Notes for 12/4/2025

 

12/4/2025

[Please complete the course evaluation.]

What is your most useless talent?

 

 

What, exactly, is art?

 

As with many concepts, dictionary definitions are inadequate. (Example: “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects” – Merriam-Webster)

 

 

Some forms of art do seem to involve skill or technique.

 

(La Pieta by Michelangelo)

(Great wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai)

Other works of art emphasize ‘creative imagination’:

 

(Les Voyageurs by Bruno Catalano)
 

(Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen)

But then there are pieces of art that don’t seem to require either skill or creative imagination (though the crucial question is what, exactly, is meant by ‘creative imagination’):

 

(My bed by Tracy Emin)

 

(Artist’s shit by Piero Manzoni)

 

 

(Untitled by Cy Twombly – (this piece sold at auction for almost $70 million))

 

Can the absence of something be art?

 

Art includes more than painting and sculpture. There is also performance art:

 

 

(The artist is present by Marina Abramovic)

 

Photography poses a problem for some attempts to define art.

 

 

Photography can sometimes involve intention, or skill, or creativity, but sometimes they seem to involve pure luck.

 

 

Dance is usually considered art:

 

 

 

 

 

 

But what kind of dance?

If dance is art, what about cheerleading?

 

 

 

Are martial arts art?

 

What is the difference between a sport and an art?

 

 

What about a performing group assuming the guise of a basketball team?

 

Music?

Attempts to define art in terms of beauty or aesthetic appreciation have generally been abandoned.

 

 

One type of definition that has been proposed in place of the aesthetic appreciation model is the communicative model:

 

Art is the attempt by the artist to communicate an idea or feeling to the viewer.

 

 “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands-on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience them.” (Leo Tolstoy)

One problem with this is that in many cases, it is not clear that artists are, in fact, attempting to communicate anything. If asked what they are attempting to communicate, or what idea their art expresses, many artists admit that they don’t know.

 

 

 

The communicative approach also seems too broad, since it appears to let in many cases of things that don’t seem like they should count as art.

 

 

 

 

For example, assembly instructions:

 

 

 

 

Much of language has the purpose of communicating ideas or feelings, but doesn’t count as art:

 

Saying, “I love you”, giving someone a gift to make them happy, describing a burglary suspect to the police, etc.

 

 

This last example also raises the question of the status of ‘practical art’.

 

 

 

Do police sketches count as art?

 

What about commercial art?

 

What about architecture?

Fashion design:

 

Product designs:

 

 

Or how about AI-generated art?

 

Is this art, or merely a simulation of art?

Who is the artist?

Jason Allen generated this using Midjourney. Is Allen the artist? Midjourney? All the artists the model was trained on? Is there an artist?

 

What about partial use of AI?

 

William Kennick presents a thought experiment: Suppose someone is asked to bring out ONLY the works of art from a warehouse. Kennick thinks this task could be completed successfully. Do you agree?

 

 

Alternatively, suppose a LLM was trained on all the works of art in all the art museums and galleries in the world. Would the LLM be able to successfully identify new works of art and distinguish them from things that are not art?

 

 

 

 

‘Family Resemblance’ theory of art (influenced by Wittgenstein):

There are no necessary and sufficient conditions for being art. Rather, instances of art are grouped together by vague similarities in the same kind of way as family resemblances.

 

 

 

An objection to the family resemblance view is that it permits too many false positives and false negatives.

  

What difference might it make if art is defined one way rather than another?

(Flagpole case)