Homework 5- Philosophy

Introducing
Aesthetics and
the Philosophy

of Art

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Hudson Hick and Reinold Schmücker

The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics, edited by Joseph J. Tanke
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Introducing
Aesthetics and
the Philosophy

of Art
Darren Hudson Hick

Bloomsbury Academic
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This book is dedicated to the memory of
R. A. Sharpe, who first introduced me to

aesthetics, and whose work and teaching continue
to guide me.

vi

Contents

Figures x
Preface xi

Introduction: Aesthetics and the Philosophy
of Art, An Extremely Brief History 1

I. On art and beauty 1
II. The ancient period 2
III. The Middle Ages 8
IV. The modern period 10

1 Defining Art 17
I. Fountain (1917) 17
II. On definitions 19
III. Art as representation 20
IV. Art as form 22
V. Art as expression 25
VI. Art and aesthetic function 28
VII. On not defining art 33
VIII. Art and the artworld 35
IX. Art and art history 39

2 Interpretation and Intention 47
I. ‘Last Leaf ’ (2011) 47
II. On interpretation 50
III. The Romantics 51
IV. Anti-intentionalism 54
V. Post-structuralism 59
VI. Intentionalism revisited 63
VII. Hypothetical intentionalism 66
VIII. The Patchwork Theory 70

viii Contents

3 Aesthetic Properties and Evaluation 77
I. Black Square (1915) 77
II. On evaluation 80
III. The search for objective beauty 82
IV. Taste 84
V. Aesthetic properties 89
VI. Contextualism 94
VII. The value of art 98

4 The Ontology of Art 107
I. Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife (1936) and

After Walker Evans: 4 (1981) 107
II. On ontology 110
III. Artworks as physical objects 113
IV. Singular and multiple artworks 116
V. Types and tokens 119
VI. Constructivism 125
VII. Mental works and action types 126

5 Emotions and the Arts 135
I. The Exorcist (1973) 135
II. On art and emotion 138
III. The paradox of fiction 144
IV. The problem of tragedy 152

6 Art and Morality 161
I. Helena (2000) 161
II. On ethics and aesthetics 163
III. Radical moralism and autonomism 170
IV. Moderate moralism and autonomism 173
V. Arts funding and censorship 179

7 Art, Aesthetics and Identity 189
I. The Good Earth (1932) and The Good Earth (1937) 189
II. Artistic exclusion 192
III. Aesthetic exclusion 197

Contents ix

IV. Authenticity and appropriation 202
V. Our bodies, ourselves 207

8 Aesthetics Without Art 217
I. Mr Blobby 217
II. On beauty and nature 219
III. Natural aesthetics 223
IV. Environmental aesthetics 228
V. Everyday aesthetics 233

Notes 245
Bibliography 265
Index 277

Figures

Figure 1.1 Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917). Photograph by Alfred
Stieglitz 18

Figure 1.2 William Powell Frith, The Railway Station (1862). Engraving
by Francis Holl (1866) 24

Figure 1.3 ‘Studio 42’ Olivetti typewriter, designed by Alexander
Schawinsky, 1936. Photograph by ChristosV; image used
under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Unported license 30

Figure 2.1 Tom Waits. Photograph courtesy Anton Corbijn 48
Figure 3.1 Kasimir Malevich, Black Square (1915) 78
Figure 3.2 The golden spiral 83
Figure 3.3 Guo Xi, Early Spring (1072) 87
Figure 4.1 Walker Evans, Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife (1936) 108
Figure 4.2 Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans: 4 (1981) 109
Figure 5.1 Poster for The Exorcist (1973). Courtesy Warner Bros 136
Figure 6.1 Marco Evaristti, Helena (2000). Installation view from the

exhibition at Trapholt Museum of Modern Art. Courtesy ME
contemporary 162

Figure 7.1 Still from The Good Earth (1937), directed by Sidney
Franklin 190

Figure 8.1 ‘Mr Blobby’. Photograph by Kerryn Parkinson 218

Preface

You may be wondering: Why is there a picture of plastic pink flamingos on
the cover of this book? I thought this was a book about the philosophy of art
– are those art?

