COMPARING ARTWORKS
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Henry John Pratt, B.A.
*****
The Ohio State University 2005
Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Lee B. Brown, Advisor
Professor Robert Kraut ______Professor Diana Raffman Adviser Philosophy Graduate Program Copyright by Henry John Pratt 2005 ABSTRACT
Judgments about the comparative value of artworks, both within and across categories, are central to art criticism.
Some philosophers, however, have thought that not all such comparisons are legitimate. Certain artworks might simply be too different for comparison, or perhaps the very practice of artistic comparison rests upon a mistake.
It is crucial, then, to examine and validate current critical practice concerning artistic comparisons. Despite various arguments to the contrary, I argue, there are no compelling reasons to abandon or substantially revise the ways in which artworks are customarily compared. This justification of art-critical practices has a startling implication: the methods by which normative comparisons actually proceed license the comparison of any artworks whatsoever, regardless of category.
One competing view, the uniqueness approach, entails that no artworks can ever be rationally compared. Though it is endorsed by several prominent aestheticians, I argue that the uniqueness approach relies on faulty assumptions and does not provide good reason to revise critical methodology.
ii A more plausible and widely received alternative to my view is that some but not all artworks are comparable: only artworks of the same kind, which are valuable for the same reasons, can legitimately be compared. I show that even these restrictions are too severe. Though appealingly moderate, this view has internal conflicts and also rules out many of the very comparisons it is intended to preserve.
The only other option is my own, the idea that all artworks are comparable. The legitimacy of artistic comparisons is grounded in what I maintain is the best available theory of artistic evaluation. In practice, critics consider not only the degree to which artworks have artistically valuable properties, but also the relative merits of these properties themselves. We arrive at overall judgments about artistic value by combining the degree to which specific artistic properties are valued and the degree to which those properties are present in each artwork under consideration. The apparatus of artistic evaluation makes this process applicable to all artworks, whatever their artistic category. Comparative judgments among any artworks whatsoever are legitimized, vindicating art criticism as an evaluative practice.
iii Dedicated to my parents, John and Mary Pratt.
iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people without whom this dissertation would have been a very different and vastly inferior document.
I owe an extraordinary debt to the members of my dissertation committee: my advisor, Lee B. Brown, for his scholarly experience, wisdom, and enthusiastic and timely critiques of my ideas big and small; Robert Kraut, who continually urged that my philosophical concerns connect to the realities of artworld practices; and Diana Raffman, for emphasizing the need for careful execution of both philosophical argumentation and writing.
I am grateful to my many graduate colleagues at The Ohio
State University, for their willingness to offer productive comments and challenges even outside their own areas of expertise. Particular thanks are due to all of the participants in the Dissertation Seminars, Philosophy 999A, in the spring quarters of 2003-2005; and to Andrew Arlig, Julian Cole, William
Melanson, Bill Roche, Joshua Smith, Cathal Woods, and, especially, Richard Groshong.
v I also wish to thank Ian Hummel for providing me with so much data and comic relief, Andrew Arlig for much practical advice, and Gloria and Perry for their kind encouragement.
Finally, I am grateful to the members of the American
Society for Aesthetics for the questions asked and advice offered about previous incarnations of some of this material, particularly the participants in the Eastern Division Meetings of 2004 and 2005 and the Annual Meeting of 2003.
vi VITA
September 7, 1973 ...... Born – Burlington, Vermont
1995 ...... B.A. Philosophy and English, The University of Vermont.
2000-present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University
PUBLICATIONS
1. Hayman, Greg, and Henry John Pratt. “What Are Comics?” in Aesthetics, 2d ed. Ed. David Goldblatt and Lee B. Brown, 419- 24. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.
2. Pratt, Henry John. Review of An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art, by Richard Eldridge. American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter, 24 (Summer 2004): 5-7.
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Philosophy
vii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Abstract ...... ii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgments ...... v Vita ...... vii
Chapters:
1. Introduction ...... 1
1.1 What Is Comparability? ...... 5 1.2 The Definitions Applied ...... 10 1.3 The Structure ...... 13
2. A Quasi-Institutional Account of Artistic Value ...... 17
2.1 Experientialism and Anti-Experientialism ...... 20 2.2 Intrinsic/Inherent Value Theories About Experiences of Artworks ...... 25 2.3 Instrumental Value Theories About Experiences of Artworks ...... 31 2.4 The Mixed Value Theory About Experiences of Artworks ...... 35 2.5 Formalism and Referentialism ...... 36 2.6 The Institutionalist Theory of Artistic Value ...... 39 2.7 Putting It All Together: The Quasi-Institutional Theory of Artistic Value ...... 44 2.8 Objections to Quasi-Institutionalism and Responses ...... 47
3. Against the Uniqueness Approach ...... 55
3.1 The Relevant Sense of “Unique” ...... 58 3.2 The Argument from Aesthetic Interest ...... 65 3.3 The Argument from Expression of Emotion ...... 68 3.4 The Argument from Expression of Meaning ...... 72 3.5 The Argument from Formulization ...... 77 3.6 The Argument from Substitutability ...... 92 3.7 A Diagnosis of the Uniqueness Approach ...... 98 viii 4. Against the Moderate Approach ...... 104
4.1 Vermazen’s First Thesis ...... 105 4.2 Vermazen’s Second Thesis ...... 110 4.3 Vermazen’s Third Thesis ...... 112 4.4 Dickie’s Expansions of Vermazen’s Theses ...... 115 4.5 Three Unexpected Limits on Comparison ...... 119 4.6 The Zero Assignment and the Zero Method ...... 129 4.7 Rejecting the Pareto Condition through Critical Scenarios ...... 137
5. The Universal Comparability Approach ...... 144
5.1 The Theoretical Apparatus ...... 147 5.2 Some Technical Elaborations ...... 152 5.3 Theory and Practice ...... 159 5.4 The Universal Comparability Approach ...... 168
6. Supporting and Applying the Universal Comparability Approach ...... 172
6.1 Evidence for the Universal Comparability of Artworks ...... 173 6.2 Some Final Objections ...... 183 6.3 Comparability and Objectivity ...... 190 6.4 Connections, Directions, and Conclusion ...... 196
Bibliography ...... 201
ix CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Seminole Sam: It’s true, Owl, your big splash has raised a thousand ripples of thought––now, here’s a handful of corn that I toss out to see if a bird of paradise will give it a passing peck. I’m rifling this into the dark, into an off-season shooting gallery, mind you, but it has a chance of ringing the old bell... we may win a kewpie doll with this... I’m not going to fancy this nugget up with a Sunday suit... I’ll just toss it into the fire, raw, an’ see if it spits back, see if it simmers into a broth of Oh Boy! or if it curls its tail and... Churchy La Femme: What is you talkin’ about?! Seminole Sam: Don’t you dig the mother tongue, or do you need another ear?
Walt Kelly, Pogo
Evaluation is central to art criticism: critics explore the relative value of artworks within the same category (e.g., two jazz compositions) and across categories (e.g., a novel and a film). We judge that some artworks are very good, some very bad, and many are somewhere in between very good and very bad.
On the face of it, these evaluative judgments are comparative.
A very good artwork is better than a mediocre artwork, not to mention a very bad artwork.
However, the situation is not quite that simple. Some philosophers have thought that not all such comparisons are 1 legitimate. It might be thought that certain artworks are simply be too different from each other for comparison. Or, it might be supposed that the very practice of artistic comparison rests upon a mistake.
The main questions I wish to address in what follows are:
Do art-critical practices support legitimate comparisons of artworks at all, or is there something special about art that precludes comparison? And if artworks are comparable, what, if any, are the constraints on comparability? Curiously, these questions have received less attention from philosophers than they deserve. In aesthetics, discussions about the value of art are generally focused on what makes art valuable qua art and
whether judgments about the value of artworks are objective.
Issues about comparing artworks in terms of their value surface
only sporadically, save for a brief flurry of debate in the
1950’s. Outside aesthetics, it is true, problems about the
comparability of various objects, events, and states of affairs
have been given consideration by those working in rational
choice and utility theory. Sometimes artworks are used as
examples in that context but they are usually used without an
informed understanding of the philosophy of art and the
particular philosophical challenges that artworks can present.
I am convinced that concentrated philosophical concern
about the comparability of artworks is merited and long overdue.
For several reasons, the issue ought to be important to those
working in aesthetics. First, there are good reasons to believe
2 that justified choice is impossible among incomparable artworks.1
Investigating the comparability of art, then, is nothing less than investigating when we are justified in preferring one artwork to another. Second, as we shall see, comparability is in an important sense a fundamental starting point for the debate about objective standards. If one cannot make rational comparative judgments about artworks, then it is hard to see how any of those judgments could be objectively correct, or at the least, how we could tell when a judgment was objectively correct. Without the subjective standards that come with comparability, objective standards would either never get off the ground, or be irrelevant to everyday practices. Third, there seem to be a number of extant practices whereby we do compare artworks to each other. It is a paradigmatically philosophical problem to figure out whether and when those practices are at all justified.
The comparability of artworks or lack thereof is also a stimulating topic for those working in value theory at large.
First, the artistic realm is a very convenient size for investigation. It is not so broad that one encounters massive problems harvesting resources from too many diverse disciplines, but broad enough that it contains a healthy variety of objects, categories, and sub-practices.2 Second, philosophers of art have
1 For some of these reasons, see (Chang 1997, 11-12; 2002, MCC, ch. 2).
2 In addition, one of the best things about concentrating on art is the wonderful trove of examples. Unlike many other disciplines of philosophy, in aesthetics, if you seek an example to 3 produced a rich dialogue about the nature of artistic value.
The resources developed here can simplify debates that sometimes get bogged down in complicated questions about how to pit radically different kinds of value (e.g., moral and prudential) against each other. Concentration on artistic value, about which we have achieved a great deal of understanding, avoids these complications. If, within the restricted context of artistic value, it can be shown that some or all artworks are incomparable, it ought to be possible to use similar strategies to show that there is incomparability in other areas of evaluative discourse. Correspondingly, if incomparability cannot be found in art, then perhaps it cannot be found anywhere. And that would be an interesting conclusion, indeed.
I have just given some reasons for why we should concern
ourselves philosophically with comparison of artworks. So let
me now reveal, up front, what I think the conclusions of our
investigations will be. Though these ideas are controversial on
the face of it, I shall show that they are the results of our
best arguments.
There is a coherent notion of artistic value that ranges
over all artworks. It is indeed possible to engage in
legitimate comparisons of artworks in terms of this value, as
attention to critical practices shows, and the arguments to the
contrary are not powerful enough to overturn those practices.
prove some point, some artist has probably already made it (in contrast, there really are very few actual Gettier cases in the real world). 4 When we look closely at the processes through which we evaluate art, we find that the critic has two tasks: to ascertain the degree to which each artwork has its artistically valuable properties, and to compare the value of those properties themselves. It is through the combination of these tasks that individual artworks are assessed. And because this methodology can be extended to every artwork, all artworks can be compared to each other, no matter how different.
Obviously, there is much work to be done here. First, however, we need to get a better grasp on some of the key terms and concepts involved, including what I mean by “comparable.”
