That they can be made out, if at all, only after much experience and long practice. This objection can be dismissed at once; for minute perceptu differences can bear enormous weight. The clues that tell me whether have caught the eye of someone across the room are almost indiscernible. The actual differences in sound that distinguish a fine from a mediocre performance can be picked out only by the well-trained ear. Extremely subtle changes can alter the whole design, feeling, or expression of a painting. Indeed, the slightest perceptual differences sometimes matter the most aesthetically; gross physical damage to a fresco may be less conse- quential than slight but smug retouching. All I have attempted to show, of course, is that the two pictures can differ aesthetically, not that the original is better than the forgery. In our example, the original probably is much the better picture, since Rembrandt paintings are in general much better than copies by unknown painters. But a copy of a Lastman by Rembrandt may well be better than the original. We are not called upon here to make such particular comparative judg- ments or to formulate canons of aesthetic evaluation. We have fully met the demands of our problem by showing that the fact that we cannot tell our two pictures apart merely by looking at them does not imply that they are aesthetically the same--and thus does not force us to conclude that the forgery is as good as the original. The example we have been using throughout illustrates a special case of a more general question concerning the aesthetic significance of authen- ticity. Quite aside from the occurrence of forged duplication, does it matter whether an original work is the product of one or another artist or school or period? Suppose that I can easily tell two pictures apart but cannot tell who painted either except by using some devices like X-ray photography. Does the fact that the picture is or is not by Rembrandt make any aesthetic difference? What is involved here is the discrimination not of one picture from another but of the class of Rembrandt paintings from the class of other paintings. My chance of learning to make this discrimination cor- rectly_of discovering projectible characteristics that differentiate Rembrandts in general from non-Rembrandts- depends heavily upon the set of examples available as a basis. Thus the fact that the given picture belongs to the one class or the other is important for me to know in learning how to tell Rembrandt paintings from others. In other words, my present (or future) inability to determine the authorship of the given picture without use of scientific apparatus does not imply that the author- ship makes no aesthetic difference to me; for knowledge of the authorship, no matter how obtained, can contribute materially toward developing my ability to determine without such apparatus whether or not any picture, including this one on another occasion, is by Rembrandt. Art and Authenticity 267 Incidentally, one rather striking puzzle is readily solved in these terms. When Van Meegeren sold his pictures as Vermeers, he deceived most of the best-qualified experts; and only by his confession was the fraud revealed.' Nowadays even the fairly knowing layman is astonished that any competent judge could have taken a Van Meegeren for a Vermeer, so obvious are the differences. What has happened? The general level of aesthetic sensibility has hardly risen so fast that the layman of today sees more acutely than the expert of twenty years ago. Rather, the better information now at hand makes the discrimination easier. Presented with a single unfamiliar picture at a time, the expert had to decide whether it was enough like known Vermeers to be by the same artist. And every time a Van Meegeren was added to the corpus of pictures accepted as Vermeers, the criteria for acceptance were modified thereby; and the mistaking of further Van Meegerens for Vermeers became inevitable. Now, however, not only have the Van Meegerens been subtracted from the precedent-class for Vermeer, but also a precedent-class for Van Meegeren has been established. With these two precedent-classes before us, the characteristic differences become so conspicuous that telling other Van Meegerens from Vermeers offers little difficulty. Yesterday's expert might well have avoided his errors if he had had a few known Van Meegerens handy for com- parison. And today's layman who so cleverly spots a Van Meegeren may well be caught taking some quite inferior school-piece for a Vermeer. In answering the questions raised above, I have not attempted the formidable task of defining "'aesthetic" in general," but have simply argued that since the exercise, training, and development of our powers of discriminating among works of art are plainly aesthetic activities, the aesthetic properties of a picture include not only those found by looking at it but also those that determine how it is to be looked at. This rather obvious fact would hardly have needed underlining but for the prevalence of the time-honored Tingle-Immersion theory, which tells us that the proper behavior on encountering a work of art is to strip ourselves of all the vestments of knowledge and experience (since they might blunt the immediacy of our enjoyment), then submerge ourselves completely and gauge the aesthetic potency of the work by the intensity and duration of the resulting tingle. The theory is absurd on the face of it and useless for dealing with any of the important problems of aesthetics; but it has become part of the fabric of our common nonsense. 3 The Unfakable A second problem concerning authenticity is raised by the rather curious fact that in music, unlike painting, there is no such thing as a forgery of y The Ontology of Art 268 a known work. There are, indeed, compositions falsely purporting to be by Haydn as there are paintings falsely purporting to be by Rembrandt, but of the London Symphony, unlike the Lucretia, there can be no forgeries. Haydn's manuscript is no more genuine an instance of the score than is a printed copy off the press this morning, and last night's perfor mance no less genuine than the premiere. Copies of the score may vary in accuracy, but all accurate copies, even if forgeries of Haydn' manuscript, are equally genuine instances of the score. Performances may vary in correctness and quality and even in "authenticity of a more esoteric kind; but all correct performances are equally genuine instances of the work; In contrast, even the most exact copies of the Rembrandt painting are simply imitations or forgeries, not new instances, of the work. Why this difference between the two arts? Let us speak of a work of art as autographic if and only if the distinction between original and forgery of it is significant; or better, if and only if even the most exact duplication of it does not thereby count as genuine. I If a work of art is autographic, we may also call that art autographic. Thus painting is autographic, music nonautographic, or allographic. These terms are introduced purely for convenience; nothing is implied concerning the relative individuality of expression demanded by or attainable in these arts. Now the problem before us is to account for the fact that some arts but not others are autographic. One notable difference between painting and music is that the com- poser's work is done when he has written the score, even though the performances are the end products, while the painter has to finish the picture. No matter how many studies or revisions are made in either case, painting is in this sense a one-stage and music a two-stage art. Is an art autographic, then, if and only if it is one-stage? Counterexamples come readily to mind. In the first place, literature is not autographic though it is one-stage. There is no such thing as a forgery of Gray's Elegy. Any accurate copy of the text of a poem or novel is as much the original work as any other. Yet what the writer produces is ultimate; the text is not merely a means to oral readings as a score is a means to performances in music. An unrecited poem is not so forlorn as an unsung song; and most literary works are never read aloud at all. We might try to make literature into a two-stage art by considering the silent readings to be the end products, or the instances of a work; but then the lookings at a picture and the listenings to a performance would qualify equally as end products or instances, so that painting as well as literature would be two-stage and music three-stage. In the second place, printmaking is two-stage and yet autographic. The etcher, for example, makes a plate from which impres- sions are than taken on paper. These prints are the end products; and Art and Authenticity 269 although they may differ appreciably from one another, all are instances of the original work. But even the most exact copy produced otherwise than by printing from that plate counts not as an original but as an imitation or forgery. So far, our results are negative: not all one-stage arts are autographic and not all autographic arts are one-stage. Furthermore, the example of printmaking refutes the unwary assumption that in every autographic art a particular work exists only as a unique object. The line between an autographic and an allographic art does not coincide with that between a singular and a multiple art. About the only positive conclusion we can draw here is that the autographic arts are those that are singular in the earliest stage; etching is singular in its first stage--the plate is unique--and painting in its only stage. But this hardly helps; for the problem of explaining why some arts are singular is much like the problem of explaining why they are autographic. 4 The Reason Why, then, can I no more make a forgery of Haydn's symphony or of Gray's poem that I can make an original of Rembrandt's painting or of his etching Tobit Blind? Let us suppose that there are various handwritten copies and many editions of a given literary work. Differences between them in style and size of script or type, in color of ink, in kind of paper, in number and layout of pages, in condition, etc., do not matter. All that matters is what may be called sameness of spelling: exact correspondence as sequences of letters, spaces, and punctuation marks. Any sequence-even a forgery of the author's manuscript or of a given edition--that so cor- responds to a correct copy is itself correct, and nothing is more the original work than is such a correct copy. And since whatever is not an original of the work must fail to meet such an explicit standard of correctness, there can be no deceptive imitation, no forgery, of that work. To verify the spelling or to spell correctly is all that is required to identify an instance of the work or to produce a new instance. In effect, the fact that a literary work is in a definite notation, consisting of certain signs or characters that are to be combined by concatenation, provides the means for distinguishing the properties constitutive of the work from all contin- gent properties- that is, for fixing the required features and the limits of permissible variation in each. Merely by determining that the copy before us is spelled correctly we can determine that it meets all requirements for the work in question. In painting, on the contrary, with no such alphabet of characters, none of the pictorial properties- none of the properties the picture has as such- is distinguished as constitutive; no such feature can be 270 The Ontology of Art dismissed as contingent, and no deviation as insignificant. The only way of ascertaining that the Lucretia before us is genuine is thus to establish the historical fact that it is the actual object made by Rembrandt. Accord. ingly, physical identification of the product of the artist's hand, and consequently the conception of forgery of a particular work, assume a significance in painting that they do not have in literature.I what has been said of literary texts obviously applies also to musical scores. The alphabet is different; and the characters in a score, rather than being strung one after the other as in a text, are disposed in a more complex array. Nevertheless, we have a limited set of characters and of positions for them; and correct spelling, in only a slightly expanded sense, is still the sole requirement for a genuine instance of a work. Any false copy is wrongly spelled -has somewhere in place of the right character either another character or an illegible mark that is not a character of the notation in question at all. But what of performances of music? Music is not autographic in this second stage either, yet a performance by no means consists of characters from an alphabet. Rather, the constitutive properties demanded of a performance of the symphony are those prescribed in the score; and performances that comply with the score may differ appreciably in such musical features as tempo, timbre, phrasing, and expressiveness. To deter- mine compliance requires, indeed, something more than merely knowing the alphabet; it requires the ability to correlate appropriate sounds with the visible signs in the score--to recognize, so to speak, correct pronuncia- tion though without necessarily understanding what is pronounced. The competence required to identify or produce sounds called for by a score increases with the complexity of the composition, but there is nevertheless a theoretically decisive test for compliance; and a performance, whatever its interpretative fidelity and independent merit, has or has not all the constitutive properties of a given work, and is or is not strictly a perfor- mance of that work, according as it does or does not pass this test. No historical information concerning the production of the performance can affect the result. Hence deception as to the facts of production is irrelevant, and the notion of a performance that is a forgery of the work is quite empty. Yet there are forgeries of performances as there are of manuscripts and editions. What makes a performance an instance of a given work is not the same as what makes a performance a premiere, or played by a certain musician or upon a Stradivarius violin. Whether a performance has these latter properties is a matter of historical fact; and a performance falsely purporting to have any such property counts as a forgery, not of the musical composition but of a given performance or class of performances. Art and Authenticity 271 The comparison between printmaking and music is especially telling. We have already noted that etching, for example, is like music in having two stages and in being multiple in its second stage; but that whereas music is autographic in neither stage, printmaking is autographic in both. Now the situation with respect to the etched plate is clearly the same as with respect to a painting: assurance of genuineness can come only from identification of the actual object produced by the artist. But since the several prints from this plate are all genuine instances of the work, however much they differ in color and amount of ink, quality of impression, kind of paper, etc., one might expect here a full parallel between prints and musical performances. Yet there can be prints that are forgeries of the Tobit Blind but not performances that are forgeries of the London Symphony. The differences is that in the absence of a notation, not only is there no test of correctness of spelling for a plate but there is no test of compliance with a plate for a print. Comparison of a print with a plate, as of two plates, is no more conclusive than is comparison of two pictures. Minute discrepancies may always go unnoticed; and there is no basis for ruling out any of them as inessential. The only way of ascertaining whether a print is genuine is by finding out whether it was taken from a certain plate. '2 A print falsely purporting to have been so produced is in the full sense a forgery of the work. Here, as earlier, we must be careful not to confuse genuineness with aesthetic merit. That the distinction between original and forgery is aes- thetically important does not, we have seen, imply that the original is superior to the forgery. An original painting may be less rewarding than an inspired copy; a damaged original may have lost most of its former merit; an impression from a badly worn plate may be aesthetically much further removed from an early impression than is a good photographic reproduction. Likewise, an incorrect performance, though therefore not strictly an instance of a given quartet at all, may nevertheless- either because the changes improve what the composer wrote or because of sensitive interpretation--be better than a correct performance.13 Again, several correct performances of about equal merit may exhibit very dif- ferent specific aesthetic qualities power, delicacy, tautness, stodginess, incoherence, etc. Thus even where the constitutive properties of a work are clearly distinguished by means of a notation, they cannot be identified with the aesthetic properties. Among other arts, sculpture is autographic; cast sculpture is comparable to printmaking while carved sculpture is comparable to painting. Architec- ture and the drama, on the other hand, are more nearly comparable to music. Any building that conforms to the plans and specifications, any performance of the text of a play in accordance with the stage directions, J. J. Gibson 272 The Ontology of Art is as original an instance of the work as any other. But architecture scems to differ from music in that testing for compliance of a building with the specifications requires not that these be pronounced, or transcribed into sound, but that their application be understood. This is true also for the stage directions, as contrasted with the dialogue, of a play, Does this make architecture and the drama less purely allographic arts? Again, an ar. chitect's plans seem a good deal like a painter's sketches; and painting is an autographic art. On what grounds can we say that in the one case but not the other a veritable notation is involved? Such questions cannot be answered until we have carried through some rather painstaking analysis. Since an art seems to be allographic just insofar as it is amenable to notation, the case of the dance is especially interesting. Here we have an art without a traditional notation; and an art where the ways, and even the possibility, of developing an adequate notation are still matters of controversy. Is the search for a notation reasonable in the case of the dance but not in the case of painting? Or, more generally, why is the use of notation appropriate in some arts but not in others? Very briefly and roughly, the answer may be somewhat as follows. Initially, perhaps, all arts are autographic. Where the works are transitory, as in singing and reciting, or require many persons for their production, as in architecture and symphonic music, a notation may be devised in order to transcend the limitations of time and the individual. This involves establishing a distinction between the constitutive and the contingent properties of a work and in the case of literature, texts have even supplanted oral performances as the primary aesthetic objects). Of course, the notation does not dictate the distinction arbitrarily, but must follow generally- even though it may amend--lines antecedently drawn by the informal classifica- tion of performances into works and by practical decisions as to what is prescribed and what is optional. Amenability to notation depends upon a precedent practice that develops only if works of the art in question are commonly either ephemeral or not producible by one person. The dance, like the drama and symphonic and choral music, qualifies on both scores, while painting qualifies on neither. The general answer to our somewhat slippery second problem of authen- ticity can be summarized in a few words. A forgery of a work of art is an object falsely purporting to have the history of production requisite for the (or an) original of the work. Where there is a theoretically decisive test for determining that an object has all the constitutive properties of the work in question without determining how or by whom the object was produced, there is no requisite history of production and hence no forgery of any given work. Such a test is provided by a suitable notational system with an articulate set of characters and of relative positions for them. For Art and Authenticity 273 texts, scores, and perhaps plans, the test is correctness of spelling in this notation; for buildings and performances, the test is compliance with what is correctly spelled. Authority for a notation must be found in an antece. dent classification of objects or events into works that cuts across, or admits of a legitimate projection that cuts across, classification by history of production; but definitive identification of works, fully freed from history of production, is achieved only when a notation is established. The allographic art has won its emancipation not by proclamation but by notation. 5 A Task The two problems of authenticity I have been discussing are rather special and peripheral questions of aesthetics. Answers to them do not amount to an aesthetic theory or even the beginning of one. But failure to answer them can well be the end of one; and their exploration points the way to more basic problems and principles in the general theory of symbols. Many matters touched upon here need much more careful study. So far, I have only vaguely described, rather than defined, the relations of compliance and of sameness of spelling. I have not examined the features that distinguish notations or notational languages from other languages and from nonlanguages. And I have not discussed the subtle differences between a score, a script, and a sketch. What is wanted now is a fundamental and thoroughgoing inquiry into the nature and function of notation in the arts. Notes 1. And only for the sake of argument--only in order not to obscure the central issue. All talk of mere looking in what follows is to be understood as occurring within the scope of this temporary concession, not as indicating any acceptance of the notion on my part. 2. Germans learning English often cannot, without repeated effort and concen- trated attention, hear any difference at all between the vowel sounds in "cup" and "cop. " Like effort may sometimes be needed by the native speaker of a language to discern differences in color, etc., that are not marked by his elementary vocabulary. Whether language affects actual sensory discrimination has long been debated among psychologists, anthropologists, and linguists; see the survey of experimentation and controversy in Segall, Campbell, and Hershkovits, The influence of Culture on Visual Perception (Indianapolis and New York, The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1966), Pp. 34-48. The issue is unlikely to be resolved without greater clarity in the use of "sensory, "perceptual," and "cognitive,' » and more care in distinguishing between what a person can do at a given time and what he can learn to do. J. J. Gibson uphinst 274 The Ontology of Art 3. In saying that a difference between the pictures that is thus relevant to my present experience in looking at them constitutes an aesthetic difference between them, lamo course not saying that everything (e,&,., drunkenness, snow blindness, twilight) thal may cause my experiences of them to differ constitutes such an aesthetic difference, Not every difference in or arising from how the pictures happen to be looked at counts: Only differences in or arising from how they are to be looked at. Concerning the aesthetic, more will be said later in this section and in VI, 3-6. 4. For a detailed and fully illustrated account, see P. B. Coremans, Van Meegeren; Faked Vermeers and De Hooghs, trans. A. Hardy and C. Hutt (Arnsterdam, J. M Meuienhoff, 1949). The story is outlined in Sepp Schüller, Forgers, Dealers, Experts, trans. J. Cleugh (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1960), pp. 95-105. 5. Not surprisingly, since a single quantum of light may excite a retinal receptor. See M. H. Pirenne and F.H.C. Marriott, "The Quantum Theory of Light and the Psycho- Physiology of Vision," in Psychology, ed. S. Koch (New York and London, McGraw-Hill Co., Inc., 1959), vol. 1, p. 290; also Theodore C. Ruch, "Vision," in Medical Psychology and Biophysics (Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Co., 1960), p. 426. 6. That the forgeries purported to have been painted during a period from which no Vermeers were known made detection more difficult but does not essentially alter the case. Some art historians, on the defensive for their profession, claim that the most perceptive critics suspected the forgeries very early; but actually some of the foremost recognized authorities were completely taken in and for some time even refused to believe Van Meegeren's confession. The reader has a more recent example now before him in the revelation that the famous bronze horse, long exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum and proclaimed as a masterpiece of classical Greek sculpture, is a modern forgery. An official of the museum noticed a seam that apparently neither he nor anyone else had ever seen before, and scientific testing followed. No expert has come forward to claim earlier doubts on aesthetic grounds. 7. I shall come to that question much later, in Chapter VI. 8. Attributed to Immanuel Tingle and Joseph Immersion (ca. 1800). 9. There may indeed be forgeries of performances. Such forgeries are performances that purport to be by a certain musician, etc; but these, if in accordance with the score, are nevertheless genuine instances of the work. And what concerns me here is a dis- tinction among the arts that depends upon whether there can be forgeries of works, not upon whether there can be forgeries of instances of works. See further what is said in Section 4 below concerning forgeries of editions of literary works and of musical performances 10. This is to be taken as a preliminary version of a difference we must seek to formulate more precisely. Much of what follows in this chapter has likewise the char- acter of an exploratory introduction to matters calling for fuller and more detailed inquiry in later chapters. 11. Such identification does not guarantee that the object possesses the pictorial properties it had originally. Rather, reliance on physical or historical identification is transcended only where we have means of ascertaining that the requisite properties are present. 12. To be original a print must be from a certain plate but need not be printed by the artist. Furthermore, in the case of a woodcut, the artist sometimes only draws upon the Art and Authenticity 275 block, leaving the cutting to someone else--Holbein's blocks, for example, were usually cut by Lützelberger. Authenticity in an autographic art always depends upon the object's having the requisite, sometimes rather complicated, history of production; but that history does not always include ultimate execution by the original artist. 13. Of course, I am not saying that a correct(ly spelled) performance is correct in any of a number of other usual senses. Nevertheless, the composer or musician is likelv to protest indignantly at refusal to accept a performance with a few wrong notes as an instance of a work; and he surely has ordinary usage on his side. But ordinary usage here points the way to disaster for theory (see V,2). “ Gmail kac attac Marg -> 306 kac attac Thu, Jun 8, 2023 at 1:59 PM To: Stefan Kac “ Part Four Representation in Art The contemporary discussion of representational art is largely, though not entirely, associated with the appearance of Ernst Gombrich's Art and Illusion (1960). There, Gombrich insists that there is no innocent eye. Particularly in the visual arts, the temptation arises to construe represen- tation in terms of given visual resemblances, to dwell on visual illusions, and to omit therefore the enormously complex background of beliefs, theories, assumptions, and the like against which one "sees" visual objects as we do. But the attempt to develop a general account of representation rang- ing over all the arts and even beyond the arts suggests the inadequacy- though not necessarily the irrelevance--of considerations of sensory simi- larity and perceptual illusion. Gombrich (1963) in fact links representation and (visual) illusion too closely. And if he may be taken to fix one pole of the current discussion of representation- emphasizing conditions of percep- tion, Nelson Goodman (to some extent, in response to Gombrich's own claims) may be taken to fix the opposite pole- emphasizing rather the log- ical conditions of representation and, correspondingly, the conceptual and non-conceptual conditions of our appreciation of representation. In Good- man's hands (1976, 2nd ed.), the development leads to a larger view about the very nature of art (see Part Three) and adumbrates an even more comprehensive theory about the characteristic activities of man. Goodman definitely shows that resemblance cannot in any indepen- dently operative way be said to be a necessary condition of representation (typically in painting), let alone a necessary and sufficient condition. He takes denotation to be "the core of representation" and to be "independent of resemblance." On the other hand, Gombrich's emphasis had been on illusion, and illusion suggests a disposition of some sort to construe certain visual displays in terms of resemblances- to some extent in spite of one's background beliefs or, at any rate, of variable and transient beliefs. 280 Representation in Art Objections to the innocent eye need not entail that there are no favored resemblances, given the larger functioning of perception in survival, to Which the human eye is prone; these may be due, on different theories, to the convergent features of all human cultures or to underlying biological regularities. In effect, the admission is the reverse side of Gombrich's thesis. Goodman will have none of this, however, for he believes that there are no favored relations at all of such a kind. The issue has enormous importance because Goodman is committed to an utterly uncompromising form of nominalism; the possibility of biologically grounded resemblances suggests a basis for the admission of universals- or, at any rate, a fuller reconciliation with realism. It is, however, in exploring representation as a classificatory procedure, involving one-term or two-term predicates, that Goodman excels. Gombrich's question has very much focused attention on the general discussion of both representation and pictorial resemblance. We may gather an initial impression of the salient puzzles by noting, first, the themes of two specimen papers (previously included in the second edition of this anthology), one by Richard Wollheim, the other by Patrick Maynard. Wollheim (1965) pursues Gombrich's issue, partly in sympathy with Gombrich's distinctions, partly in opposition. He favors the view, to some extent convergent with both Gombrich's and Goodman's (though he does not discuss Goodman), that representation has an intentional aspect. But he also wishes, against Gombrich, to distinguish sharply between represen- tation and illusion: the first concerns the way in which certain elements function intentionally without affecting our perceptual beliefs (or without regard to that); the second, as in trompe l'oeil, may even override our beliefs. Maynard (1972) also pursues Gombrich's distinction but more in terms of explicating our sense of realism, fidelity, perceptual convincing- ness, without falling afoul of Goodman's criticism of Gombrich and yet without conceding a purely relativistic view of representational realism. So Maynard, too, avoids construing representation in terms of illusion; but he attempts to develop a conception of pictorial realism that is not illusionistic and is not merely controlled by representational conventions. In this regard, returning to the psychology- even the biology-_of perception, he is inclined to resist Goodman's polar extreme at the same time that he avoids Gombrich's fatal linkage. But apart from quarrels about details, the admission of representational properties requires a counterpart admis- sion of the complexity of the nature of aesthetic experience (see Part One) and of the nature of artworks (see Parts Two and Three). More recent papers have pressed more boldly (though also more ar- gumentatively) in terms both of the extreme possibilities posed by the Representation in Art 281 usual debates and of new options that a wider perspective invites regarding the complexities of human culture. Marx Wartofsky (1979) embraces the radical thesis that human vision itself is an "artifact" produced by such other artifacts as pictures. This, of course, challenges, as Wartofsky himself sees, the very undertaking of a theory of natural vision. The problem concerns the relationship between the biology of vision and the cultural grooming of visual perception. There is, first of all, the theoretical issue of whether there are definable biological limits on the cultural variability of perception; and second, whether there are any visual phenomena that Wartofsky's thesis cannot accommodate. It may well be that the ecological optics of J. J. Gibson (1966, 1979) is too naive to accommodate the interpretive dimension of perceptual occasions indissolubly linked with culturally induced habits and expectations: certainly, Gibson--whose theory is centrally implicated in the debate between Gombrich and Good- man--fails to make suitable sense of two-dimensional paintings within his ecological account. But Gibson does show, nevertheless, that a strong case can be mounted for biologically constrained (informational) invariances within the range of normal perception--at the human as well as at the animal level. In fact, if the argument holds at the animal level, it is difficult to see how it can be denied at the human. On the other hand, some commentators--Alan and Judith Tormey (1979), for instance- specifically challenging Goodman's thesis, which in effect Wartofsky favors, have demonstrated, as in reporting the "X-ray" art of the Australian aborigines and others and the surprisingly analogous practices of Western artists, that objects are often represented in ways meant to preserve realist information about the way things are believed to be rather than merely to preserve the way they "appear" (in however many culturally divergent ways); and that, consequently, the spontaneous recognition of such representations is some- how grounded in deeper biological regularities than Wartofsky (also, Goodman) fails to acknowledge. Peter Kivy (1984) offers a plausible account of the possibilities of representation- even of a sort of pictorial representation- in the most recal- citrant context of all, that of music. He rejects mimesis, and explores the prospect of defending pictorial resemblance by according expressiveness a place in musical representation. Here, Kivy's concern centers on the viability of such a theory, not on a full-scale account of representation as such; he considers representational possibilities, then, both in terms of the expression of arousable emotions and of the expressiveness of what is itself expressive of emotion. This leads him to what he regards as the "optimal form' " of musical representation. But he warns against construing represen- tation exclusively in terms of expression. Joseph Margolis (1986) attempts to place the very question of represen- J. J. Gibson Representation in Art 282 tational function within the ontologically larger question of the inten. tonality or aboutness of art works- that is, insisting that representation is a restricted and conceptually dependent distinction that arises only within a larger intentional space; and that that "space" is, precisely, identifiable only by distinguishing the cultural and natural worlds. By means of this strategy, he is able to contrast the representationality of a painting, say, from representations in paintings--hence, to address the question of pie- torial resemblance in terms that simply disallow a disjunction between natural and "artifactual" perception among humans. In this way, once again, the necessity of bridging the differences between Anglo-American and Continental theories of art may be made more convincing. 