Good question.

The particular flamingos depicted on the cover are the pair designed by Don
Featherstone back in 1957: they’re the original plastic pink flamingos. (Well,
not the original originals, but we’ll get to that on page 123.) Featherstone
created the first pink flamingos as part of his job with Union Products, an
American manufacturer of plastic lawn ornaments, and they have since
become a staple on American lawns – an icon of popular culture – spawning
a number of knock-off flamingo species. Featherstone was trained as a
sculptor at the school of the Worcester Art Museum, and legally speaking,
at least, his pink flamingos are sculptures. Does that mean they’re art?

Good question.

In 1996, the satirical science magazine Annals of Improbable Research
awarded Featherstone the tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Prize in Art. If plastic
pink flamingos are art – even if they’re bad art – does that mean they mean
something? If so, what? And how would we know? Would we need to ask
Featherstone? If they aren’t art, what standards should I judge them by?

The New York Times calls the Featherstone flamingo ‘[l]ess hideous than
a garden gnome, more diplomatic than a lawn jockey’.1 Calling garden
gnomes ‘hideous’ seems a little harsh; calling lawn jockeys ‘undiplomatic’
seems more than a little charitable. Let’s start with the gnomes: what makes
them hideous, or at least more hideous than plastic pink flamingos? Is that
just a matter of preference, or is there some fact of the matter of which is
more hideous? Can I tell just by looking at a gnome or flamingo that one is
more hideous than the other? Professor Robert Thomson once suggested:
‘As iconic emblems of kitsch, there are two pillars of cheesy campiness in the
American pantheon. One is the velvet Elvis. The other is the pink flamingo.’2

xii Preface

Is kitschiness a bad thing to have? What about cheesiness? For that matter,
what about downright ugliness? As for lawn jockeys, would it be wrong
to put one on your lawn? How about on the cover of your book? If lawn
jockeys are immoral depictions of African Americans, does that make them
bad art? Not art at all? Does morality have anything to do with aesthetics?

Featherstone’s original pink flamingos were advertised with instructions
‘Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape.’ Thousands upon thousands of
Americans seem to have followed those instructions. Indeed, the flamingos
on the cover of this book now reside on my front lawn. What do you think
the chances are that they have beautified my yard? My neighbourhood?
Would my lawn be prettier if, instead, a pair of real pink flamingos had
descended upon it?

Featherstone’s pink flamingos are pink because they’re made with plastic
that has been dyed pink. Real pink flamingos – the kind that hatch from
eggs – are pink because of all of the beta-carotene-loaded algae that they
eat. Does knowing that make them more beautiful? Less beautiful? Does it
matter at all? Would it matter to you if they were just dyed pink?

Although plastic pink flamingos don’t tend to come up much in aesthetics
and the philosophy of art, the questions they raise certainly do. None of these
are easy questions, and I’m not going to tell you the answers. If philosophy
came with easy answers, most philosophers probably wouldn’t do it. I have
views of my own on at least some of these questions, but I’m not going to tell
you what those are either. That isn’t what this book is about. Rather, this text
is designed to introduce you to a number of the core issues in aesthetics and
the philosophy of art, some of which have bothered thinkers since antiquity,
and most of which still bother philosophers today. Other questions are quite
new. We will consider an array of theories and arguments, both historical
and contemporary, leaving it up to you to figure out which view, if any, is the
best view. Perhaps they all miss the mark, and you have the best view – if so,
all the better for aesthetics. Philosophy is a dialectical discipline – it grows
through ongoing investigation, consideration and discussion. This book is
written to give you the background and tools to engage in and contribute
to that discussion.