1.1 What Is Comparability?
There are a number of ways in which artworks might or might not be related to each other evaluatively. My concern will be with the particular relation of comparability. Let me spell this relation out and distinguish it from some others, using the helpful framework developed by Ruth Chang.3
There are, Chang holds, positive and negative value
relations that one can employ in judgmental claims: “A positive
claim describes how things are, while a negative claim describes
how things are not” (Chang 2002, 1). To say that the Yankees
are better than the Red Sox this year is to point to a positive
value relation; to say that football is not a better sport than
3 Chang does this in several places—see (1997, 1-6; 2002, MCC xvii, 1-2, 9-10, 84-86). 5 baseball is to point to a negative value relation (because it only says what football is not, it leaves open the possibility that football is equal to baseball as a sport, or worse than baseball, or cannot be compared to baseball).4
With this in mind, I will employ the following definitions
of comparability and incomparability throughout. These
definitions are modeled on Chang’s, but I use a biconditional
where she uses a conditional.
Two objects5 are comparable if and only if some positive value relation holds between them.
Correspondingly:
Two objects are incomparable if and only if no positive value relation holds between them.
These definitions apply at a very general, generic level of value. The comparability of objects, however, can also be made more specific—to range over only one type of value, or “covering value” (Chang’s term), such as moral value, prudential value, epistemological value, or (most relevant here) artistic value.
4 I should note that there is some debate about how many positive value relations there are. It is my view that there are three and only three: better than, worse than, and equal to (Pratt [2004]). Chang, among others, has suggested that there is a fourth relation—parity or rough equality. I shall try to remain largely neutral about this issue here, though I will have a bit to say about it at the end of Chapter 6.
5 Within the scope of “objects” I include (and shall continue to include) events, states of affairs, and so on—anything over which one can existentially quantify. 6 Accordingly, we can distinguish the generic senses of the relations above from the following specific senses:6
Two objects are comparable with respect to a certain covering value if and only if some positive value relation holds between them with respect to that covering value.
Two objects are incomparable with respect to a certain covering value if and only if no positive value relation holds between them with respect to that covering value.
These notions are, I think, simple and intuitive. If the
Yankees really are better than the Red Sox as a sports team,
then the two teams are comparable (as they would be if the
Yankees were, per impossible, worse than the Red Sox). If football is neither better, nor worse, nor equal to baseball as a sport (and no other positive value relation holds between them either), then football and baseball are incomparable.
The relations characterized above are somewhat technical, in that ordinary linguistic usage licenses other applications of the terms “comparable” and “incomparable.” These applications need to be disambiguated to avoid confusion. Comparability is not the same as what Chang terms “commensurability,” and incomparability is not the same as incommensurability. Let us characterize those other relations like this (loosely following
Chang again):
6 Chang seems to recognize these different senses, but she does not make the distinctions explicit anywhere that I am aware of. 7 Two objects are commensurable if and only if there is a common scale of value upon which they can be precisely compared.
Two objects are incommensurable if and only if there is no common scale of value upon which they can be precisely compared.
Those are the generic senses; like comparability and
incomparability, commensurability and incommensurability can
also be made specific to particular covering values. The way to
do this should be sufficiently obvious that I need not cover it
here.
There is one more comparative relation that I should
mention. This is “noncomparability.” Some philosophers, Chang
included, apply the idea of Rylean category mistakes7 to the evaluative realm. The idea is that each evaluative predicate has a certain domain of application—it can only be predicated of certain objects. For example, moral goodness cannot be predicated of the activities of jellyfish, since jellyfish do not count as moral agents. Noncomparability is defined using this notion of applicability:
Two objects are noncomparable if and only if there is no evaluative predicate that has both of them in its domain of application.
The specific version of this definition is:
Two objects are noncomparable with respect to an evaluative predicate if and only if at least one of them is not in its domain of application.
7 See (Ryle 1949). 8 Chalk and cheese, to use a popular example, are often thought to be noncomparable with respect to nutritional goodness, because chalk is not the sort of thing that can be evaluated from the nutritional point of view.
Chang wants to keep noncomparability and incomparability entirely distinct (Chang 2002, MCC, 84), but I think it is more
helpful to understand the former as a special case of the
latter. Noncomparability is just a way in which items can be
incomparable, since there is no positive value relation that
holds between noncomparable objects. The notions are still not
identical, however. In each case, the failure of comparison
happens for different reasons. If cheese and chocolates were
incomparable when it comes to tastiness as an hors d’oeuvre,
this would be because there is some substantive difference
between their flavors—their tastiness is too different in kind.
But they would not be noncomparable, as cheese and chalk might
be when it comes to nutritional value. Chalk is simply not the
sort of thing that can have nutritional value; because that value predicate cannot be applied to both chalk and cheese, they cannot be compared.
The generic and specific senses of comparability, commensurability, and noncomparability are logically interrelated. Here are the most important and interesting entailments (for bookkeeping purposes):
1. If two objects are comparable in the generic sense, then it is possible for them to be either commensurable or incommensurable. 9 2. If two objects are comparable in the specific sense with respect to a certain covering value, then they may be incomparable, commensurable or incommensurable, and/or noncomparable with respect to other covering values. 3. If two objects are incomparable in the generic sense, then they are incommensurable in the generic sense. 4. If two objects are incomparable in the specific sense with respect to a certain covering value, then they are incommensurable with respect to it. They may be either comparable or incomparable with respect to other covering values. 5. If two objects are commensurable in the generic sense, they must be comparable in the generic sense. 6. If two objects are commensurable in the specific sense with respect to a certain covering value, then they must be comparable with respect to it. 7. If two objects are incommensurable in the generic sense, they may be either generically comparable or incomparable. 8. If two objects are incommensurable in the specific sense with respect to a certain value, they may be either comparable, or incomparable and/or noncomparable with respect to it. 9. If two objects are noncomparable in the generic sense, then they are generically incomparable and incommensurable. 10. If two objects are noncomparable in the specific sense with respect to a certain evaluative predicate, then they are incomparable and incommensurable with respect to it.
1.2 The Definitions Applied
With these definitions in place, I can now describe my project in greater detail. What I propose to investigate is the extent to which artworks are legitimately comparable to each other with respect to their artistic value. Are any two artworks comparable, or are there limitations on their comparability?
Obviously, this is not the same as the issue of the comparability of artworks in the generic sense. Generic comparability is a non-starter, chiefly because the answers seem so easy. Pick any two artworks and of course there is going to 10 be some evaluative dimension on which both can be assessed.
Even such different artworks as Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty”
(a 1500-foot-long earthwork in the Great Salt Lake) and a performance of George Balanchine’s choreography for “Orpheus” have at least one common covering value: suitability for viewing from an airplane, or for that matter, beauty. The concentration has to be on artistic value, not just value writ large, because
then the issue of comparability demands attention: what could
the foregoing artworks possibly have in common that would allow
us to assess their relative artistic merits? Accordingly,
unless otherwise indicated, please assume that from now on when
I refer to the comparability of artworks, I am referring to
their specific comparability with respect to artistic value. (I
shall have much more to say shortly on which properties
contribute towards artistic value.)
Note also that I am concentrating on comparability rather
than commensurability. I could have done this differently;
because of entailment six above (commensurable objects are
comparable), were I to show that a certain class of artworks are
commensurable, I would have shown that they are comparable. But
I want to concentrate on comparability instead because it is a
more significant relation than commensurability.8 Comparability, not commensurability, grounds rational choice. Alternatives need not be commensurable in order for a decision among them to be justified. Even if there is no fact of the matter about
8 Chang stresses this repeatedly: see (1997, 2-3; 2002, MCC, xviii and ch. 2). 11 precisely how much better a career in philosophy is for me than a career in contortionism, I can still rationally choose one over the other—but only provided that they are comparable.
Similarly, if we are interested in the justification one might have for preferring one artwork to another in a given choice situation, it is their comparability that matters, not their commensurability.
Issues about the noncomparability of art will arise in this project from time to time. But this will not be my primary focus, for two reasons. First, it seems rather unlikely that artworks will turn out to be noncomparable. For that to be the case, they would have to be the sorts of things that cannot possibly be artistically valuable. But artworks are exactly the sorts of things that can be artistically valuable. Accordingly, though artworks may, at the end of the day, fail to be comparable, their incomparability will not be a case of noncomparability.
Second, for reasons I shall only gesture at here, I do not think that any objects can possibly be noncomparable. Are chalk and cheese really noncomparable when it comes to nutritional value? No: chalk has none, so cheese is more nutritious than
chalk. Chang’s conception of noncomparability is not nonsense,
but it applies to nothing. I shall have more to say about this
move later on.
12 1.3 The Structure
I shall begin to tackle the problems associated with the comparability of art by looking at the covering value in question: artistic value. The account I offer in Chapter 2 is what I call quasi-institutional: the value of art depends both on the institution of the artworld and naturalistic facts outside the artworld about the dispositional properties of art objects. I do not intend quasi-institutionalism to be the final word on the subject (after all, the topic of artistic value is worth a full and extended treatment in its own right), but only that it is plausible and defensible to the extent that it provides a better option than views that ground some of the competing theories of comparability of artworks.
In Chapter 3, I shall move on to one of the main traditions in aesthetics about the comparability of art: the uniqueness approach. On this view, an artwork demands treatment as a unique object, and hence no artworks can be ranked in comparison to one another. I shall consider the most promising ways of arriving at this conclusion, and reject each in turn.
Proponents of the uniqueness approach, I shall argue, have it all wrong, because they rely on inadequate theories of art and artistic value, and because their position is drastically at odds with critical practices. Since the uniqueness approach is a failure, I conclude that at least some artworks are comparable.
13 But which artworks is it legitimately possible to compare?
What features of artworks make them comparable or incomparable?
In Chapter 4, I take up what I call the moderate approach to this question. Starting with the plausible claim that artistic value is complex—that there are a number of sub-values that contribute to the total artistic value of an artwork—proponents of the moderate approach argue that we can engage in rational comparisons of two artworks only when (a) they derive all their artistic value from the very same set of properties, and (b) one artwork is at least as good with respect to all of those properties as the other. Though there are some complications, on the face of it, the moderate approach restricts comparability to artworks that are very similar, especially in category. Some but not all artworks are comparable to each other, but, in addition, every artwork is comparable to at least some other actual and/or possible artworks.
I argue that the moderate approach is insupportable. For various technical reasons I shall raise, it tends to collapse into either the uniqueness view or the view that all artworks can be compared. Given the reality of our practices of art evaluation, and the resources we muster when we engage in it, I argue that the failures of the moderate approach push us
(surprisingly, perhaps) in the direction of the universal comparability approach—the idea that all artworks are comparable—to which I turn in Chapter 5.
14 The universal comparability approach is my own solution to the problem of comparability and the arts. Many choices among artworks, as attention to art criticism shows, seem to be legitimate even where the artworks in question have different valuable properties or where one artwork is better than another with respect to one property but worse with respect to a different property. The best explanation for this aspect of artistic evaluation is that as critics, we do not base our comparisons of artworks only on the degree to which they have each of their artistically valuable properties. We also utilize our ratings of these properties themselves. Once we make clear the qualitative degree to which we value properties, we can combine this with quantitative judgments about the degree to which those properties are present in artworks in order to arrive at overall judgments about artistic value. I show how it is possible to apply this process to all artworks, allowing us potentially to place them all on the same “comparison matrix,” thus making sense of comparative judgments between any two artworks.
Much of Chapter 6 is devoted to elaborating and answering some potential objections to the theory I lay out in Chapter 5.
First, I raise a number of apparently legitimate cases of comparison, both within and across categories, that can only be accommodated by the universal comparability approach. This conformity with artistic practices indicates that my theory is much more intuitive and plausible than it might initially seem.