15. Reality Remade NELSON GOODMAN Art is not a copy of the real world. One of the damn things is enough.* 1 Denotation Whether a picture ought to be a representation or not is a question much less crucial than might appear from current bitter battles among artists, critics, and propagandists. Nevertheless, the nature of representation wants early study in any philosophical examination of the ways symbols function in and out of the arts. That representation is frequent in some arts, such as painting, and infrequent in others, such as music, threatens trouble for a unified aesthetics; and confusion over how pictorial representation as a mode of signification is allied to and distinguished from verbal description on the one hand and, say, facial expression on the other is fatal to any general theory of symbols. The most naive view of representation might perhaps be put somewhat like this: "A represents B if and only if A appreciably resembles B, Or "A represents B to the extent that A resembles B." Vestiges of this view, with assorted refinements, persist in most writing on representation. Yet more error could hardly be compressed into so short a formula. Some of the faults are obvious enough. An object resembles itself to the maximum degree but rarely represents itself; resemblance, unlike represen- tation, is reflexive. Again, unlike representation, resemblance is symmetric: *Reported as occurring in an essay on Virginia Woolf. I have been unable to locate the source. From Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1976), Chapter I. Reprinted with permission of the author. J.J. 284 Representation in Art Dis as much like A as A is like B, but while a painting may represent the Duke of Wellington, the Duke doesn't represent the painting. Further. more, in many cases neither one of a pair of very like objects represents the other: none of the automobiles off an assembly line is a picture of any of the rest; and a man is not normally a representation of another man, even his twin brother. Plainly, resemblance in any degree is no sufficient condition for representation.' Just what correction to make in the formula is not so obvious. We may attempt less, and prefix the condition "If A is a picture, . » Of course, if we then construe "picture" as "representation," we resign a large part of the question: namely, what constitutes a representation. But even it we construe "picture" broadly enough to cover all paintings, the formula is wide of the mark in other ways. A Constable painting of Marlborough Castle is more like any other picture than it is like the Castle, yet it represents the Castle and not another picture--not even the closest copy. To add the requirement that B must not be a picture would be desperate and futile; for a picture may represent another, and indeed each of the once popular paintings of art galleries represents many others. The plain fact is that a picture, to represent an object, must be a symbol for it, stand for it, refer to it; and that no degree of resemblance is sufficient to establish the requisite relationship of reference. Nor is resemblance necessary for reference; almost anything may stand for almost anything else. A picture that represents--like a passage that describes-an object refers to and, more particularly, denotes? it. Denotation is the core of representation and is independent of resemblance. If the relation between a picture and what it represents is thus assimi- lated to the relation between a predicate and what it applies to, we must examine the characteristics of representation as a special kind of denota- tion. What does pictorial denotation have in common with, and how does it differ from, verbal or diagrammatic denotation? One not implausible answer is that resemblance, while no sufficient condition for representa- tion, is just the feature that distinguishes representation from denotation of other kinds. Is it perhaps the case that if A denotes B, then A represents B just to the extent that A resembles B? I think even this watered-down and innocuous-looking version of our initial formula betrays a grave misconception of the nature of representation. 2 Imitation "To make a faithful picture, come as close as possible to copying the object just as it is." " This simple-minded injunction baffles me; for the object before me is a man, a swarm of atoms, a complex of cells, a fiddler, a Reality Remade 285 friend, a fool, and much more. If none of these constitute the object as it is, what else might? If all are ways the object is, then none is the way the object is.* I cannot copy all these at once; and the more nearly I succeeded. the less would the result be a realistic picture. What I am to copy then, it seems, is one such aspect, one of the ways the object is or looks. But not, of course, any one of these at random--not, for example, the Duke of Wellington as he looks to a drunk through a raindrop. Rather, we may suppose, the way the object looks to the normal eye, at proper range, from a favorable angle, in good light, without instrumentation, unprejudiced by affections or animosities or interests, and unembellished by thought or interpretation. In short, the object is to be copied as seen under aseptic conditions by the free and innocent eye. The catch here, as Ernst Gombrich insists, is that there is no innocent eye." The eye comes always ancient to its work, obsessed by its own past and by old and new insinuations of the ear, nose, tongue, fingers, heart, and brain. It functions not as an instrument self-powered and alone, but as a dutiful member of a complex and capricious organism. Not only how but what it sees is regulated by need and prejudice. It selects, rejects, organizes, discriminates, associates, classifies, analyzes, constructs. It does not so much mirror as take and make; and what it takes and makes it sees not bare, as items without attributes, but as things, as food, as people, as enemies, as stars, as weapons. Nothing is seen nakedly or naked. The myths of the innocent eye and of the absolute given are unholy accomplices. Both derive from and foster the idea of knowing as a process- ing of raw material received from the senses, and of this raw material as being discoverable either through purification rites or by methodical disinterpretation. But reception and interpretation are not separable opera- tions; they are thoroughly interdependent. The Kantian dictum echoes here: the innocent eye is blind and the virgin mind empty. Moreover, what has been received and what has been done to it cannot be distinguished within the finished product. Content cannot be extracted by peeling off layers of comment. All the same, an artist may often do well to strive for innocence of eye. The effort sometimes rescues him from the tired patterns of everyday seeing, and results in fresh insight. The opposite effort, to give fullest rein to a personal reading, can be equally tonic--and for the same reason. But the most neutral eye and the most biased are merely sophisticated in different ways. The most ascetic vision and the most prodigal, like the sober portrait and the vitriolic caricature, differ not in how much but only in how they interpret. The copy theory of representation, then, is stopped at the start by inability to specify what is to be copied. Not an object the way it is, nor J.J Gibson against 286 Representation in Art all the ways it is, nor the way it looks to the mindless eye. Moreover, something is wrong with the very notion of copying any of the ways an object is, any aspect of it. For an aspect is not just the object-from-a-given-dis- tance-and-angle-and-in-a-given-light; it is the object as we look upon or conceive it, a version or construal of the object. In representing an object, we do not copy such a construal or interpretation--we achieve it.8 In other words, nothing is ever represented either shorn of or in the fullness of its properties. A picture never merely represents *, but rather represents * as a man or represents x to be a mountain, or represents the fact that y is a melon. What could be meant by copying a fact would be hard to grasp even if there were any such things as facts; to ask me to copy x as a soandso is a little like asking me to sell something as a gift: and to speak of copying something to be a man is sheer nonsense. We shall presently have to look further into all this; but we hardly need look further to see how little is representation a matter of imitation. The case for the relativity of vision and of representation has been so conclusively stated elsewhere that I am relieved of the need to argue it at any length here. Gombrich, in particular, has amassed overwhelming evidence to show how the way we see and depict depends upon and varies with experience, practice, interests, and attitudes. But on one matter Gombrich and others sometimes seem to me to take a position at odds with such relativity; and I must therefore discuss briefly the question of the conventionality of perspective. 3 Perspective An artist may choose his means of rendering motion, intensity of light, quality of atmosphere, vibrancy of color, but if he wants to represent space correctly, he must- almost anyone will tell him--obey the laws of perspec- tive. The adoption of perspective during the Renaissance is widely accepted as a long stride forward in realistic depiction. The laws of perspective are supposed to provide absolute standards of fidelity that override differences in style of seeing and picturing. Gombrich derides "the idea that perspec- tive is merely a convention and does not represent the world as it looks," and he declares "One cannot insist enough that the art of perspective aims at a correct equation: It wants the image to appear like the object and the object like the image.» And James J. Gibson writes:' " it does not seem reasonable to assert that the use of perspective in paintings is merely a convention, to be used or discarded by the painter as he chooses. .. When the artist transcribes what he sees upon a two-dimensional surface, he uses perspective geometry, of necessity."10 Obviously the laws of the behavior of light are no more conventional than any other scientific laws. Now suppose we have a motionless, Reality Remade 287 monochromatic object, reflecting light of medium intensity only. The argument runs;11. -A picture drawn in correct perspective will, under specified conditions, deliver to the eye a bundle of light rays matching that delivered by the object itself. This matching is a purely objective matter, measurable by instruments. And such matching constitutes fidelity of representation; for since light rays are all that the eye can receive from either picture or object, identity in pattern of light rays must constitute identity of appearance. Of course, the rays yielded by the picture under the specified conditions match not only those yielded by the object in question from a given distance and angle but also those yielded by any of a multitude of other objects from other distances and angles.' Identity in pattern of light rays, like resemblance of other kinds, is clearly no sufficient condition for representation. The claim is rather that such identity is a criterion of fidelity, of correct pictorial representation, where denotation is otherwise established. If at first glance the argument as stated seems simple and persuasive, it becomes less so when we consider the conditions of observation that are prescribed. The picture must be viewed through a peephole, face on, from a certain distance, with one eye closed and the other motionless. The object also must be observed through a peephole, from a given (but not usually the same) angle and distance, and with a single unmoving eye. Otherwise, the light rays will not match. Under these remarkable conditions, do we not have ultimately faithful representation? Hardly. Under these conditions, what we are looking at tends to disappear rather promptly. Experiment has shown that the eye cannot see normally without moving relative to what it sees;' apparently, scanning is necessary for normal vision. The fixed eye is almost as blind as the innocent one. What can the matching of light rays delivered under conditions that make normal vision impossible have to do with fidelity of representation? To measure fidelity in terms of rays directed at a closed eye would be no more absurd. But this objection need not be stressed; perhaps enough eye motion could be allowed for scanning but not for seeing around the object.' The basic trouble is that the specified condi- tions of observation are grossly abnormal. What can be the grounds for taking the matching of light rays delivered under such extraordinary conditions as a measure of fidelity? Under no more artificial conditions, such as the interposition of suitably contrived lenses, a picture far out of perspective could also be made to yield the same pattern of light rays as the object. That with clever enough stage-managing we can wring out of a picture drawn in perspective light rays that match those we can wring out of the object represented is an odd and futile argument for the fidelity of perspective. Furthermore, the conditions of observation in question are in most cases Laurbin 288 Representation in Art not the same for picture and object. Both are to be viewed through a peephole with one transfixed eye; but the picture is to be viewed face on at à distance of six feet while the cathedral represented has to be looked at from, say, an angle of 45° to its facade and at a distance of two hundred feet. Now not only the light rays received but also the attendant conditions determine what and how we see; as psychologists are fond of saying, there is more to vision than meets the eye. Just as a red light says "stop" on the highway and "port" at sea, so the same stimulus gives rise to different visual experience under different circumstances. Even where both the light rays and the momentary external conditions are the same, the preceding train of visual experience, together with information gathered from all sources, can make a vast difference in what is seen. If not even the former conditions are the same, duplication of light rays is no more likely to result in identical perception than is duplication of the conditions if the light rays differ. Pictures are normally viewed framed against a background by a person free to walk about and to move his eyes. To paint a picture that will under these conditions deliver the same light rays as the object, viewed under any conditions, would be pointless even if it were possible. Rather, the artist's task in representing an object before him is to decide what light rays, under gallery conditions, will succeed in rendering what he sees. This is not a matter of copying but of conveying. It is more a matter of 'catching a likeness' than of duplicating--in the sense that a likeness lost in a photograph may be caught in a caricature. Translation of a sort, compensating for differences in circumstances, is involved. How this is best carried out depends upon countless and variable factors, not least among them the particular habits of seeing and representing that are ingrained in the viewers. Pictures in perspective, like any others, have to be read; and the ability to read has to be acquired. The eye accustomed solely to Oriental painting does not immediately understand a picture in perspec- tive. Yet with practice one can accommodate smoothly to distorting spectacles or to pictures drawn in warped or even reversed perspective. '" And even we who are most inured to perspective rendering do not always accept it as faithful representation: the photograph of a man with his feet thrust forward looks distorted, and Pike's Peak dwindles dismally in a snapshot. As the saying goes, there is nothing like a camera to make a molehill out of a mountain. So far, I have been playing along with the idea that pictorial perspective obeys laws of geometrical optics, and that a picture drawn according to the standard pictorial rules will, under the very abnormal conditions outlined above, deliver a bundle of light rays matching that delivered by the scene portrayed. Only this assumption gives any plausibility at all to Reality Remade 289 the argument from perspective; but the assumption is plainly false. By the pictorial rules, railroad tracks running outward from the eye are drawn converging, but telephone poles (or the edges of a facade) running upward from the eye are drawn parallel. By the 'laws of geometry' the poles should also be drawn converging. But so drawn, they look as wrong as railroad tracks drawn parallel, Thus we have cameras with tilting backs and elevating lens-boards to 'correct distortion'-that is, to make vertical paral- lels come out parallel in our photographs; we do not likewise try to make the railroad tracks come out parallel. The rules of pictorial perspective no more follow from the laws of optics than would rules calling for drawing the tracks parallel and the poles converging. In diametric contradiction to what Gibson says, the artist who wants to produce a spatial representation that the present-day Western eye will accept as faithful must defy the 'laws of geometry. If all this seems quite evident, and neatly clinched by Klee, " there is nevertheless impressive weight of authority on the other side, '7 relying on the argument that all parallels in the plane of the facade project geometri- cally as parallels onto the parallel plane of the picture. The source of unending debate over perspective seems to lie in confusion concerning the pertinent conditions of observation. In Figure 1, an observer is on ground level with eye at a; at b,c is the facade of a tower atop a building; at d,e is a picture of the tower facade, drawn in standard perspective and to a scale such that at the indicated distances picture and facade subtend equal angles from a. The normal line of vision to the tower is the line a,f; looking much higher or lower will leave part of the tower facade out of sight or blurred. Likewise, the normal line of vision to the picture is a,g. Now although picture and facade are parallel, the line a,g is perpendicular to the picture, so that vertical parallels in the picture will be projected to the eye as parallel, while the line af is at an angle to the facade so that vertical parallels there will be projected to the eye as converging upward. We might try to make picture and facade deliver matching bundles of light rays to the eye by either (1) moving the picture upward to the position h,i, or (2) tilting it to the position j;k, or (3) looking at the picture from a but at the tower from m, some stories up. In the first two cases, since the picture must be also nearer the eye to subtend the same angle, the scale will be wrong for lateral (left-wing) dimensions. What is more important, none of these three conditions of observation is anywhere near normal. We do not usually hang pictures far above eye level, or tilt them drastically bottom toward us, or elevate ourselves at will to look squarely at towers. '8 With eye and picture in normal position, the bundle of light rays delivered to the eye by the picture drawn in standard perspective is very different from the bundle delivered by the facade. J. J. Gibson apainst 290 Representation in Art m a e Figure I This argument by itself is conclusive, but my case does not rest upon it. The more fundamental arguments advanced earlier would apply with full force even had the choice of official rules of perspective been less whimsical and called for drawing as convergent all parallels receding in any direction. Briefly, the behavior of light sanctions neither our usual nor any other way of rendering space; and perspective provides no absolute or independent standard of fidelity. 4 Sculpture The troubles with the copy theory are sometimes attributed solely to the impossibility of depicting reality-in-the-round on a flat surface. But imita- tion is no better gauge of realism in sculpture than in painting. What is Reality Remade 291 to be portrayed in a bronze bust is a mobile, many-faceted, and fluctuating person, encountered in ever-changing light and against miscellaneous backgrounds. Duplicating the form of the head at a given instant is unlikely to yield a notably faithful representation. The very fixation of such a momentary phase embalms the person much as a photograph taken at too short an exposure freezes a fountain or stops a racehorse. To portray faithfully is to convey a person known and distilled from a variety of experiences. This elusive conceit is nothing that one can meaningfully try to duplicate or imitate in a static bronze on a pedestal in a museum. The sculptor undertakes, rather, a subtle and intricate problem of transla tion. Even where the object represented is something simpler and more stable than a person, duplication seldom coincides with realistic representation. If in a tympanum over a tall Gothic portal, Eve's apple were the same size as a Winesap, it would not look big enough to tempt Adam. The distant or colossal sculpture has also to be shaped very differently from what it depicts in order to be realistic, in order to look right.' And the ways of making it look right' are not reducible to fixed and universal rules; for how an object looks depends not only upon its orientation, distance, and lighting, but upon all we know of it and upon our training, habits, and concerns. One need hardly go further to see that the basic case against imitation as a test of realism is conclusive for sculpture as well as for painting. 5 Fictions So far, I have been considering only the representation of a particular person or group or thing or scene; but a picture, like a predicate, may denote severally the members of a given class. A picture accompanying a definition in a dictionary is often such a representation, not denoting uniquely some one eagle, say, or collectively the class of eagles, but distributively eagles in general. Other representations have neither unique nor multiple denotation. What, for example, do pictures of Pickwick or of a unicorn represent? They do not represent anything; they are representations with null denota- tion. Yet how can we say that a picture represents Pickwick, or a unicorn, and also say that it does not represent anything? Since there is no Pickwick and no unicorn, what a picture of Pickwick and a picture of a unicorn represent is the same. Yet surely to be a picture of Pickwick and to be a picture of a unicorn are not at all the same. The simple fact is that much as most pieces of furniture are readily sorted out as desks, chairs, tables, etc., so most pictures are readily sorted J. J. Gibson against 292 Representation in Art out as pictures of Pickwick, of Pegasus, of a unicorn, etc., without reference to anything represented. What tends to mislead us is that such locutions as "picture of" and "represents" have the appearance of mannerly two-place predicates and can sometimes be so interpreted. But "picture of Pickwick" and "represents a unicorn" are better considered unbreakable one-place predicates, or class-terms, like "desk" and "table." We cannot reach inside any of these and quantify over parts of them. From the fact that P is a picture of or represents a unicorn we cannot infer that there is something that P is a picture of or represents. Furthermore, a picture of Pickwick is a picture of a man, even though there is no man it represents. Saying that a picture represents a soandso is thus highly ambiguous as between saying what the picture denotes and saying what kind of picture it is. Some confusion can be avoided if in the latter case we speak rather of a 'Pickwick-representing-picture' or a 'unicorn- representing-picture' or a 'man-representing-picture' or, for short, of a 'Pickwick-picture' or 'unicorn-picture' or 'man-picture.' Obviously a pic- ture cannot, barring equivocation, both represent Pickwick and represent nothing. But a picture may be of a certain kind--be a Pickwick-picture or a man-picture- -without representing anything." The difference between a man-picture and a picture of a man has a close parallel in the difference between a man-description (or man-term) and a description of (or term for) a man. "Pickwick," "the Duke of Wellington," "the man who conquered Napoleon," "a man, » "'a fat man," "the man with three heads," are all man-descriptions, but not all describe a man. Some denote a particular man, some denote each of many men, and some denote nothing.? And although "Pickwick" and "the three-headed man" and "Pegasus" all have the same null extension, the second differs from the first in being, for example, a many-headed-man-description, while the last differs from the other two in being a winged-horse-description. The way pictures and descriptions are thus classified into kinds, like most habitual ways of classifying, is far from sharp or stable, and resists codification. Borderlines shift and blur, new categories are always coming into prominence, and the canons of the classification are less clear than the practice. But this is only to say that we may have some trouble in telling whether certain pictures (in common parlance) 'represent a unicorn. or in setting forth rules for deciding in every case whether a picture is a man-picture. Exact and general conditions under which something is a soandso-picture or a soandso-description would indeed be hard to formu- late. We can cite examples: Van Gogh's Postman is a man-picture; and in English, "a man" is a man-description. And we may note, for instance, that to be a soandso-picture is to be a soandso-picture as a whole, so that a picture containing or contained in a man-picture need not itself be a Reality Remade 293 man-picture. But to attempt much more is to become engulfed in a notorious philosophical morass; and the frustrating, if fascinating, prob- lems involved are no part of our present task. All that directly matters here, I repeat, is that pictures are indeed sorted with varying degrees of ease into man-pictures, unicorn-pictures, Pickwick-pictures, winged-horse- pictures, etc., just as pieces of furniture are sorted into desks, tables, chairs, etc. And this fact is unaffected by the difficulty, in either case, of framing definitions for the several classes or eliciting a general principle of clas- sification. The possible objection that we must first understand what a man or a unicorn is in order to know how to apply "'man-picture" or "unicorn-pic- ture" seems to me quite perverted. We can learn to apply "corncob pipe" Or "staghorn" without first understanding, or knowing how to apply, "corn" or "cob" or "corncob" or "pipe" or "stag" or "horn" as separate terms. And we can learn, on the basis of samples, to apply "'unicorn-pic- ture" not only without ever having seen any unicorns but without ever having seen or heard the word "unicorn" before. Indeed, largely by learning what are unicorn-pictures and unicorn-descriptions do we come to understand the word "unicorn"; and our ability to recognize a staghorn may help us to recognize a stag when we see one. We may begin to understand a term by learning how to apply either the term itself or some larger term containing it. Acquiring any of these skills may aid in acquir- ing, but does not imply possessing, any of the others. Understanding a term is not a precondition, and may often be a result, of learning how to apply the term and its compounds.21 Earlier I said that denotation is a necessary condition for representation, and then encountered representations without denotation. But the explana- tion is now clear. A picture must denote a man to represent him, but need not denote anything to be a man-representation. Incidentally, the copy theory of representation takes a further beating here; for where a represen- tation does not represent anything there can be no question of resemblance to what it represents. Use of such examples as Pickwick-pictures and unicorn-pictures may suggest that representations with null denotation are comparatively rare. Que the contrary; the world of pictures teems with anonymous fictional persons, places, and things. The man in Rembrandt's Landscape with a Huntsman is presumably no actual person; he is just the man in Rembrandt's etching. In other words, the etching represents no man but is simply a man-picture, and more particularly a the-man-in-Rembrandt's- Landscape-with-a-Huntsman-picture. And even if an actual man be de- picted here, his identity matters as little as the artist's blood-type. Further- more, the information needed to determine what if anything is denoted by Gibson 294 Representation in Art a picture is not always accessible. We may, for example, be unable to tell whether a given representation is multiple, like an eagle-picture in the dictionary, or fictive, like a Pickwick-picture. But where we cannot deter. mine whether a picture denotes anything or not, we can only proceed as if it did not-that is, confine ourselves to considering what kind of picture it is. Thus cases of indeterminate denotation are treated in the same way as cases of null denotation. But not only where the denotation is null or indeterminate does the classification of a picture need to be considered. For the denotation of a picture no more determines its kind than the kind of picture determines the denotation. Not every man-picture represents a man, and conversely not every picture that represents a man is a man-picture. And in the difference between being and not being a man-picture lies the difference, among pictures that represent a man, between those that do and those that do not represent him as a man. 6 Representation-as The locution "represents as" has two quite different uses. To say that a picture represents the Duke of Wellington as an infant, or as an adult, or as the victor at Waterloo is often merely to say that the picture represents the Duke at a given time or period- that it represents a certain (long or short, continuous or broken) temporal part or 'time-slice' of him. Here "'aS . .." combines with the noun "the Duke of Wellington" to form a description of one portion of the whole extended individual.22 Such a description can always be replaced by another like "the infant Duke of Wellington" or "the Duke of Wellington upon the occasion of his victory at Waterloo." Thus these cases raise no difficulty; all that is being said is that the picture represents the object so described. The second use is illustrated when we say that a given picture represents Winston Churchill as an infant, where the picture does not represent the infant Churchill but rather represents the adult Churchill as an infant. Here, as well as when we say that other pictures represent the adult Churchill as an adult, the "'aS . .." combines with and modifies the verb; and we have genuine cases of representation-as. Such representation-as wants now to be distinguished from and related to representation. A picture that represents a man denotes him; a picture that represents a fictional man is a man-picture; and a picture that represents a man as a man is a man-picture denoting him. Thus while the first case concerns only what the picture denotes, and the second only what kind of picture it is, the third concerns both the denotation and the classification. More accurate formulation takes some care. What a picture is said to represent may be denoted by the picture as a whole or by a part of it. Reality Remade 295 Likewise, a picture may be a soandso-picture as a whole or merely through containing a soandso-picture.?3 Consider an ordinary portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Wellington. The picture (as a whole) denotes the couple, and (in part) denotes the Duke. Furthermore, it is (as a whole) a two-per- son-picture, and (in part) a man-picture. The picture represents the Duke and Duchess as two persons, and represents the Duke as a man. But although it represents the Duke, and is a two-person-picture, it obviously does not represent the Duke as two persons; and although it represents two persons and is a man-picture, it does not represent the two as a man. For the picture neither is nor contains any picture that as a whole both represents the Duke and is a two-man-picture, or that as a whole both represents two persons and is a man-picture. In general, then, an object k is represented as a soandso by a picture p if and only if p is or contains a picture that as a whole both represents k and is a soandso-picture.24 Many of the modifiers that have had to be included here may, however, be omitted as understood in what follows; for example, "is or contains a picture that as a whole both represents Churchill and is an adult-picture" may be shortened to "is an adult-picture representing Churchill." Everyday usage is often careless about the distinction between represen- tation and representation-as. Cases have already been cited where in saying that a picture represents a soandso we mean not that it denotes a soandso but that it is a soandso-picture. In other cases, we may mean both. If I tell you I have a picture of a certain black horse, and then I produce a snapshot in which he has come out a light speck in the distance, you can hardly convict me of lying; but you may well feel that I misled you. You understandably took me to mean a picture of the black horse as such; and you therefore expected the picture not only to denote the horse in question but to be a black-horse-picture. Not inconceivably, saying a picture represents the