Ultimately, aesthetics and the philosophy of art are about things in
the world – things like the Featherstone pink flamingo. As much as the
philosophers who ask them, it is things like these that raise philosophical
questions and challenge philosophical theories. As such, I provide a variety
of examples throughout the text to help raise, illustrate and – in some
cases – complicate these issues. In particular, each chapter opens with an

Preface xiii

extended case to serve as a starting point to motivate the problems in the
chapter, and to operate as a touchstone through the discussion. A number
of these are new to this edition. Each chapter closes with a number of tools
for readers, including a short chapter summary, a timeline of artworks and
philosophical views discussed through the chapter, an index of key terms
and concepts from the chapter, and a guide to further reading on the topics
discussed. As well, regarding the idea that aesthetics and the philosophy of
art are dialectical in nature, I have provided a list of three or four questions
that have been left unresolved in each chapter. Some of these have been
addressed elsewhere by philosophers, but most have not.

In addition to the eight chapters in this book, I have included an
extended Introduction, meant to provide a historical grounding to the
topics discussed in depth in the chapters. Much of the history of aesthetics
and the philosophy of art tends to go overlooked by contemporary philoso-
phers (with the exceptions of Plato, Aristotle, Hume and Kant). However,
the history of philosophy is rich with discussion on issues fundamental to
contemporary aesthetics. And so, while historical discussion is interwoven
into each chapter, the Introduction provides a developmental overview
of the discipline, from its beginnings in pre-Socratic thinking up to
the nineteenth century, where the project of defining ‘art’ – the topic of
Chapter 1 – begins in earnest.

I owe many thanks to my editor Colleen Coalter and designers
[Cover Designer] and Fakenham Prepress Solutions [and anyone else at
Bloomsbury who I haven’t thought of ] for their effort and encouragement
throughout the creation of this edition. I want to thank my many friends
and colleagues who have supported this book, particularly Craig Derksen,
Cynthia Freeland, Sherri Irvin, Francesca di  Poppa and Danny Nathan.
I especially want to thank my wife, Delaina Pearson, who now probably
knows far more about the ontology of art than most other soil scientists,
and yet doesn’t openly complain about this. Finally, I want to thank the two
anonymous reviewers whose early feedback helped to shape the current
edition of this text, and my many, many students who have helped to shape
not only how I teach aesthetics and the philosophy of art, but how I think
about them as well.

xiv

Introduction: Aesthetics and
the Philosophy of Art, An

Extremely Brief History

I. On art and beauty
Within philosophy, ‘aesthetics’ and ‘the philosophy of art’ are often treated
as interchangeable terms, and indeed both tend to refer to the same body
of interrelated questions in the field. The meaning of ‘philosophy of art’ is
clear enough – it refers to those issues in philosophy that pertain to art:
to painting and sculpture, to literature and theatre, and so on. ‘Aesthetics’,
meanwhile, can be a trickier issue. The term itself was not coined until the
eighteenth century, when it was used by the German philosopher Alexander
Baumgarten to describe perception and judgement by means of the senses,
as opposed to the intellect. Traditionally, however, talk of aesthetics is
couched in terms of beauty, and such talk has a much longer history in
philosophy. In contemporary discussion, a great many terms are likewise
treated as aesthetic ones – elegance, gracefulness, sublimity, and certainly
the opposite of beauty, ugliness; however, beauty tends to be regarded as
the central concept upon which these others depend. The lumping together
of ‘aesthetics’ and ‘the philosophy of art’ is, as such, perhaps not difficult to
understand. Certainly, we judge artworks using aesthetic terms, and there
seems no greater compliment for a work of art than to judge it beautiful. Yet,

Chapter Outline

I. On art and beauty 1
II. The ancient period 2
III. The Middle Ages 8
IV. The modern period 10

2 Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art

we also find beauty in nature, in the human form, and perhaps in everyday
items, and these too concern aestheticians. Conversely, contemporary art
seems less and less concerned with beauty, and more and more concerned
with mankind, with society and with art itself. Nevertheless, throughout
the history of Western philosophy, issues of beauty and issues of art have a
habit of becoming intertwined, and it is the purpose of this introduction to
highlight some of the central threads in this tradition before turning in the
book to a selection of topics that preoccupy contemporary aesthetics.

