Fisher, Ch. 5: Avant-Garde (AG) Art and Dickie's Institutional Theory of Art

Def of AG art

"Most advanced art of its own time"
Problem: But this applies to Mozart, but he wasn't AG artist,

Though his works sometimes met with hostility and misunderstanding,
He didn't intend to confuse or offend his listener's taste, as do many AG artists
Nor did Mozart see himself as part of artistic group aimed at being social and artistically revolutionary

20^th century AG musicians (Eric Satie/ Stravinsky), consciously reject conventional musical taste

AG challenges conventional ideas about art (including beauty, originality, structure, craft)

Modern dance developed out of Ballet by rejecting convention of beauty basic to ballet.
Dances designed for people who don't know how to dance

Doubt that their dancing is beautiful (graceful)

Challenges conventional values in general (not just art values)

For example, Otternerff's Shoot Dog Film (moral values)

Great deal of AG art since WWI: Artists believe expanding boundaries of art is the principle obligation of artists

Duchamp illustrates these points:

"Taste is the enemy of art" (conventional taste?)
"Fact RM regarded with same reverence as objects of art probably means I have failed to solve problem of trying to do away with art entirely

Art in a specific, traditional sense

LHOOQ: Mona Lisa with mustache and goatee (assisted ready made): poking fun at cultural icon and attitude of unthinking worship of famous artworks

Some AG art has no point; rejecting idea that art has to have a point

"Whole point is to be gloriously pointless"
"It exists entirely for itself; like humanity, art is entirely self-validating" (does this mean it does have a point?)

So Tolstoy is mistaken in insisting that art needs to justify itself by showing how its value/benefits outweigh its costs?

Does art need to have a point? (an "artistic vision?")

Shoot dog film (artist not discuss its purpose)
One might think that the best way to express the point of the artwork to view the artwork itself and deny that rational discussion of the artwork convey's its meaning any better

Strange to criticize AG art for being ugly or repulsive or confusing or pointless, since this is exactly what they are trying to do

Worries/criticisms of AG art

One common strategy for attacking role/importance of art in society is to attack AG art

Attack art that many see as incomprehensible and even repulsive
Critics of art feed on hostility toward AG art

Some argue that, AG art strips art of clear reason for being and thus any clear value to society
AG art only possible because of high status art enjoys and AG relentlessly undermined the reasons commonly offered for that status

E.g., LHOOQ depends on high status of Mona Lisa

Where can art go next? Leading art toward a dead end?

AG ART ARGUES THAT ART NEEDN'T BE:
Beautiful: Duchamp's Fountain
Original: Sherrie Levine photography are exact copies of earlier photos
Involve craft: Ready mades
Involve skill: Roped (Montano and Hsieh) (all the skill is in conceptualization)
Made by artist: (Carl Andre sends bricks and lets museum arrange them)
Be structured: Jason Pollock (1947) flinging house paint onto canvas on the floor
Set outside of life: (Living Theater)
Distinction between audience and artist: Audience becomes part of play (Living Theater)
Remain the same over time: John Cage's music is different each time it is played

George Dickie's Institutional Theory of Art (1969, APQ?)

Response to challenge of defining art posed by AG art?

Reject's Weitz's idea that no def, no common property to art, that no nec/suff conditions, that only family resemblances between artworks (network of overlapping and crisscrossing similarities)

That the subclasses of art (music, poetry, novels) can't be defined, doesn't mean the class itself can't be
Art could have a common property, even though its subclasses do not

People who have been unable to define art looking for common property in wrong place

Look in art work itself
Look for an exhibited property

What makes something art is a non-exhibited social property dealing with relation of artifact to social institutions

Art is

An artifact
On which society or subgroup confers the status of candidate for appreciation

Appreciation: "in experiencing the qualities of a thing one finds them worthy or valuable"

What makes something a work of art is that the institutions of the art world grants it the status of art

Dickie, art institutional; Danto, art-historical

Dickie: Anything can be a work of art if it gains that status
Explains how Duchamp's RM can be art

RM are art as artworld accepted them
Museums, art critics, art historians give them attention

Evidence that a something has had this status conferred on it include: Hanging in a museum or performed in a theater

So not an inherent feature of the art work (exhibited), but contextual, historical feature, the work's social relation to the art world, what we do with the objects we call art.

Being a work of art is a social property
Follows that something is not art if no artworld exists

Analogy with common law marriage (being married without a ceremony), art gets this status without any specific ceremony

Dickie's responses to objections/questions:
What about nonhuman artifact

Ant scratched out the Mona Lisa in a world with no humans, not art
Chimp painting hung in Chicago's field Natural History museum is not art
Chimp painting hung in Chicago Art institute is art
Or driftwood

What about artworks never appreciated?

Need only be a "candidate" for appreciation

What about artworks that are never displayed?

Because many artworks don't get to public display, artists can confer this status themselves
They can confer status of candidate for appreciation on their works
Artists need not confer this status; they may not view their artworks that way, but others might view this object in that way

Michelangelo's doodles on a privy door

Ability of artists to do this comes from their status in art world

For example, Ned couldn't do this? As I'm not a member of artworld

Dickie's view is not a simple conventionalism: Not the view that this is art if I say it is; for only the artworld can confer such status.

These guys can do this stuff, we can't
So it is the institutional setting, context that makes it art
You and I do can't do it, for we are not in the right setting
You and I can create the same intrinsic properties, perhaps, but not the same institutional, or historical product
Criticism that says-"I could do this too, so it is not art"--won't work; as we can't do this

What about fact that many artifacts that are appreciated are not art? (Something Dickie acknowledges)

Plumber laying his wears out on a table for you

Though we or he might appreciate these facets/pipes, he is not offering them as candidates for appreciation? And he his not a member of the art world.

Baseball game appreciated but not art

Artworld is not offering it as a candidate for appreciation

Fisher's suggestion: Art provides for a more concentrated occasion for audience to exercise its appreciative capacities

Dickie needs a theory or account of appreciation

Problem of circularity of saying it is artworld that grants this status

Which institution grants this status? (Art world)

Fisher worried that this def of art would allow pop and commercial music to be considered art

Could avoid this by limiting art institutions to orchestra and music schools
But I'm not sure why this is a problem, especially given that (see below)

For Dickie, nothing follows from its being art concerning its quality

Criticism that some art is not an artifact, but a natural object

Weitz says that artifactuality not nec condition for art as people say "this piece of driftwood is a lovely piece of sculpture"
Dickie's response: this is not a descriptive statement, but an evaluative one (not really saying this is art, but saying that this is beautiful, lovely object)
Objection: what if we place driftwood in art museum?

Reply? Then we have turned it into an artifact by our conceptualization and treatment of it?
What it is, depends on its context; in the museum context, it is an artifact?