Contemporary Aesthetics course Tate Modern - notes from session one

Contemporary Aesthetics, Tate Modern

Reading 35 from set book: Morris Weitz 'The Role of Theory in Aesthetics'

'Art' Can't Be Defined

We considered Morris Weitz's anti-theoretical position - he declares 'Art' and its sub-concepts (e.g. collage) to be Open Concepts and explains traditional aesthetic theorizing as resting on the mistake of misidentifying Art as the sort of concept that can be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (remember necessary = pre-requisite; sufficient = guarantee). Because of the influence of Wittgenstein's notion of a family resemblance term, Weitz's approach is sometimes described as neo-Wittgensteinian. Basically he opposes the idea that Art and its sub-concepts are the sorts of concepts that lend themselves to definition - instead we rely on a pattern of criss-crossing and overlapping resemblances with paradigm cases of art or of the subconcept and as a community of language users make a judgement (presumably usually a tacit one) about whether or not to extend the concept to cover the new or controversial case.

Art theory of the past isn't useless though - Weitz suggests we read it as recommending paying greater attention to particular features of art (representation, expression, form or whatever) that may have been neglected in the past rather than what it purports to be, namely an attempt at definition.

For Weitz, any attempt to close the concept Art (or its sub-concepts) risks foreclosing on creativity...

His conclusion about the logical impossibility of defining Art is too strong - his supporting evidence is:  art theory or the past has failed; the open concept idea has some plausibility as an explanation; and art is adventurous and thrives on not being constrained. None of these, even jointly, leads to the conclusion that art, logically, cannot be defined, only that it may be difficult to define and possibly to the conclusion that the open concept approach is the best available explanation of what is going on.

Listen to a podcast interview on the definition of art

For further discussion of this topic, see my book The Art Question(Routledge), especially Chapter 3 'Family Resemblances'.

Next week: Readings 36 and 37. The Artworld and the Institutional Theory of Art.