Strictly speaking, this introduction is not necessary for an understanding
of the chapters to follow. However, all too often it seems, contemporary
philosophers of art tend to ignore the long history of aesthetics, a valuable
foundation upon which to study today’s central topics of discussion.
That being said, it simply is not possible to give a full and comprehensive
history of Western aesthetics in so small as space as this. Rather, I will
focus here on only some of the central lines of thinking in the history of
the philosophy of art, and on some of its central figures. Indeed, at several
points, entire centuries will be skipped over and any number of important
philosophers will be left out entirely. For a more complete history, I would
recommend either Monroe C. Beardsley’s Aesthetics from Classical Greece to
the Present (University of Alabama Press, 1996) or the even more compre-
hensive History of Aesthetics in three volumes by Władysław Tatarkiewicz
(Continuum, 2005).

II. The ancient period

The Pythagoreans and the Sophists
In the Western tradition, aesthetics and the philosophy of art find their
origin where philosophy generally is born – in ancient Greece – and
perhaps the first philosophical approach to beauty and the arts comes from
the man credited with coining the term ‘philosophy’, Pythagoras. Although
most of what we know of Pythagoras comes from references written long
after he died, a number of views have been attributed to him and his
followers. Pythagoras is perhaps best known for his Pythagorean theorem
– the principle that the square of the length of the hypotenuse of a right-
angled triangle is equal to the sum of the square of the lengths of the other
two sides – though the theorem was only a small part of a much grander
view of the universe. Pythagoras’s followers, the Pythagoreans, and perhaps

Introduction: Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, An Extremely Brief History 3

Pythagoras himself, believed that underlying everything in the universe
was mathematics – that the universe was harmonious, ordered and regular,
and that such ordered regularity was a guarantee of beauty. On this basis,
they believed that beauty itself was a quantifiable and objective principle of
nature.

Pythagoras is credited with discovering the mathematical basis to
musical intervals – that musical strings at fixed lengths relative to each
other produce harmonious sounds, and that the relation between these is
grounded in simple numeric ratios. Pythagoras was not interested in music
as a distinct philosophical project, however, nor even as an artistic pursuit,
but rather for the part it played in his larger philosophical framework. First,
music offered insight into the laws of order, harmony and regularity of
nature, and so knowledge of the universe itself. (As such, music was thought
by the Pythagoreans to be a discovery, and not an invention, of mankind.)
Second, because the soul too was thought by the Pythagoreans to have a
mathematical basis, and to be harmoniously or inharmoniously propor-
tioned, music was thought to have the power both to express and to purify
the soul – to allow the soul temporary freedom from the body.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these Pythagorean views.
Pythagoras’s discovery of the mathematical nature of musical intervals is
the fundamental basis to musical theory today. But more than this, the view
that beauty has an objective, mathematical basis, and that music allows for
a purging of the soul, would resonate both through the arts and philosophy
in the centuries to come.

The view that beauty is grounded in mathematical principles had an
enormous effect not only on music, but also on the plastic arts: architecture,
sculpture and painting. On the notion that beauty followed discoverable
laws, the classical Greek artists worked to develop principled, quantifiable
rules of art. In music, these were called the nomos (or law); in the plastic
arts, these were called the canon (or measure). The sculptor Polyclitus was
perhaps the first – or at least the most famous – to set out a list of such rules
in his Canon. Polyclitus’s school lasted for three generations, but the effect
of his Canon lasted much longer, and can be found throughout the sculpture
and architecture of the ancient world and well beyond. Others wrote on
rules of proportion in music, in song and in painting.