15 Second, I confront a worry about why situations in which one must compare radically diverse artworks, across categories, hardly ever arise. Third, I raise and respond to several technical objections to my theory having to do with my conception of art evaluation.
I close Chapter 6 and the dissertation itself by engaging in some speculations about the applicability of my arguments about the comparability of artworks to other issues in aesthetics and beyond. In particular, I make some suggestions about the consequences of my theory to the (heavily discussed) topic of the objectivity of judgments about artistic value, and the ways in which my conclusions about artworks can be applied to comparisons made along other value dimensions.
In all this, it is my hope that the reader finds the issues to be as engaging and challenging as I have found them to be myself.
16 CHAPTER 2
A QUASI-INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNT OF ARTISTIC VALUE
I’ve got values, but I don’t know how or why.
The Who, “The Seeker”
The aim of this chapter is to reflect on what is distinctive about artistic value—what it is that makes artworks valuable as art. In order to assess the extent to which artworks can be legitimately compared to each other in terms of artistic value, it will be important to arrive at an understanding of that sort of value. I intend to offer an analysis that conforms more closely than competing accounts to our artistic practices and the phenomenology of our experiences of artworks. By doing this, I hope ultimately to provide support for my conclusions about the comparability of artworks, especially my upcoming critiques of alternative views (see
Chapters 3 and 4). These views rely on inadequate views about artistic value; the current discussion is required in order to make this clear.
17 The method I shall pursue here is directly inspired by a
comment made by Robert Stecker in his book Artworks:
A theory of artistic value is satisfactory only if it meets two basic requirements: it must explain why the properties it picks out as the artistic values are (a) artistic properties and (b) valuable properties. (1997, 260-61)
In short, what the theory needs to address is what makes artistically valuable properties valuable, and what makes them artistic.
I begin to meet Stecker’s desiderata in section 2.1 by
suggesting that artworks derive their value from the sorts of
valuable experiences that they can provide. Within this
framework, there are several competing theories about the nature
of those experiences. In section 2.2, I discuss a view
according to which artistic value is understood in terms of the
intrinsically valuable experiences that artworks can provide. I
reject this view, on the grounds that many (if not all) of the
experiences that lead us to value artworks are only
instrumentally valuable. The opposite view, that artistic value
is to be understood in terms of the instrumentally valuable
experiences that artworks can provide, is the subject of section
2.3. I reject it for similar reasons: some (if not all)
experiences that lead us to value artworks are intrinsically
valuable. In section 2.4, I propose a compromise that I call
the mixed value theory: the idea that the artistic value of an object lies in its capacity to provide instrumentally and/or intrinsically valuable experiences. 18 The mixed value theory only answers half of Stecker’s
demands. It expresses what is valuable about artistically valuable properties, but not what is artistic about them. In
section 2.5, then, I look at two sorts of traditional views,
which locate the artistic aspect of artistic value in formal
properties and referential properties respectively. I find
these views lacking, and consider instead, in section 2.6, an
institutionalist strategy. Though institutionalism can shed
light on the artistic aspect of artistic value, it cannot help
us with the valuable aspect. Accordingly, in section 2.7, I
combine the institutionalist strategy with the mixed value
theory from section 2.4 to form a quasi-institutional theory of
artistic value. In section 2.8, finally, I answer several
prominent objections to quasi-institutionalism.
Before beginning the discussion proper, I would like to
forestall a certain worry at the outset. The view I shall be
putting forth here can reasonably be viewed as an essentialist
analysis, in that I propose what seem to be necessary and
jointly sufficient conditions for artistic value. It may well
be the case at the end of the day that there is something
fundamentally flawed about the essentialist strategy. To this,
I have several brief avenues of reply. First, anti-
essentialism, from my perspective at least, has problems that
are equally severe. Second, I defer to a defense of the
essentialist project made by Noël Carroll (1998, 6). One cannot
know whether essentialist analyses will fail unless one tries,
19 he claims, and even if one ultimately fails to secure anything like necessary and sufficient conditions, the gains in understanding we make in advancing and considering them are of great value, giving us insight about the very cores of the concepts involved.
2.1 Experientialism and Anti-Experientialism
Right away, let me set up a dichotomy. Either artistic value depends in some way on the value of actual or potential experiences of artworks, or it does not. Call the former view experientialism and the latter, contrasting view anti-
experientialism. I shall argue in this section that experientialism is the more plausible alternative.
Anti-experientialism is a kind of position often referred to as Platonist (though Plato’s own ideas about the value of art do not fit neatly into the anti-experientialist model). This carries with it a notable amount of baggage, especially when it comes to epistemology. Disconnecting evaluative properties from any potential experiences of them gives them an aura of mystery or “queerness” in J.L. Mackie’s sense of the term.1 It is hard
1 See (Mackie 1977). 20 to see what reason we would have for believing that such properties exist, or, if we had such a reason, it is hard to see how we could access them with any reliability.2
Perhaps anti-experientialism has more intuitive
plausibility when we focus on what are traditionally understood
as “aesthetic” properties of artworks (such as beauty), which
are often shared by natural objects. It is at least tempting to
argue that the universe would be a beautiful place even if there
were no sentient creatures to experience it. On the other hand,
for us to say that there would be beauty in this case might just
be to assert a counterfactual: had we existed, we would have
found the universe beautiful. And in any case, it is pretty
clear (as I will emphasize later on) that artistic value is not
exhausted by artworks’ aesthetic features. So even if it can be
shown that the value of aesthetic properties is to be construed
anti-experientially, this would not be enough to show that
artistic value does not depend on experiences.
Moreover, there may be good reason to tie all value to experiences. Experientialists find support for their view in arguments to the effect that judgments about the value of art necessarily involve a standpoint. As Peter Railton (1998) has argued, there must be a place that can (at least counterfactually) be occupied, from which experiences can be had and conclusions drawn about what matters. Value, Railton
2 These problems are, of course, not unique to anti-experientialist claims about artistic value. Similar issues arise in metaethics (due not least to Mackie) and mathematics—see, for example, (Benacerraf 1973) and (Field 1989). 21 contends, is about mattering, and the idea of mattering makes no sense apart from considerations about mattering for or mattering to, from a standpoint. Unless artistic value is tied to experiences we can have of objects, there seems to be little reason to think that those objects would matter to us, and hence, little reason to think the objects would even be valuable at all.
In addition, our practices of art appreciation are strongly at odds with anti-experientialism. As Stecker notes:
Artworks have many functions: providing aesthetic experience or pleasure, offering ways of seeing, presenting vivid descriptions and representations of almost any aspect of life, giving one an insider’s perspective on states of mind and systems of value other than one’s own, serving up puzzles, alternative ‘realities,’ fantasies, and so forth. (1997, 252)
These examples, Stecker concludes, point to an understanding of valuing art which refers essentially to “things we get from our
interactions with artworks” (1997, 252), that is, experiences.
This is all very quick, and I cannot, in this short space,
resolve the many complications involved in the details of the
experientialism/anti-experientialism debate. Anti-
experientialism has had a powerful impact, especially with
regard to the need many philosophers feel to tackle the
objectivity of judgments about artistic value.3 But by and large, I think the foregoing considerations indicate that
3 This is a point Dickie makes (1988, 9-10): intuitions we might have to the effect that evaluations of artworks can be right and wrong can be traced back to the impact of anti- experientialist theories of value. 22 experientialism is more plausible than anti-experientialism. At the least, proponents of the former view are able to avoid a host of troubling problems, and on the face of it, are more sensitive to the phenomenology of our experiences of artworks.
In general, the artworks we value are artworks that make us feel something.
I hope I have said enough to justify the stance I shall adopt through the rest of this project: that experientialism is more promising than the alternative. But even if the value of art depends on experiences, we still need to examine more closely the nature of this dependence.
One view that will not do is that valuable artworks are those that have actually provided valuable experiences. This leaves too much to chance. A breathtaking work of genius would not count as valuable on this view if its artist, who died upon its completion, left it locked away in her basement. The problem here may be viewed (loosely speaking) as a conflation of
“valued” with “valuable,” able to be valued. Just because
nobody happens to have valued an artwork does not mean that it
is not valuable.
This suggests that we follow the tradition realized perhaps
most famously in the works of Monroe Beardsley, and understand
the value of art as having to do with dispositional properties
relating artworks, in potential, to experiences of them.4 This resolves the difficulties with the previous view because
4 See especially (Beardsley 1958, 454-57). 23 dispositions, of course, do not have to be realized in order to exist; a sugar cube that never encounters water is still disposed to dissolve in it.
There are (at least) two ways to advance a dispositional account of artistic value. First, it might be proposed that the dispositions are had by the artworks. This is how Beardsley does it himself: an artwork is valuable, he thinks, in virtue of its capacity to provide experiences of a certain (valuable) kind. Second, it might be proposed that the dispositions are located in the perceivers. That is, an artwork is valuable in
virtue of the properties it has such that those who experience
them are disposed to find them valuable.5
These may look at first like rival theories, but I think
they are just two different ways of talking about the same idea.
When dispositional properties reflect the way in which different
kinds of objects interact with each other, those properties are
complementary. Unless they occur in one of those kinds of
object, they cannot occur in the other: though a sugar cube is
disposed to dissolve in water, this could not be the case if
5 There are several significant concerns about these ideas that I shall largely leave aside (remember, this is a sketch of artistic value, not a full-blown account in all its detail). Among these are: (a) Which perceivers count? It may well be that not all of us are going to respond to the same dispositional properties of objects, and/or not all of us have the disposition to respond to the same objects in the same way. This is ultimately a worry about objectivity. (b) Do dispositional properties really exist? There is a debate in metaphysics and the philosophy of science about whether it even makes sense to posit the existence of dispositional properties, given that they may well reduce or be identical to microstructural properties of objects—dispositional properties, upon reflection, may just go away. If that is the case, then what I should really be focusing on is those microstructural properties, but if I do, it is unclear as to what I should point to. To specify the microstructural properties that constitute artistic value would be a difficult task indeed.
24 water was not disposed to dissolve sugar. The difference between the two foregoing dispositional accounts of artistic value is merely one of emphasis; on the former view, artworks are valuable because of what they do to us, whereas on the
latter they are valuable because of what they do to us.
With this in mind, it is mainly for the sake of brevity
that I will give my account in the former sort of terminology,
locating artistic value in the dispositions (or capacities—I
shall be using the terms interchangeably) of artworks to cause
certain kinds of experiences. Throughout the following
discussion, it should be realized that this is a sort of
shorthand. Just as artworks are disposed to cause certain kinds
of experiences in us, we are disposed to react in certain ways
to the artistically valuable properties of objects.6
2.2 Intrinsic/Inherent Value Theories About Experiences of
Artworks
The value of art, according to experientialism, lies in the capacities of artworks to provide experiences of a certain kind or kinds—where those experiences themselves are valuable. This is, by itself, not enough to capture the concept of artistic value fully. For many objects that are not artistically valuable have the capacity to provide valuable experiences.
6 One advantage of emphasizing the dispositional properties of objects rather than perceivers is that it makes clear the “objectual” objectivity of those properties—those properties are objective in the sense that they are really in the objects (compare Railton 1998). 25 Some philosophers attempt to capture the concept of
artistic value by attending to the distinctive kinds of valuable
experiences that only artworks can provide. In this section, I
discuss (and reject) the view that what makes artistically
valuable properties artistic is their unique capacity to provide intrinsically valuable experiences.