black horse might on other occasions mean that it represents the horse as black (i.e., that it is a black-thing-picture representing the horse) or that it represents the black thing in question as a horse (i.e., that it is a horse-picture representing the black thing). The ambiguities of ordinary use do not end there. To say that the adult Churchill is represented as an infant (or as an adult) is to say that the picture in question is an infant-picture (or an adult-picture). But to say that Pickwick is represented as a clown (or as Don Quixote) cannot mean that the picture is a clown-picture (or Don-Quixote-picture) representing Pickwick; for there is no Pickwick. Rather, what is being said is that the picture belongs to a certain rather narrow class of pictures that may be described as Pickwick-as-clown-pictures (or Pickwick-as-Don-Quixote-pic- tures). Distinctions obscured in much informal discourse thus need to be 296 Representation in Ar carefully marked for our purposes here. Being a matter of monadie classification, representation-as differs drastically from dyadic denotative representation. if a picture represents k as a (or the) soandso, then i denotes k and is a soandso-picture. If k is identical with h, the picture also denotes and represents h. And if k is a suchandsuch, the picture alsn represents a (or the) suchandsuch, but not necessarily as a (or ine) suchandsuch. To represent the first Duke of Wellington is to represent Arthur Wellesley and also to represent a soldier, but not necessarily to represent him as a soldier; for some pictures of him are civilian-pictures. Representations, then, are pictures that function in somewhat the same way as descriptions. ?5 Just as objects are classified by means of, or under, various verbal labels, so also are objects classified by or under various pictorial labels. And the labels themselves, verbal or pictorial, are in turn classified under labels, verbal or nonverbal. Objects are classified under "desk," "table, " etc., and also under pictures representing them. Descrip- tions are classified under "desk-description,» "centaur-description," "Cicero-name," etc.; and pictures under "desk-picture, "Pickwick-pic- ture," etc. The labeling of labels does not depend upon what they are labels for. Some, like "unicorn, " apply to nothing; and as we have noted, not all pictures of soldiers are soldier-pictures. Thus with a picture as with any other label, there are always two questions: what it represents (or describes) and the sort of representation (or description) it is. The first question asks what objects, if any, it applies to as a label; and the second asks about which among certain labels apply to it. In representing, a picture at once picks out a class of objects and belongs to a certain class or classes of pictures.26 7 Invention If representing is a matter of classifying objects rather than of imitating them, of characterizing rather than of copying, it is not a matter of passive reporting. The object does not sit as a docile model with its attributes neatly separated and thrust out for us to admire and portray. It is one of countless objects, and may be grouped with any selection of them; and for every such grouping there is an attribute of the object. To admit all classifications on equal footing amounts to making no classification at all. Classification involves preferment; and application of a label (pictorial, verbal, etc.) as often effects as it records a classification. The 'natural' kinds are simply those we are in the habit of picking out for and by labeling. Moreover, the object itself is not ready-made but results from a way of taking the world. The making of a picture commonly participates in making what is to be pictured. The object and its aspects depend upon organization; and labels of all sorts are tools of organization. Reality Remade 297 Representation and description thus involve and are often involved in organization. A label associates together such objects as it applies to, and is associated with the other labels of a kind or kinds. Less directly, it associates its referents with these other labels and with their referents, and so on. Not all these associations have equal force; their strength varies with their directness, with the specificity of the classifications in question, and with the firmness of foothold these classifications and labelings have secured. But in all these ways a representation or description, by virtue of how it classifies and is classified, may make or mark connections, analyze objects, and organize the world. Representation or description is apt, effective, illuminating, subtle, in- triguing, to the extent that the artist or writer grasps fresh and significant relationships and devises means for making them manifest. Discourse or depiction that marks off familiar units and sorts them into standard sets under well-worn labels may sometimes be serviceable even if humdrum. The marking off of new elements or classes, or of familiar ones by labels of new kinds or by new combinations of old labels, may provide new insight. Gombrich stresses Constable's metaphor: "Painting is a science... of which pictures are but the experiments.»27 In representation, the artist must make use of old habits when he wants to elicit novel objects and connections. If his picture is recognized as almost but not quite referring to the commonplace furniture of the everyday world, or if it calls for and yet resists assignment to a usual kind of picture, it may bring out neglected likenesses and differences, force unaccustomed associations, and in some measure remake our world. And if the point of the picture is not only successfully made but is also well taken, if the realignments it directly and indirectly effects are interesting and important, the picture--like a crucial experiment-_makes a genuine contribution to knowledge. To a complaint that his portrait of Gertrude Stein did not look like her, Picasso is said to have answered, "No matter; it will." In sum, effective representation and description require invention. They are creative. They inform each other; and they form, relate, and distinguish objects. That nature imitates art is too timid a dictum. Nature is a product of art and discourse. 8 Realism This leaves unanswered the minor question what constitutes realism of representation. Surely not, in view of the foregoing, any sort of resemblance to reality. Yet we do in fact compare representations with respect to their realism or naturalism or fidelity. If resemblance is not the criterion, what is? 298 Representation in Art One popular answer is that the test of fidelity is deception, that a picture is realistic just to the extent that it is a successful illusion, leading the viewer to suppose that it is, or has the characteristics of, what it represents. The proposed measure of realism, in other words, is the probability of confusing the representation with the represented. This is some improve- ment over the copy theory; for what counts here is not how closely the picture duplicates an object but how far the picture and object, under conditions of observation appropriate to each, give rise to the same responses and expectations. Furthermore, the theory is not immediately confounded by the fact that fictive representations differ in degree of realism; for even though there are no centaurs, a realistic picture might deceive me into taking it for a centaur. Yet there are difficulties. What deceives depends upon what is observed, and what is observed varies with interests and habits. If the probability of confusion is 1, we no longer have representation-we have identity. Moreover, the probability seldom rises noticeably above zero for even the most guileful trompe-l'oeil painting seen under ordinary gallery conditions. For seeing a picture as a picture precludes mistaking it for anything else; and the appropriate conditions of observation (e.g., framed, against a uniform background, etc.) are calculated to defeat deception. Deception enlists such mischief as a suggestive setting, or a peephole that occludes frame and background. And deception under such nonstandard conditions is no test of realism; for with enough staging, even the most unrealistic picture can deceive. Deception counts less as a measure of realism than as evidence of magicianship, and is highly atypical mishap. In looking at the most realistic picture, I seldom suppose that I can literally reach into the distance, slice the tomato, or beat the drum. Rather, I recognize the images as signs for the objects and characteristics represented- signs that work instantly and unequivocally without being confused with what they denote. Of course, sometimes where deception does occur-say, by a painted window in a mural-we may indeed call the picture realistic; but such cases provide no basis for the usual ordering of pictures in general as more or less realistic. Thoughts along these lines have led to the suggestion that the most realistic picture is the one that provides the greatest amount of pertinent information. But this hypothesis can be quickly and completely refuted. Consider a realistic picture, painted in ordinary perspective and normal color, and a second picture just like the first except that the perspective is reversed and each color is replaced by its complementary. The second picture, appropriately interpreted, yields exactly the same information as the first. And any number of other drastic but information-preserving transformations are possible. Obviously, realistic and unrealistic pictures may be equally informative; informational yield is no test of realism. Reality Remade 299 So far, we have not needed to distinguish between fidelity and realism. The criteria considered earlier have been as unsatisfactory for the one as for the other. But we can no longer equate them. The two pictures just described are equally correct, equally faithful to what they represent, provide the same and hence equally true information; yet they are not equally realistic or literal. For a picture to be faithful is simply for the object represented to have the properties that the picture in effect ascribes to it. But such fidelity or correctness or truth is not a sufficient condition for literalism or realism. The alert absolutist will argue that for the second picture but not the first we need a key. Rather, the difference is that for the first the key is ready at hand. For proper reading of the second picture, we have to discover rules of interpretation and apply them deliberately. Reading of the first is by virtually automatic habit; practice has rendered the symbols so transparent that we are not aware of any effort, of any alternatives, or of making any interpretation at all.2 Just here, I think, lies the touchstone of realism: not in quantity of information but in how easily it issues. And this depends upon how stereotyped the mode of representation is, upon how commonplace the labels and their uses have become. Realism is relative, determined by the system of representation standard for a given culture or person at a given time. Newer or older or alien systems are accounted artificial or unskilled. For a Fifth-Dynasty Egyptian the straightforward way of representing something is not the same as for an eighteenth-century Japanese; and neither way is the same as for an early twentieth-century Englishman. Each would to some extent have to learn how to read a picture in either of the other styles. This relativity is obscured by our tendency to omit specifying a frame of reference when it is our own. "Realism' thus often comes to be used as the name for a particular style or system of representation. Just as on this planet we usually think of objects as fixed if they are at a constant position in relation to the earth, so in this period and place we usually think of paintings as literal or realistic if they are in a traditional? European style of representation. But such egocentric ellipsis must not tempt us to infer that these objects (or any others) are absolutely fixed, or that such pictures (or any others) are absolutely realistic. Shifts in standard can occur rather rapidly. The very effectiveness that may attend judicious departure from a traditional system of representation sometimes inclines us at least temporarily to install the newer mode as standard. We then speak of an artist's having achieved a new degree of realism, or having found new means for the realistic rendering of (say) light or motion. What happens here is something like the 'discovery' that not the earth but the sun is 'really fixed.' Advantages of a new frame of reference, partly because of their novelty, encourage its enthronement on J.J.60 agains 300 Representation in Art some occasions in place of the customary frame. Nevertheless, whether an object is 'really fixed' or a picture is realistic depends at any time entirely upon what frame or mode is then standard. Realism is a matter not o any constant or absolute relationship between a picture and its object but of a relationship between the system of representation employed in the picture and the standard system. Most of the time, of course, the tradi- tonal system is taken as standard; and the literal or realistic or naturalistic system of representation is simply the customary one. Realistic representation, in brief, depends not upon imitation or illusion or information but upon inculcation. Almost any picture may represent almost anything; that is, given picture and object there is usually a system of representation, a plan of correlation, under which the picture represents the object.3 How correct the picture is under that system depends upon how accurate is the information about the object that is obtained by reading the picture according to that system. But how literal or realistic the picture is depends upon how standard the system is. If representation is a matter of choice and correctness a matter of information, realism is a matter of habit. Our addiction, in the face of overwhelming counterevidence, to thinking of resemblance as the measure of realism is easily understood in these terms. Representational customs, which govern realism, also tend to generate resemblance. That a picture looks like nature often means only that it looks the way nature is usually painted. Again, what will deceive me into supposing that an object of a given kind is before me depends upon what I have noticed about such objects, and this in turn is affected by the way I am used to seeing them depicted. Resemblance and decep- tiveness, far from being constant and independent sources and criteria of representational practice are in some degree products of it. 3 9 Depiction and Description Throughout, I have stressed the analogy between pictorial representation and verbal description because it seems to me both corrective and sugges- tive. Reference to an object is a necessary condition for depiction or description of it, but no degree of resemblance is a necessary or sufficient condition for either. Both depiction and description participate in the formation and characterization of the world; and they interact with each other and with perception and knowledge. They are ways of classifying by means of labels having singular or multiple or null reference. The labels, pictorial or verbal, are themselves classified into kinds; and the interpreta- tion of fictive labels, and of depiction-as and description-as, is in terms of such kinds. Application and classification of a label are relative to a system;32 and there are countless alternative systems of representation and Reality Remade 301 description. Such systems are the products of stipulation and habituation in varying proportions. The choice among systems is free; but given a system, the question whether a newly encountered object is a desk or a unicorn-picture or is represented by a certain painting is a question of the propriety, under that system, of projecting the predicate "desk" or the predicate "unicorn-picture" or the painting over the thing in question, and the decision both is guided by and guides usage for that system,33 The temptation is to call a system of depiction a language; but here I stop short. The question what distinguishes representational from linguistic systems needs close examination. One might suppose that the criterion of realism can be made to serve here, too; that symbols grade from the most realistic depictions through less and less realistic ones to descriptions. This is surely not the case; the measure of realism is habituation, but descrip- tions do not become depictions by habituation. The most commonplace nouns of English have not become pictures. To say that depiction is by pictures while description is by passages is not only to beg a good part of the question but also to overlook the fact that denotation by a picture does not always constitute depiction; for example, if pictures in a commandeered museum are used by a briefing officer to stand for enemy emplacements, the pictures do not thereby represent these emplacements. To represent, a picture must function as a pictorial symbol; that is, function in a system such that what is denoted depends solely upon the pictorial properties of the symbol. The pictorial properties might be roughly delimited by a loose recursive specification.3 An elementary pictorial characterization states what color a picture has at a given place on its face. Other pictorial characterizations in effect combine many such elementary ones by conjunction, alternation, quantification, etc. Thus a pictorial characterization may name the colors at several places, or state that the color at one place lies within a certain range, or state that the colors at two places are complementary, and so on. Briefly, a pictorial characterization says more or less completely and more or less specifically what colors the picture has at what places. And the properties correctly ascribed to a picture by pictorial characterization are its pictorial properties. All this, though, is much too special. The formula can easily be broadened a little but resists generalization. Sculptures with denotation dependent upon such sculptural properties as shape do represent, but words with denotation dependent upon such verbal properties as spelling do not. We have not yet captured the crucial difference between pictorial and verbal properties, between nonlinguistic and linguistic symbols or systems, that makes the difference between representation in general and description. 302 Representation in Art What we have done so far is to subsume representation with description under denotation. Representation is thus disengaged from perverted ideas or it as an idiosyncratic physical process like mirroring, and is recognized as a symbolic relationship that is relative and variable. Furthermore, representation is thus contrasted with nondenotative modes of reference Notes What I am considering here is pictorial representation, or depiction, and the comparable representation that may occur in other arts. Natural objects may represent in the same way: witness the man in the moon and the sheep-dog in the clouds. Some writers use "representation" as the general term for all varieties of what I call symbolization or reference, and use "symbolic" for the verbal and other nonpictorial signs I call nonrepresentational. "Represent" and its derivatives have many other uses, and while I shall mention some of these later, others do not concern us here at all. Among the latter, for example, are the uses according to which an ambassador represents a nation and makes representations to a foreign government. 2. I use "object" indifferently for anything a picture represents, whether an apple or a battle. A quirk of language makes a represented object a subject. 3. Not until the next chapter will denotation be distinguished from other varieties of reference. 4. In "The Way the World Is," Review of Metaphysics XIV (1960), 48-56, I have argued that the world is as many ways as it can be truly described, seen, pictured, etc., and that there is no such thing as the way the world is. Ryle takes a somewhat similar position (Dilemmas [Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1954], pp. 75-77) in comparing the relation between a table as a perceived solid object and the table as a swarm of atoms with the relation between a college library according to the catalogue and according to the accountant. Some have proposed that the way the world is could be arrived at by conjoining all the several ways. This overlooks the fact that conjunction itself is peculiar to certain systems; for example, we cannot conjoin a paragraph and a picture. And any attempted combination of all the ways would be itself only one-_and a peculiarly indigestible one- of the ways the world is. But what is the world that is in so many ways? To speak of ways the world is, or ways of describing or picturing the world, is to speak of world-descriptions or world-pictures, and does not imply there is a unique thing_or indeed anything-that is described or pictured. Of course, none of this implies, either, that nothing is described or pictured. See further section 5 and note 19 below. 5. In Art and Illusion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), pp. 297-298 and elsewhere. On the general matter of the relativity of vision, see also such works as R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1966), and Marshall H. Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville J. Herskovits, The Influence of Culture on Visual Perception (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1966). Reality Remade 303 6. For samples of psychological investigation of this point, see Jerome S. Bruner's "On Perceptual Readiness," Psychological Review LXIV (1957), 123-152, and other articles there cited; also William P. Brown, "Conceptions of Perceptual Defense," British Journal of Psychology Monograph Supplement XXXV (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1961). 7. On the emptiness of the notion of epistemological primacy and the futility of the search for the absolute given, see my Structure of Appearance (2nd ed.; Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1966- hereinafter referred to as SA), pp. 132-145, and "Sense and Certainty," Philosophical Review LXI (1952), 160-167. 8 And this is no less true when the instrument we use is a camera rather than a pen or brush. The choice and handling of the instrument participate in the construal. A photographer's work, like a painter's, can evince a personal style. Concerning the 'corrections' provided for in some cameras, see section 3 below. 9. Art and Illusion, pp. 254 and 257. 10. From "Pictures, Perspective, and Perception," Daedalus (Winter 1960), P. 227. Gibson does not appear to have explicitly retracted these statements, though his interesting recent book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966), deals at length with related problems. 11. Substantially this argument has, of course, been advanced by many other writers. For an interesting discussion see D. Gioseffi, Prospettiva Artificialis (Trieste: Università degli studi di Trieste, Istituto di Storia dell'Arte Antica e Moderna, 1957), and a long review of the same by M. H. Pirenne in The Art Bulletin XLI (1959), 213-217. I am indebted to Professor Meyer Shapiro for this reference. 12. Cf. Gombrich's discussion of 'gates' in Art and Illusion, pp. 250-251. 13. See L. A. Riggs, F. Ratliff, J. C. Cornsweet, and T. Cornsweet, "The Disappearance of Steadily Fixated Visual Objects," Journal of the Optical Society of America XLIII (1953), 495-501. More recently, the drastic and rapid changes in perception that occur during fixation have been investigated in detail by R. M. Pritchard, W. Heron, and D. I. Hebb in "Visual Perception Approached by the Method of Stabilized Images," Canadian Journal of Psychology XIV (1960), 67-77. According to this article, the image tends to regenerate, sometimes transformed into meaningful units not initially present. 14. But note that owing to the protuberance of the cornea, the eye when rotated, even with the head fixed, can often see slightly around the sides of an object. 15. Adaptation to spectacles of various kinds has been the subject of extensive experimentation. See, for example, J. E. Hochberg, "Effects of Gestalt Revolution: The Cornell Symposium on Perception," Psychological Review LXIV (1959), 74-75; J. G. Taylor, The Behavioral Basis of Perception (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), pp. 166-185; and Irvin Rock, The Nature of Perceptual Adaptation (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1966). Anyone can readily verify for himself how easy it is to learn to read pictures drawn in reversed or otherwise transformed perspective. Reversed perspective often occurs in Oriental, Byzantine, and medieval art; sometimes standard and reversed perspective are even used in different parts of one picture- see, for example, Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir J. J. Gibson 304 Representation in Art Lossky, The Meaning of Icons (Boston: Boston Book and Art Shop, 1952), p. 42 (note 1), p. 200. Concerning the fact that one has to learn to read pictures in standard perspective, Melville J. Herskovits writes in Man and His Works (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 381: "More than one ethnographer has reported the experience of showing a clear photograph of a house, a person, a familiar landscape to people living in a culture innocent of any knowledge of photography, and to have the picture held at all possible angles, or turned over for an inspection of its blank back, as the native tried to interpret this meaningless arrangement of varying shades of grey on a piece of paper. For even the clearest photograph is only an interpretation of what the camera sees." 16. [Ed. Goodman included a] frontispiece to this chapter. As Klee remarks, the drawing looks quite normal if taken as representing a floor but awry as representing a facade, even though in the two cases parallels in the object represented recede equally from the eye. 17. Indeed, this is the orthodox position, taken not only by Pirenne, Gibson, and Gombrich, but by most writers on the subject. Some exceptions, besides Klee, are Erwin Panofsky, "Die Perspektive als "'Symbolische Form,'" Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg (1924-1925), pp. 258ff; Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), e.g., pp. 92ff, and elsewhere; and in an earlier day, one Arthur Parsey, who was taken to task for his heterodox views by Augustus de Morgan in Budget of Paradoxes (London, 1872), pp. 176-177. I am indebted to Mr. P. T. Geach for this last reference. Interesting discussions of perspective will be found in The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, by John White (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1958), chs. 8 and 13. 18. The optimal way of seeing the tower facade may be by looking straight at it from m; but then the optimal way of seeing the railroad tracks would be by looking down on them from directly above the midpoint of their length. 19. The substance of this and the following two paragraphs is contained in my paper, "On Likeness of Meaning," Analysis I (1949), 1-7, and discussed further in the sequel, 'On Some Differences about Meaning," Analysis XIII (1953), 90-96. See also the parallel treatment of the problem of statements "about fictive entities' in "About," Mind LXX (1961), especially pp. 18-22. In a series of papers from 1939 on (many of them reworked and republished in From a Logical Point of View [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953], W. V. Quine had sharpened the distinction between syncategorematic and other expressions, and had shown that careful observance of this distinction could dispel many philosophical problems. I use the device of hyphenation (e.g., in "'man-picture") as an aid in technical discourse only, not as a reform of everyday usage, where the context normally prevents confusion and where the impetus to fallacious existential inference is less compulsive, if not less consequential, than in philosophy. In what follows, "man- picture" will always be an abbreviation for the longer and more usual "picture apply to all or only to pictures that represent an actual man. The same general principle will govern use of all compounds of the form " picture." Thus, for example, I shall not use "Churchill-picture" as an abbreviation for "picture painted by Churchill" or for "picture belonging to Churchill." Note, furthermore, that a Reality Remade 305 square-picture is not necessarily a square picture but a square-representing-picture. 20. Strictly, we should speak here of utterances and inscriptions; for different instances of the same term may differ in denotation. Indeed, classifying replicas together to constitute terms is only one, and a far from simple, way of classifying utterances and inscriptions into kinds. See further SA, pp. 359-363, and also chapter IV [of Languages of Art]. 21. To know how to apply all compounds of a term would entail knowing how to apply at least some compounds of all other terms in the language. We normally say we understand a term when we know reasonably well how to apply it and enough of its more usual compounds. If for a given "- picture" compound we are in doubt about how to apply it in a rather high percentage of cases, this is also true of the correlative "represents as a " predicate. Of course, understanding a term is not exclusively a matter of knowing what inferences can be drawn from and to statements containing the term. 22. I am indebted to Mr. H. P. Grice and Mr. J. O. Urmson for comments leading to clarification of this point. Sometimes, the portion in question may be marked off along other than temporal lines. On the notion of a temporal part, see SA, Pp. 127-129. 23. The contained picture may, nevertheless, denote given objects and be a soandso-picture as a result of its incorporation in the context of the containing picture, just as "triangle" through occurrence in "triangle and drums" may denote given musical instruments and be a musical-instrument-description. 24. This covers cases where k is represented as a soandso by either a whole picture or part of it. As remarked in the latter part of note 19 above, there are restrictions upon the admissible replacements for "soandso" in this definitional schema; an old or square picture or one belonging to Churchill does not thereby represent him as old or square or self-possessed. 25. The reader will already have noticed that "description" in the present text is not confined to what are called definite descriptions in logic but covers all predicates from proper names through purple passages, whether with singular, multiple, or null denotation. 26. The picture does not denote the class picked out, but denotes the no or one or several members of that class. A picture of course belongs to countless classes, but only certain of these (e.g., the class of square-pictures, the class of Churchill- pictures) and not others (e.g., the class of square pictures, the class of pictures belonging to Churchill) have to do with what the picture represents-as. 27. From Constable's fourth lecture at the Royal Institution in 1836; see C. R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, ed. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1951), p. 323. 28. Cf. Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955), I, 155; also Berkeley, "Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision," in Works on Vision, ed. C. M. Turbayne (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1963), p. 42. 29. Or conventional; but "conventional" is a dangerously ambiguous term: witness the contrast between "very conventional" (as "very ordinary") and "highly conventional" or "highly conventionalized" (as "very artificial"). 30. Indeed, there are usually many such systems. A picture that under one J.T. 6105 306 Representation in Art (unfamiliar) system is a correct but highly unrealistic representation of an object may under another (the standard) system be a realistic but very incorrect represen- tation of the same object. Only if accurate information is yielded under the standard system will the picture represent the object both correctly and literally. 31. Neither here nor elsewhere have I argued that there is no constant relation of resemblance; judgments of similarity in selected and familiar respects are, even though rough and fallible, as objective and categorical as any that are made in describing the world. But judgments of complex overall resemblance are another matter. In the first place, they depend upon the aspects or factors in terms of which the objects in question are compared; and this depends heavily on concep- tual and perceptual habit. In the second place, even with these factors determined, similarities along the several axes are not immediately commensurate, and the degree of total resemblance will depend upon how the several factors are weighted. Normally, for example, nearness in geographical location has little to do with our judgment of resemblance among buildings but much to do with our judgment of resemblance among building lots. The assessment of total resemblance is subject to influences galore, and our representational customs are not least among these. In sum, I have sought to show that insofar as resemblance is a constant and objective relation, resemblance between a picture and what it represents does not coincide with realism: and that insofar as resemblance does coincide with realism, the criteria of resemblance vary with changes in representational practice. 32. [Ed.- .. ] a symbol system (not necessarily formal) embraces both the symbols and their interpretation, and a language is a symbol system of a particular kind. A formal system is couched in a language and has stated primitives and routes of derivation. 33. On the interaction between specific judgment and general policy, see my Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (2nd ed.: Indianapolis and New York; The Bobbs-Mer- rill Co., Inc., 1965-- hereinafter referred to as FFF), pp. 63-64. The propriety of projecting a predicate might be said to depend upon what similarities there are among the objects in question; but with equal truth, similarities among the objects might be said to depend upon what predicates are projected (cf. note 31 above, and FFF, pp. 82, 96-99, 119-120). Concerning the relationship between the language theory' of pictures outlined above and the much discussed 'picture theory' of language, see "The Way the World Is" (cited in note 4 above), pp. 55-56. 34. The specification that follows has many shortcomings, among them the absence of provision for the often three-dimensional nature of picture surfaces. But while a rough distinction between pictorial and other properties is useful here [Ed.. .. .], nothing very vital rests on its precise formulation. “

