Theories of Art and the Definition of Art
This area asks what, if anything, makes something a work of art, surveying the classical attempts to define art and the anti-essentialist challenge that no such definition is possible.
Definition
A definition of art states the necessary and sufficient conditions for an object or performance to count as a work of art; the area also includes anti-essentialist and procedural positions that reject or replace this classical aim.
Scope
This area covers the philosophical project of defining art: representational, expressive, and formal theories that identify a single essence of art; the mid-twentieth-century anti-essentialist objection that 'art' is an open concept; and the procedural responses that locate arthood in an institutional or historical context rather than in intrinsic features of objects. It treats the meta-question of whether art can be defined at all, alongside the leading first-order definitions. It does not cover the analysis of aesthetic properties or experience, treated in a separate area.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Can art be defined by necessary and sufficient conditions, or is it an open concept?
- Is there a single property or function common to all and only works of art?
- Do representational, expressive, and formal theories capture what makes something art?
- Can arthood be conferred by an institution or by an object's relation to art history?
Key theories
- Anti-essentialism (the open-concept thesis)
- Following Wittgenstein, Weitz argues that art is an open concept held together by family resemblances rather than shared essence, so that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can define it.
- The institutional theory
- Dickie holds that a work of art is an artifact upon which some person acting on behalf of the artworld has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation, locating arthood in a social practice rather than in intrinsic features.
- Historical definitions
- Levinson defines art relationally and historically: an object is art if it is intended for regard in any of the ways earlier artworks were correctly regarded, anchoring the concept in art's own past.
History
Classical aesthetics from Plato and Aristotle through the eighteenth century treated art largely in terms of mimesis, before Romantic and modernist movements foregrounded expression and form. The arrival of readymades and conceptual art made intrinsic-feature definitions look untenable, prompting Weitz's 1956 anti-essentialist argument that art is an open concept. Subsequent decades saw a revival of definition through procedural strategies—Dickie's institutional theory and Levinson's historical definition—that locate arthood in context and tradition rather than in observable properties.
Debates
- Can art be defined at all?
- Anti-essentialists hold that the search for a real definition is misguided, while definists reply that procedural and historical accounts succeed where classical functionalist theories failed.
- Circularity in procedural definitions
- Critics charge that institutional and historical definitions are circular or regressive, since they explain art by reference to the artworld or to prior art, which themselves presuppose the concept being defined.
Key figures
- Morris Weitz
- George Dickie
- Arthur Danto
- Jerrold Levinson
- Noël Carroll
Related topics
Seminal works
- weitz1956
- dickie1974
- levinson1979
Frequently asked questions
- Why is defining art considered so difficult?
- Avant-garde works such as Duchamp's readymades share no obvious perceptible feature with paintings or symphonies, so any definition by intrinsic properties seems either to exclude genuine art or to admit too much; this motivated both anti-essentialism and procedural definitions.
- What is the artworld?
- In Dickie's institutional theory, the artworld is the loose network of practices, institutions, and roles—artists, curators, critics, audiences—within which the status of art is conferred on artifacts.