The Pythagorean views of beauty and the arts were not without their
detractors, however. In particular, challenges came from the Sophists,
another group of early Greek philosophers. To the notion that beauty is
objective and quantifiable, the Sophists proposed the theory that beauty

4 Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art

is relative to the appreciator – to the sort of thing that he is, to his own
particular tastes and to his circumstances. Where the Pythagoreans were
objectivists about beauty, the Sophists were firm subjectivists. And although
the Sophist perspective did not have the immediate effect in the arts that the
Pythagorean view did, this counterproposal to the Pythagorean view would
continue to challenge thinking about the arts for centuries to come. To the
Pythagorean view that music had the power to purify the soul, the Sophist
Gorgias suggested that poetry – through words – moved audiences to terror,
pity and sadness, allowing audience members to feel others’ problems as
their own. Gorgias compared the effect to that of drugs, ‘poisoning’ the soul.
Theatre enchanted its audience and threw a spell over it, and so its effects
could be as negative as they could be positive.

Socrates and Plato
Socrates is considered by many to be the father of Western philosophy.
Because Socrates himself never wrote down any of his philosophy, what
we know about his views we get primarily from the dialogues written by
his pupils, Plato and Xenophon, in which the authors chronicle Socrates’
encounters with various philosophers and public figures. However, because
of this, it can be difficult at times to determine where Socrates ends and his
students begin.

In Xenophon’s dialogue, the Memorabilia, Socrates is challenged by the
philosopher Aristippus about the nature of beauty. Socrates argues that a
thing capable of being used by man is beautiful when it is well suited to its
purpose. What is beautiful in wrestling may be ugly in running, and vice
versa. In the wrong conditions, he suggests, a painting is more apt to take
joy away than give it. Here, Socrates’ notion of beauty seems largely synon-
ymous with the ‘good’, and seems heavily influenced by the relativist views
of the Sophists. Later in the Memorabilia, Socrates questions the painter
Parrhasius and the sculptor Cleiton about the representational nature of
the plastic arts. The artist, Socrates observes, does not merely represent
the human form as it is found in any particular model, but takes the most
beautiful aspects from many models and puts them together. At one and
the same time, the artist imitates and idealizes – not only in the propor-
tions of the body, but also in representing the soul through the expression
depicted in the representation. Here, Socrates’ thinking seems to draw on
the Pythagorean view. In Xenophon’s Socrates, then, we find the central
clash in the ancient Greeks’ central concepts of beauty.

Introduction: Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, An Extremely Brief History 5

In an early dialogue by Plato, Hippias Major, Socrates tackles the notion
of beauty with the Sophist, Hippias. Socrates argues, contrary to the view
expressed in the Memorabilia, that beauty cannot be equated with the
good, nor with what is useful. Rather, Socrates suggests, we might think of
beauty as that which makes us feel joy through sight and sound. However
appealing, Socrates argues that such an understanding leaves out the beauty
of noble deeds and laws, which are grounded neither in sight nor sound.
Socrates struggles, but is unable to reach a satisfactory definition of beauty
in the Hippias Major. In the later dialogues of the Timaeus, the Philebus
and the Sophist, however, Plato’s Socrates returns to a Pythagorean notion,
suggesting that what is beautiful is proportionate, and what is dispropor-
tionate is always ugly.

In the Ion, Plato turns to Gorgias’s suggestion that poets could enchant,
and so poison, their listeners. Ion is a rhapsode, a dramatic reader of poetry
– in particular, the works of Homer. When Socrates encounters him, Ion
has just won first prize at the festival of Asclepius, the god of healing. Ion
is understandably a bit high on his achievement. Socrates draws Ion into
a discussion about where he gets his ability to so wonderfully interpret,
embellish and deliver Homer’s poetry. When Ion is unable to explain his
ability, Socrates suggests that rather that being a skill, Ion’s ability comes
from divine inspiration. Where the poets are compelled by the gods,
Socrates suggests, the rhapsode is in turn inspired by the poets. Ion admits
that, when reciting Homer, he is often overcome with emotion, and Socrates
points out that the same happens to audience members. In this way, Socrates
contends, neither the poet, nor the rhapsode, nor the audience member is
in his right mind when dealing with poetry. As the poet is overcome with a
tragedy, so too is the rhapsode, and in turn the audience.