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Picturing and Representing

MARX W. WARTOFSKY

[orig. 1979]

The thesis I want to present in this chapter, although stated very baldly, is; human vision is a cultural and historical product of the creative activity of making pictures. To put it somewhat differently, human vision is an artifact, produced by means of other artifacts- for example, by pictures; as such, it is a historically variable mode of perception, which changes with changes in our modes of representation. What follows from this thesis, if it is true, are two radical conclusions- one, methodological, the other, epistemological.

The methodologically radical conclusion is that all theoretical attempts to construct a theory of vision, which presuppose that seeing is an essential, unchanging structure of process; or that the human eye is describable in some generic physiological way, are, if not fundamentally mistaken, then essentially incomplete. For the plasticity of the visual system, if I am right, is such that it requires a historical account of its development and not simply a biological account of its evolution, whether phylogenetically or ontogenetically.

The radical epistemological conclusion is that there is no intrinsically veridical, or "correct," mode of representation, that is, there is no criterion of veridicality that is not itself a product of the social and historical choices of norms of visual representation. There is, therefore, no canon of truth in perception that can be established by reduction to the physiology of vision, or to optics, or to some species-specific biological, or even ecologi- cal, account. That is not to say that we do not inherit the mammalian eye, nor is it to say that human vision is not based in an evolved, adaptive

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structure which develops with the speciation of Homo sapiens. However, truth in perception, as I will argue, is bound to canons of the veridicality of representation; these, in turn, have a history and are rooted in our social practice and in our own activities of picturing and representing. Thus, it is we who create the very norms of veridicality by our pictorial practice. Such norms are not arbitrary, though they are conventional; they are not biological but historical.

The larger theoretical enterprise of which the thesis that I propose is a part may be characterized as a historical epistemology. I will present one specific aspect of such a historical theory of vision, which I have begun to develop elsewhere (Wartofsky 1972, 1976). At issue is the question of how representation is possible in the specific mode of representation that we call picturing-_and, more specifically, in that subcategory of pictures which we call paintings.

My argument may be summarized in five points. First, the act of representing something pictorially is a creative act. That is to say, it does not depend on some antecedent notion that something (a picture) "looks like" or "resembles" or "represents" something else for example, a scene, an object, a person, and so forth), but rather that it is we who create the similarity which counts as representational. Similarity is not given, but achieved; made, not discovered. It is invented and created.

Second, the perceptual system--and the visual system in particular-is biologically evolved to take certain things in the visual world as being like or resembling others, by virtue of the forms of life activity of a given species, that is, the means by which its individual members preserve themselves in existence and reproduce the species life. These canons of resemblance, similarity, or identity are mapped into the neural and neuromuscular structure of the species; they may be said to be coded into its genetic structure by natural selection. The human species, however, has a radically alternative mode of mapping its forms of life activity into structure, and this is by means of canons of visual representation, that is, embodied rules for taking one thing as a representation of something else. Pictures--or rather styles of pictorial representation--exemplify canons of representation, by means of which we come to see the visual world as like the picture.

Third, the rules of linear perspective in painting and drawing are not "correct" representations of the way things "look" but rather proposals to see things the way they are represented pictorially. When they come to look the way they are pictured, it is because we have adopted the rule of picturing as a rule of seeing the world--that is, we see by way of our picturing.

Fourth, the alleged paradox of pictures--namely, that the three-dimen-

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sional world is represented in a two-dimensional image of the world-is not a paradox; it is dissolved when we recognize that in taking a picture as a representation of the world, we come to take the world as a two-dimen- sional picture, which is, in this respect, like what pictures or represents it. When we are fooled, then the picture is no longer, properly speaking, a picture. However, we are rarely fooled. The argument is this: We say that representational pictures (for example, paintings) "look" three dimen- sional, that is, they "look like" the three-dimensional objects or scenes which they represent. However, we take the world to "look" three dimen- sional only by contrast to the two-dimensionality of pictures. The visual concept of "three dimensionality" is thus a constructive concept, which depends upon reference to, or a relation to, the two dimensionality of pictures. We would have no distinctive notion of the three dimensionality of the visual world except for the distinction we come to draw between it and two-dimensional representations of it. In short, the making of two- dimensional representations, or pictures, is what generates the contrastive visual concept of three dimensionality. I would suggest that the geometry which defines the plane projection of a solid is likewise dependent on the more primitive notion of a picture, that is, a representation or configura- tion in the two-dimensional plane.

Fifth, and finally, modes of picturing change, with changes in form of our social, technological, and intellectual praxis; representation has a history, and thus, in coming to adopt different modes of representation, we literally change our visual world. Human vision is an artifact created and changed by the modes of picturing. Different modes of picturing have different theories. We have adopted the theory of linear perspective as our theory of veridical representation. It is not incorrect. But neither is it correct. Veridicality is not a given feature of a mode of picturing. It is defined by the theory of pictorial representation that we come to adopt.

So much for the summary of my argument. Now to the question posed for this volume: "What is a painting?" The question needs to be specified more concretely in order to be answered. It has many answers, depending on what it is that is being asked. A merely ostensive definition-"that's a painting" (pointing at one)-will not do, but it does hide a deeper answer. Namely, paintings are the sorts of things that are taken to be paintings. Thus revised, the question becomes, "What is it we take to be a painting?"

I plan to deal with only one aspect of this question here, namely, that of pictorial representation, which is one of the things paintings do (or are taken to do). In order to deal with this question, however, there is a more general characterization I want to give to paintings, apart from, but related to their representational capacities, that is, paintings are artifacts, made things, the products of intentional human activity, and insofar as they are

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representational, they are intended as representations -that is, they are artifacts whose purpose it is to represent something.

The question then becomes, "How do the kinds of artifacts called pictures represent?" What is made in such a way as to come to represent something else? More specifically, in the case of painting, how do arrange- ments of lines, areas, colors, and gradients of dark and light on a two-dimensional plane surface come to represent three-dimensional ob- jects, scenes, and persons?

There are several possible answers to this question. I will examine three, but first, I would like to frame my approach so that the context of my considerations will be clear. There are several general points to be made. First, if (as is clear and undisputed) representation has a history and if (as is yet unclear and in dispute) this history is a crucial factor in the historical and cultural evolution of the human visual system, then the history of art becomes an essential component of the theory of vision: alternative modes of representation, the history of styles in painting, the theoretical analysis and reconstruction of the visual concepts of space, objects, and relations, which are characteristic of a given style or period, the phenomenological reconstruction of the modes of intentionality that identify an art-historical epoch, or a school all become essential components of any theory of vision, as crucial as the study of the psychology or physiology of vision and inseparable from these latter inquiries.

Second, since modes of representation are not simply or abstractly visual matters but involve also the larger social, technological, political, scientific, and even ideological contexts of human cognitive practice, a theory of vision is embedded in this larger framework of human social activity. Our seeing is a mode of our activity; just as vision cannot be conceived of simply as an activity of the eye, taken out of its context as part of the mammalian brain, and of the whole organism, so, too, it cannot be conceived of simply as the activity of the visual system, taken out of the context of the form of life in which this system operates, in which it develops, and which it is capable of transforming. To put this another way: it is neither the eye nor the visual system that sees. Rather, it is we who see, by means of the eye or the visual system. Similarly, it is not feet that walk. Rather, it is we using our feet. I could not walk without feet or see without eyes, but the I that sees, walks, talks, paints, argues, and gives papers at symposia is a social being, an individuated member of a life-form which is essentially historical and social. No mode of the life activity of such an individual can be adequately characterized, therefore, by abstractive reduction to the particular organs or apparatus by means of which this life activity proceeds. In this regard, the approach I am proposing is analogous to James Gibson' ecological approach to vision,

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but it differs sharply from his in that the ecology I am suggesting here is not a natural or biologically defined one but a cultural, or sociohistorical, "ecology." In short, vision, or seeing, is not merely the after-product, the epiphenomenon, of a given apparatus in a given environment or simply the operation of an organ. It is a creative activity that can be transformed and which, in turn, can itself transform a given form of life.

Third, and finally, if vision is a historically variable mode of cognitive practice that changes with alterations in our modes of representation, then the evolution of our visual system, as a cultural artifact, is, in contrast with its evolution as a biological system, no longer Darwinian but Lamarckian. That is to say, in the cultural evolution of this artifact, that is, of vision, there is transmission of acquired characteristics from one generation to the next. The mode of transmission is, therefore, no longer genetic but becomes social or cultural. The visual culture of a society or of an age is not inherited by the operation of genetic transmission or by means of the biochemical structures or codes that have been selected out, preserved, and developed by natural selection but rather by means of social structures- in particular, visual artifacts and modes of picturing. To put it simply, the artifact is to cultural evolution what the gene is to biological evolution. Cultural evolution, in contrast with biological evolution, is Larmarckian and not Darwinian. Such a thesis makes it possible to account for the plasticity and also the rapidity of cultural evolution; further, it is directly opposed to the current theoretical approaches to human cognition, as well as to human sociality, which find it necessary to focus on the alleged biological or genetic constraints on, or determinants of, modes of human activity.

To summarize this introductory discussion: (1) we see by way of our picturing changes in our modes of cognition, in general, and in our modes of vision, in particular, are concomitant with changes in our modes of social practice, in general, and with our modes of pictorial representation, in particular; (2) the human visual system is therefore not simply the biological structure of our species evolution but an artifact produced by our own creative activity of picturing and seeing; thus, its plasticity cannot be defined reductively in biological, that is, physiological or genetic, terms.

Against this larger framework, let me now turn to the specific question, "How is representation possible?" The title of this chapter, "Picturing and Representing," is intended to correct a certain initial tendency to hypos- tatize: "Pictures and representations" suggests, I think, that we begin with certain entities already understood. I want to put in question what it is we understand by such entities and to emphasize that pictures picture and representations represent by virtue of the fact that they are the products of an activity that intends them as picturing and representing. That is, for

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something to be a picture, it needs to be made as a picture and taken as a picture; for something to be a representation, it has to be intended to represent, and this intention has to be understood in taking it as a representation. Nothing, then, is a picture or a representation in itself apart from being made as one or taken as one. There are no entities, then, which may "objectively" be characterized in this way. Instead, things of a certain sort are constituted as pictures and representations by makers and viewers. There is a radical consequence to this view as well: if nothing is intrinsi- cally a picture or a representation, then we cannot ascribe a set of intrinsic properties to something that would identify it as a picture. In effect, anything can be a picture or a representation if it is made to be one or is taken as one. Let me make clear that I propose this in the strongest way, without qualification, that is, it is not the case that certain things are taken to be pictures or representations because they exhibit certain visual properties but, rather, that they come to exhibit certain visual properties because they are taken to be pictures or representations.

Now, this flies in the face of common sense--or seems to, for, in fact, not everything is taken to be a picture or a representation; in fact, a very narrow range of things is so taken at any given time or in any given culture. However, this narrow range itself is variable: some things not taken or made as pictures in one context are pictures in another. Moreover, insofar as pictures represent, it would appear that the relation of representing is based on some relation between some properties of the picture and some properties of what it is taken to represent, usually, a relation of resembling, or similarity, or likeness. The pictorial representa- tion is said to be a representation by virtue of being a likeness; therefore, a successful representation shares properties with its reference.

My first claim, against this common view, is not original but is shared with Goodman (1976), upon whose more systematic and elaborrated argument on thie point I will rely. It is that representation requires no relation of resemblance, or likeness, but is rather constituted as an act of reference. My second claim, however, goes beyond this, though it is in the same spirit. It is that likeness, resemblance, or similarity is itself not given in our visual perception; it is not a primitive, irreducible relation, as Mill took it to be (in Nagel 1950), but is itself an achieved relation, that is, one which is constructed and, therefore, construable (compare Mann 1971). Things come to be similar, to resemble each other, be likenesses by virtue of being made as similar, or alike, or being taken as resembling each other. Thus, even in the relation of representation in which it is alleged that the representation is like what it represents, I am arguing that it is so by virtue of our taking it to be so, in a given respect. It is we who create similarity, resemblance, or likeness in those forms of pictorial representation that are

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said to be based on it. We do so, I would argue, by producing artifacts that are specifically intended to be like other things, to represent them, in this way. The classic story here, of course, is about Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein. When told that it did not look like her, he answered: "It will."

On the basis of one interpretation, this may be no more than to say that in making a representation, we imitate what it is that is being represented, that is, we construct something that is similar to what it is to represent--in effect, we make a copy. In this case, then, there should be no surprise that there is resemblance, likeness, or similarity, for is not the representation made expressly to be like what it represents? But this interpretation- the common one--begs precisely the question that it sets out to answer. For in order to make something that is similar to, or resembles, something else, we have to establish what the feature is which is being "copied" in this sense, and that something else in fact resembles it. Imitating, copying, or reproducing the features of a given object, scene, or relation requires therefore just that creative act of achieving the likeness, of establishing that something resembles something else, which is presup- posed as a given in the standard view. In a second interpretation, one thing may be said to re-present another, not in being like it, or resembling it, in some common properties--for example, same shape, or color, or same relation among parts--but, rather, in causally effecting the same response. Therefore, the representation comes to represent by virtue of bringing about the same physiological response or visual experience as the thing or scene represented, though it does so by means that are dissimilar. So, for example, in this view, paintings of landscapes or figures are pictorial artifacts and, thus, two-dimensional arrays: they are not themselves "like," in this sense, the three-dimensional objects or spaces that they represent. Yet, they are arranged in such a way as to deliver the "same" or a similar light flux to the retina, and thus initiate similar visual responses.

This view, perhaps the most popular psychological theory of represen- tation, retains semblance in the phenomenal experience, or in the response, though it gives up identity or even similarity in the stimulus. In this sense, it presupposes that similarity in the response is passive--a matter of equivalent causal or antecedent conditions, whose equivalence is judged by the sameness of the response.

The faults with this view are many. But let me simply point to one experimental fact: the recognition of pictures as representations of x ranges over pictures that are obviously not similar to each other in any respect one could define as "causally equivalent." Gibson would evade this point by arguing that for all their dissimilarity, such a range of alternative pictorial representations are all alike in transmitting the same higher-order

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visual invariances criteria for object or scene recognition, though through the range of transformations. But such invariances, in Gibson's ecological optics, are taken to be objective features of the ambient light, and the organism—in this case, the human one, or, perhaps, the higher vertebrate in general—has so evolved its visual system as to be able to pick up these invariances directly—that is, without processing lower-order variations. The net is woven, so to speak, in order to catch fish of only a certain size (or a higher order) and to let all the smaller ones (or those of a lower order) slip through unnoticed.

This interpretation begs the question in a different way from the first, for it presupposes as invariant just those features that representations represent- for example, so-called real shape or real size in the case of perceptual constancies--and, thus, does not explain how representation is possible; in fact, it theoretically constructs an explication of one kind of representation--namely, that which is constructed in accordance with the rules of linear perspective- that it takes to be canonical. It is no surprise then-in fact, it is inevitable, because circular--that in Gibson's view, what we see is what there is, and representations succeed because they re-present what we see.

If I deny that we have direct access to the way things really are, at least as the real objects in our ecological space or the space of our species' life activity, then how else is representation possible? What links representa- tion to representandum: how do we have access to the properties of the visual world so that we know how to represent them successfully?

To take a step further, I would propose that we do not come to have visual concepts of the properties of the visual world except by such a process of creating representations of it. Nature comes to imitate art precisely because what we make of nature as an object of vision is constituted, in large part, by how we choose to represent it.

Before proceeding with the argument, it may be useful to make explicit some distinctions that have thus far been merely suggested. I have stated that human vision is itself an artifact, produced by other artifacts, namely, pictures. I call something an artifact if it is a product of human activity, in the sense that it comes into being as the result of intentional human making and is made or constructed with an end-in-view or for a use or purpose. This use or purpose defines the artifact as what it is, so that an artifact is what it is made for: it is, in short, a teleological entity. It may be odd to talk of vision or seeing in this way, but in fact, it is we who have shaped our vision to certain uses~-who have adopted, adapted, and replaced different visual modes in our pursuit of different interests and ends. We have, in effect, learned to read the visual world in different ways, depending on our interests and needs.

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One objection to such a view is, obviously, that the physiology of the visual system, though it may be understood as a biological adaptation to a form of life, is not itself the product of our own deliberate design nor is it subject to our intentional manipulation. We cannot be said to "change" our visual physiology as our interests or purposes change, for the structure is a genetically determined one and its evolution to the present species-form is the product of natural and not cultural selection. Within the confines of gross physiology, this is, I believe, evidently true. The adaptive variation of the visual system, in the course of species evolution, is the work of natural selection. But even here, we may characterize this species evolution as the mapping into the organism's genetic makeup of those features of its life-world and life activity that are requisite for its species-survival. The story is different, however, for the development of vision beyond the species level that is, for the differentia- tion of visual perceptions which proceed with cultural evolution or with historical changes in the human forms of life. One may go so far as to claim (with Penfield 1966) that the physiological ontogenesis of the neural system in general (and for the visual cortex in particular) is a differentiated one, which maps into the individual's neural structure the specific modes of experience and activity that characterize the life history of that in- dividual. But one need not go so far to see that the visual system as a way of seeing is subject to the variability of modes of visual re-presentation.

What then are pictures and representations, and specifically, what is a painting? Let me make a distinction between pictures and representations. Pictures are visual artifacts, that is to say, pictures are made to be seen. Many other artifacts, are of course, also visible, but by visual artifact, I mean something expressly made for the purpose of being seen. Pictures, on the other hand, do not exhaust the class of visual artifacts. One may include, here, any marks, signs, objects, or expressions that are expressly made to be seen or any entities which come to be taken principally as objects of vision. So, for example, physiognomic expression, hand signs, sculpted objects, signs or markings of warning, direction, ownership, kinship, and so forth, may be taken as visual artifacts in this sense, that is, that they are intended to be seen and to communicate a meaning visually. Thus, modes of dress, scarification, gestures, and facial expres- sions are all such artifacts. Pictures, as a special class of such artifacts, I will take to be as those that are made upon a plane surface (thus, not gestures or sculptures for example) and which depend on line or color as their visual means. Not all pictures are representations, though all pictures may be said to have meaning. Moreover, natural objects or scenes may be taken pictorially, though they are not made things. Thus, we may see a tree, a sunset, or a cloud as a picture when we take it principally as a

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visual artifact, that is, as a meaningful form or shape seen as if it were on a plane surface. The force of this particular qualification will be seen later, since I will argue that it is by means of our activity of picturing that we come to be able to see the world as a picture and that the standard theory of vision which underlies constancy theory, in perception, and which proposes linear perspective as the correct representation of the visual world is based on an interpretation of the three-dimensional visual world as a two-dimensional picture.

Pictures, then, are visual artifacts made to be seen-_and when understood in this way, seen as pictures. The ubiquitousness of the pictorial in human life leads us to forget that picture making and picture seeing are learned activities of the species. I would go further and suggest that picturing, both in making and seeing, is a fundamental form of the life activity of the human species and, in this sense, I am proposing that it is this activity that shapes human vision and develops it beyond the biological inheritance of the mammalian eye.

If all pictures are not representations, all pictures may be taken to be representations. Visual representations, briefly, are visual artifacts ex- pressly made or understood as referring to something beyond themselves. Thus, there are nonvisual representations that are not pictures, for ex- ample, vocal reference in speech or gestural ostension; so, too, there are visual modes of reference that are not pictorial. Representation is sym- bolic. That is, one thing stands for another, under an interpretation given in a symbol system of which the representation is a part.

There is much more to be said about these distinctions, and Goodman's pioneering work (1976) goes a long way in developing this analysis. I will not pursue it here. But in summary, for the purposes of this chapter, I will distinguish pictures from representations, insofar as there are pictures that do not represent and representations that are not pictorial. More generally still, I will hold that all artifacts are putative representations, insofar as the very use, or understanding, or recognition and identification of an artifact as what it is requires that we take it as a representation of the mode of activity involved in its use or in its production. The artifact "represents," literally, in being taken as an imitation of an action, that is, the embodiment of the intentionality involved in its production, reproduc- tion, or use. Thus, for example, a tool or a weapon, such as an ax or a spear, is not only something made to be used for a certain end but is also itself a representation of the action involved in its use and in its production or reproduction. An ax therefore, as a visual artifact, represents the activity of chopping and a spear, the activity of throwing in order to kill in the hunt. Moreover, the artifact also represents the mode of activity involved in its production or reproduction: it is a prototype of its replicas and a model of its own process of production.

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What, then, marks off pictorial representations from the wider class of artifacts as putative representations? Again, the emphasis is on intentions, that is, what is intended in the making and taking of such visual artifacts. A spear is made for hunting and also represents the mode of action of the hunt. A spear-picture, on the other hand, is not made for hunting but is made expressly as a representation of a spear. It is principally made as a visual artifact, not a hunting artifact; its very intentionality is distinct in this sense; its purpose is different. Moreover, the representation is detached from use or from production: it functions independently of the activities or contexts of what it represents. Such a relatively autonomous act of representing is made possible by the picture, for it is in the express creation of something as a visual artifact, as something made to be seen, that the separation from other contexts of use becomes possible. It is not that representational pictures have no use but that their intended use is dif- ferent. The use-value of a picture (representational or not) is in its being seen, whatever other purposes such visual presentation may have, for example, didactic, formal, expressive, informative, and so forth. The use-value of a representational picture is in its visual representation of its referent. It is in this sense that I argued earlier that something is a representation insofar as it is made to be, or taken to be, a representation. The features that come to be called representational will then depend on what is taken to serve this function. Anything can; but not everything, in fact, is chosen to do so. What is chosen to function as representational is a complex question, not to be resolved by appeal to physiological (or ecological) optics. Rather, it demands comparative study of what in fact has been taken as representational or what, in various alternative canons, continues to be taken as representational.

Pictures that represent, then, are artifacts which guide or shape our vision of the world, leading us to take this as like that, to pick out features of the seen world that are referred to by the representations we make, where the act of reference is itself a creative act and not merely a matching of pregiven similarities or identities. One may say, then, that representa- tional pictures are heuristic and didactic artifacts. They teach us to see: they guide our vision in such a way that the seen world becomes the world scene.