According to the usual understanding of the concept, x is intrinsically valuable when it is valuable for its own sake and not merely for the sake of other valuable consequences or effects it might have. The contrasting type of value is instrumental value—when something is valuable for the sake of something else valuable it produces. Anti-experientialists attribute intrinsic value to artworks themselves, because on their view, artworks are valuable regardless of the valuable experiences they can or do provide.
Some experientialist philosophers, however, also deploy the
idea of intrinsic value: artworks are valued, via our
experiences of them, for themselves. Malcolm Budd and Stephen
Davies, who hold versions of this position, believe that this
makes the value of art intrinsic, because the experiences that
artworks provide are intrinsically rather than instrumentally
valuable.7
Let us (at least initially) classify as “intrinsic value
theories” the position that a property is artistically valuable
7 See (Budd 1995, ch. 1) and (Davies 1987). 26 just in case the experiences it provides are intrinsically valuable. What sorts of arguments can be given in support of intrinsic value theories?
Budd and Davies are best understood, perhaps, as running a reductio ad absurdum on the idea that artworks are only instrumentally valuable, in virtue of the experiences they can afford. (Yes, there is something very confusing here: Budd and
Davies are focusing on the instrumental value of artworks rather than experiences of artworks. Much more on this shortly.) The experiences instrumentally valuable artworks can afford, the argument runs, could be had without the artworks; they could be caused by something else. Artworks would be, in some way, dispensable, so long as we could get those experiences from something else. However, artworks are not dispensable. We would not get rid of them even if we had pills that make us feel like artworks do. Each artwork has its own flavor: the value of our experience of an artwork comes distinctively from that artwork and cannot be specified or identified without referring to it. The value that artworks have is integral to the experiences we get from them, and nothing short of art can provide those specific valuable experiences. Accordingly, Budd and Davies each conclude, though the value of an artwork depends on experiences of it, artworks are still valued for their own sake, intrinsically.
Stecker (1997, 253-55) points out that the above argument involves a terminological confusion. It is disingenuous to say,
27 as Budd and Davies do, that artworks are intrinsically valuable while also claiming that the value of artworks lies in their capacity to provide experiences with a distinctive intrinsic value. Experientialists like Budd and Davies cannot claim that artworks are intrinsically valuable (provided that they also think that artworks are valuable).
Nevertheless, Stecker thinks, Budd and Davies are on the right track. We can still use their ideas in the effort to capture the distinctive value of artworks, but we need to replace their confused terminology. The value of artworks themselves is not intrinsic, but inherent.
Stecker gets the notion of inherent value from William
Frankena. On Frankena’s conception, x is inherently valuable when the experience of x is intrinsically valuable (1963, 65-
66). The use to which Stecker wants to put the concept of inherent value (in part, on behalf of Budd and Davies) is this:
Artworks are inherently valuable. That is, artistically valuable properties have the capacity to provide intrinsically valuable experiences. Earlier, this is what I called an intrinsic value theory. But because that causes a confusion between the view that artworks are intrinsically valuable and the view that experiences of artworks are intrinsically
valuable, let us reclassify the view under a new term: the inherent value theory.
28 Historically speaking, inherent value theories are
commonplace. Contemporary philosophers like Davies and Budd
(both read charitably, through Stecker), Stecker himself, and
perhaps George Dickie are inherent value theorists. So are most
of the British empiricists (including Shaftesbury, Burke, and
Hutcheson, but not Hume).
Despite their popularity, inherent value theories are
inadequate for distinguishing artistic value from other sorts of
value. First, having the capacity to provide intrinsically
valuable experiences, as Budd and Davies would have it, is not
distinctive of art. As Stecker himself points out (1997, 253-
55), a plausible case can be made that items such as beds,
fishing rods, and cigars each provide a distinctive,
intrinsically valuable experience. Nevertheless, none of these
items must be artistically valuable.8 Budd and Davies are wrong: inherent value is just not sufficient for artistic value.
Furthermore, in contrast to Stecker’s assertions, an artwork does not have to be inherently valuable to be artistically valuable. It does not provide a necessary condition; not all artworks derive all of their artistic value from their abilities to provide experiences that are intrinsically valuable. At least some of the experiences that provide the basis for attributions of artistic value are of instrumental value only.
8 It is true, however, as I shall argue later on, that each of these items could be artistically valuable. 29 For example, some experiences of artworks are of a
disturbing or traumatic nature. We value some artworks because
they make us feel afraid, disturbed, guilty, perverted, evil, or
stupid, to give a few examples. It would be a stretch to hold
that such experiences are intrinsically valuable for most
psychologically normal human beings. More plausibly, they have
instrumental value, which derives from factors such as (a) their
efficaciousness in promoting self-awareness and sympathy for
others, (b) their ability to provide other cognitive benefits
including overall psychological well-being, and (c) the pleasure
we take in them from a second-order perspective.9 The states of being self-aware, sympathetic, psychologically healthy, or happy might all be good candidates for intrinsically valuable states.
But if artworks sometimes cause these states only through intermediate experiences, those artworks have more than inherent value.
Moreover, it is also common practice to think that some contemporary artworks (sociopolitical art, for example) are valuable because of what they teach us about the world: their value derives from the knowledge they impart. If knowing something is at least partly instrumentally valuable (as it seems to be—knowledge has great value in helping us safely navigate the world), then, again, the value of art transcends the intrinsically valuable experiences artworks can impart.
9 Among those who have recognized these instrumentally valuable features of the experiences of artworks are Beardsley (1958), Goodman (1976), Levinson (1996), all in a somewhat Aristotelian vein. 30 In short, some objects that are not artistically valuable
can produce intrinsically valuable experiences, and some
artworks derive part of their value from the instrumentally
valuable experiences they can provide. Accordingly, the
inherent value theory goes to far: artistic value must not be
restricted to inherent value.
2.3 Instrumental Value Theories About Experiences of Artworks
If artistic value is not identical to inherent value, nor
is merely a kind of inherent value, then what is it? One
prominent alternative is what I shall call the instrumental
value theory about experiences of artworks: properties of artworks are artistically valuable when they have the capacities to provide instrumentally valuable experiences.
Instrumental value theories are, naturally, diametrically
opposed to inherent value theories. They too have enjoyed a
certain popularity, especially in the twentieth century through
Beardsley and Nelson Goodman. But, like the inherent value
theory, they also fail to capture the nature of artistic value.
Taking his cue from John Dewey, Beardsley (1958) endorses a
view on which all value is instrumental. First, he thinks, it seems very unlikely that it can be shown that anything has
intrinsic value; there are no reasons we could cite to prove as
much. Second, one can never judge the value of anything except
31 in relation to other things taken at that time to be valuable: all value is relational. Third, statements about value are made in situations where we seek to decide between different alternatives, and such choices always involve discussion of means to the ends-in-view.
With these claims in the background, Beardsley’s view is that artworks are the instrumentally valuable sources of instrumentally valuable experiences. Artworks have the capacity to provide particularly aesthetic experiences, which are in turn valuable because they promote mental health (in some way–Beardsley says far too little about the beneficial effects of aesthetic objects).
Beardsley’s view is an unfortunate extreme. He starts it from a very suspect perspective: questions about the value of experiences of artworks aside, it is odd to assert that nothing can be intrinsically valuable. Foundationalism about knowledge may be passé in some circles, but intuitively, there should be some ground or foundation for value. When we ask questions
about why x is valuable, we will eventually run out of answers.
Though it may be true that we cannot give reasons for why x is
intrinsically valuable, that is precisely the point.
Intrinsically valuable things are just those to which such
reasons no longer apply; x is intrinsically valuable when
statements of the form “x is valuable because ...” make no
32 sense. And if at least some things can be intrinsically valuable, then maybe experiences of artworks can be too. More on this point shortly.
Beardsley’s rival Goodman also seems to locate the value of art in its capacity to provide us with instrumentally valuable experiences (1976, ch. 6). Though Goodman is somewhat difficult to interpret on this point, he makes it clear that artworks are evaluated in respect of their cognitive efficacy, that is, their ability to provide us with knowledge and understanding. The primary purpose of art, he tells us, is to produce and cultivate acts of cognition. But cognition seems to be valuable because it produces pleasure and for various pragmatic reasons (it enhances our abilities of communication, and gives us a better grasp of the world). Thus, Goodman seems to locate the value of art in its ability to provide us with instrumentally valuable cognitive experiences.
Beardsley and Goodman each make points that have a grain of truth to them. Artworks can derive their artistic value from their dispositions to evoke instrumentally valuable experiences.
This is exactly the point I used in the previous section against the inherent value theory.
However, the instrumental value theory goes too far to provide a reasonable understanding of artistic value. Beardsley and Goodman claim that our experiences must be instrumentally
valuable if the artworks that cause them are to be artistically
valuable—that the only value of artworks is in their capacities
33 to provide instrumentally valuable experiences. Surely, if there are intrinsically valuable experiences, then artworks should not in principle be the sorts of things that cannot derive any value from their capacities to produce them. If, for example, pleasure turns out to be intrinsically valuable, we do not want to say that an artwork cannot derive any of its artistic value from its ability to be the source of pleasurable experiences.
Instrumental value theories fail for exactly the same reason as inherent value theories, which is unsurprising, given that they are contrastive extremes. Neither theory can be used to pick out only the objects that are artistically valuable, since plenty of objects that are not artistically valuable can provide the sorts of experiences to which the theories advert.
And, more importantly, each theory rules out a large class of properties that should be counted as artistically valuable. In the case of inherent value theories, properties that are disposed to provide instrumentally valuable experiences are left out. In the case of the instrumental value theories, properties that are disposed to provide intrinsically valuable experiences are left out. Perhaps, however, there is a way to combine the good parts of each theory into a single view.
34 2.4 The Mixed Value Theory About Experiences of Artworks
Intuitively, we do in fact take artworks to be the sources of both instrumentally and intrinsically valuable experiences.
Rather than opting for the extremes of the inherent value theory or the instrumental value theory, this insight suggests that we adopt the following mixed value theory about the experiences of artworks:
The artistic value of an artwork lies in its capacity to provide experiences that are intrinsically valuable, instrumentally valuable, or both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable.
The mixed value theory is my response to Stecker’s demand, raised at the beginning of this chapter, that an account of artistic value specify what it is that makes artistically valuable properties valuable. The root of the value of those properties is their ability to provide valuable experiences.
The lesson of the previous two sections is that we should not rule out any of those experiences, for the valuable experiences that artworks can provide are sometimes intrinsically valuable, and sometimes instrumentally valuable (and sometimes both).
As it stands, however, the mixed value theory is incomplete. Many things that do not ordinarily count as artistically valuable (baseball games, beds, beans, bicycles, etc.) have the instrumental capacity to provide us with intrinsically and/or instrumentally valuable experiences. The proponent of the mixed value theory needs to do something to put 35 a limit on instrumentally valuable properties such that they do not all count as artistically valuable. That is to say, the mixed value theory needs to be combined with something that meets Stecker’s other desideratum: What is it that makes
artistically valuable properties artistic? The rest of this chapter is my attempt to answer this need.
2.5 Formalism and Referentialism
There are two main traditions that address the issue of what it is that makes artistically valuable properties distinctively artistic. Formalists associate artistic value with disinterested attention to perceptual properties of artworks. This accompanies a disregard for the conditions under which the works were produced and their representational content.10 For referentialists, in contrast, artistic value has
to do with the objects to which artworks refer, the objects they
represent, or the particular way in which artworks refer.