In the later Platonic dialogue, the Republic, Socrates suggests that while
we praise the poet’s ability to so affect us, this is at odds with our desire to
keep our emotions in check. By the time Plato writes the Republic, it seems
fairly clear that he is incorporating his own philosophies, and inserting
them into the mouth of Socrates. Plato, through the character of Socrates,
suggests that the poet uses imitation to appeal to the emotional part of the
soul, which is ordinarily kept in check by the soul’s rational aspect. With
his rationality overwhelmed by his emotions, man is out of control, and
imitation is to blame. The representational arts, Plato believed, had another
failing as well: by giving us only a small part – an image – of the subject, they
misrepresent reality. In depicting courage or honour or even man, the artist
only gives us the appearance of what he imitates, and gives us no access to

6 Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art

its true form. Being necessarily particular, any such representation cannot
represent courage or honour or man per se, but only a shadow of these
things, only the barest suggestion of what they are about. There is courage,
and then there are Achilles’ acts of courage, and then there is Homer’s
representation of Achilles’ courageous acts in the Iliad. Rather than getting
closer to the ideal – as Xenophon’s Socrates contends – the artist’s represen-
tation is far removed from the true form of courage. Neither Homer nor
Ion know about courage – rather, only about its appearance – and it is this
appearance, Plato contends, which so appeals to the soul’s emotional aspect
and overcomes our reason.

In his final dialogue, the s, Plato seems to have reached a conclusion
on the matter of beauty and art. Here, through the character of the Athenian,
Plato suggests that the sense of beauty – grounded in such formal matters
as proportion, harmony and order – is a sense peculiar to man, and which
connects him to the gods. It is the ideal arrangement of parts that makes
these things beautiful, and not merely how they appear to the audience.
He voices approval of those works which adhere to these proper qualities,
and disapproval of those which abandon such forms and through imitation
instead appeal to man’s harmful, irrational pleasures.

Aristotle
Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, wrote several treatises on aesthetics – substantially
more than any before him – but only part of one survives – the Poetics –
and this seems to be a collection of his lectures prepared by his students.
Although originally covering theatrical tragedy and comedy, the section
of the Poetics dealing with comedy has been lost. However, from what
remains we can find much of Aristotle’s thinking about the arts. Where
Plato condemned the imitative arts for being far removed from the true
forms of things, Aristotle praised the imitative arts for their imitation.
Aristotle contends that all of us are born both with the instinct to imitate
and the instinct to enjoy works of imitation. He notes that where the sight
of something causes us pain, contemplating an image of that same thing
may give us pleasure, and the arts allow us to exercise this uniquely human
capacity. It is not what is imitated that gives us pleasure, Aristotle argues,
but rather imitation itself.

Imitation, for Aristotle, is not simply slavish copying. The imitative
arts – painting, sculpture, poetry, music – may represent things as they
really are, as better than they are or as worse than they are. The artist may

Introduction: Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, An Extremely Brief History 7

represent things as they are said or thought to be or as they ought to be.
As such, he may embellish on reality, and so surpass it. Contrary to Plato’s
argument that the imitative arts are faulty in only giving us the particular
and not what it really true, Aristotle suggests the opposite. Poetry, he says,
is more profound than history: where history deals with particulars and so
represents only some particular thing, poetry trades in what is universal to
man, and allows us to present something general. The artist does not merely
imitate; rather, in doing so, he creates.

Where Plato argued in the Republic that in appealing to the emotional
part of us, poetry is to be condemned, Aristotle contends that the instinct
to create and enjoy imitation is part of what makes us uniquely human. And
where Plato’s Socrates argues in the Ion that in being overcome by poetry, we
descend into madness, Aristotle suggests that the …