To Dickie, “A work of art in the classifactory sense is (1) an artifact (2) a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the artworld).” Looking to the dictionary definition this would mean that art can be “any object made by human beings” that is put up for election to hold the prominence of being called ‘a work of art’ by those of the artworld; and those of the artworld make up all “the core personnel” as well as “every person who sees himself as a member of the artworld”--which would mean that anyone wishing to be a member could be by simply saying it, regardless of whether or not they have even seen any art. Dickie’s attempt at defining art as well as who is entitled to become a member of the artworld seems to me, and in the end even a bit to himself, to be “viciously circular.” Still, though, he puts up a hard-fought (in my opinion losing) battle to defend his claim stating that he has taken up all of this space writing about the artworld and that this influx of information to the reader should be enough to accept his ideas as theory. Sorry, Dickie, but this, to me is not an instance where one can try to define art then, in the end, say that "focus[ing] narrowly on the definition” is not enough.
Yea, I can definately see where you are coming from on this point. I definately was not that fond of what Dickie had to say when we went over him in class. I think that he is a classic example of someone trying to sound smarter than they actually are, and most of his point have been brought up in different conversations about other philosophers anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest issue that I have is that he is horribly vague. Obviously art has to be an artifact, its about the only distinguishing factor between human intereaction and nature. When it comes down to it though, I feel that the classifications of what makes art the art that it is requires more defining, despite how difficult that may be. All in all, I feel that Dickie was just a cheap reiteration from our past genius' and he does not get that much praise in my book.