10 Formalism is a broadly Kantian tradition, though to be fair, Kant himself may not be a formalist when it comes to artistically valuable properties. But he is when it comes to aesthetically valuable properties such as beauty (see (1987 pt. 1, div. 1, bk.. 1)), and his views on that score have been heavily influential in accounts of artistic value. In the twentieth century, Beardsley is one of the most prominent formalists in this sense (see (Beardsley 1958, ch. 10; 1979). 36 Artworks are valuable insofar as they relate the perceiver to the world, by connecting the two via the artworks’ referential properties.11
Our contemporary practices of evaluating artworks generally
do necessitate attention to both formal and referential
features, so formalism and referentialism alike carry elements
of truth.12 But there are good reasons to suspect that something
is amiss with both views. Neither of them accords very well
with the actual practices and standards of art critics. Proper
experiences of art do not always seem to reflect the sort of
insularity and absorption in the artwork and nothing else that
formalists require. Formalists cannot provide a coherent and
complete account of the value of any number of artworks. Mel
Chin, for example, has made an installation called “Revival
Field” (1990-present), in which he plants and harvests
hyperaccumulative plants that leach toxins from polluted soil.
“Revival Field” is not nice to look at: it basically appears to
11 Referentialism actually stretches back to Plato, who attached art’s (generally negative) value to their imitative portrayals of the world (see (1989, Republic X and Ion)). Goodman (1976) is a recent referentialist, attaching artistic value to how well artworks symbolize their referents. In the context of formalism and referentialism, I should also mention the expressionist tradition of Benedetto Croce (1909) and R.G. Collingwood (1938), among others. I am de- emphasizing this here because I think expressionism is ultimately a variety of referentialism in which artworks achieve their value in light of their success in representing, reflecting, and/or communicating emotional states. And indeed, expressionism and referentialism share common flaws.
12 Morris Weitz makes a similar point about essentialist definitions of art—though ultimately they fail, they do draw attention to significant aspects of artworks and artistic practices (1956, 34-35). 37 be a chain-link fence surrounding rather drab grasses, all within an industrial wasteland. Yet Chin’s work is highly esteemed by contemporary art cognoscenti.13
Referentialists encounter similar difficulties.14 Sometimes
artists sacrifice the referential aspects of their works for
formalistic reasons: making an artwork less “true” to the world
can make it better.15 Cézanne’s works provide a number of
instructive examples. Ernest Gombrich describes one of them, an
1885 still life of a bowl of fruit, as follows:
In [Cézanne’s] tremendous effort to achieve a sense of depth without sacrificing the brightness of colours, to achieve an orderly arrangement without sacrificing the sense of depth—in all the struggles and gropings there was one thing he was prepared to sacrifice if need be: the ‘correctness’ of outline. . . . Brunelleschi’s invention of ‘linear perspective’ did not interest him overmuch. He threw it overboard when he found that it hampered him in his work. (1978, 432-33)
Clearly, it is Gombrich’s view (a widely shared one, I should
note) that Cézanne abandoned representational fidelity for other
goals, and that his work benefited from it immeasurably.
13 If this example is too controversial (it might be thought that these sorts of works are not art at all, but just fraudulence) think about the merits of a Charles Dickens novel removed from its referential features.
14 Referentialism is subject to an additional, unrelated problem as well. Many valuable artworks (e.g., abstract paintings and much instrumental music) cannot plausibly be counted as referential at all, without recourse to measures like Goodman’s idea that they exemplify themselves. Goodman’s idea seems to me to be spawned of desperation, and, to my mind, has been convincingly refuted by George Dickie (1988, 107-11). Dickie argues that Goodman seems to be forced to admit that in some cases possession of a property is enough to exemplify it (a consequence that is antithetical to Goodman’s own characterization of exemplification).
15 Beardsley (1978) makes a similar criticism of Goodman. 38 Referentialism and formalism alike carry the seeds of truth. It does seem to be the case that our contemporary practices of evaluating artworks, at least, necessitate attention to both formalist and referential features (though not every artwork or category of artwork demands assessment on both dimensions). But in general, formalism and referentialism fail as theories because they generally occur in conjunction with definitions of art centered, respectively, on art’s purportedly distinctive formal features (Clive Bell, Beardsley) or referential features (Plato, Goodman). Such definitions are now viewed with suspicion (rightly, on my view) and are not widely endorsed. Perhaps the errors of the formalists and referentialists can be avoided by filtering our discussion of artistic value through a more plausible sort of approach to the nature of art, one that takes socio-institutional contexts into consideration.
2.6 The Institutionalist Theory of Artistic Value
In the late twentieth century, philosophers such as Arthur
Danto (1964; 1973) and George Dickie (1984) proposed that objects have their status as artworks in virtue of the roles they play within certain social-institutional contexts
(artworlds). Call this classificatory institutionalism.
Perhaps we can achieve an understanding of the artistic aspect
39 of artistic value by attending to those same artworld communities; this would be an evaluative institutionalism.
David Graves, an institutionalist about both the classification and evaluation of art, is one of the few philosophers who has explored this option.16 On his view,
objects are classified as art because of the systems of rules
that constitute artworlds and provide the sorts of environments
into which artworks fit. Artworks come by their value via those
rules as well: good works of art are those “capable of
satisfying rightness criteria of various Artworld systems that
appear in the work’s full Artworld package” (Graves 1997, 63).
Let us unpack these claims a bit.
For Graves, an artwork’s “artworld package” is the set of
all artworld systems that are relevant to its status as an
artwork. This includes the system that the artwork is actually
in, as well as related systems. An artworld system is, at root,
a category or style of art. One part of an artwork’s value
derives from its “intra-systematic rightness,” its ability to
meet the requirements of the artworld system to which it belongs
(as set out in the rules of that system).17 The other part of an
artwork’s value depends on its “inter-systematic rightness,”
16 See (Graves 1997), especially 58-64.
17 This entails that all artworks have at least some positive value, since to be an artwork in the first place, an object must satisfy the rules of its artworld system to some degree. I find this counterintuitive, but it is endorsed not uncommonly (Beardsley and Dickie both think that all artworks have at least some positive artistic value). 40 which a work has to the degree that it satisfies criteria from the various related artworld systems that occur within its full artworld package.
Consider, for example, Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The
Dock of the Bay.” On Graves’ view, the intra-systematic rightness of that song would depend on the degree to which it satisfies the requirements of the soul genre of music. But soul does not constitute the entire artworld package for Redding’s song. To determine its inter-systematic rightness, and its total artistic value, we would have to ascertain the degree to which it complies with the rules set out in the related artworlds of blues, gospel, funk, doo-wop, and rock.
Though I believe that the basic insight behind Graves’ evaluative theory is sound, I would like to draw attention to two interrelated problems with it, both of which are analogous to worries about classificatory institutionalism.
First, there is the prominent issue of circularity.
Artistically valuable properties, according to Graves, are those licensed as valuable by rules of artworld systems, where those systems are practices that contain rules about what counts as artistically valuable properties. I shall take up the circularity problem at length a bit later.18
18 Perhaps it can be argued that this circle is ultimately not of the vicious variety, as Dickie (1984) contends, but I generally find that sort of argument unconvincing— the circle is simply too small to provide much useful analytic understanding. 41 The second problem with Graves’ theory is more difficult to
explain. It corresponds to the following dilemma Richard
Wollheim presents for the classificatory institutionalist.19 Of
the objects that have the status of artworks, either there are
or are not good reasons why those objects have that status
rather than others.
If there are good reasons, then it seems that we should
define art not by its institutional features, but by adverting
to the qualities of the objects upon which the reasons focus.
For example, if some artifacts earn their place within the
artworld institution in virtue of their notable expressiveness,
then expressiveness should be considered a sufficient condition
for being art.
On the other hand, if there are no good reasons why objects are chosen to be art, then why should we pay attention to those objects in the first place? The selection of objects as art would proceed on an arbitrary, random, or meaningless basis. If that were the case, we would have little motivation to care about or pay attention to artworks, view them as things that ought to be appreciated, or treat them as having the rights and privileges that seem in general to accompany artwork status.20
19 See (Wollheim 1980, 157-66).
20 Dickie (2001) does offer a response to Wollheim: his definition does not have to account for the reasons why objects become art because those reasons might have nothing to do with the status of that object as an artwork. That is, artists may have all sorts of reasons for making art—perhaps they are trying to get a moral message across, or just want to make money—and the institutionalist definition need not take this into account. I have some sympathy with Dickie’s response, and, in fact, what I shall have to say two sections from now about my own 42 In the context of Graves’ view, the related dilemma is that
there either are or are not good reasons why each artworld is
structured in such a way as to license these rather than those properties as artistically valuable. If there are reasons of this kind, we ought to be able to define artistic value in terms of the properties that lie behind them. If there are not, we have no assurance that artworks are valuable in more than name only, even when they meet the normative requirements of the artworld systems in which they are embedded. This is a point
Stecker has emphasized: just fitting into a system is not enough to make an object valuable unless there is something about the system itself that is valuable (1997, 261-62). Certain instruments of torture (this is Stecker’s example) may fulfill the requirements of the social practice of torturing better than others, but this does not make them good at the end of the day, for the practice of torture itself has significant negative value.
The root of the difficulty here is a deep one. For the institutionalist, it seems that whatever criteria are operant within the various artworld systems must always be tracking artistic value, since artistic value is internal to artworld practices. And this makes evaluative institutionalism incomplete, because there is no guarantee that artworld practices are valuable practices. It is compatible with Graves’
view has some connections to it. Nevertheless, I do not think Dickie’s response gets him off of the other horn of Wollheim’s dilemma: if the reasons for which artworks are made have nothing to do with them as artworks, then why should we pay attention to them as artworks? 43 view that what artists do is just as disvaluable as what torturers do. Intra- and inter-systematic rightness are not enough; extra-systematic rightness is needed as well.
2.7 Putting It All Together: The Quasi-Institutional Theory
of Artistic Value
The institutional theory of artistic value is correct to focus on a number of factors. It does seem to be the case that there are normative artworld practices that license certain kinds of behavior and artworks rather than others. There seem also to be evolving sets of criteria employed to do that, and these are reflected in the behavior of artists, critics, and audiences. But these criteria may or may not be tracking properties that are really artistically valuable. That is why the institutional theory is incomplete.
Such considerations prompt a distinct need to step outside the institution of the artworld in order to understand artistic value. From the external perspective, we have two tasks.
First, we must assess what is valuable about the artworld and the artistic properties it selects. Second, we must examine the internal rationale for the selection of some artistically valuable properties rather than others.
I shall get to the latter issue later. Happily, we have already undertaken the former task: we have ready at hand the mixed value theory explicated in section 2.4. For a property to
44 be artistically valuable, it is necessary for that property to
have the capacity to provide valuable experiences. Many
properties with that capacity are not artistically valuable;
only those that are licensed as artistically valuable from
within an artworld context count. Correspondingly, it is
possible for properties to be viewed as artistically valuable
from within the artworld even though those properties are not
actually artistically valuable. Mistakes can be made from
within the practice, and they are made where the practice does
not track properties that have the capacity to provide us with
valuable experiences.
We are now in a position to combine our understanding of
what makes artistically valuable properties valuable with what
makes them artistic. The result is what I shall be calling the quasi-institutional account of artistic value:
x is an artistically valuable property just in case (1) any object that bears x has the capacity to provide valuable experiences because it bears x, and (2) x is recognized as artistically valuable by some artworld system.
