With regard to developing a philosophy of art
history and clarifying the role of art history in aesthetics, then, analytic
philosophers are in a difficult position, since generally speaking they cannot
or will not accommodate historicism. But
if there’s one thing that’s subject to historical drift and transformation it’s
the artworld. Just as linguistic
theories of meaning should engage the historicity of language, so should
philosophical aesthetics embrace the dense variety of artworks in the fullness
of their sociohistorical contexts.
Instead, artworks have been made to serve theory. For example, the problem of defining art has
often been addressed in purely deductive and conceptual terms, with examples of
a few actual or imagined artworks (or hypothetical warehouses filled with items
that may or may not be artworks) that are selected in order to make a
philosophical point. In many cases,
highly atypical examples (like Duchamp’s Fountain
or Warhol’s Brillo Box or pieces of
driftwood) have been used to generate theories of art in general. Aesthetic theories have been built around
artworks with little or no attention paid to either problems of interpretation
generated from within the discipline of art history or the immediate facture of
the medium; for example, Nelson Goodman’s approach to aesthetics suffered from
“an insufficient modulation of theory to do justice to the material reality of
art [caused by] a wish to explain all of the mechanisms of meaning in terms of
a relatively small set of concepts.”[1] Artworks have been interpreted along lines
suggested by a favorite theory in philosophical aesthetics without introducing
the specific social and technical aspects of its production and reception, and
so on. So a closer encounter with art
history is essential to the development of philosophical aesthetics, but will
require a paradigm shift in the direction both of a strong historicism and also
simultaneously toward the immediate, sensuous materiality of the artwork For all artworks, what is essential is what
is being said and how what is said becomes a physically real and culturally
effective communication in an object or performance, and this requires minute
attention to detail, always within the context of a background or milieu, and
always within the multiple frameworks of its relationships to other artworks.
[1]. Paul Mattick, “Form and Theory: Meyer Schapiro’s Theory and Philosophy of Art,” The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 55, #1 Winter, 1997 p. 18
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