References

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17. Representation as Expression PETER KIVY Honegger's Pacific 231 has forced itself upon our attention frequently . . as perhaps the paradigm of musical illustration: the most musically success- ful sound picture in the literature. For this reason... what Honegger said about his work is so altogether surprising. "I have not attempted the imitation of the sound of an engine in Pacific 231, but the expression of a visual impression and physical pleasure in a musical construction," he is quoted as remarking in an interview.' It is surprising, of course, because if any musical composition succeeds as an easily recognizable imitation of sound in music, it is Honegger's. If he did not intend this remarkable imitation of an engine, we must assume what is almost beyond belief: that the resemblance is purely fortuitous, a lucky (or unlucky) accident. Why should Honegger have said such an extraordinary thing? That he was so self-deluded as not to have known what he was in fact doing, compositionally, seems as much beyond belief as that the remarkable picture of sound in sound was unintended. Yet so strong was his desire not to be taken for an imitator of sounds that he was impelled to say about his work what could not possibly have been true. It is tempting to think that Honegger, like me, is really rejecting the concept of imitation rather than denying that his composition is a picture of sounds that, in fact, sounds remarkably like what it pictures. Or perhaps what Honegger really intended to convey, by hyperbole, is that Pacific 231 is not merely an imitation or illustration of sounds, but an expressive From Peter Kivy, Sound and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation, Chapter VI. Copyright © 1984 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press. Some examples have been deleted; those that remain have not been renumbered. retard itt 320 Representation in Ar musical composition in its own right, with some of the same musical values to be found in all serious symphonic writing. (It surely is no accident, in this regard, that he gave it the subtitle, Mouvement Symphonique.) 'An this may have a grain of truth in it. The piece is a fine example of symphonie writing, with many lyrical and expressive passages. It is no merely a sound picture, like, say, Mossolov's The Iron Foundry. But Honegger, after all, said what he said; and perhaps it would be more fruitful (not to say more honest) to try to understand what exactly he did say, and why he said it, rather than to try to say not what he said but what he meant (or what he meant to say). For what he said is not, by any means, unique in the history of music. The prejudice against musical illustration, and in favor of musical expression--they almost invariably come in each other's company- is deep-seated in composers, and of long standing in the profession. It behooves us to take this seriously, and to fathom its import. 2 How far back in time the argument between illustration and expression can be pushed I do not know, but it is clear that the Renaissance madrigal composers were devoted -their critics might have said addicted--to musical representation. And these so-called "madrigalisms" in which they indulged, along with certain criticisms their efforts elicited from the theorists prepar- ing the way for monody, opera, and the musical Baroque, constitute a clear enough example of the tension between the concepts of musical representation and musical expression to provide us with a reasonable starting point, if not a true historical beginning. Musicologists would surely agree that one of the most important of such theorists working in the seam between Renaissance and Baroque was Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo). He laid the theoretical foundations for the development of monody and opera, and, in the process, made illuminating remarks of a critical nature on Renaissance music in general, and musical representation in particular. The latter are of some interest to us here, and I will quote them at some length. Gallei writes: [Composers] will say that they are imitating the words when among the conceptions of these there are any meaning "to flee" or "to fly", these they will declaim with the greatest rapidity and the least grace imaginable. In connection with the words meaning "to disappear," "to swoon, '» 'to die," or actually "to be extinct" they have made the parts break off so abruptly, that instead of inducing the passion correspond- ing to any of these, they have aroused laughter and at other times Representation as Expression 321 contempt in the listeners, who felt they were being ridiculed. Then with words meaning "alone," "two," or "together" they have caused one lone part, or two, or all parts together to sing with unheard-of elegance. . And then, as sometimes happens, the conceptions they have had in hand have made mention of the rolling of the drum, or of the sound of the trumpet or any other such instrument, they have sought to represent its sound in their music, without minding at all that they were pronouncing these words in some unheard-of-man- ner... . At another time, finding the line: He descended into hell, into the lap of Pluto, they have made one part of the composition descend in such a way that the singer has sounded more like someone groaning to frighten children and terrify them than like anyone singing sense. In the opposite way, finding this one: This one aspires to the stars, in declaiming it they have ascended to a height that no one shrieking from excessive pain, internal or external, has ever reached.? What strikes the reader straightaway about Vincenzo Galilei's difficulty with representational music is not that he thinks representation in music to be impossible; rather, that it always seems to him to be a violation of musical good taste in one way or another. Thus, when composers represent "fleeing" ' or "flying" with running passages, they must be executed "with the greatest rapidity and the least grace imaginable." When they represent the sounds of instruments (in vocal music, of course) they represent them "without minding at all that they were pronouncing these words in some unheard-of manner." When they represent ascent or descent with an ascend- ing or descending line, they either take the voice so low that "the singer has sounded more like someone groaning to frighten children,' » or take it so high that the singer seems to be "shrieking from excessive pain." But why, one wonders, need this necessarily be the case? Can't good taste and representation be served at the same time, even if it was not by the composers whom Galilei takes to task? Why must running passages be written so that they have to be taken too fast when they represent flight? Why can't the trumpet's sound be represented with proper declama- tion? And surely there is no need to take an ascending or descending line beyond the acceptable range of the voice, in representing ascent and descent. The thing can be done in moderation, one would think, and the idea still come across. There must, one suspects, be something deeper here 322 Representation in Art than this, for Galilei is not just saying that composers in his time have been doing representation badly. He is making a stronger claim, presumably: that, in principle, if it is done it must be done badly. Where, though, is the argument for that? A hint is dropped, I think, in the passage just quoted, where Galilei says: "In connection with the words meaning "to disappear,' to swoon. 'to die,' or actually to be extinct' they have made the parts break off so abruptly, that instead of inducing the passion corresponding to any of these [my italics] they have aroused laughter and at other times contempt in the listeners.. 99 Two points are worth noting here. First, Galilei is suggesting that there is something altogether appropriate in arousing emotions in listeners, as there is something inherently inappropriate in representing anything, even when music is capable of so doing: that is to say, arousing emotions is peculiarly musical, part of the special genius of the art, whereas representation is not, but, rather, something alien to it, even where possible. Second, he suggests that there is something the composer can do entirely consonant with the emotive character of music, in lieu of representation, namely, arouse in the listener the emotion (or emotions) corresponding to the things he might wish to represent: in this case, one assumes, the emotions we tend to associate with disappearing, swooning, dying, or being dead (whatever these might be). 3 The development of such hints as Galilei's into a doctrine of musical representation by way of musical expression awaited the advent, in the eighteenth century, of what Paul Oskar Kristeller has aptly called "The Modern System of the Arts." When music, literature, and the visual arts had been gathered up into one class of objects--or, perhaps, as this was in process--theories were naturally required to explain (a) what it was about these seemingly disparate activities of writing, painting, sculpting, compos- ing, that made them all of a piece, all of the same genus; and (b) what, nevertheless, distinguished them from one another. The prominent view, of course, was that the fine arts or beaux-arts, the arts of the beautiful, were, as Aristotle and Plato had long ago conjectured, the arts of imita- tion. That being the case, how was music, first of all, to be considered one of the fine arts at all, since so little of it seemed to be imitative in any obvious sense of that word, cuckoo calls aside? And, second, what was it about musical imitation, if there really were such a species of the thing, that distinguished it from painterly imitation, say, or literary representation? What was the peculiarly musical genius of musical imita- tion? Representation as Expression 323 The problem, and its most pervasive solution for the Enlightenment, is best displayed in one of the more influential aesthetic treatises of the time, Batteux's Les beaux arts reduits à un même principe (1747). The very title of Batteux's work poses the problem in admirably succinct terms: How to reduce the arts of the beautiful, the fine arts, to a single principle. That principle, of course, was the imitation of la belle nature, according to Batteux. But how reduce music to the imitation of nature, while still retaining what was thought, since ancient times, to be the peculiarly musical in it: that is to say, its emotive "content"? The answer was clearly dictated by the "même principe." If emotive content was music's "dif- ference," and the imitation of nature its "genus," then its whole nature must be the imitation of the emotions. Thus, for Batteux, "the principal object of music and dance [is] the imitation of the sentiments or passions.«A But what could it mean to "imitate" a sentiment or passion? Whatever might plausibly be described as an imitation of a passion or sentiment (if anything can), it would not seem to be music. What can be imitated or represented by music, Batteux (quite correctly, I believe) concluded, are the tones of voice with which our passions and sentiments are expressed.' And because music can "imitate" passionate human speech, it has the emotive import of that speech: it has, Batteux insists, "a meaning, a sense" (une signification, un sens)." Usually, that meaning or sense was cashed in, in the eighteenth century, in terms of the propensity of music to arouse in the listener the emotions which it was described as possessing: its significance or sense was a dispositional property, gained through the imitation of the "natural language" of passionate speech. The arousal theory of musical expression was not, as I have argued elsewhere, the only one in the running.' But it surely was the most common one; and, more important for our purposes, the one that became, in the eighteenth century (unfortunately, I think), most intimately con- nected with the theory of musical representation as musical expression. Thus it became common for Enlightenment writers to recommend to the composer that he not try, as the Baroque composers had done, to "paint" or "imitate" things in his music, but, rather, that he try to make music that would arouse in the listener the emotion that would be felt if that object were actually present and perceived. Johann Adam Hiller, for example, in his essay "On the Imitation of Nature in Music,' " suggests that if music is to represent, say, a ghost or spirit, it must not "attempt to portray the quivering or drifting around of the spirit; it attempts only to portray it fearfully.» Or again, Jean-Jacques Rousseau says of the com- poser: "He will not directly represent things, but excite in the soul the same movement [that is, emotion] which we feel in seeing them." It is important to realize fully just how influential this doctrine of 324 Representation in Art representation as expression has been, not only among critics, theorists, and philosophers, but among composers as well; and, it should be added not just as an understandable reaction in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries against real or imagined "literalism" in musical representation, but an attractive, one might almost say mesmerizing, alternative to musical representation in which one can have one's musical cake and eat it too, under the assumption that musical representation is at least unmusical and in bad taste, and, perhaps, even impossible. Without multiplying examples beyond endurance, let me simply call the reader's attention to some of the better known and more striking instances of the view in the past one hundred fifty years. There is, to begin with, the obvious and important case of Beethoven' Sixth Symphony, obvious because Beethoven himself apparently embraced the theory of musical representation as musical expression, explicitly if not always in practice (as we shall see); important because he not only expressed his belief in the theory, but gave us a masterpiece to exemplify it. A barren theory we can perhaps afford to ignore; but a theory fecund enough, in the hands of a genius, to produce the Pastoral, we ignore at our peril. The clearest statement of what Beethoven intended in the Pastoral is to be found in the following sketchbook notations: "Every kind of paint- ing loses by being carried too far in instrumental music. Sinfonia pas- torella... it is [a record of] sentiments rather than a painting in sounds. And again: "'Pastoral Symphony not a painting, but an expression of those sentiments evoked in men by their enjoyment of the country, a work in which some emotions of country life are described" (1807-1808)." Beethoven, of course, is not one with whom we tend to associate tone painting and program music: he is our paradigm of the "pure" instrumen- tal composer, so it comes as no real surprise to us that in his one "programmatic" symphony he disavows musical illustrationism. More surprising is the fact that Berlioz, whose name is almost synonymous with the musical program and musical representation, apparently made a similar disavowal in regard to what we take to be his quintessential programmatic effort, Symphonie fantastique. Thus Edward T. Cone takes Berlioz as intending "'not to describe scenes and incidents, but to depict his hero's reactions to them,"' and adds: "Berlioz makes this clear in a footnote to one of the early editions of the program, where he firmly rejects, for example, the 'notion of painting mountains' in favor of the attempt to express "the emotion aroused in the soul... by the sight of these imposing masses.»12 Moreover, it is clear, I think, from the vigor with which Cone goes on to persuade us of Berlioz' espousal of musical representation as musical expression that it is Cone's view as well, and that he is somewhat relieved to find Berlioz, the arch-illustrator, really on the side of the angels after all. He concludes: Representation as Expression 325 Berlioz's position, then, seems to be that an instrumental composition is the communication of an experience, transformed into abstract sound. A program can tell us something about the subject of that experience and the specific circumstances giving rise to it. But the experience the music records is not the event described by the program; it is the reaction of the subject to that event, I3 Quite in line with this interpretation of musical representation as musical expression, although considerably less subtle, is J.W.N. Sullivan's, in his popular biography of Beethoven. Sullivan writes that what he calls the peculiar character of program music does not consist in any correspondences that may exist between auditory and other physical perceptions, but in the analogy between the musical emotions communicated and the emotions aroused by the external situation that forms the programme of the composition. If it be said, for instance, that Debussy's L'Après-midi d'un Faune makes the impression of "a vegetable world alive in quivering hot sun- shine... the life of trees, streams and lakes, the play of light upon water and on clouds, the murmur of plants drinking, and feeding in the sunlight," it is not because musical sounds can evoke images of heat and light and vegetables, but because a man in such surroundings may typically experience emotions analogous to those communicated by the music. Programme music, in the strict sense, may be defined as music that communicates musical experiences analogous to extra- musical experiences that may be associated with some definite exter- nal situation. It does not, any more than any other music, depict any part of the external world. It Enough examples have been adduced, I think, to make the point that the theory of musical representation as musical expression of some kind has been ubiquitous in the history of Western art music from the Renais- sance to the present. What must now be determined is how much truth (if any) there is in the theory and (antecedently) how that theory can best be understood. 4 In order to evaluate the theory of musical representation as musical expression we must first become somewhat clearer about what the theory is, and, in particular, how the word expression" is to be construed. We saw that the theory, as it emerged in the Enlightenment, generally construed the emotive content of music to be its disposition to arouse 326 Representation in Art emotions in the listener. On such a theory, then, expression is to be understood as arousal, and "the music is p" (where "$" names an emotion or mood) as "the music arouses $ in the listener." But it is by no means clear that emotive expression, or depiction, or evocation was so construed by all of those since the eighteenth century who have believed that musical representation is really a matter of musical expression, or depiction, or evocation. Beethoven, to begin with, says that he intends the Pastoral to be an "expression of those sentiments evoked in men by their enjoyment of the country," and again, "a work in which some emotions of country life are described." Nowhere does he tell us (so far as I know) how we are to construe "express" and "describe" in this regard; nor is there any suggestion that he thought the Pastoral was to arouse the emotions of country life in the listener. Certainly "describe" would be an odd word to choose if arousal were intended, and although "express" would at least be consistent with "arouse," at least as it was used in the Enlightenment (which was, essentially, as a term of art), it would scarcely by synonymous with it in is presystematic use. Nor does Berlioz, as interpreted by Cone, commit himself to saying that music arouses the emotions which its objects of representation would arouse if perceived. He too uses the noncommital "express"; and Cone himself, neither in his account of Berlioz nor in the representation of his own views, commits himself to construing musical expression as emotive stimulation. Sullivan, indeed, is committed to a theory of musical expression as emotive arousal, derived, no doubt, from Tolstoy, whose views Sullivan's closely resemble. "Music as an expressive act," Sullivan tells us, "'evokes states of consciousness in the hearer which are analogous to states that may be produced by extra-musical means. It is usual to describe these states as 'emotions. '» And again: "The most valuable states or 'emotions' that music arouses are those that spring from the richest and deepest spiritual context."'S Among the four post-Enlightenment examples, then, of the theory of musical representation as musical expression--Beethoven's Berlioz', Sullivan's, Cone's -only Sullivan's forces us to construe expression as arousal; the others leave it an open question, and even seem recalcitrant to such an interpretation where words like "describe" are used. There are, I think, fairly persuasive reasons for not (under ordinary circumstances at least) construing "the music is b" as "the music arouses "(where "p" names an emotion or mood). I have presented some of them elsewhere, as have others; and there would be nothing to gain by rehearsing such arguments at any great length here." It will suffice to point out the following. (a) Emotions are generally aroused by a combination of experiences (for example, falling in love) and beliefs (for example, Representation as Expression 327 believing that your lover is unfaithful) that music cannot provide. (b) Emotions characteristically make themselves evident in certain observable ways (for example, behavioral expression and physiological symptom) which listeners do not display (that is, they do not get red in the face and shake their fists when listening to the angry contortions of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge). (c) People generally try to avoid, if they can, experiencing such unpleasant emotions as sadness and anguish, whereas they by no means avoid sad and anguished music per se, suggesting that such music is not sad or anguished in virtue of arousing these emotions in listeners. (d) The only clear case of music arousing full-blooded nonmusical emo- tions-that is, by association with personal experiences-is a case quite irrelevant to our emotive characterizations of music qua art work; for although the first chorus of Handel's Judas Maccabaeus (for example) always fills me with cheerful feelings of nostalgia, because I performed in it during a particularly happy period of my life, which it invariably recalls to me, it remains a wonderfully mournful and melancholy piece. And so I would describe it to anyone, in spite of my personal associations, private to me, and no part of the music as a public object. It would seem, then, that if we are to have any hope of formulating an at least initially plausible theory of musical representation as musical expression, we cannot, for the foregoing reasons, construe musical expres- sion as emotive arousal. How then is it to be construed? Again, I must refer the reader elsewhere for my fully elaborated views on this question."7 Briefly, I would suggest, as others have done, that the operative word in this regard be "expressive" rather than "expression" or "express" (although the words do to a certain extent overlap)." Weeping willows and the faces of Saint Bernards are expressive of sadness, but they need not make us sad. Nor are they, properly speaking, expressions of sadness. For to truly say that someone is expressing sadness, he or she would have to be actually experiencing that emotion--that is to say, he or she would have to be sad; but weeping willows cannot experience emotions, and Saint Bernards' faces are expressive of sadness whether or not the creatures are sad or happy (or stuffed). We recognize the emotive properties of music, I suggest, in very much the same way we recognize the sadness of the weeping willow or the Saint Bernard's face, as properties of the object rather than as dispositions to arouse emotions in us, or as expressions of vegetable souls, depressed canines, or composers. The emotions, then, are "in" the music, not in us; but in no very mysterious sense (for symphonies no more have souls than do weeping willows). Just as many creatures and insentient objects possess expressive properties, so too does our music. But I cannot go into the details of this possession here, nor need the reader accept my version of them, just as long as he or she is willing to accept, 328 Representation in Art at least as a working hypothesis, the claim that in many (I do not even say all) of the central cases, music is b (where "f' is the name of an emotion or mood) in the way that the weeping willow or the Saint Bernard's face is sad: as expressive of the emotion or mood. We can now formulate the thesis that musical representation is musical expression in a version that does not, at least, fail immediately for irrelevant reasons. We need not, that is to say, understand the musical representation of a mountain as involving the impossible task of making me feel the way I would feel if I saw the mountain: music can only do that by sheerest accident. What music can do, perhaps, is be expressive of the emotions one might feel in contemplating a mountain, or (more important) be expressive of the same emotions that the mountain might be expressive of (since mountains, I presume, like weeping willows, or the faces of Saint Bernards, can, and often do possess expressive properties). The theory of musical representation as musical expression, then, in its optimal form, is the theory of musical representation as musical expres- siveness: that music represents things by being expressive either of the emotions that those things might arouse in us if we were experiencing them face to face, or by being expressive of the emotions those things are expressive of, or both. It is this version of the theory of musical represen- tation as musical expression that I wish now to examine critically. 5 It appears to me that anyone who has followed the argument • must believe, as I do, that the theory of musical representation as solely musical expressiveness is wholly false. Too many examples have been adduced that are clearly sound pictures and representations of various kinds, and not so in virtue of being expressive either of the emotions their objects might arouse, or of what the objects themselves might be expressive of, for the theory of musical representation as musical expressiveness pure and simple, to stand in unqualified form. Can it stand in any form at all? I think that it can, in a fairly obvious version, which perhaps can best be gleaned from looking not at what composers say, but at what they do. Consider, for a moment, some of the illustrative effects Beethoven achieves in the Pastoral: in particular, in the second and fourth movements, entitled, respectively, Szene am Bach (Scene by a Brook) and Gewitter, Sturm (Thunderstorm). The Sene am Bach is one hundred thirty-six measures long (in g time); and of these one hundred thirty-six measures, at least one hundred three contain a running sixteenth-note figure, the following being a fairly representative example (Example 24). Representation as Expression EXAMPLE 24 Beethoven, Sixth Symphony, Op. 68 Second Movement Andante molto mosso (d. -50) Crea Clarinet 1, Il in Bb Horn 1, Il in Bb Violin I Violin Il 329 cresc. Viola Solo Cello 1, II con Sordino Cello and Bass cresc. That the movement is called Szene am Bach, and that it is permeated by this "flowing" figure is not, needless to say, an accident. It is, of course, the traditional representation of running water that we have already seen in Mendelssohn's setting of "The waters gather, they rush along, 99 and Schubert' representation of the brook in Die Schöne Müllerin. It "flows" through the entire movement, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes the background- but its presence is always felt. Nor is this the only purely illustrative music in the movement; for it is in the Szene am Bach that we hear the… cuckoo, nightingale, and quail. And well before the entrance of these three characters--they appear only in the coda- we have heard the unmistakable representation of less carefully painted (and unnamed) warblers in the strings (Example 25). More obvious still is the musical thunderstorm which comprises the fourth movement. The noise is all there, in the most naively pictorial way, with grumbling double basses and rolling tympani. Nor does Beethoven omit the lightning, which cuts jaggedly across the musical texture, in the first violins and violas (Example 26). Thus, no matter what Beethoven says about the Pastoral, there are Representation as Expression 331 plenty of musical representations and pictures in it. But what does he say, after all? Only that it is not so much a pictorial work as an expressive one. And that is the truth, I suppose. There are certainly more expressive features in the Pastoral than there are purely illustrative ones. That, perhaps, is all Beethoven was saying, except, of course, for the implicit and implied prescription for listening: "Don't concentrate too much on the EXAMPLE 26 Beethoven, Sixth Symphony, Op. 68, Fourth Movement Allegro (d=80) Flute 1, Il Oboe I, II Clarinct I, Il in Bb Bassoon I, Il Horn 1. Il in F Trumpct I, II in Eb Timpani Violin I Violin Il 332 Representation in illustrative features, or look for them where they do not exist, just because my symphony is called 'Pastoral' and has movements with descriptive titles. If you do, you may miss the far more numerous expressive features that I intended you to hear, and with which I achieve most of my illustrative and musical effects." In what way, then, can expressiveness contribute to musical illustration? For that, clearly, is what I am suggesting takes place in the Pastoral (and elsewhere, of course), and what I am certain Beethoven must have been Representation as Expression EXAMPLE 27 Mendelssohn, Overture, Op. 26 (The Hebrides or Fingal's Cave) Allegro moderato Oboe 1, Il Clarinet I, Il in A 333 Bassoon I, Il Violin I Violin Il Viola Cello Bass quite well aware of. The illustrative and expressive features of a well- wrought musical composition cannot, after all, be wholly unrelated. The answer, I think, is more or less obvious. The objects of musical illustrations, as well as the musical illustrations themselves, can possess expressive properties; if one can represent, say, the brightness of the sun, as Haydn does, by giving a bright quality to his music, one can represent it too (or, rather, help to represent it) by giving the music whatever expressive properties the sun might possess: in Haydn's case, joy, for one. Brooks, as opposed to rivers, are gay and lively, as well as flowing. Beethoven has represented his brook, in the Pastoral, by making his music flow, with the help of the "flowing" sixteenth-note figure that permeates the second movement. He has also represented it--its liveliness and gaiety, that is--by making his music lively and gay, and since thunderstorms are somber, brooding, ominous, as well as noisy, Beethoven has made the fourth movement--Gewitter, Sturm- not only noisy, but somber, brooding, and ominous as well. Another example, perhaps, will drive the point home. Mendelssohn titles his familiar overture, Opus 26, Fingal's Cave or The Hebrides. As a 334 Representation in Art musical seascape (of which there are many examples), it is unsurpassed and seldom equalled. It begins with the unmistakably seething ebb and flow of a heavy sea, represented by the persistent repetition of a musical figure obviously designed to give the impression of a periodic wave motion or swell. The motive "ripples" and "heaves," and is both melodically and harmonically constructed to allow for its reiteration on various scale degrees, and in various keys, for the purpose of representing the lapping or breaking of waves on the rocky coast (Example 27). But what makes this a representation of the Scottish seas and not. perhaps, the sea at Brighton or Coney Island on a sunny day in July? These musical waves could break anywhere, were it not, of course, for their expressive quality- -dark, brooding, melancholy, like the expressive quality of the Hebrides' seas themselves. It is, thus, by a union of illustrative and expressive features that Mendelssohn achieves his musical seascape. And it is, perhaps, somewhat misleading to distinguish illustra- tive and expressive features in such contexts as these (or, rather, it should be made plain that they are all illustrative but not all expressive, the expres- sive being a subclass); for on our construal of the expressive, these features of music are as illustrative as those we have been calling illustrative, being all illustrative by being all properties that are shared, one way or another, by music and by its objects of representation. But there are, we said, two kinds of expressive features that might figure in the theory of musical illustration as musical expression: the features already discussed, that music and the objects of its representations might share: the gaiety of the brook, the brooding quality of the Hebrides' seas; and the emotions that such objects might arouse in the spectator: the terror a thunderstorm might evoke in a child, or the awe and wonder of the Alps. What role, if any, might these latter features play in musical illustration? Often, it is clear, the two kinds will tend to coincide: that is to say, the gloom of a dark, densely wooded forest is also the emotion it would tend to evoke in the spectator. The gaiety of a brook is also the gaiety it might make me feel. Indeed, we sometimes say "X is b" (where "p" names an emotion or mood) when we mean not that X is expressive of & but that X is evocative of $ (as in "sad news" or "'glad tidings"). Now in cases where the emotion aroused is also the emotion of the object is expressive of, composers tend not to distinguish carefully between them (they are, after all, composers, not philosophers), and even if they were so to distinguish them, it would be all one with their compositions. Whether Beethoven, say, intended to make his music expressive of the gaiety of the brook, or the gaiety of the spectator, which the brook might arouse, the music, in either case, was made expressive of gaiety. And whether Representation as Expression 335 Beethoven intended it or not, the gaiety of Sene am Bach contributes to the representation of the brook. If it was also supposed to be expressive of the gaiety the brook might arouse in a spectator (Beethoven, perhaps), it achieved this at the same stroke. Sometimes, however, an emotion that an object, scene, or event might tend to arouse in a spectator will not be an emotion that the object, scene, or event is expressive of. In such a case, would making music meant to illustrate the object, scene, or event expressive of that emotion, contribute in any way to the illustration? The answer to this question seems to depend very much on how widely one might want to construe "contribute" or "illustration" or both. My own instinct (and that is all it is) is to construe them widely, simply because illustrations, representations, and pictures come in such an enormous variety, and what contributes to them is so much a matter of the enormous freedom and flexibility of intellect, imagination, and communication. Certainly, in the direct way in which an expressive property of an object can (by being made an expressive property of a musical representation) contribute to that representation, dispositional properties of objects (which is, of course, what we are talking about) cannot so contribute when they are made expressive properties of musical illustrations. The resurrection of the dead, which the faithful await (in the Credo of the mass) is a joyous occasion more in the dispositional than expressive sense of the word. It will cause joy in the spectator or par- ticipant. This is the joy that musical settings of the text are almost invariably expressive of. Does this expressive property contribute to the representation of the event? (The musical settings are, with equal fre- quency, replete with rising musical figures to represent the raising of the dead.) Not in any direct sense. On the other hand, one would find it singularly odd, jarring, even inappropriate to come upon a setting of "et expect resurrectionem mortuorum" " expressive not of joy but of some opposite emotion like grief or melancholy. One would look for an explana- tion: some point being made, or some musical exigency being served. And if emotive appropriateness is thought of as contributing to the musical representation, then I suppose both kinds of emotive properties of ob- jets- the expressive and the dispositional-contribute to musical illustration when made expressive properties of it. This, then, is the grain of truth in the otherwise false thesis that musical illustration is really musical expres- sion (or expressiveness) tout court. 6 What has emerged, then, not very surprisingly, from this examination of the "musical illustration as musical expression" thesis is simply that the 336 Representation in Art thesis is overstated. Clearly, both directly and indirectly-as common expressive property and dispositional property of objects, but expressive property of musical illustrations- expressiveness contributes to musical illustration: indeed, in the former case, is a species of it. However, that all musical illustration comes in the end to musical expressiveness of one kind or another is plainly false: too many nonexpressive pictorial and represen- tational techniques have been adduced in the preceding pages for that thesis to stand unchallenged and unmodified. But it would be ending this chapter on a false note, I think, to simply conclude that the thesis is false as it stands and true as amended. For perhaps it was never meant to be taken for truth at all. It has been enunciated, more often than not, not as a revelation of musical reality but as a passionate statement of musical policy. It is, in other words, more normative or prescriptive than neutrally descriptive: a call to musical reform or revolution. The "illustrationism" of the madrigalists was rejected as unmusical by Galilei, as was the «illustrationism" of the Baroque composers by the preclassical defenders of sentiment and the "natural.» Far from being denounced as impossible, such musical pictures and representations were all too possible according to their critics, their pos- sibility proved, as Aristotle would say, by their very palpable actuality, cluttering, as they did, the music of those whose styles were being rejected by another generation. How music is to be composed-whether it should or should not be pictorial or representational- these are matters, of course, for composers, not philosophers to decide. For Beethoven to have turned his back on a good deal of the "tone painting" of the Baroque as Haydn, by the way, did not, in the Creation and Seasons) was, doubtless, a wise stylistic choice on the composer's part, and one that only Beethoven himself could have made. This, needless to say, does not make any more plausible the charge that Bach' illustrationism-the product of perhaps the greatest musical intellect the West has seen- is "unmusical." If Bach is unmusical, then Shakespeare is not a poet, and all things [are] possible. Unmusical for Beethoven's style, no doubt; but supremely, sublimely musical for Bach's and Handel's. But such normative questions are not to the present purpose. It suffices for me to have shown that expressiveness is part of musical representation, but not the whole. There I must let the matter ... rest. Notes 1. Quoted in the pocket edition of the score (Paris: Editions Salabert, n.d.). My translation. Representation as Expression 337 2. Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (1581), trans. Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History, ed. Strunk, p. 317. 3. Paul Oskar Kristeller, "The Modern System of the Arts," Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951) and 13 (1952). 4. Charles Batteux, Les beaux arts reduits à un même principe (Paris, 1747). My translation. 5. Ibid., p. 270. 6. Ibid., p. 277. 7. See, for example, my "What Mattheson said," The Music Review 34 (1973); and Peter Kivy, The Corded Shell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), chapters 3 and 5. 8. Hiller, "Nature in Music," p. 536. My translation. 9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Dictionary of Music, trans. William Waring (London, n.d.), p. 199 (in the article "Imitation"). 10. Beethoven: Letters, Journals and Conversations, p. 53. 11. Edward T. Cone, The Composer's Voice (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Un- iversity of California Press, 1974), p. 83. 12. Ibid., pp. 83-84n. 13. Ibid., p. 84. 14. J. W. N. Sullivan, Beethoven: His Spiritual Development (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), p. 38. 15. Ibid., Pp. 34-35. 16. For my own view of the matter, see The Corded Shell, pp. 22-23, 29-33, et passim. 17. Ibid., especially Chapters 5-8. 18. Alan Tormey, The Concept of Expression: A Study in Philosophical Psychology and Aesthetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), chapters 4 and 5. “

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Puzzles of Pictorial Representation

JOSEPH MARGOLIS

If cultures are real, if they are the actual milieux in which humans live and flourish and make and do the things they do, then there is no convincing sense in which art and nature can be opposed as the unreal and the real or as instantiating different orders of reality inferior or superior one to the other. Jean-Paul Sartre is perhaps the contemporary theorist of the arts who has confused this question with the more profound one of distinguishing, within one world, the mark of the cultural and the mark of the natural.¹ Sartre had supposed the difference to rest with that between the perceptible and the imperceptible; whereas one might better claim that, for instance, the visible may be construed in a variety of ways theoretically, but in none can it be convincingly affirmed that what we report as perceptually accessible is ever free of the nonsensory, formative complexities of our cultural habits of perceptual discrimination.