What is valuable about artistically valuable properties? Here, we stand at a perspective external to artistic practices: it depends on the capacity of those properties to provide valuable experiences. What is artistic about artistically valuable properties? Here, we stand at a perspective internal to artistic practices: it depends on the role of those properties within the context of the artworld.
45 A significant feature of this account is that though not
every property is artistically valuable, an extraordinary number of properties could become artistically valuable.21 The
properties of being monetarily valuable, or earthquake
resistant, or famous are not ordinarily artistically valuable,
but they could become artistically valuable.22 The situation is
similar to the widely noted virtue of classificatory
institutionalism that although not all objects are art, nearly every object could be turned into art. Ordinary urinals are not
art, though Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” is, because of its
socio-institutional context.
Incidentally, quasi-institutionalism also points in the
direction of an answer to the vexing problem of whether ethical
and moral properties of artworks count towards their artistic
value. Since those properties are ones we find to be
instrumentally valuable (or disvaluable, in the case of some
immoral properties), they will count as artistically valuable
whenever the artworld evolves in such a way as to encompass
them. I think it is fairly clear that the current state of the
artworld is such that socio-political art, strongly espousing
moral points of view, derives some or most of its value from
21 Properties can become artistically valuable whenever the objects that bear them have the capacity to provide valuable experiences in virtue of those properties. Properties cannot be artistically valuable when they lack that feature. Properties are not artistically valuable if either the objects that have them fail to have the capacity to provide valuable experiences or those properties are not considered to be artistically valuable within the artworld.
22 Indeed, it is not far-fetched to think of a good part of Jeff Koons’ career as an attempt to make money and fame artistically valuable. 46 those properties (think of the art of James Luna, Steve Earle, or Bill T. Jones). Accordingly, at the present time, ethical and moral properties seem to count towards artistic value
(though this may not have been the case at some times in the past, and it may be possible that it will not be the case at some time in the future).
2.8 Objections to Quasi-Institutionalism, and Responses
Now, it may be objected that my account, as stated, does not meet either of the desiderata from Stecker with which we began. The main reason why I might have failed to capture what is distinctive about artistically valuable properties is that my account is blatantly circular: “artistically valuable” occurs on both sides of the biconditional.23 A natural way to avoid the
circle is to remove “artistic” from the second half, analyzing
artistic value in terms of properties recognized as valuable
(not artistically valuable) by the artworlds in which they are embedded. But I am greatly reluctant to do that. If “artistic” is removed from the definiens, there is no obstacle to counting money or playbills or fame as artistically valuable—after all, these are often valued within artworld contexts. So let me offer three alternative, complementary replies.
23 I am grateful to Thomas Adajian for raising this objection in his commentary on an earlier version of this chapter given at the American Society for Aesthetics Eastern Division Meeting in April 2004. 47 1. If an epistemologist were to propose that S knows that p if and only if God recognizes that S knows that p, she might not be telling us a lot about knowledge, but she would not be guilty of circularity. For she would not be defining knowledge in terms of knowledge; rather, she would be defining knowledge in terms of what is recognized by God. The occurrence of “knows” in her definiens is intensionally embedded, and hence is not intersubstitutable with the non-intensional occurrence in the definiendum. My definition works the same way. “Artistically valuable,” in the notion of being recognized as artistically valuable by some artworld system, occurs in an intensional context, whereas the occurrence of that same term in the definiendum does not.
So what is it, exactly, for an artworld to recognize a property as artistically valuable? Without an answer to this question, I seem to be in the position of the hapless philosopher who, in one of Carroll’s examples (1994, 12), tries to define wisecracks in terms of the attitudes of the jokeworld.
Unless that philosopher gives us some idea about what the jokeworld is like and what would have to happen for it to recognize something as a wisecrack, our understanding of wisecracks would not be enhanced at all by the proposed characterization.
2. Fortunately, I think something can be said about an artworld’s recognition that a property is valuable. Start with the notion that what it is that makes a property distinctively
48 artistically valuable indeed depends on its role within the context of the artworld. That role, I hold, is one of (partial) constitution.24! The properties in question are those selected by
norms such that if the artworld did not have those norms, it
would not be an artworld at all.! No one set of properties, on
my view, has that feature in every possible artworld.! This is
the point of the foregoing claim that artworlds can evolve and
differ.! It does seem clear, however, that for each artworld,
there is some set of properties upon which it constituatively
focuses.
Consider the world of contemporary jazz.! Jazz musicians
like to get paid for their performances, club owners like to
hire players who can keep their venues teeming with well-paying
patrons, record producers like to land lucrative hits, and so
on: in general, they all value money.! But the amount of money a
jazz performance can make for those associated with it is
irrelevant to its status as an artistic endeavor.! The norms
that select for monetary value could be completely dropped out
of the practice and it still would be an artistic practice.!
24 For a sophisticated discussion of social constructions, see (Haslanger 1995). At present, I am not entirely sure where my conception of artistic value would fit into Haslanger’s classifications of different social constructions. I at least suspect that artistic value, on my view, fits into both Haslanger’s notion of causal construction (social factors have a role in bringing it into existence) and her notion of constitutive construction (social factors are used in its definition). 49 Those in the jazz world might need to make money (or at least to break even) to continue doing what they do.! But to play jazz is
not to make money.25
Now compare: if we took away the norms within jazz that
select for harmonic, rhythmic, and dynamic complexity; thematic
development; timbre modulation; communication as an ensemble;
and so on, would we still have an artistic practice?! Perhaps
the result would not be an artistic practice at all.! At the
very least, it would be a very different artistic practice—it would be a stretch to say that the activities undertaken in the absence of such norms would be embedded in the world of jazz.
Generalizing from this example, we arrive at the following principle:
An artworld recognizes a set of properties as artistically valuable whenever the norms within that artworld that select for those properties are (partially) constitutive of that artworld.
Without those properties, there would be no artworld whatsoever.
In short, to recognize a property as artistically valuable from one’s position within an artworld is to say, “Here is what we do.! It is because we are doing this that we are doing art.”26
3. If all else fails, and the circularity cannot be
dispelled, there is one other reply. The circularity here, if
25 As the joke goes: How does a jazz musician get a million dollars? He starts with two million and goes on tour.
26 Note that not every member of the artworld always has to be saying such things—quite the contrary is the case, in fact. 50 it exists, should not be viewed as troubling, because the concepts involved are holistically interconnected and must be defined in terms of one another.27 Circularity is abundant in philosophy: consider the connections between Lockean secondary properties, normal observers, and standard conditions; or a sense of humor and funniness; or numbers and arithmetic discourse. Any social practice, whether it is the artworld, or mathematics, or the law, is going to require attention to its subject matter if we are to say what is distinctive about it.
The fact that such circularity is so widespread may indicate that it is not a decisively damning feature of any account of a social practice (or at least that in my misery, I have plenty of company).
Furthermore, quasi-institutionalism is less circular than full-blown institutionalism—the circle is more informative.
Yes, it is still the case that, just like Graves, I hold that being artistically valuable depends on being recognized as valuable by the artworld. However, first, artistic value is now understood to have a component that is not circular at all—that which adverts to the capacities of artworks to provide valuable experiences. Second, the move from a pure institutionalism to a quasi-institutionalism allows us to step outside the artworld practice in order to identify and understand that practice, something it is not clear that the institutionalist can do. And
27 This is one of Dickie’s moves (1984). Given my qualms about Dickie’s success there, I want to endorse this response less than whole-heartedly. But it does seem to be a live option. 51 third, the quasi-institutionalist avoids the institutionalist’s commitment (forced on her by circularity) to the idea that the properties selected as artistically valuable by the artworld must be artistically valuable.28 Under quasi-institutionalism,
mistakes can be made within the practice, and they are made
where the practice does not track properties that have the
capacity to provide us with valuable experiences.
This leaves us again face to face with one of Wollheim’s
concerns: why have some properties been selected as artistically
valuable while others have not? Artists have created (and still
create) artworks that challenge the artworlds in which they are
embedded to adopt new criteria of artistic value. Examples
abound: consider the replacement of the values of nineteenth-
century Romantic painting by those selecting for personality and
“truthfulness” to nature,29 or the death of the “shred” style of
electric guitar playing in the early 1990’s (prompted by
“grunge” bands like Nirvana). Why are the challenges raised by
creative and original artworks accepted in some cases and
rejected in others?
The straightforward solution here is that such matters are
not in the philosophical domain. There are many reasons for the
evolution of artistic evaluation, including: whether or not an
artist finds the right kind of financial backing, the
circumstances under which she lives (including where she lives),
28 This commitment, note, makes institutionalism seem to be merely trivially true.
29 For a nice discussion of this historical transition, see (Gombrich 1978, 392-93). 52 her ability to market her work, how deeply entrenched current artworld styles are, the tastes of the public, the moral and political climate, and so on. But explaining those factors and their relations to artists and their works is not a philosophical enterprise. The task is equivalent to explaining how small green pieces of paper came to be used as money. In each case, the extra-institutional explanations Wollheim would demand are of the kind sought and found by sociologists, economists, political scientists, and especially, in our case, art historians and critics.
The last of these—historians and critics—are particularly important. One of their main tasks is to explain to us why and how the artworld is evolving (or to argue that the artworld needs to evolve in certain ways—think of the polemical views about art advanced by Roger Fry, Leo Tolstoy, and Clement
Greenberg). We should let critics, historians, and the whole lot of them do their work, and as philosophers stay out of the way whenever possible.
Let me sum up, briefly. Artistic value, I have argued, has to do with capacities of properties of artworks to provide valuable experiences and the choices made within artworlds to focus on some properties rather than others. This entails that the artworld can be wrong about what is artistically valuable.
Nevertheless, the artworld has an extremely broad range of properties to choose from; an artwork could be valuable because of its formal properties, or its representational fidelity, or
53 its moral goodness, or in virtue of the fact that it is bulletproof, or because it is “low carb.”30 Admittedly, some of
these properties are unlikely to be selected by the artworld,
but this is because of politics, fashion, social relationships
between artists and their environments, and so on, and it is not
the philosopher’s obligation to explain why some properties are
deemed to be artistically valuable while others are not.
In the end, the restrictions placed on the properties that
could have artistic value are few indeed. It is because philosophers have tended to impose too many such restrictions that their views about the comparability of artworks are skewed in unacceptable directions. This is precisely what I shall reveal in the next three chapters.
30 Though I, for one, have serious doubts about the dispositional value of low carb foods. 54 CHAPTER 3
AGAINST THE UNIQUENESS APPROACH
Hobbes: There! I made a Tiger. Calvin: That’s no good! Who’s going to buy something like that?! It’s subtle! It’s boring! It’s incomprehensible! How will this ever appeal to the lowest common denominator?! It’s completely unadaptable to merchandising tie-ins! Hobbes: Who cares? I just wanted to make it. Calvin: What?! Is this some snobby, elitist, aesthetic thing?!?
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
On the tradition I shall call the uniqueness approach or uniqueness theory, artworks cannot be compared to each other at all in terms of their value because they are, in a certain sense, unique objects. Any attempt to compare artworks is a violation of the nature and status of art. Using the terminology developed in Chapter 1, this amounts to the idea that artworks are incomparable.1
In general, uniqueness theories emerge from the insight
that the practices of making, interpreting, and evaluating art
1 Incomparability, to remind ourselves, occurs when no positive value relation holds between alternatives. 55 are very different from others that inform everyday life.
