Definitions of Art [1 ed.] 9780801497940

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W eitz's Anti-essentialism

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failure of artists and aestheticians successfully to define art is no accident. Art is not susceptible to definition, he claims. The reasons he gives for his conclusion are philosophical, but no doubt a general dismay at the state of contemporary art might have pointed to his conclusion. W hen it looks as if anything at all might become (or be declared) art, the idea that something is an artwork because it shares with others of its kind a common essence looks to be implausible.

JtVeitz '.s Argument The quest for an essential definition of "artwork" is a quest for a nontrivial specification of the joindy necessary and sufficient condi­ tion for "artworkness," where the realization of this condition is essentially and not merely contingendy related to artworks' being artworks. Weitz's claim is not only that al! past attempts to define art have failed, but that any attempt to provide an essential definition of art îs doomed to failure for the reason that art has no essence-that no property is joindy necessary and sufficient for something's being an artwork. If we "look and see," he says, we will observe that there is no property common to all and only artworks. Weitz might have accepted that there are both some necessary and some sufficient properties for artworkness; his point is that there are no joindy necessary and sufficient conditions for artworkness. In fact, though, Weitz goes so far as to deny that there is any property com­ mon to all artworks; that is, he denies that there is any necessary condition for something's being an artwork. He thinks that the pos­ session of artifactuality is a necessary condition for something's being an artwork, if any propcrty îs. But he also holds that something can be made into an artwork without its also being made into an artifact. A piece of driftwood can be removed from the beach and becomes an artwork (without being artifactualized) in being presented as such within an art gallery. He concludes: not even artifactuality is a neces­ sary condition for artworkness; so there is no necessary condition for artworkncss.