There is, among animals, no reporting of sensory experience. Among humans, there is no reporting of what is naturally and sensorily perceived—neutrally with regard to cultural inference or interpretation; although there are theories enough about how to sort the two. There is, therefore, no reportable comparison between sub- or de-cultural and culturated perception.² Hence, for instance, the glib disputes about the natural or conventional status of linear perspective and so-called naturalistic painting—popularized most recently by the disagreement between E. H. Gombrich and Nelson Goodman—are simply badly mismanaged. Realism at the present time, of every sort that aspires to afford a common ground for the cognitive achievements of science and the cognizable constructions of art, is indissolubly linked to that form of idealism at least that rejects the sheer transparency of the actual world.³ Once that indissoluble linkage is admitted, and once the cultural is put on an ontological par with the physical and the natural, the entire theory of art—in particular the theory

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of representational art, of the intentionality of art, of the vexed question of naturalistic painting—cannot fail to be profoundly affected. We have, then, by the obvious expedient of retreating from immediate quarrels to the less disputable commonplaces of our age, moved to outflank certain troublesome and unproductive speculations about the world of art. But we have as yet only promised an economy.

Of course, even at this point an advantage suggests itself. If for instance we allow ourselves the easy concession of construing Brunelleschi's great dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore as an ineliminable artwork, then we see at once that art is, first, whether it represents anything at all; that it cannot represent anything if it is not real; that it need not represent anything despite being real; and that it may yet have properties that, whether or not including in any instance the representational, are such as to raise serious doubts about their being characterizable as merely or solely physical or natural. One may perhaps dare to say that we are considering the same generic puzzle in considering the relationship between sound and language, stones and cathedrals, nature and culture, movement and action, time and history, perceptual ecology and perspectival drawing, Homo sapiens and persons. This suggests the sense in which, opposing Sartre's extravagance, reformulating the dispute between Gombrich and Goodman, and linking these two matters together as versions of the same question, we signify that an issue like that of how to understand natural perspective bears decisively on much more than, casually reviewed, it may seem to do.

What often misleads the unwary theorist, to put the issue in its crudest form, is simply that if language is, generally or en bloc, "about" the world, then it both represents the world and is either not real in the sense in which the world is real (and language is "about" it but not of it) or exhibits some order of reality other than that of the real world. Both conclusions are untrue; both arguments are non sequiturs; and both sets of disorders may be quite readily drawn from Sartre's characterization of art. Sartre's motive seems to have been to elevate art by treating it as "unreal," that is, as superior to the (merely) perceivable world. Others, for instance in accord with the theme of the unity of science program, have meant thereby to eliminate language--and culture--from seriously complicating the theory of science.* But if, by an admittedly boldly chosen term of art, we say that the cultural is the Intentional- not yet venturing an analysis, but stipulating by the use of the capital "I" some complex order of significative property that indissolubly links, on the one hand, whatever belongs collectively to the prevailing practices of human societies as well as to the conscious and deliberate intentions of individual persons and, on the other hand, what belongs narrowly to the semantic and further functional use of language that services the paradigmatic activity of man (speech) and that serves as

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the precondition of every other nonlinguistic activity that man exhibis (painting, for instance)- then, clearly, the representational is itself a specia instance of the Intentional or a distinction that presupposes the other Brunelleschi' dome is Intentional, culturally significant, in a way trai clearly invites a suitable specification; but there is no reason to suppose that it must be assignably representational in addition to its being, per. haps, expressive of or endowed with the gathering spirit of Brunelleschi's Own perception of the Florentine world; and even if it were representa. tional in some particular regard--as, rather conventionally, it has been said of the drive to achieve, or represent in a literal way, the divinely infinite in the Gothic vault-the one could not reasonably replace the other.

The same is true of painting, though it is intuitively less obvious, since the two-dimensional naturally invites a collapsing of the notions of what is, as an artwork, and of what, in being such, is significant. But even in language, though as in uttering a statement, what is thereby said represents some state of affairs in the world, uttering statements in actual conversa- tion is an Intentional activity (in our invented sense), a form of uttering that cannot be exhausted by the representational function of the other. Furthermore, the representational function presupposes and instantiates the other, is a restricted distinction within the other's full scope, and may even be absent without diminishing in any way the presence of the other. It is not at all clear, for instance, that the poems of Sappho represent anything at all, though they appear to be the significant utterances of the poet herself: as opposed, say, to its being true (or at least reasonable to hold) that the lines of Shakespeare's Richard III represent (in some com- plex way) the movement of the life of a historical king. The global theory of mimesis, therefore, is distinctly unsound.' In any case, the actuality of art is neither diminished nor enhanced by its Intentionality or' "aboutness", and its aboutness is never exhausted by or merely equivalent to the contingency of its being representational.

All this is put at serious risk in saying_-which we do insouciantly enough--that art and language are "about" the world. The assumption here is that one knows straightforwardly what that means. But there is reason to doubt that we do. "Aboutness" may be taken as a near-synonym for our term of art, "Intentionality" (with capital "I'). But if so, then about- ness is, in the logical sense, not transitive and, in the grammatical sense, not necessarily relational and, in the global sense fitted to the world of culture, not necessarily or invariably representational." Vermeer's Lady Reading a Letter at an Open Window, for instance, undoubtedly "about" the seventeenth-century Dutch world already so altered from Rembrandt's, and understandably offered as a specimen of representational painting, does not in any obvious sense denote that world, the actual Dutch world

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(reference to which facilitates our "understanding" the painting in ques- tion, that is, our recognizing it in some suitably detailed way as an actual cultural artifact of the Dutch world). It is true that there is represented in it a young woman, a casement, a letter, a table, a carpet, a drapery, a chair. These, thus represented, need not be taken to denote anything, the would-be denotata being perhaps not parts of the actual world. But what is represented in the painting is represented only on the sufferance of the larger "aboutness" or Intentionality of the painting as a real artifact possessing the peculiar significative or cultural properties that it does possess. One of Kandinsky's familiar Improvisations represents nothing, neither denotatively nor non-denotatively, though it discloses an artifac- tually visible "world, " is significant in that sense, is "about" that world, is Intentionally so structured. There is, in this respect, no difference between the Vermeer and the Kandinsky.

There is one trivial, overinflated maneuver that ensures the representa- tional nature of all painting and (if necessary) all art. That is the thesis that art is inherently self-referential, that is, that an artwork must be taken as exemplifying (as by expression) the properties it possesses. Cloth samples do something like this, it is true. But only by an extravagance--for instance, to save a semiotic theory of art- -could one say that every painting or every artwork refers to the (or the salient) properties it merely possesses (whatever we suppose the complexity of such properties to be);" or to say, apparently more cautiously, that insofar at least as an artwork possesses "expressive' " properties (which, perhaps, both the Vermeer and the Kan- dinsky may be said to do, in being "about" the visual "worlds" they respectively disclose), they represent what, reflexively, they refer to." If of course, as is often the case, what is represented in a painting need not exist in the real world, then in order to hold that a painting refers to what it thus represents, one must (on the standard view) also hold that it makes reference in a most distinctive way--magically, by way of metaphor, fic- tively, or the like; or that, in making reference in the ordinary way, the properties it possesses, that serve such reference, it possesses magically, metaphorically, fictively, or the like.

There are "objects" represented in the Vermeer; there are none in the Kandinsky. But both are "expressive" in the generous sense conceded, the sense (in the grammatical use) of being intransitively "about" the artifac- tual, visible "world," by which aboutness each uniquely controls our access to that world. For perceiving them pertinently is perceiving their visible "worlds." If this is so, then, in a very firm sense, whatever other senses we may assign the term "representation, 99 no painting is primarily a representation, in that it does not substitute or stand in or is imagined to stand in for another thing but discloses--uniquely, to those rightly trained

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in the pertinent cultural skills and practices- a visible "world" not otherwise thus accessible.

This is the essential point of speaking of aboutness or Intentionality, the point of the systematic difference between the cultural and the natura This not, as Sartre supposes, that the first is perceivable and the second, not it is rather that the perception of the second is complicated by nonsensory structures of aboutness or significance or Intentionality and that so also is the perception of the natural, even though its objects do nor as such exhibit aboutness. Furthermore, if we insist that every imagined or "intended world" or every significant message or communica. tion accessed (repeatedly accessible) through the exchanged utterances of culturally apt agents- merely presented or thus accessible- are also thereby represented by, or themselves represent through, such utterances (via brush strokes and dance steps, say, as well as via speech acts), we risk trivializing the use of the notion of representation.'

Of course, in spite of all this (or better, because of it), paintings may be representations and often are. The general rationale is al- ready- prophetically--captured in Roger Bacon's Opus majus, in which Bacon promotes a strict knowledge of science and geometry as a way of understanding how God's grace orders the created world: "It is impos- sible, » Bacon says, "for the spiritual sense to be known without a knowledge of the literal sense." Hence, as he goes on; "Since . . . artificial works, like the ark of Noah, and the temple of Solomon and of Ezechiel and of Esdra and other things of this kind almost without number are placed in Scripture, it is not possible for the literal sense to be known, unless a man have these works depicted in his sense, but more so when they are pictured in their physical forms; and thus have the sacred writers and sages of old employed pictures and various figures, that the literal truth might be evident to the eye, and as a consequence the spiritual truth also. For in Aaron's vestments were described the world and the great deeds of the fathers."'2 But whether particular paintings are actually emblematic in this sense, in representing pictorially what may be proposi- tionally extracted as a lesson- an issue that has been notably disputed with regard to the interpretation of Dutch painting13. -is a contingent question at best, hardly one that would decide whether, in failing the emblematic criterion, a would-be painting was not an artwork at all or did not exhibit the required aboutness. The important thing about the emblematic inter- pretation of (Dutch) painting is that it offers a coherent possibility even if it is a mistaken one.'* The thesis holds, as Svetlana Alpers summarizes the matter (in order to reject it), that "Dutch art... only appears realis- tic... is [rather] a realized abstraction.»IS (The most familiar emblematic device is that of illustrated proverbs, but the claim is surely more far-reach-

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ing.) Nevertheless, the representation of meaningful scenes is not the emblematic representation of meanings. Right or wrong, however, the thesis points to the importance of distinguishing between the aboutness of paintings and the further possibility of their specifically representational function. The emblematic possibilities of Breughel's Proverbs may not bear at all on the representational possibilities of Breughel's Seasons; and the representational possibilities of van Eyck's Arnolfini and his bride may not capture at all the ulterior function of the painting as a documentary utterance.

Samuel Edgerton, addressing the direct consequence of views like Bacon's on the emerging worldiness of the Renaissance some centuries later, remarks that, as far as he can determine, in the Brancacci Chapel of the Santa Maria della Carmine, two frescoes, Masaccio's Tribute Money and Masolino's Raising of Tabitha and Healing of the Cripple, "are the first in the entire history of art to illustrate the scientific-artistic principle of [what Edgerton terms] horizon line isocephaly."l6 Edgerton does not say that, in employing Brunelleschi's rules for the use of perspective, these artists were representing those rules or their use of perspective itself or, emblematically, the grace of God through perceptual geometry. (Neither isocephaly nor the vanishing point principle is actually explicit in Brunel- leschi's handbook.) And even if we supposed that, given the occasion, there was some application of Bacon's instruction, such an application must already be fading into a new perspectival practice regarding aboutness.

Aboutness is a monadically complex rather than simple or atomic feature of predicable structure: what is identified, in understanding per- tinent utterances (in speech or painting, for instance), is relationally identified within and only within the scope of that monadic structure. That is, it is Intentionally emergent. Thus we speak of the meaning of a statement or of what a painting represents. But the seeming detachment of meanings and representations from those culturally freighted utterances that control access to them (again, relationally characterized) is of course misleading. There are no independent meanings or representations that human speakers and artists somehow collect or select or contingently link their efforts to: that is the way of Platonism.' The only escape from Platonism--if we mean to escape, in the present context- is to treat about- ness monadically: that way, the reality or fictionality of the world thus subtended becomes an independent, contingent, entirely debatable issue; otherwise, the "world" represented (for instance, as in Rembrandt's using Hendrickje as a model for "rendering" Bathsheba) requires that Bathsheba exist (and "be as the painting shows her to be") even though "Hendrickje need not exist."I& No, representation partakes of aboutness essentially; hence, it, too, is monadic, both in the sense appropriate to an entire

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painting's being a representation and in the sense of there being various Phines represented in it. Hence, too, the logically (not necessarily episten)". cally further question of whether what, identified. within the scope of the monadic structure (by a heuristic use of a relational idiom), ocours of exists independently of the aboutness or representational structure must be conceded to be a legitimate question; but is is, logically, an independent and contingent matter. Monadic representation, therefore, is an equivoca notion: it signifies either the instantiation of the generic Intentionality or aboutness of a painting or the fictional or merely imagined status of what is thus represented judged with respect to the actual world; both monadic representation (in the second sense) and dyadic representation (as in portraiture) signify logically complex findings relating paintings and the actual world.

Two considerations suggest themselves, therefore: first, representation, in the sense of an entire painting's being representational rather than in the sense of details within a painting's being representations, may well be uncertain, indeterminate, and not even always important to establish; second, the representationality of a painting is an ulterior function of its very Intentionality or aboutness. That is certainly the point that Bacon captures so clearly. What we may add is that such representationality may be either propositional (as in the emblematic sense) or non-propositional or both. Perhaps Jan Steen's "Easy Come, Easy Go" may fairly illustrate the first; and Rembrandt's Bathsheba, the second. But surely, in either sense, that by which what is represented is represented (by forms drawn from considering Hendrickje to represent Bathsheba, or by the image of the Steen interior to represent the proverb) are not themselves thus or thereby represented or are not themselves represented in the same sense in which Bathsheba and the proverb are represented.

A felicitous distinction for holding the difference in place is afforded by the old notion of natura naturans and natura naturata: in the space of human culture, possibly less quarrelsomely than in the context of nature, cultural phenomena must be bodied forth (rendered) first in order to function in whatever distinctive way they do. Aboutness or Intentionality serves in this dual way, but the first is presupposed by the functioning of the second. Painting, for instance, is "about" in the monadic sense in which what is emergently complex within its intransitively uttered structure is thus located only on the condition of its having been first suitably uttered: Sappho's uttering her poems first raises the question of what they, the poems, thus rendered or uttered, represent; the strokes drawn by Rem- brandt studying or conjuring up Hendrikje in order to represent Bathsheba do not represent those strokes or Hendrikje in the sense required (despite the naturalness of the ordinary idiom; and the assumed parity between

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the image and the associated proverb in the Steen interior merely shows the double function of the image--in the sense of aboutness or represen- tational uttering and in the sense of aboutness or what is represented.

What we now see is that the representationality of a painting is a functionally specialized, optional, and dependent (further) role of a paint- ing's essential aboutness; also, that representations in a painting presup- pose such aboutness in virtue of which they function as the details they do-that is, that only thus do natural marks become significant marks or embody culturally significant forms. But such emergence or transformation does not entail a change from the perceivable to the interpreted and therefore not perceivable; furthermore, it must be emphasized, the very recognition of the representational (in the second sense) depends upon and is impossible without a grasp or tacit mastery of the perceptual practices of a particular contingent culture. We are speaking here of the conceptual structure of paintings, not of the order or range of what may be discovered in them. It is entirely possible that, failing to understand what is being represented in a painting may decisively impoverish what we can perceive of the world it discloses. Thus, not knowing what in the iconographical sense is to be understood to be represented in a given painting may well impoverish our perception of it--for example, as in not grasping the documentary function of Jan van Eyck's Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife, according to the well-known interpretation,19 or for that matter, the nonconformity of Flemish perspective of van Eyck's period with the perspectival rules of Brunelleschi's Florence;2 or, for that matter, as in Michel Foucault' bold speculation about Velázquez's Las Meninas, to the effect that "Perhaps there exists, in this painting by Veläzquez, the representation as it were, of Classical representation, and the definition of the space it opens up to us"-so that "representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it [the relation of resemblance to actual figures], can offer itself as representation in its pure form."21

It is quite usual to speak of representation as either relational or non-relational, dyadic or monadic, as depending on whether what is represented exists or not. But if representation may be of the proposi- tional, then both the monadic/ dyadic distinction and the notorious ques- tion of resemblance cannot fail to be distinctly local issues. Monadic representation, "representation-as," cannot resemble what does not exist, is fictional, or merely imagined (though it may represent aptly what it actually represents, for instance in accord with a descriptive text);?2 but the representation of a maxim, for instance, does not even raise the question of resemblance (as opposed to aptness) and is not suitably captured conceptually by the notion of the pictorial representation of what is itself sensorily visible-~-whether monadically or dyadically. On the other

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hand, pictorial or visual resemblance obtains independently of representa- tion, although it is true and important to bear in mind that visual resemblance may be enhanced by the governing function of representa tion even where it is not determinately particular. One may remember, for instance, having spotted on occasion Matisse women in the New York subway or Modigliani women at fashionable restaurants. And Picasso's famous remark to Gertrude Stein on the occasion of his having painted her in her prime is less a prophecy of how she would age (though the possibility has point) than it is an insight into the influence of the practice of painting and of perceiving paintings on the subsequent perception of our world. What, we may ask, then becomes of the famous question of the natural resemblance between painting and object or of what is alleged to be the merely conventional nature of similarity?

The question has two foci: the first, largely neglected; the second, largely ill-presented. They are, nevertheless, closely linked and, together, they enable us to collect in a coherent and compendious way most of, if not all, the proliferating issues regarding representation. The first is the famous problem of universals. We shall not, of course, attempt to solve it here.?3 But it bears particularly on the troubling questions of naturalistic painting and natural perspective--both of which affect rather special, if notorious, puzzles about representation. The reason, familiarly, concerns the question of resemblance or perceived similarity.24 There are two arguments to press: one to the effect that resemblance is a cognitively pertinent concern (usually, as in painting, perceptual); the other to the effect that resemblances, like any other putatively cognizable features of the world, are not cognitively transparent. The one directly bears on the fortunes of nominalism; the other draws directly on the overwhelming contemporary consensus that, cognitively, realism and idealism are indissolubly linked.

The point about nominalism is marvellously elementary: it is impossible to account for the spontaneous extension of perceptual and linguistic practice--as in the use of natural languages and cultural habit-by any strictly nominalistic theory. The reason is simply that nominalism has no way of accounting for the spontaneous application of distinctions first introduced by way of a finite number of exemplars. Every account of how general terms are extended to apply to new cases or of whether newly encountered objects, representations of objects, and the like resemble or fail to resemble whatever we have already collected in an initial repertory of classified items requires a reasonably regular and reliable ability to extend such general distinctions to new cases so that the society possessing those distinctions will also spontaneously support their extension (variably, divergently, transiently) without first arriving at an explicit consensus case by case. There you have the defeat of nominalism- in any epistemically

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pertinent application. Resemblances must have a basis both in the biology of the human species (though not necessarily hardwired or nativist) and in the diverging cultural practices that exploit that biology in relatively more determinate ways. We may think of the biological as a relatively stable template that cultures progressively build novel but cognate distinc- tions upon and more and more determinately specify or alter.25

This consideration fixes the essential difficulty of Nelson Goodman's insistence, for example, against Gombrich, when Goodman (rightly) holds (effectively, in agreement with Gombrich) that "Dyadic likeness between particulars will not serve to define those classes of particulars that have a common quality throughout."26 Both Goodman and Gombrich un- doubtedly reject "the myths of the innocent eye and of the absolute given" as, as Goodman puts it, "unholy accomplices."27 But Goodman, adhering to his well-known nominalism, will not and cannot concede an effective biological or cultural basis for spontaneously recognizing resemblances--in the sense of extension already introduced. As Goodman puts it: "Realism is a matter not of any constant or absolute relationship between a picture and its object but of a relationship between the system of representation employed in the picture and the standard system. .. Realistic representa- tion, in brief, depends not upon imitation or illusion or information but upon inculcation. »28 The trouble is that Goodman does not resolve or even address the essential fact that even the use of a system of representation (or "inculcation"), in the extending sense given, defeats the strict nominalist: for what is the basis for the successful extended use of any such system? Gombrich understands Goodman's point, here, to be that "there is no such thing as resemblance to nature."29 He is right in a way but not precisely enough. For Goodman goes on to say, "That a picture looks like nature often means only that it looks the way nature is usually painted" and "Resemblance and deceptiveness, far from being constant and independent sources and criteria of representational practice are in some degree products of it. "30 In this qualification by way of the vague, Goodman betrays himself, because he cannot quite insist on the point Gombrich assigns him and he cannot quite concede that his own careful formulation (at the very moment we allow it) actually entails the rejection of nominalism and mere conventionalism and entails as well the admission of some habituated basis for extending the use of systematic distinctions. There is, in fact, no other way to see the matter.

Gombrich's point, which concedes (in fact, always insisted on) the need to learn the representational conventions of a society (rejecting the in- nocent eye), really opposes "extreme [that is, mere] conventionalism"_ pressing the basically biological thesis that "Recognizing an image is certainly a complex process and draws on many human faculties, both

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inborn and acquired. But without a natural starting point we could never have acquired that skill."» The double issue, then, is: (I) the inadequacy of nominalism or extreme conventionalism to accommodate the natural extension of any general distinctions, even those that have a strongly conventional nature (possibly radically divergent, plural orienta- tins): and (2) the inextricably symbiotic complexity of human perception, that will not yield to any compositional factoring of the natural and the conventional but insists nevertheless on the effective dependence of the conventional (however specified) upon the biologically natural, even if subsequently culturally skewed. In fact, (2) is also a determinate version of what we have already suggested regarding the realist/idealist distinction.

The second, usually ill-presented focus regarding resemblance in representational contexts or regarding the representational use of resemblance asks whether resemblance is or is not conventional. One way of reading the question invites us to answer whether there are determinate similarities in the real world independent of human cognition, that cogni- tion detects as such. The answer to that reading is flatly no: both Goodman and Gombrich are agreed on that. This is (at least) part of the point of Goodman's denying "any constant or absolute relationship be- tween a picture and its object" and any "constant and independent sources and criteria of representational practice" (that is, aptness of representa- tion). And this is also part of the point of Gombrich's rejection of the "innocent eye."

But Goodman rejects as well the strong salience or, more boldly, the unique "success" of the evolution of linear perspective in two-dimensional representation; and Gombrich insists on it." So perspective signifies in its own terms as well as metonymically (for other forms of possible resemblance) the need for a second reading. On that second reading, for Goodman, there is no empirically likely basis for testing--perhaps not even a logically formulable, pertinent option for testing--whether particular modes of representation are rightly favored over others, species-wide, because of "natural" resemblances between pictures and what they picture; and, for Gombrich, there is empirical evidence confirming just that. Goodman challenged the thesis both in Gombrich's and J. J. Gibson's version (Gombrich readily following Gibson)." Gombrich concedes the point: "Nelson Goodman is certainly right when he protests that the behavior of light does not tell us how we see things."34 But Gombrich moves on more promisingly to theorize about the way in which ecologi- cally shifting perception (in Gibson's sense) leads us to draw pictures into the phenomenal world itself-hence, that there is a fair sense in which although "the world does not look like a picture... a picture can look like the world.»35

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The problem of natural perspective remains (and perhaps must remain) incompletely resolved- certainly if we mean (as Gombrich seems to mean) to answer whether it is uniquely successful thus. But if we answer only in terms of salience, in terms of characteristic tendencies among diverging (or potentially diverging) alternatives, then it is difficult to deny that Gombrich is more right than Goodman. In fact, as we have already noted, Goodman's own view entails (and must entail) the concession--which he does not acknowledge explicitly. In saying that, we take note, well after the fact, of how the second reading of our question should go. It goes this way: Are there determinate similarities that humans appear to favor in the real world they perceive and between the world and their pictorial representations of the world? This is the important form of the second question helped by our answer to the problem of universals and com- patible with the rejection of cognitive transparency.

Once we grasp this, both the history of linear perspective and the theoretical quarrels about pictorial representation fall into place. As Gombrich firmly and correctly remarks, natural perspective and the ren- dering of physiognomic likeness are guided by the phenomenal appearance of the world--not by the geometry of light. But of course the phenomenal appearance of the world is also elastic and is itself shaped or guided (variably) by the network of perceptual and non-perceptual practices of different cultures. The important point is that the alternative options are all biologically grounded, that is, that the cultural variants must themselves be biologically grounded in order to be viable- as in the resolution of the problem of perceptual universals. So there is no need to share Gombrich's inclination to favor the unique validity of what Gombrich calls the "evolution of perspective representation.»36 But resisting that option does not drive us to Goodman's option.

The opposition between the "conventional" and the "natural" only makes sense if one denies the realist/idealist symbiosis and if one ignores the cognitive problem regarding universals. Within that complex, there is room for both elements--though not determinately or disjunctively; and within that complex, it is entirely possible, empirically, to demonstrate that some forms of representation are more "natural" than others: either more likely to be closer to original biological dispositions or behaviorally more apt within the space of a particular culture (or even more apt in terms of recognizability within the perceptual practices of an alien culture). But what this shows is the simple fact that the success of spontaneous recog- nition cannot (contra Goodman) be merely an artifact of "representational systems [or] pictorial purpose alone."37

Beyond this, what we must take note of is the further fact that pictorial realism--that is, the use of representational forms that phenomenally

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resemble the world- depends on key saliences only and is able to tolerate considerable fuzziness regarding the "rules" of representation. Thus, for example, in the phenomenon of horizon line isocephaly (as in the Masac- cio and Masolino frescoes), the use of isocephaly together with fixing the vanishing point on the isocephalic line itself permits us to tolerate small variations in the legibility of the compared sizes of particular figures: we are often aided more by occlusion and intended spatial relationships than by strict scale. It is, furthermore, rather amusing to consider what we could make of Velázquer's Las Meninas construed in Foucault's way--but also by intruding a sense of wicked trickery with regard to isocephaly. Then, the use of the dwarf and midget at the right of the painting, more or less in the same isocephalic line as the Infanta, raises odd questions about the relative size of the figures represented--a matter complicated by the kneel- ing of one maid on the Infanta's right and the apparent breach of isocephaly by the tall maid on her left, as well as by the 'witty" uncertainty of the size of the dog. A cognate isocephalic puzzle then appears in the line that links Veläzquez himself, the mirror image of Philip and Maria Ana, the court officer in the doorway, and the other two adults at the right of the painting; for now the illusion is obviously an illusion, since the distance of the mirrored image baffles the isocephalic order if not first correctly interpreted. In fact a number of Velázquez's paintings seem to query the bearing of creatures of anomalous size, also the bearing of the imputed size of representations lined up with actual creatures and represented "'materialistically" as well within one and the same visual image. Velázquez's own training in painting, through Pacheco, renders his interest in the problem entirely reasonable.38 These considerations favor construing Velázquez's painting as a representation of representing by painting (Foucault' point) rather than (or merely than) as a representation of a represented scene, a would-be painting (as recently suggested by John Searle).39 Thus, it also confirms the usefulness of the distinction between aboutness and representation.