Genuine artworks are not made on the assembly line.2 Rather, they are products of very individualized activity. Artists make products that are different from extant objects—if they did not, they would not be artists at all, but craftspeople or forgers.
Through the activity of the artist, an artwork achieves a distinct identity. To do justice to an artwork as an artwork, we must attend to it in light of that distinct identity: we must treat it as a unique object, immune from generalized strategies of evaluation and hence from comparison.
My view, ultimately, is the exact opposite of the uniqueness theory. I hold that all artworks are comparable.
Obviously, the uniqueness approach must fail if I am to be right. In this chapter, I argue that it does fail, and that the ways in which it fails are instructive: they push us in the direction of a more moderate approach to the comparability of artworks, the failure of which in turn pushes us in the direction of my universal comparability approach.
The uniqueness approach has a distinguished lineage and has enjoyed spates of widespread popularity.3 Nevertheless, the view is massively underdeveloped and generally assumed rather than supported with robust argumentation. Yet its wide acceptance
2 R.G. Collingwood’s famous distinction between art and craft (1938) is a prominent example of this point. Compare as well the views on popular music articulated in (Adorno and Simpson 1941).
3 Mary Mothersill, for example, cites Dewey, Santayana, Croce, Prall, and “countless literary critics” as having endorsed the view (1968, 194). 56 means that the uniqueness approach needs to be taken seriously.
Accordingly, on behalf of its proponents, I shall attempt to construct the best possible arguments for it. Two things must be shown in these arguments.
First, it must be shown that there is a sense of uniqueness that supports the claim that unique objects are incomparable. I uncover this sense of uniqueness in section 3.1. Second, it must be shown that all artworks are unique in that very sense.
Sections 3.2 to 3.6 discuss the uniqueness theorist’s best attempts to do that, and reveal their failures.
In general, my objections to the uniqueness approach rely on the idea that it can only be supported by inadequate theories about the nature of art and artistic value. Moreover, because the uniqueness approach is drastically inadequate to everyday critical practices, the onus is on the uniqueness theorist. Its proponents must show, counterintuitively, that even though we take ourselves to be acting legitimately when we make comparative judgments among artworks, we are making massive errors. Any alternative approaches to the issue that avoid this consequence would be preferable—a point I make in my concluding section (3.7), in which I offer a general diagnosis of the flaws with the uniqueness approach.
57 3.1 The Relevant Sense of “Unique”
In what way would an object x have to be unique in order for it to be incomparable to some other object y? Only four options seem to be at all plausible.
1. For every property that x has, nothing else has it.
If x were unique in this sense, x would have nothing in common with any other object y, in which case it would be natural to conclude that they are incomparable. However, artworks have many properties in common not only with many objects that are not art but also with each other.4 Any painting, for example, has something in common with at least one other painting, whether it is that they are made partially from paint, show some sort of visual design, have a frame, can be hung on a wall, or something else. I shall say no more here; it would be very counterintuitive to attribute this sense of uniqueness to artworks.
2. x has a particular set of properties that nothing else has.
Every distinct object, including every artwork, is like this, so long as it is identical to itself and nothing else.
But this sense of uniqueness does not lead to the incomparability of art. For if artworks were incomparable because they each have a distinct set of properties, then all
4 Danto has investigated this point extensively: see (Danto 1973; 1981), for example. 58 objects with a distinct set of properties would be incomparable, in every way. And the view that no objects whatsoever can be compared to each other is preposterous. It would rule out even such straightforward claims as “Henry is less massive than
Saturn” and “Gandhi was a better man than Hitler.” Hitler,
Gandhi, Saturn, and I each have a set of properties that is shared by nothing else, but our uniqueness in that sense does not make us completely incomparable.
3. x is the only object of its kind.
If x is the only object of its kind, the claim would be, then it cannot be compared to any other object y (since y must be of a different kind). The idea that objects cannot be compared across kinds is familiar—it is the idea of the Rylean category mistake that grounds the relation of noncomparability
(see section 1.1). It is often alleged, to use some typical examples, that one cannot compare chalk and cheese, or philosophy and pushpin.
For three reasons, this kind of uniqueness cannot lead us to the conclusion that artworks are incomparable. First, the claim that each artwork is the only object of its kind is not very plausible. To use this sense of uniqueness in her argument, the uniqueness theorist must deny that individual artworks belong to any kind. Presumably this would amount not to the odd claim that there is only one painting, one song, one string quartet, and so on, but to the claim that the terms
59 “painting”, “song”, “string quartet”, and even “artwork” do not refer to kinds at all. Perhaps qualms about essentialism, or a metaphysical reluctance to countenance kinds are at work here.
Even so, there seem to be crucial similarities among artworks—even if not all artworks are similar, surely all paintings (for example) are similar to each other in notable respects. To say that artworks are the only objects of their kinds is to deny the plausible claims that these similarities exist and that they are ontologically important.5
Second, even if one could somehow maintain that artworks
are the only objects of their kinds, one would have to abandon
any sensible notion of what a kind is. “Kind” is essentially a
collective term. A collection may happen to consist of only one
object, so an artwork may in fact be the only item of its kind.
But this is a contingent matter, not a necessary one. If an
object is genuinely of a kind, I think that we have to admit
that it is at least possible for there to be or to have been
another instance of that kind. If so, then though an artwork
might be the only object of its kind, it is still comparable
(where comparable is understood modally: able to be compared) to
something, namely the other possible objects of that kind.
Third, in order for this conception of uniqueness to entail
incomparability, it would have to be the case that comparisons
across kinds are impossible. They are not. Consider the
5 For some prominent ideas about the role that kinds of art play in artistic interpretation and evaluation, see (Walton 1970). I shall have more to say about this article in a few pages. 60 examples, raised in Chapter 1, of chalk and cheese, and of philosophy and pushpin. Chalk is a kind of writing tool, whereas cheese is a kind of dairy product. The kind writing
tool and the kind dairy product are distinct and have little
overlap (though one can, after all, write with whipped cream).
But this does not bar us from comparing them with respect to
suitability as an hors d’oeuvre. Cheese is an excellent hors
d’oeuvre; chalk is a terrible one. Similarly, though philosophy
and pushpin are very different kinds of activity, they are quite
comparable. Philosophy is much better than pushpin for gaining
an understanding of modal semantics; pushpin is better than
philosophy for developing eye-hand coordination. Such examples
show that even if artworks like Chagall’s The Green Violinist and Lichtenstein’s Takka-Takka are the only objects of their respective kinds, this does not by itself entail that they are incomparable.
4. For a given evaluative parameter, the standards upon which x is to be assessed are particular to x and do not apply to any other object y.
Now we are really getting somewhere. This is not a chalk and cheese sort of case. Both chalk and cheese can be assessed on the same parameters: suitability as an hors d’oeuvre, perishability, usefulness in the classroom, tendency to provoke allergic reactions, and so on. That is why they can be compared. But objects that cannot be assessed on any of the
same parameters do not seem comparable. If the only standards
61 for assessing x apply to x and nothing else, then there is no possibility of using those standards to assess y. In that case, x’s value is unique: it generates and satisfies only its unique set of evaluative standards.
If artworks had this kind of uniqueness, then their incomparability could be demonstrated as follows:
1. For every artwork x, the standards upon which its artistic value is to be assessed are particular to x and do not apply to any other artwork. 2. If, for a given evaluative parameter, the standards upon which x is to be assessed are particular to x and do not apply to any other object y, then x and y are incomparable. 3. Therefore, every artwork is incomparable to every other artwork.
Call this the master argument for incomparability.
A comprehensive survey of the literature on this topic, I believe, will reveal that most extant arguments for the incomparability of art are of this general form. Moreover, the other most plausible arguments for incomparability that can be constructed on behalf of the uniqueness theorist are of this form as well.
I propose to grant premise 2 for now, though I take it up again briefly in section 3.7. Instead, I want to concentrate on the grounds one might offer in support of premise 1, for uniqueness theorists have generally expended most of their argumentative energy on it.
Indeed, premise 1 of the master argument is central to the uniqueness approach. One frequently finds claims that artworks are unique in the relevant sense because of the lack of 62 intersubjective criteria that can be used to evaluate them.
George Yoos, for example, says, “There can be no justifiable, fixed, or universal criteria to rank or grade art . . . artworks are unique, particular, or novel creations and not essentially comparable” (1967, 81).
Claims like Yoos’ depend on the idea that an artwork is an integrated whole with a value that is not found in any other artwork. Nor can the value be ascertained, the uniqueness theorist asserts, by picking out valuable properties that the artwork shares with others; one cannot reach judgments of the form, “This artwork with property P and all other artworks that have P are good because of it.” Generalized external criteria cannot be deployed, because that amounts to judging artworks unfairly, in terms of their parts. If we do that, we fail to judge the artworks as artworks at all.
Instead, the only way in which we can criticize an artwork qua artwork is in terms of what Yoos calls its primary aspect—
“that aspect of the work which is essential to our identification of the work” (1967, 83). Much of the internal debate among uniqueness theorists concerns the nature of the primary aspect of artworks. It may be a unique form, an individualized expression of an emotional state, a unique meaning (as Yoos himself thinks, along with Danto), or something else entirely. But whatever the primary aspect turns out to be, an artwork must be identified and evaluated through attention to
63 it and nothing else. Otherwise, there would be nothing that serves to distinguish artworks from each other and to separate them from ordinary real objects.
The result, for the uniqueness theorist, is that the way to judge artworks is through first-hand attention to each artwork itself. Yoos sums up the view thus:
The primary thrust of criticism [of the arts] is in the elicitation of standards from the very object being judged or criticized. Such criticism does not impose a standard derived externally. Instead of judging the work of art according to criteria, principles, or standards that are given or accepted externally, the standards are recognized in and drawn from the very work of art itself. (1967, 82)
If this is right, then art criticism does not require one to consider the relations between an artwork and any others to which one might be tempted to compare it. As Stuart Hampshire puts it, the critic
need not look elsewhere and to possible alternatives in making his judgment. On the contrary, his purpose is to lead people not to look elsewhere, but to look here, at precisely this unique object; not to see the object as one of a kind, but to see it as individual and unrepeatable. (1954, 165)
With this context in mind, I now turn to the various arguments uniqueness theorists give to show that their claims are correct and that premise 1 of the master argument is true.
I shall show that none of these arguments work.
64 3.2 The Argument from Aesthetic Interest
One argument for the uniqueness approach depends on the idea that what artists do is to make objects that merit aesthetic interest, an interest in a single object, for its own sake, apart. In Hampshire’s words, “Nothing but holding an object still in attention, by itself and for its own sake, would count as having an aesthetic interest in it” (1954, 166-67).
Why would anybody hold such a view? Well, one readily available theoretical context that could provide a grounding for statements like Hampshire’s is formalism about the nature of art. The uniqueness theorist might avail herself of something like Clive Bell’s idea that in picking up on significant form
(the property distinctive of artworks), the representational aspects of the artwork are irrelevant and distracting.
