Theory of art

Theorizing about art, on the other hand, is analogous to a theory of a natural phenomenon like gravity.

In contrast, a 'conception' is an individual attempt to grasp at the putative essence behind this common term while nobody has "access" to the concept.

[3] The formalist theory of art asserts that we should focus only on the formal properties of art—the "form", not the "content".

[5]According to Robert J. Yanal, Danto's essay, in which he coined the term artworld, outlined the first institutional theory of art.

Versions of the institutional theory were formulated more explicitly by George Dickie in his article "Defining Art" (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1969) and his books Aesthetics: An Introduction (1971) and Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (1974).

An early version of Dickie's institutional theory can be summed up in the following definition of work of art from Aesthetics: An Introduction: A work of art in the classificatory sense is 1) an artifact 2) on which some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the artworld) has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation.

The philosopher primarily associated with the historical definition of art is Jerrold Levinson (1979).

The question of whether a new artifact is art "is not factual, but rather a decision problem, where the verdict turns on whether or not we enlarge our set of conditions for applying the concept" (p. 32).

For Weitz, it is "the very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and novel creations", that makes the concept impossible to capture in a classical definition (as some static univocal essence).

While anti-essentialism was never formally defeated, it was challenged, and the debate over anti-essentialist theories was subsequently swept away by seemingly better essentialist definitions.

For example, consider two of Gaut's criteria: "possessing aesthetic merit" and "being expressive of emotion" (200, p. 28).

In 2021, the philosopher Jason Josephson Storm defended anti-essentialist definitions of art as part of a broader analysis of the role of macro-categories in the human sciences.

Specifically, he argued that most essentialist attempts to answer Weitz's original argument fail because the criteria they propose to define art are not themselves present or identical across cultures.

"[10]: 124 The theory of art is also impacted by a philosophical turn in thinking, not only exemplified by the aesthetics of Kant but is tied more closely to ontology and metaphysics in terms of the reflections of Heidegger on the essence of modern technology and the implications it has on all beings that are reduced to what he calls 'standing reserve', and it is from this perspective on the question of being that he explored art beyond the history, theory, and criticism of artistic production as embodied for instance in his influential opus: The Origin of the Work of Art.

Zangwill distinguishes three phases in the production of a work of art: In the creation of an artwork, the insight plays a causal role in bringing about actions sufficient for realizing particular aesthetic properties.

"[16] Artists, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, and programmers all use the notion of art in their respective fields and give it operational definitions that vary considerably.

[18] Another view, as important to the philosophy of art as "beauty", is that of the "sublime", elaborated upon in the twentieth century by the postmodern philosopher Jean-François Lyotard.

Perhaps art should be thought of as a cluster of related concepts in a Wittgensteinian fashion (as in Weitz or Beuys).

Marxist attempts to define art focus on its place in the mode of production, such as in Walter Benjamin's essay The Author as Producer,[20] and/or its political role in class struggle.

[21] Revising some concepts of the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, Gary Tedman defines art in terms of social reproduction of the relations of production on the aesthetic level.

[23] The Dadaist Tristan Tzara on the other hand saw the function of art in 1918 as the destruction of a mad social order.

For example, Tolstoy asserts that empathy for decadent members of the ruling class makes society worse, rather than better.

[26] Whatever one might think of this claim — and it does seem to undervalue the many other achievements of which human beings have shown themselves capable, both individually and collectively — it is true that art appears to possess a special capacity to endure ("live on") beyond the moment of its birth, in many cases for centuries or millennia.

This capacity of art to endure over time — what precisely it is and how it operates — has been widely neglected in modern aesthetics.