But we must not lose sight of the point that the biological grounding of natural perspective does not entail the unique validity of any particular perspectival canon. If, as Gombrich, following Gibson, had originally supposed, linear perspective and visual resemblance depend primarily or essentially on the geometry of light, then a uniquely correct canon might have been possible. But if, as Gombrich concedes to Goodman--and, in conceding that, surpasses Goodman' conventionalism-these phenomena depend on the regularities of phenomenal perception (where phenomenal perception may well be confined by a painting's frame and the practice within which it is normally perceived), then there is room for alternative, incompatible modes of perspectival rendering equally or comparably "cor-

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rect." Thus, van Eyck's perspective precedes Brunelleschi's. But if, as Panofsky observes, the Arnolfini has a number of distinct vanishing points, it hardly follows that the Arnolfini is not perspectivally correct. One might for instance argue that ecological perception, even of paintings, is or may be more favorable to alternative vanishing points than to a fixed point, 40

The puzzle about perspectival realism begins of course with Brunelles- chi's famous mirror experiment, which may be reasonably reconstructed.41 The Brunelleschi experiment depends on the surprise that follows when, standing in an appropriately fixed place inside the middle door of the Santa Maria del Fiore, one peeps through a small hole located in the back of Brunelleschi's own painting (now lost) of the Santo Giovanni (the Florentine Baptistery) at the represented spot corresponding to one's actual place (one's eye), one first sees what purports to be a perspectivally accurate picture of the Baptistery reflected in a mirror and then, when the mirror is removed, one sees the Baptistery itself, which seems not to have been altered or to be different from the painting in any essential particular. Brunelleschi' experiment, even admitting the limitations of fixed-point perception, certainly confirms the "naturalness" of the perspective he introduced; and certainly, the fixed point of the peephole should not be confused with the representationally fixed point or vanishing point of Masaccio's and Masolino's frescoes--influenced by Brunelleschi. Their work clearly shows the import of Brunelleschi's discovery for a moving or ecological perspective represented at a pictorially fixed point. It goes without saying that pictorial representation rarely tries to capture the difference between focal and peripheral vision at a fixed point.42 Neverthe- less, regarding Brunelleschi-like possibilities involving a moderately restricted ecological perspective in an ambient world, one can find a stunning confirmation in René Magritte's devilishly clever Les Promenades d'Euclide. Magritte's device helps to clarify the sense of natural similarity, without yielding to the extremes of conventionalism or transparency; and, perhaps by allusion, helps even to reinforce the sense in which Velázquez's painting could well be a witty commentary of some sort on Brunelleschi's original experiment rather than a merely realistic representation. In any case, it helps as well to remind us of our distinction between aboutness and representation.

All in all, then, representation is an optional instantiation of Inten- tonality or aboutness-which is itself monadic, in the essential sense that whatever is culturally emergent with respect to what enables us to construe physical marks as, or as embodying,43 significant marks, emerges only within the space of such aboutness. The monadic or dyadic standing of representations thus "naturated" is a mixed and logically dependent con-

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sideration raised regarding paintings and the actual world. Within the scope of representation, pictorial resemblance must still share, with visual resemblance perceived in nature, some biological disposition. But since the cultural and the natural cannot be disjunctively sorted, since realist and idealist elements in perception are not merely compositionally linked, since cognitive transparency is everywhere denied, since resemblance is phenomenally perceived, resemblance may be said to be natural in being spontaneous--but cannot be shown among diverging cultures to entail a unique or uniquely favored canon for all. To say that much, however, is hardly to deny the validity of a moderate grading and ranking of natural resemblance-_capable of accommodating nonconverging practices of perspective and representation.

There is another, extremely large way of viewing representation, which We can only barely broach here. To mention it, however, is to ensure the congruent power of the distinctions already introduced. The theory that language literally represents an independent world, as in veridical science, presupposes some version of the correspondence theory of truth-the "adequation" of word and world complete with operative criteria. That thesis is viable only on the strength of accepting the cognitive transparency of reality, in however sanguine or attenuated a degree. But the entire thrust of contemporary science and philosophy opposes such transparency--which is hardly the same as opposing the legitimate realism of science. It may not be wide of the mark to suggest that, within Western philosophy, the rejection of the thesis of transparency is most characteristically focused in (if not actually induced by) Wittgenstein's replacement of the conceptual model of his own Tractatus and Nietzsche's earlier and more radical repudiation of the structural match of language and world.' A propositional model best suits a representational theory of language: truth, then, is easily construed in terms of picturing or resemblance—its analogue, in experience, is systematized in Cartesian and Lockeian versions of representationalism; and fictional or imaginative uses of language (or painting) are merely construed as parasitic uses of representational devices naturally first suited for veridical science (or, say, "uniquely successful" linear perspective).

The rise of the speech-act theory of language grows jointly out of a grasp of intentional complexities regarding truth and reference that a purely propositionalized model (Bertrand Russell's, for example) could not satisfactorily accommodate,' and an appreciation that deeds and work are actually executed by the "mere" activity of speaking. When these themes are themselves integrated with a full-bodied adherence to the rejection of cognitive transparency and to the two themes with which we began this account--namely, the inextricability of realist and idealist elements in the

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achievements of science and the equal reality of the languaged world of culture and the world of what we call physical nature (accessible only through the other) then we are led to treat discourse about nature as discourse that: first, "natures" (in a culturally pertinent but irreducible way) the world that language thereby discloses or is monadically "about", and, secondly, constitutes our actual engagement with that world thus "natured," including of course our occasional efforts to represent what we find in it or can imagine on the strength of our familiarity with it. The independent world is thus "second-natured" in being rendered linguistically intelligible, just as we ourselves, as persons, are the "second-natured" realizations of Homo sapiens. Neither achievement is possible without the disposing power of physical and biological nature. The two are really symbiotically one. Furthermore, the "first" natures of physical nature and Homo sapiens are themselves extrapolated by human persons exploring their languaged world. This final sketch, therefore, suggests the important sense in which the resolution of the puzzles of pictorial representation effectively requires a full-scale theory of the relationship between nature and culture.

But the sense in which language makes a languaged world accessible to linguistically apt humans, relative to which the natural world--as it is independent of being thus captured- is posited always and only from within a languaged world, affords the global model within which all the puzzles of representation and aboutness may be perspicuously placed. Perhaps it helps, in closing, therefore, to remark that the surprising identity of artwork and object, as in a Jasper Johns painting of a target (that is a target), or the ease of wrongly identifying a Robert Morris earthwork as a mere stretch of earth (which it is not), or the peculiar shock of viewing a Duane Hanson hyperlifelike sculpture (the Museum Guard, for example, which we cannot at first discern as a sculpture), is an instance (all are instances) of how an artwork can present a familiar world without any representational function at all. Yet each does what it does only within the invention of a cultural world and the conditions of "aboutness" internal to it, on which alone what each is' "about" becomes accessible.

Notes

1. Jean-Paul Sartre, Imagination: A Psychological Critique, trans. Forrest Wil- liams (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962).

2. Arthur Danto, who sees the difficulty of Sartre's theory, nevertheless follows Sartre in theorizing about the perception of paintings: all his very good puzzle cases regarding the "indistinguishability" of paintings and non-paintings and sets of

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different paintings are fatally infected with this mistake. See for instance, Arthur C. Danto, The Transformation of the Commonplace (Cambridge: Harvard Un fiversity Press, 1981), particularly chs. 1 and 2. Thus, Danto remarks, characteris. tically, "That there should exist indiscernible artworks- indiscernible at least with respect to anything the eye or ear can determine- has been evident." (P. 33). See also, Arthur C. Danto, "The Artworld," Journal of Philosophy LXI (1964); but also, Jean-Paul Sartre (New York: Viking, 1975), Pp. 29-31.

3. For a sense of what is at stake here, see Joseph Margolis, "A Sense of Rapprochement between Analytic and Continental Philosophy,' » History of Philosophy Quarterly I (1985); and "Scientific Realism as a Transcendental Issue Manuscrito, VII (1984). 4. One of the most influential, brief developments of this theme appears in Wilfrid Sellars, "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man," in Science, Percep. tion and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963). 5. This goes against the subtle revival of mimesis in Monroe C. Beardsley, The Possibility of Criticism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970). 6. There is some convergence here but also much disagreement with Danto's use of "aboutness": cf. for instance, The Transformation of the Commonplace, pp. 84-85. 7. The theory is Nelson Goodman's, in Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill, 1968), particularly ch. 2. 8. Cf. Goodman, op. cit., p. 95.

9. Compare Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, pp. 18-19, 71-78.

10. This is the fatal flaw not only of Sartre's theory but of Danto's as well; for following Sartre to this extent, Danto rightly emphasizes "the difference between a plain mark and a meaningful one" but he construes it also to be the difference "between a thing and a rule for its interpretation, '" Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 30. No, the difference concerns rather a difference in theories of perception matched to an admitted difference between natural and cultural things. The confusion subverts Danto's well-known examples of what are said to be perceptually "indistinguish- able"-but are only sensorily indistinguishable.

11. Cf. Danto, The Transformation of the Commonplace, Pp. 18-19. 12. Robert Belle Burke, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (Philadelphia: Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 232-233. 13. See Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), Appendix: and Peter C. Sutton (org.), Masters of Seventeenth-Cen- tury Dutch Genre Painting (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), "Masters of Dutch Genre Painting." 14. The principal advocate seems to be a certain E. de Jongh, whom Alpers identifies. 15. Alpers, op. cit., p. 229. 16. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 87. 17: The most elaborate recent version of this sort of theory has been developed by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980). 18. Ibid., Pp. 262-263.

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19. This is Goodman's characteristic emphasis, of course, op. cit., pp. 27-31. Danto follows him to this extent, The Transformation of the Commonplace, ch. 3. See also the special number, "Representation, " Social Research LI (1984). 20. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1964), vol. 1, p. 7. Panofsky observes that the Arnolfin; "has four central vanishing points instead of one", see also p. 202. 21. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (in trans.) (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 16. 22. The point is disputed, unconvincingly, by David Novitz, "Black Horse Pictures: Exposing the Picturing Relation," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXXIV (1975). 23. See further, Joseph Margolis, "Berkeley and Others on the Problem of Universals," in Colin Turbayne (ed.), Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive Essays (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 24. It is worth remarking that, commenting on Magritte's paintings, which would otherwise be easily treated as merely representational (however fanciful), Foucault introduces the pointedly perceptive distinction between "resemblance" and "similitude" (that is, in the French). Magritte himself seems to have been willing to follow Foucault in this. Things do not (both hold) have resemblances: resemblances are imposed by reference to artifactually introduced categorial sys- tems serving representational functions; but things have similitudes, that is, the capacity to invite a kind of "horizontal" slippage, as, as in Magritte's paintings, when a leaf takes the shape of a tree and a ship at sea, the form of the sea. See Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, trans. James Harkness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). 25. See Elinor Rosch, "On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories," in T. M. Moore (ed.), Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language (New York: Academic Press, 1973); "Classification of Real-world Ob- jects: Origins and Representations in Cognition," in S. Ehrlich and E. Tulving (eds.), La Memoire sémantique (Paris: Bulletin de psychologie, 1976). 26. Nelson Goodman, "Seven Strictures of Similarity," in Lawrence Foster and J. W. Swanson (eds.). Experience & Theory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970), p. 25. 27. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 8; cf. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 2nd ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1961), passim. 28. Languages of Art, p. 38; italics added. 29. E. H. Gombrich, The Image and the Eye (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 279. 30. Languages of Art, p. 39; italics added. 31. The Image and the Eye, pp. 280, 287. The entire essay, "Image and Code: Scope and Limits of Conventionalism in Pictorial Representation" repays atten- tion. See also E. H. Gombrich, "The 'What' and the 'How: Perspective Represen- tation and the Phenomenal World," in Richard Ruder and Israel Scheffler (eds.), Logic and Art: Essays in Honor of Nelson Goodman (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972); also, Marx W. Wartofsky, "Pictures, Representation, and the Understand- ing," in the same volume.

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32. Languages of Art, pp. 10-19; "The What' and the 'How: Perspective Representation and the Phenomenal World," particularly p. 148. 33. See James J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston; Houghton Mifflin, 1966). 34. "The 'What' and the 'How,'" p. 132. 35. Ibid., Pp. 138, 141. 36. Ibid., p. 148. 37. Alan Tormey and Judith Farr Tormey, "Seeing, Believing, and Picturing," in Calvin F. Nodine and Dennis R. Fisher (eds.), Perception and Pictorial Representation (New York: Praeger, 1979), p. 294. 38. Francisco Pacheco, Velázquez's father-in-law, shows a distinct interest in Alberti, for instance. See his Arte de la Pintura, 2 vols., ed. F. J. Sanchez Canton (Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1956). 39. This way of reading Veläzquez's painting goes somewhat contrary to the one interestingly proposed by Searle. See John R. Searle, "Las Meninas and the Paradoxes of Pictorial Representation," Critical Inquiry VI (1980). There are serious but irrelevant difficulties in Searle's interpretation. But what is important, here, is that Searle concedes no variability or tolerance if "classical representation" is invoked--a point quite alien to Foucault's reading. Thus it is that he takes too literally the notion that the representation must obtain from one determinate point of view. Gombrich had already observed (favoring Gibson) that realistic represen- tation had to accommodate an ecologically shifting point of view. But if we also add that the point of view needs only to be salient, not in any sense strictly correct phenomenally (whether fixed or moving) to ensure realism, then we need not insist on Searle's preference for a fixed point of view. Not finding this readily confirmed and insisting on "classical representation," Searle opts instead for the point of view's being that "of the model and not. . that of the artist" (p. 483)--that is, the point of view of Philip and Ana ("offstage"). The difference between Searle's and Foucault's interpretation is a double one; for one thing, Searle believes Las Meninas to be a representation of a representation (cf. p. 488), whereas Foucault takes it to be a representation of (the entire mode or illusion of classical) repre- sentation, that is, the act of rendering or uttering representations; for a second, Searle believes the representation to be naturalistic when seen from the point of view of the subjects, Philip and Ana, whereas Foucault takes it that, qua natural- istic, the painting merges the points of view of the painter, the subject, and the viewer. Joel Snyder (whose recent piece on Las Meninas appeared after eompleting this essay) has conclusively shown the untenability of Searle's and Foucault's sec- ond claim; in his own voice, he suggests another reading that is not entirely out of sympathy with Foucault's first claim, one in fact that is congenial with, though quite different from, the one here suggested. Velázquez's witty use of the paintings in the neighborhood of the mirror then makes novel sense-_somewhat in the same way that Matisse often exploits in his "confusing" paintings and parts of paintings with parts of natural scenes. See Joel Snyder, " Las Meninas and the Mirror of the Prince," Critical Inquiry XI (1985). 40. Panofsky, loc. cit.

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41. The full account is conveniently provided in Edgerton, loc. cit.; also, in John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, 2nd ed. (Boston: Boston Book and Art shop, 1967), ch. 8. The accounts are drawn from Antonio Manetti's Life of Brunelleschi, evidently written some decades later. 42. This is perhaps the fatal difficulty of Searle's argument--which is not to say that that is the fatal difficulty of his interpretation of Velázquez's painting. 43. On the use of "embodying, ," see Joseph Margolis, Art and Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978), chs. 2 and 3. 44. Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," in Daniel Breazeale (trans. and ed.), Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's (Atlantic Highlands, N.J: Humanities Press, 1979). 45. The essential discussion, here, is that of P. F. Strawson, "On Referring, 99 Mind LIX (1950). 46. The classic source is of course J. L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962).

Part Five The Intentional Fallacy and Expressive Qualities Representational art raises the general question of the relevance of an artist's intention in the appreciation of art (see Part One). It is of course possible to construe representation, as Goodman does, in logical or functional terms. But it may be reasonably argued that, whatever the puzzles generated, the question is ultimately one of intentional considera- tions- though not necessarily psychological ones. It is characteristic of empiricist tendencies, as of extensionalist ten- denies, which obtain in somewhat different mixes in Beardsley and Goodman, that problems of intentionality (or even of artists' intentions--a more restricted issue) are either dismissed, muted, made marginal, or otherwise assigned a very limited role in the philosophy of art. The Continental emphasis, however, on intentionality, stemming originally from the work of Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl, and the rise of strongly historicized theories of artworks, texts, and interpretation, stem- ming chiefly from the work of Martin Heidegger and the hermeneutic tradition- notably, the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer-challenge in a fun- damental way the dominant tendencies of Anglo-American aesthetics. The issue of the Intentional Fallacy, therefore, is a special, rather heavily debated, version of more general puzzles regarding what may be critically eligible or relevant (that is, short of true or false, or correct or incorrect) in describing and interpreting works of art and performing particular works. Characteristically, we ask whether, say, James Joyce intended Finnegans Wake to be construed this way or that, or whether Stanis- lavski's production of The Cherry Orchard, accords with Chekhov's inten- tions. The questions are quite familiar. But one may puzzle over the critical eligibility of these very questions. Is it "aesthetically" relevant to inquire regarding the artist's intention? As soon as the question is put in this form, we see that the issue depends on the ease with which we may decide what 362 The Intensional Fallacy and Expressive Qualie, the aesthetic point of view in criticism is (see Part One). Are we face, (hin a finding or a ruling? If a finding how ate we to judge conliating jpinions here? If a ruling, what is the force of the term "fallacy? We noif? Thar critics, in their practice, sometimes appeal to the artist's intention War then is the logical status of a judgment that such appeals are inadmissible? And how may the artist's intention be determined: through autobiographical materials? through psychoanalysis? through cultural com. ventions? through the properties of the work of art itself? And will the answer be quite general for all the arts? For example, will adjustments be advisable when we possess a composer's musical notation? The issue of the Fallacy is tangentially related to that of the artist's expression, since one variant of the view that the artist expresses himself is to hold that to understand a work one must, or at least on occasion one may have to, know the artist's intention. Sometimes the relationship is reversed and one insists that the merit of a work is to be judged solely or chiefly on whether the artist's intention has been fulfilled- either, on internal grounds, in the work actually produced or, as in the performing arts, in accord with a notation. More directly, the issue of the Fallacy presupposes some fairly clean-cut conception of what "the work of art" is (see Parts Two and Three). Otherwise, we should have difficulty determin- ing the relevance or irrelevance of critical comments_-whether intentionally oriented, psychoanalytically oriented, or oriented in terms of cultural history or in accord with frankly partisan convictions (e.g., Marxist, Roman Catholic). So the issue of the Fallacy spreads inevitably to that of the general relationship of critical interpretations to the work of art. If we ask ourselves how we define the boundaries of a poem, what are the implications of a changing tradition of dramatic and musical performance, we are at once placed at the center of the difficulties. If a psychoanalyti- cally oriented interpretation of Hamlet be eligible, why not one that accords with Shakespeare's autobiographical remains? And if we may at times restrict dramatic and musical performances in terms of period style, why not in terms of the artist's intention? May we perhaps judge with equal ease, in the context of appreciation, that some particular perfor- mance is both ingenious and not in accord with the artist's original conception? And what are the differences, with regard to appreciation itself, between two such remarks as these? What in fact is properly meant by 'the artist's intention? All these questions have been focused memorably by the appearance of Wimsatt and Beardsley's essay (1954). The essay has attracted considerable attention and a very large part of the professionally relevant literature since its appearance is explicitly concerned to defend or criticize its views. A number of questions may be usefully sorted, here. For one thing, The Intentional Fallacy and Expressive Qualities 363 Wimsatt and Beardsley construe 'intentional' not only in psychological terms but also in terms of an artist's conscious plan. In effect, what they are concerned about is what, broadly speaking, is central to so-called autobiographical considerations. Many who have criticized them are in- clined to think that the "intentional" aspects of a work- even aspects bearing on the artist's "plan"-may be discerned in the work itself. Now it is not clear whether Wimsatt and Beardsley would be entirely opposed to reference to such features- presumably not- though it is also not clear whether so-called intentionalists have ever meant to rely on biographical considerations somehow not manifest or confirmed at all in some actual work. Again, along these lines, it is not entirely obvious how, as in the performing arts, reference to the artist's plan- mediated by a notation, possibly by biographical information-_can be altogether avoided. Granting this, counterpart moves seem possible in the other arts. Sometimes, Wimsatt and Beardsley understand the Fallacy to be what might be termed (if it were a fallacy) the Romantic Fallacy, that an artist is, at the moment of creation, expressing himself or his age. But this invites us to consider that some of the features of given works of art may well be expressive in either of these two senses, as well as to concede that to construe them thus need not rest on independent evidence of a plan in the artist's mind. Criticism of the one thesis seems not to be tantamount to criticism of the other. Again, they do not sort out with complete success puzzles connected with the problem of allusiveness and meaning. If, for example, as both Wimsatt and Beardsley on separate occasions have maintained, meanings depend on usage and usage includes the author's usage (even if idiosyncratic), then it is difficult to see how to free the objective specification of meaning altogether from intentional factors, however they may be attenuated. This bears in an important way on Wimsatt and Beardsley's would-be distinction between "internal and ex- ternal evidence" and, more generally, on the theory of the nature of a work of art (see Part Three). More recently, Beardsley in particular-as with a number of theorists of literature--has been attracted to a speech-act model. But such a model is incapable of being developed along non-intentionalis- tic lines. And the intentional factors involved cannot be freed altogether from contextual and psychological considerations. In general, a speech-act model of meaning is inherently intentionalistic; although, contrary to standard speech-act theory (for instance, John Searle's, 1969), it need hardly be confined to the conscious intentions of speaking or writing agents; and meanings, complicated by speech-act considerations, can certainly not be confined in any merely psychological or solely individualistic sense. The very notions of language, meaning, tradition, practice, style, history, and the like are inherently societal 364 The intentional Fallacy and Expressive Qualities "possessions." The irony is that the early Continental emphasis on inten. tonality- explicitly, in Brentano and Fusserl, implicitly, in the pioneer hermeneutic work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1977) and his followers, for instance, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (1967) is also strongly inclined (with whatever adjustments) to confine the notion initially to contexts of in. dividual psychology, rational egos, or the like. Among the most vigorous and detailed criticisms of Wimsatt and Beardsley's position is a paper by Frank Cioffi (1963-1964), which stresses, among other things, that the relation of intention to interpretation is unpredictable and variable (hence cannot be ruled out as a general policy), and that art (Cioffi confined himself to the literary arts) is such that our appreciation of it is affected by the artist's relation to his own work. These appear to be quite sensible observations, though their force against Wim- satt and Beardsley depends in part on how we construe the latter's distinction between internal and external evidence--which is not entirely explicit. More recently, Guy Sircello (1972) has identified a range of attributes properly ascribed to works of art that may reasonably be expressed as well in terms of the artist's intentions. These are interesting because they spring to mind in the most natural way, cannot properly be ascribed to particular works without attention to something like a plan in the artist's mind or psychological intention or intentional state, and because their possession by works of art confirms distinctive aspects of the nature of artworks as such (see Parts One and Two). They may be characterized as expressive properties, though this is not to say that all expressive qualities are properly formulable in terms of the artist's intentional states. The confla- tion of the two themes is the central feature of the Romantic theory of art: Wimsatt and Beardsley are right in supposing that it cannot be an adequate theory of art; the question is whether they rightly claim that it has no application at all. The principal feature of Sircello's account, however, is that, although these properties may be ascribed to works of art, they cannot be detected by attention to the work of art itself- in any sense in which it is frequently claimed that works of art are directly perceivable (see Part One). Alternatively put, it is not clear what we mean to say, given these complications, in saying that a given artwork is perceivable or somehow perceivable without regard to the intentional, historical, cultural, and related ("imperceptible") preconditions on which "it" the artwork, not merely a physical object=-becomes perceivable. This, for instance, may well be the right way to unpack Danto's notion of the "is" of artistic identification, although, ironically, that notion is not called into play when Danto (1981) develops his well-known account of numeri- cally different but perceptually indistinguishable paintings (a series of red The Intentional Fallacy and Expressive Qualities 365 canvases). The large problem of intentionality, then, actually colors the theory of perceptual discrimination itself-hence, the theory of aesthetic qualities. This has been largely ignored in the more-or-less empiricist- minded theories favored in the Anglo-American tradition, even when the very thesis of empiricism is being criticized as too narrow. On the other hand, Alan Tormey (1971) argues persuasively that expres- sive qualities need not, and cannot all, be dependent on the actual intentional states of artists. He provides, therefore, for a set of predicates (e.g., tenderness, sadness, anguish, nostalgia) which designate expressive properties in works of art because when applied to human persons they designate intentional states. The question remains whether works of art actually have such properties or whether they may validly be attributed to them for some other reason. There is a strong tendency to hold that such attributions are, somehow, metaphorical. Both Goodman and Beardsley have been inclined to con- strue them thus. But the justifiability of that view depends ultimately on the theory of the ontology of art (see Part Three), because to hold that a work of art could not literally possess an expressive property, or to hold that the expressive property it does possess must depend on a metaphoric application of a predicate that rightly designates only what may be literally ascribed to human beings, favors certain theories of the nature of artworks over others (see Goodman, Part Three). The problem of intentionality, then, cannot be confined to the narrowly psychological (as in Beardsley's view) and cannot be disjoined from the complexities of societal history. That is the principal contribution, to the philosophy of art, of the work of the continuing Continental traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutics. But, as already noted, until fairly recently the principal themes of both these traditions have--taking terms somewhat informally--been inclined to favor the mental life of individuals and the timeless fixing of historical change. In the hermeneutic tradition, E. D. Hirsch (1967) is at once the direct descendant of Schleiermacher's romantic conception of intention and the Continentally oriented opponent of Beardsley's New Critical rejection of authors' intentions. But, in serving in that role, Hirsch is also the most prominent American opponent of the post-Heideggerian version of hermeneutics--that is, the strongly historicized alternative that denies that textual interpretation can be confined to the recovery of an original author's intention and must instead be construed in terms of a certain appropriately disciplined consensus formed and reformed within the very flux of cultural life. The latter is almost the invention of Hans-Georg Gadamer (represented in Part Six). Here, Hirsch states very fairly Gadamer's version of the hermeneutic position and his own fundamental objections to it. It is clear, however, 366 The Intentional Fallacy and Expressive Qualite, That Hirsch counts both on not radically historicizing he human cognition bhi historical change and on the relatively sedimented fixity of the acta artifacts of different historical eras. Both of these commitments are a afurse opposed by Gadamer. In this regard, #tirsch is obliged to develog a peculiarly ambivalent theory of period styles: on the one hand, it must be rather strictly construed in order to widen the romantic conception sufficiently and in a sufficiently disciplined way, so as to go beyond explicit or conscious intention; on the other, it must not be so rigialy formulated that the hermeneut is bound to advocate an essentialism with respect to human history or to deny the open texture of a developing style. The puzzle thus produced is a version of that of the so-called hermeneutic circle. But it is useful to note that, in the Anglo-American tradition. notably in Goodman's theory (1978), the characterization of style is usually not reconciled with a strongly historicized (as opposed to a historically periodized) conception meant to come to terms with the challenge of the hermeneutic circle. For, construed in the hermeneutic sense, style could not be satisfactorily captured by a notation- in the manner said to hold of the allographic arts.

