A representational theory of artefacts and artworks

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 353-370

  Dilworth, John ^a  

^a WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 25444440780     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/41.4.353     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. N. Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), ch. III, sec. 3, 'The Unfakable'.
2. Various writers hold that there is some kind of non-identical, part-whole relation between artefacts and artworks; for Danto, an artwork is a whole which includes an artefact and an interpretation as its parts - see, for example, A. C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1981),
3. while for Margolis an artwork is embodied in an artefact - see, for example, J. Margolis, Art and Philosophy (Brighton: Harvester, 1980).
4. Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1991).
5. Goodman, Languages of Art.
6. Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, ch 1.
7. Others providing arguments for the distinctness of artefacts and artworks include Margolis, Art and Philosophy and R. Wollheim, Art and Its Objects: With Six Supplementary Essays, 2nd edn (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U.P., 1980).
8. Support for a 'type' view as applied to at least some works of art is provided by (among others) N. Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998),
9. G. Currie, An Ontology of Art (New York: St Martin's Press, 1989),
10. Margolis, Art and Philosophy,
11. and Wollheim, Art and Its Objects.
12. Further arguments against a type view are given in my article 'Artworks Versus Designs', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 41, no. 2 (April 2001), pp. 162-177, where it is shown (among other things) that two distinct artworks could be associated with the same artefact, so that on a type view (per impossibile) a single artefact would have to be a token of two distinct types of the same general kind.
13. Two useful works on this and other features of representation are D. Lopes, Understanding Pictures (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996),
14. and R. Wollheim, Painting as an Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP., 1987).
15. Lopes, Understanding Pictures, ch. 7 defends such a view.
16. For example, Peter Kivy, 'How to Forge a Musical Work', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 58, no. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 233-235, argues that musical works can be forged under certain conditions.
17. Thus I can agree with the arguments deployed by Christopher Janaway in 'What a Musical Forgery Isn't', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 39, no. 1 (1999), pp. 62-71,
18. and 'Two Kinds of Artistic Duplication', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 37, no. 1 (1997), pp. 1-14, to the effect that in general forgery of musical works is not possible, since he takes no account of my 'atypical' cases.
19. Kivy, 'How to Forge a Musical Work', p. 234.
20. Jerrold Levinson, quoted in Kivy, 'How to Forge a Musical Work', footnote 3.
21. and A. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia U.P., 1986).
22. A. Danto, 'The Artworld', Journal of Philosophy, vol. 61 (1964), p. 577.
23. A recent and ongoing debate between Danto and Joseph Margolis usefully draws attention to other problematic issues concerning Danto's view: see J. Margolis, 'Farewell to Danto and Goodman', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 38, no. 4 (October 1998), pp. 353-374;
24. A. Danto, 'Indiscernibility and Perception: A Reply to Joseph Margolis', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 39, no. 4 (October 1999), pp. 321-329;
25. and J. Margolis, 'A Closer Look at Danto's Account of Art and Perception', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 40, no. 3 (July 2000), pp. 326-339.