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The Intentional Fallacy

W. K. WIMSATT, JR. AND
MONROE C. BEARDSLEY

[orig. 1946]

He owns with toil he wrote the following scenes;
But, if they're naught, ne'er spare him for his pains:
Damn him the more; have no commiseration
For dullness on mature deliberation.

William Congreve
Prologue to The Way of the World

I

The claim of the author's "intention" upon the critic's judgment has been challenged in a number of recent discussions, notably in the debate entitled The Personal Heresy, between Professors Lewis and Tillyard. But it seems doubtful if this claim and most of its romantic corollaries are as yet subject to any widespread questioning. The present writers, in a short article entitled "'Intention" for a Dictionary! of literary criticism, raised the issue but were unable to pursue its implications at any length. We argued that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art, and it seems to us that this is a principle which goes deep into some differences in the history of critical attitudes. It is a principle which accepted or rejected points to the polar opposites of classical "imitation" and romantic expres- sion. It entails many specific truths about inspiration, authenticity, biog- raphy, literary history, and scholarship, and about some trends of contem- porary poetry, especially its allusiveness. There is hardly a problem of

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literary criticism in which the critic's approach will not be qualified by his view of "intention.

"Intention," as we shall use the term, corresponds to what he intended in a formula which more or less explicitly has had wide acceptance. "In order to judge the poet's performance, we must know what he intended» Intention is design or plan in the author's mind. Intention has obvious affinities for the author's attitude toward his work, the way he felt, what made him write.

We begin our discussion with a series of propositions summarized and abstracted to a degree where they seem to us axiomatic.

1. A poem does not come into existence by accident. The words of a poem, as Professor Stoll has remarked, come out of a head, not out of a hat. Yet to insist on the designing intellect as a cause of a poem is not to grant the design or intention as a standard by which the critic is to judge the worth of the poet's performance.

2. One must ask how a critic expects to get an answer to the question about intention. How is he to find out what the poet tried to do? If the poet succeeded in doing it, then the poem itself shows what he was trying to do. And if the poet did not succeed, then the poem is not adequate evidence, and the critic must go outside the poem- _for evidence of an intention that did not become effective in the poem. "Only one caveat must be borne in mind," says an eminent intentionalist? in a moment when his theory repudiates itself; "the poet's aim must be judged at the moment of the creative act, that is to say, by the art of the poem itself."

3. Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. It is only because an artifact works that we infer the intention of an artificer. "A poem should not mean but be." A poem can be only through its meaning_-since its medium is words--yet it is, simply is, in the sense that we have no excuse for inquiring what part is intended or meant. Poetry is a feat of style by which a complex of meaning is handled all at once. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and "bugs" from machinery. In this respect poetry differs from practical messages, which are successful if and only if we correctly infer the intention. They are more abstract than poetry.

4. The meaning of a poem may certainly be a personal one, in the sense that a poem expresses a personality or state of soul rather than a physical object like an apple. But even a short lyric poem is dramatic, the response of a speaker (no matter how abstractly conceived) to a situation (no matter how universalized). We ought to impute the thoughts and attitudes of the poem immediately to the dramatic speaker, and if to the author at all, only by an act of biographical inference.

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5. There is a sense in which an author, by revision, may better achieve his original intention. But it is a very abstract sense. He intended to write a better work, or a better work of a certain kind, and now has done it. But it follows that his former concrete intention was not his intention. "He's the man we were in search of, that's true, says Hardy's rustic constable, "and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted.»

"Is not a critic," asks Professor Stoll, "a judge, who does not explore his own consciousness, but determines the author's meaning or intention, as if the poem were a will, a contract, or the constitution? The poem is not the critic's own." He has accurately diagnosed two forms of irrespon- sibility, one of which he prefers. Our view is yet different. The poem is not the critic's own but the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public , It is embodied in language, ] the peculiar possession of the public, and it is about the human being, an object of public knowledge. What is said about the poem is subject to the same scrutiny as any statement in linguistics or in the general science of psychology.

A critic of our Dictionary article, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, has argued' that there are two kinds of inquiry about a work of art: (1) whether the artist achieved his intentions; (2) whether the work of art "ought ever to have been undertaken at all" and so "whether it is worth preserving." Number (2), Coomaraswamy maintains, is not "criticism of any work of art qua work of art," but is rather moral criticism; number (1) is artistic criticism. But we maintain that (2) need not be moral criticism: that there is another way of deciding whether works of art are worth preserving and whether, in a sense, they "ought" to have been undertaken, and this is the way of objective criticism of works of art as such, the way which enables us to distinguish between a skillful murder and a skillful poem. A skillful murder is an example which Coomaras- wamy uses, and in his system the difference between the murder and the poem is simply a "moral" one, not an "artistic" one, since each if carried out according to plan is "artistically" successful. We maintain that (2) is an inquiry of more worth than (1), and since (2) and not (1) is capable of distinguishing poetry from murder, the name "artistic criticism" is properly given to (2).

II

It is not so much a historical statement as a definition to say that the intentional fallacy is a romantic one. When a rhetorician of the first century

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A.D. writes: "Sublimity is the echo of a great soul," or when he tells us that "Homer enters into the sublime actions of his heroes" and "shares the Full inspiration of the combat," we shall not be surprised to find this rhetorician considered as a distant harbinger of romanticism and greeier in the warmest terms by Saintsbury. One may wish to argue whetner Longinus should be called romantic, but there can hardly be a doubt thar in one important way he is.

Goethe's three quéstions for "constructive criticism" are "What did the author set out do do? Was his plan reasonable and sensible, and how far did he succeed in carrying it out?" If one leaves out the middle question, one has in effect the system of Croce- the culmination and crowning philosophic expression of romanticism. The beautiful is the successfui intuition-expression, and the ugly is the unsuccessful; the intuition or private part of art is the aesthetic fact, and the medium or public part is not the subject of aesthetic at all.

The Madonna of Cimabue is still in the Church of Santa Maria Novella; but does she speak to the visitor of to-day as to the Florentines of the thirteenth century?

Historical interpretation labors... to reintegrate in us the psychological conditions which have changed in the course of history. It . . enables us to see a work of art (a physical object) as its author saw it in the moment of production.

The first italics are Croce's, the second ours. The upshot of Croce's system is an ambiguous emphasis on history. With such passages as a point of departure a critic may write a nice analysis of the meaning or "spirit" of a play by Shakespeare or Corneille--a process that involves close historical study but remains aesthetic criticism-- or he may, with equal plausibility, produce an essay in sociology, biography, or other kinds of nonaesthetic history.

My note here says:
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III

I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. ... I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them. Will you believe me?.. there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration.

That reiterated mistrust of the pets which we hear from Socrates may have been part of a rigorously ascetic view in which we hardly wish to

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participate, yet Plato's Socrates saw a truth about the poetic mind which the world no longer commonly sees--so much criticism, and that the most inspirational and most affectionately remembered, has proceeded from the poets themselves.

Certainly the poets have had something to say that the critic and professor could not say; their message has been more exciting: that poetry should come as naturally as leaves to a tree, that poetry is the lava of the imagination, or that it is emotion recollected in tranquility. But it is necessary that we realize the character and authority of such testimony. There is only a fine shade of difference between such expressions and kind of earnest advice that authors often give. Thus Edward Young, Carlyle, Walter Pater:

I know two golden rules from ethics, which are no less golden in Composition, than in life. 1. Know thyself; 2dly, Reverence thyself.

This is the grand secret for finding readers and retaining them: let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me flere, is applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every poet, to every writer, We might say: Be true, if you would be believed.

Truth! there can be no merit, no craft at all, without that. And further, all beauty is in the long run only fineness of truth, or what we call expression, the finer accommodation of speech to that vision within.

And Housman's little handbook to the poetic mind yields this illustration:

Having drunk a pint of beer at luncheon-beer is a sedative to the brain, and my afternoons are the least intellectual portion of my life--I would go out for a walk of two or three hours. As I went along, thinking of nothing in particular, only looking at things around me and following the progress of the seasons, there would flow into my mind, with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza at once.

This is the logical terminus of the series already quoted. Here is a confession of how poems were written which would do as a definition of poetry just as well as "emotion recollected in tranquility"_-and which the young poet might equally well take to heart as a practical rule. Drink a pint of beer, relax, go walking, think on nothing in particular, look at things, surrender yourself to yourself, search for the truth in your own

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soul, listen to the sound of your own inside voice, discover and express the vraie vérité.

It is probably true that all this is excellent advice for poets. The young imagination fired by Wordsworth and Carlyle is probably closer to the verge of producing a poem than the mind of the student who has been sobered by Aristotle or Richards. The art of inspiring poets, or at least of inciting something like poetry in young persons, has probably gone further in our day than ever before. Books of creative writing such as those issued from the Lincoln School are interesting evidence of what a child can dos All this, however, would appear to belong to an art separate from criticism--to a psychological discipline, a system of self-development , a yoga, which the young poet perhaps does well to notice , but which is something different from the public art of evaluating poems.

Coleridge and Arnold were better critics than most poets have been, and if the critical tendency dried up the poetry in Arnold and perhaps in Coleridge, it is not inconsistent with our argument, which is that judgment of poems is different from the art of producing them. Coleridge has given us the classic "anodyne" story, and tells what he can about the genesis of a poem which he calls a "psychological curiosity," but his definitions of poetry and of the poetic quality "imagination" are to be found elsewhere and in quite other terms.

It would be convenient if the passwords of the intentional school, "sincerity," "fidelity," "spontaneity," "authenticity," "genuineness," "originality," could be equated with terms such as "integrity," "relevance, "unity," "function," "maturity," "subtlety," "adequacy, and other more precise terms of evaluation in short, if "expression" always meant aesthetic achievement . But this is not so.

"Aesthetic" art, says Professor Curt Ducasse, an ingenious theorist of expression, is the conscious objectification of feelings, in which an intrinsic part is the critical moment. The artist corrects the objectification when it is not adequate. but this may mean that the earlier attempt was not successful in objectifying the self, or "it may also mean that it was a successful objectification of a self which, when it confronted us clearly, we disowned and repudiated in favor of another.» What is the standard by which we disown or accept the self? Professor Ducasse does not say. Whatever it may be, however, this standard is an element in the definition of art which will not reduce to terms of objectivication. The evaluation of the work of art remains public ; the work is measured against something outside the author.

IV

There is criticism of poetry and there is author psychology, which when applied to the present or future takes the form of inspirational promotion;

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but author psychology can be historical too, and then we have literary biography, a legitimate and attractive study in itself, one approach, as Professor Tillyard would argue, to personality, the poem being only a parallel approach. Certainly it need not be with a derogatory purpose that one points out personal studies, as distinct from poetic studies, in the realm of literary scholarship. Yet there is danger of confusing personal and poetic studies; and there is the fault of writing the personal as if it were poetic.

There is a difference between internal and external evidence for the meaning of a poem. And the paradox is only verbal and superficial that what is (1) internal is also public : it is discovered through the semantics and syntax of a poem, through our habitual knowledge of the language, through grammars, dictionaries, and all the literature which is the source of dictionaries, in general through all that makes a language and culture; while what is (2) external is private or idiosyncratic ; not a part of the work as a linguistic fact: it consists of revelations (in journals, for example, or letters or reported conversations) about how or why the poet wrote the poem to what lady, while sitting on what lawn, or at the death of what friend or brother. There is (3) an intermediate kind of evidence about the character of the author or about private or semiprivate meanings attached to words or topics by the author or by a coterie of which he is a member. The meaning of words is the history of words, and the biography of an author, his use of a word, and the associations which the word had for him, are part of the word's history and meaning.' But the three types of evidence, especially (2) and (3), shade into one another so subtly that it is not always easy to draw a line between examples, and hence arises the difficulty for criticism. The use of biographical evidence need not involve intentionalism , because while it may be evidence of what the author intended, it may also be evidence of the meaning of his words and the dramatic character of his utterance. On the other hand, it may not be all this. And a critic who is concerned with evidence of type (1) and moderately with that of type (3) will in the long run produce a different sort of comment from that of the critic who is concerned with (2) and with (3) where it shades into (2).

The whole glittering parade of Professor Lowes's Road to Xanadu, for instance, runs along the border between types (2) and (3) or boldly traverses the romantic region of (2). 'Kubla Khan,'" says Professor Lowes, "is the fabric of a vision, but every image that rose up in its weaving had passed that way before. And it would seem that there is nothing haphazard or fortuitous in their return." This is not quite clear- not even when Professor Lowes explains that there were clusters of associations, like hooked atoms, which were drawn into complex relation with other clusters in the deep well of Coleridge's memory, and which then

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coalesced and issued forth as poems. If there was nothing "haphazard or fortuitous" in the way the images returned to the surface, that may mean (1) that Coleridge could not produce what he did not have, that he was Nimited in his creation by what he had read or otherwise experienced, or (2) that having received certain clusters of associations, he was bound to return them in just the way he did, and that the value of the poem may he described in terms of the experiences on which he had to draw. The latter pair of propositions (a sort of Hartleyan associationism which Coleridge himself repudiated in the Biographia) may not be assented to. There were certainly other combinations, other poems, worse or better, that might have been written by men who had read Bartram and Purchas and Bruce and Milton. And this will be true no matter how many times we are able to add to the brilliant complex of Coleridge's reading. In certain flourishes (such as the sentence we have quoted) and in chapter headings like "The Shaping Spirit," "The Magical Synthesis," "Imagination Creatrix," it may be that Professor Lowes pretends to say more about the actual poems than he does. There is a certain deceptive variation in these fancy chapter titles; one expects to pass on to a new stage in the argument, and one finds--more and more sources, more and more about "the streamy nature of association 398

"Wohin der Weg?" quotes Professor Lowes for the motto of his book. "Kein Weg! Ins Unbretretene." » Precisely because the way is unbetreten, we should say, it leads away from the poem. Bartram's Travels contains a good deal of the history of certain words and of certain romantic Floridian conceptions that appear in "Kubla Khan." And a good deal of that history has passed and was then passing into the very stuff of our language. Perhaps a person who has read Bartram appreciates the poem more than one who has not. Or, by looking up the vocabulary of "Kubla Khan" in the Oxford English Dictionary, or by reading some of the other books there quoted, a person may know the poem better. But it would seem to pertain little to the poem to know that Coleridge had read Bartram. There is a gross body of life, of sensory and mental experience, which lies behind and in some sense causes every poem, but can never be and need not be known in the verbal and hence intellectual composition which is the poem. For all the objects of our manifold experience, for every unity, there is an action of the mind which cuts off roots, melts away context-or indeed we should never have objects or ideas or anything to talk about.

It is probable that there is nothing in Professor Lowes's vast book which could detract from anyone's appreciation of either The Ancient Mariner Or "Kubla Khan." We next present a case where preoccupation with evidence of type (3) has gone so far as to distort a critic's view of a poem (yet a case not so obvious as those that abound in our critical journals).

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In a well-known poem by John Donne appears this quatrain:

Moving of th'earth brings harmes and feares, Men reckon what it did and meant, But trepidation of the spheares, Though greater farre, is innocent.

A recent critic in an elaborate treatment of Donne's learning has written of this quatrain as follows:

He touches the emotional pulse of the situation by a skillful allusion to the new and the old astronomy.... Of the new astronomy, the "moving of the earth" is the most radical principle; of the old, the "trepidation of the spheares" is the motion of the greatest com- plexity. The poet must exhort his love to quietness and calm upon his departure; and for this purpose the figure based upon the latter motion (trepidation), long absorbed into the traditional astronomy, fittingly suggests the tension of the moment without arousing the "harmes and feares" implicit in the figure of the moving earth.

The argument is plausible and rests on a well substantiated thesis that Donne was deeply interested in the new astronomy and its repercussions in the theological realm. In various works Donne shows his familiarity with Kepler's De Stella Nova, with Galileo's Siderius Nuncius, with William Gilbert's De Magnete, and with Clavius's commentary on the De Sphaera of Sacrobosco. He refers to the new science in his Sermon at Paul's Cross and in a letter to Sir Henry Goodyer. In The First Anniver- sary he says the "new philosophy calls all in doubt." In the Elegy on Prince Henry he says that the "least moving of the center" makes "the world to shake.

It is difficult to answer argument like this, and impossible to answer it with evidence of like nature. There is no reason why Donne might not have written a stanza in which the two kinds of celestial motion stood for two sorts of emotion at parting. And if we become full of astronomical ideas and see Donne only against the background of the new science, we may believe that he did. But the text itself remains to be dealt with, the analyzable vehicle of a complicated metaphor. And one may observe: (1) that the movement of the earth according to the Copernician theory is a celestial motion, smooth and regular, and while it might cause religious or philosophic fears, it could not be associated with the crudity and earthiness of the kind of commotion which the speaker in the poem wishes to discourage; (2) that there is another moving of the earth, an earthquake, which has just these qualities and is to be associated with the tear-floods

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and sigh- tempests of the second stanza of the poem; (3) that "trepidatiop» is an appropriate opposite of earthquake, because cach is a shaking or Vibratory motion; and "trepidation of the spheres" is "greater fare" inan in earthquake, but not much greater (if two such motions can be com. pared as to greatness) than the annual motion of the earth; (4) that reckoning what it "did and meant" shows that the event has passed, life an earthquake, not like the incessant celestial movement of the carth Perhaps a knowledge of Donne's interest in the new science may add another shade of meaning, an overtone to the stanza in question, though to say even this runs against the words. To make the geocentric and heliocentric antithesis the core of the metaphor is to disregard the English language, to prefer private evidence to public, external to internal.

V

If the distinction between kinds of evidence has implications for the historical critic, it has them no less for the contemporary poet and his critic. Or, since every rule for a poet is but another side of a judgment by a critic, and since the past is the realm of the scholar and critic, and the future and present that of the poet and the critical leaders of taste, we may say that the problems arising in literary scholarship from the inten- tional fallacy are matched by others which arise in the world of progressive experiment.

The question of "allusiveness," for example, as acutely posed by the poetry of Eliot, is certainly one where a false judgment is likely to involve the intentional fallacy. The frequency and depth of literary allusion in the poetry of Eliot and others has driven so many in pursuit of full meanings to the Golden Bough and the Elizabethan drama that it has become a kind of commonplace to suppose that we do not know what a poet means unless we have traced him in his reading -a supposition redolent with intentional implications. The stand taken by F. O. Matthiessen is a sound one and partially forestalls the difficulty.

If one reads these lines with an attentive ear and is sensitive to their sudden shifts in movement, the contrast between the actual Thames and the idealized vision of it during an age before it flowed through a megalopolis is sharply conveyed by that movement itself, whether or not one recognizes the refrain to be from Spenser.

Eliot's allusions work when we know them- and to a great extent when we do not know them- through their suggestive power.

But sometimes we find allusions supported by notes, and it is a nice

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question whether the notes function more as guides to send us where we may be educated, or more as indications in themselves about the character of the allusions. "Nearly everything of importance. that is apposite to an appreciation of 'The Waste Land,' writes Matthiessen of Miss Wes- ton's book, "has been incorporated into the structure of the poem itself, or into Eliot's Notes." And with such an admission it may begin to appear that it would not much matter if Eliot invented his sources (as Sir Walter Scott invented chapter epigraphs from "old plays" and "anonymous" authors, or as Coleridge wrote marginal glosses for The Ancient Mariner), Allusions to Dante, Webster, Marvell, or Baudelaire doubtless gain some- thing because these writers existed, but it is doubtful whether the same can be said for an allusion to an obscure Elizabethan:

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

"Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees": says Eliot,

When of a sudden, listening, you shall hear,
A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
Where all shall see her naked skin.

The irony is completed by the quotation itself; had Eliot, as is quite conceivable, composed these lines to furnish his own background, there would be no loss of validity. The conviction may grow as one reads Eliot's next note: "I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia." The important word in this note—on Mrs. Porter and her daughter who washed their feet in soda water--is "ballad." And if one should feel from the lines themselves their "ballad" quality, there would be little need for the note. Ultimately, the inquiry must focus on the integrity of such notes as parts of the poem, for where they constitute special information about the meaning of phrases in the poem, they ought to be subject to the same scrutiny as any of the other words in which it is written. Matthiessen believes the notes were the price Eliot "had to pay in order to avoid what he would have considered muffling the energy of his poem by extended connecting links in the text itself." But it may be questioned whether the notes and the need for them are not equally muffling. F. W. Bateson has plausibly argued that Tennyson's "The Sailor Boy" would be better if half the stanzas were omitted, and the best versions of ballads like "Sir Patrick Spens" owe their power to the very audacity with which the minstrel has taken for granted the story

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upon which he comments. What then if a poet, finds he cannot take so Wwch for granted in a more recondite context and rather than whitf informatively, supplies notes? It can be said in favor of this plan that ai least the notes do not pretend to be dramatic, as they would if written in verse. On the other hand, the notes may look like unassimilated material Iving loose beside the poem, necessary for the meaning of the verbal symbol, but not integrated, so that the symbol stands incomplete.

We mean to suggest by the above analysis that whereas notes tend to seem to justify themselves as external indexes to the author's intention, yet they ought, to be judged like any other parts of a composition (verbal arrangement special to a particular context), and when so judged their reality as parts of the poem, or their imaginative integration with the rest of the poem, may come into question , Matthiessen, for instance, sees that Eliot's titles for poems and his epigraphs are informative apparatus, like the notes. But while he is worried by some of the notes and thinks that Eliot "appears to be mocking himself for writing the note at the same time that he wants to convey something by it," Matthiessen believes that the "device" ' of epigraphs "is not at all open to the objection of not being sufficiently structural." "The intention," he says, "is to enable the poet to secure a condensed expression in the poem itself." "In each case the epigraph is designed to form an integral part of the effect of the poem." And Eliot himself, in his notes, has justified his poetic practice in terms of intention.

The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

And perhaps he is to be taken more seriously here, when off guard in a note, than when in his Norton Lectures he comments on the difficulty of saying what a poem means and adds playfully that he thinks of prefixing to a second edition of Ash Wednesday some lines from Don Juan:

I don't pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned
Unless it were to be a moment merry.

***mcluhan***

If Eliot and other contemporary poets have any characteristic fault, it may be in planning too much .

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Allusiveness in poetry is one of several critical issues by which we have illustrated the more abstract issue of intentionalism, but it may be for today the most important illustration. As a poetic practice allusiveness would appear to be in some recent poems an extreme corollary of the romantic intentionalist assumption, and as a critical issue it challenges and brings to light in a special way the basic premise of intentionalism. The following instance from the poetry of Eliot may serve to epitomize the practical implications of what we have been saying. In Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," toward the end, occurs the line: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each," and this bears a certain resemblance to a line in a Song by John Donne, "Teach me to heare Mermaides singing, 99 so that for the reader acquainted to a certain degree with Donne's poetry, the critical question arises: Is Eliot's line an allusion to Donne's? Is Prufrock thinking about Donne? Is Eliot thinking about Donne? We suggest that there are two radically different ways of looking for an answer to this question. There is (1) the way of poetic analysis and exegesis, which inquires whether it makes any sense if Eliot-Prufrock is thinking about Donne. In an earlier part of the poem, when Prufrock asks, "Would it have been worth while, ... To have squeezed the universe into a ball," his words take half their sadness and irony from certain energetic and pas- sionate lines of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." But the exegetical inquirer may wonder whether mermaids considered as "strange sights" (to hear them is in Donne's poem analogous to getting with child a mandrake root) have much to do with Prufrock's mermaids, which seem to be symbols of romance and dynamism, and which incidentally have literary authentication, if they need it, in a line of a sonnet by Gérard de Nerval. This method of inquiry may lead to the conclusion that the given resemblance between Eliot and Donne is without significance and is better not thought of, or the method may have the disadvantage of providing no certain conclusion. Nevertheless, we submit that this is the true and objective way of criticism, as contrasted to what the very uncertainty of exegesis might tempt a second kind of critic to undertake: (2) the way of biographical or genetic inquiry, in which, taking advantage of the fact that Eliot is still alive, and in the spirit of a man who would settle a bet, the critic writes to Eliot and asks him what he meant, or if he had Donne in mind. We shall not here weigh the probabilities--whether Eliot would answer that he meant nothing at all, had nothing at all in mind--a sufficiently good answer to such a question--or in an unguarded moment might furnish a clear and, within its limit, irrefutable answer. Our point is that such an answer to such an inquiry would have nothing to do with the poem "Prufrock", it would not be a critical inquiry. Critical inquiries, unlike bets, are not settled in this way. Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle.

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Notes

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