Representational features can only provoke non-aesthetic emotions, Bell says, leaving us in the realm of “human interests” and “the world of man’s activity,” and keeping us out of “the world of aesthetic exaltation” (1958, 27).6
Picking up on the features of aesthetic interest, on this
view, does not require the consumer of art to notice the
relations of the artwork to any other objects. Quite the
contrary: to pay attention to an artwork qua artwork is to
involve oneself in it alone. The conditions under which the
6 I do not think that Bell himself is a uniqueness theorist, only that something like his formalist ideas are likely to be cited by the uniqueness theorists. 65 artwork was made (who made it, where and when it was made), its originality and influence, and its relations to other artworks are mere distractions. To pay them heed interferes with one’s disinterested attention to artworks. And when disinterest is lost the two unavoidable consequences are the impossibility of aesthetic experience and the failure to be interested in the artwork itself.
Formalism about the nature of art provides an apt
background for what I shall call the argument from aesthetic
interest:
1. Evaluating art is exclusively an aesthetic matter: all non-aesthetic properties are irrelevant to artistic value. 2. The aesthetic properties of an artwork x are determined by x and nothing else (including the relations that hold between x and any other objects). 3. So when we evaluate x in terms of artistic value, we are to pay attention to x and nothing else. 4. If we were to evaluate x in terms of artistic value on the basis of standards that derive from our evaluation of other objects, then in assessing x, we would be paying attention to something other than x. 5. So in assessing the artistic value of x, we cannot employ standards that apply to any other artwork. 6. Hence, artworks are unique in the sense required in premise 1 of the master argument.
The main failing of this argument is that formalism has
serious flaws. Today, it is widely believed that artworks are
not all objects that are separate from the real world. Our
interests in artworks are not always aesthetic in the sense
Hampshire and his ilk have in mind. And even when we do take an
66 aesthetic interest in artworks, it is not clear that the aesthetic does not involve factors external to the artwork itself.
Since the heyday of the uniqueness theorist, Kendall Walton
(1970) has advanced a powerful and famous argument that purports to show just this. Walton demonstrates (convincingly, to my mind) that which aesthetic features an artwork has depend on its social and historical circumstances. Attention to the conditions under which an artwork is made, far from being a distraction from the artwork qua art, is essential for any sort
of understanding and evaluation of the artwork.
In particular, Walton argues, understanding an artwork and
picking up on its aesthetic features requires a grasp of the
categories in which the artwork ought to be placed (painting,
music, cubism, collage, free jazz, and so on). Categories are
nested, interrelated, and have vague and shifting boundaries.
Still, categorization of an individual artwork involves
consideration of other artworks that exist or could exist. The
similarities and differences among artworks (some of which may
not be merely perceptual) are crucial for determining how each
is to be taken.
Most of the controversy generated by Walton’s view is about
which of the properties of artworks are relevant to their
categorization (notably, there is debate about whether artists’
intentions matter). His claim that the aesthetic properties of
artworks have something to do with their relations to other
67 artworks is much less controversial—rightly so, given its plausibility. And if Walton is right here, then an interest in an artwork itself actually necessitates an interest in other artworks.
Accordingly, it is a mistake to endorse premise 2 of the argument from aesthetic interest (that the aesthetic properties of an artwork x are determined by x and nothing else, including the relations that hold between x and any other objects). The features an artwork has, and by extension what that artwork is, depend on its relations to other artworks. If premise 2 fails, the rest of the argument does not go through. Even concentration on a work’s aesthetic features is, it turns out, relational and hence comparative.
3.3 The Argument from Expression of Emotion
Another argument for the uniqueness theory looks to the
process of artistic creation. On the view advanced by Benedetto
Croce (1909) and later popularized by R.G. Collingwood (1938),
artworks gain their unique status as a result of the unique
parts of themselves that artists put into them. Specifically,
artworks express the emotional states of the artists who made them. Expression is not mere description of emotion—that can be done by individuals who do not even feel the emotion in question. Nor is it the involuntary betrayal of emotion through behavior. Rather, the process is deep, complicated, and
68 extremely personal. Expressing one’s emotion is like performing psychoanalysis on oneself. It is giving shape and voice to an initially vague and incoherent (though gripping) emotional state.
The sort of emotions upon which Croce and Collingwood focus are mental states that are very individualized, distinctive, and private. Artworks, whose essential aspect is the expression of these emotions, share these properties. Because the emotional states are themselves unique, the artworks are as well.
Collingwood puts it thus:
Expressing [an emotion], we saw, has something to do with becoming conscious of it; therefore, if being fully conscious of it means being conscious of all its peculiarities, fully expressing it means expressing all its particularities. The poet . . . gets as far away as possible from merely labeling his emotions as instances of this or that general kind, and takes enormous pains to individualize them by expressing them in terms which reveal their difference from any other emotion of the same sort. (1938, 112)
For Collingwood, the emotions expressed in all genuine artworks are necessarily individual and particular, and so are the artworks that express them.
The argument from expression of emotion, which can be pulled out of the Croce/Collingwood view, is this:
1. Artworks are the expressions of initially vague personal emotional states. 2. Expressing an emotion is not labeling it or describing it as belonging to a general kind, but revealing what is particular to its individual occurrence. 3. So an artwork, qua expression of emotion, is private, individual, and not general or generic.
69 4. It is a mistake to assess private, individual objects that are not general or generic on grounds imported from external sources; one must assess such objects on their own terms. 5. So artworks are unique in the sense required in premise 1 of the master argument.
The argument from expression of emotion is another that
depends on a flawed conception of the nature of art, articulated
in this case in the first premise. Aside from a wide variety of
counterexamples (collaborative arts like film, much socio-
political art, bad art in general, the non-artistic expression
of emotion one finds in objects like manifestos), the view in
question privatizes art to an unacceptable extent. As Richard
Wollheim argues (1980, 40-43), the theory that art is the
expression of emotion both raises epistemological problems about
access to artworks by anyone but their artists, and ignores the
plausible notion that at least some artworks are publicly
accessible physical objects produced in recognized artistic
media.
Furthermore, even if the Croce/Collingwood line or
something like it is correct, it is not clear that the relevant
type of uniqueness for artworks must follow. Nothing in the
expression theory rules out the possibility of different artists
striving to express the same emotion. Indeed, Collingwood himself holds that the social role of the artist is to reveal unspoken truths about her community. Though the emotion the artist feels is private, her community shares it, and it is the special talent of artists to be able to show other members of
70 their community aspects of their collective psyche that they cannot reveal themselves. If one artist can express the very same emotion as another, an emotion common to the community at large, then is it really plausible to say that one expression of emotion cannot be better than another? If not, then the expression theory encompasses comparative evaluative relations.
So if there are the resources within Collingwood’s framework for different degrees of success in expressing emotion, then expression theories of art need not eliminate comparability.
Collingwood is caught in a dilemma here. The expression of emotion characteristic of artworks, on his view, either admits of degrees of success or it does not. If emotion can be
expressed more or less successfully, then artworks can be
compared. Emotions might be individual, particular, and
private, but the expressions thereof have something in common:
they are all expressions. We should be able to evaluate them as
such. When a private emotion could have been expressed better,
the resulting artwork is less good than others. This is a
comparative judgment.
On the other hand, if Collingwood is not willing to
countenance better and worse expressions of emotion, he faces
another problem: he cannot handle truly bad art. To be an
artwork, the emotion must be expressed successfully (and to the
same degree of success as all other artists achieve). When one
attempts to express an emotion in, say, a painting and does not
do it at all, one has failed to make art entirely. If
71 Collingwood’s theory commits him to the impossibility of bad art, it is problematic to the extent that it cannot be used to support the uniqueness approach.
In sum, the Croce/Collingwood expression theory is inadequate in various respects. It does not line up well with the boundaries of the contemporary arts, and its use catches the uniqueness theorist on the horns of a dilemma. Accordingly, it is a poor foundation for the argument from expression of emotion, or for the uniqueness approach in general.
3.4 The Argument from Expression of Meaning
As I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, I want to look at the most powerful arguments that can be advanced in favor of the uniqueness theory. The argument I shall discuss in this section, as far as I am aware, does not appear in the literature. The uniqueness theorist, I think, might react to the failure of the argument from expression of emotion by basing a further argument on a different, more plausible expressivist theory of art: Danto’s. Danto believes that an essential aspect of artworks is that they express unique meanings.7 Though the
7 Danto’s views on this subject are complex and not easily gleaned from his writings. Happily, Noël Carroll has done the hard work for the rest of us, in a way with which Danto himself agrees. Carroll writes: “Stated formulaically, the theory of art that Danto propounds in Transfiguration [of the Commonplace] maintains that something X is a work of art if and only if (a) X has a subject . . . (b) about which X projects some attitude or point-of-view . . . (c) by means of rhetorical ellipsis . . . (d) which ellipsis, in turn, engages audience participation in filling-in what is missing . . . (e) where the works in question and the interpretations thereof 72 Croce/Collingwood theory fails to ground the uniqueness approach, perhaps its proponents can find support in Danto’s ideas.
Danto’s view emerges from attention to two problems about counterparts—objects that are perceptually, if not numerically identical. One problem is about several counterparts that differ in their status as art: what makes one an artwork while others are not? Danto’s suggestion is that to be an artwork, an object must have a place within a certain socio-institutional context.8 The other problem occurs when several different artworks are counterparts of each other: what makes them different artworks? Because counterparts cannot be individuated by their perceptual properties, Danto holds that the different meanings that the artworks express do the job. No two artworks can have exactly the same meaning.
This latter counterpart problem seems to entail that each artwork has individualized semantic content, expresses a unique point of view, and makes a unique statement.9 To identify an artwork, to understand it, criticize it, and evaluate it, indeed to perceive it qua artwork at all, it is necessarily to attend to these factors. Though Danto himself does not do it (more on
require an art-historical context” (1993, 80). Obviously, it is condition (b) that is of particular interest to us here, although condition (e) will be quite important later.
8 This is the classificatory institutionalism that I discussed in Chapter 2.
9 John Dewey says something similar: “The material expressed [by an artwork] cannot be private; that is the state of the mad-house. But the manner of saying it is individual, and, if the product is to be a work of art, induplicable” (1934, 108). 73 this shortly), the uniqueness theorist could exploit his insight to inform an argument from the expression of meaning:
1. Artworks are individuated from each other by their unique meanings. 2. So attention to an artwork’s unique meaning is essential for understanding, criticizing, and evaluating it. 3. Paying attention to an artwork’s individual meaning is paying attention to it, and not to contextual factors like the artwork’s category or conditions of origin. 4. Given that we do evaluate artworks, and that qua artwork, an artwork must be cut off critically from other artworks in the sense explained in premise 3, we must evaluate each artwork according to its own standards. 5. So artworks are unique in the sense required in premise 1 of the master argument.
An important point to be made about this argument is that
Danto himself does not make it. Why not? Well, one reason is
that precious little of his philosophy addresses the evaluative
aspects of artistic practice. But a more important reason is
that other aspects of his view actually seem to tell against his exploitation by uniqueness theorists. In order for the uniqueness theorist to use Danto’s theory of art, she must either go well beyond his own arguments or ignore conflicting aspects of his view. For example, Danto writes:
Responding to [“The Night Watch”] or any painting is considerably more than being able to identify it. Exactly this complexity of responsive understanding must, in many cases explicitly, be abetted by the mediation of criticism. . . . the impugning of secondary works is part of what those have in mind who direct us to “the work itself” . . . I have inveighed against the isolation of artworks from the historical and generally causal matrices from which they derive their identities and structures. The ‘work itself’ thus presupposes so many causal connections with its artistic environment that an ahistorical theory of art can have no philosophical defense. (1981, 175)
74 What Danto seems to be claiming here is that identification
of an artwork, which requires understanding of the meaning
expressed in it, is essential to proper experiences of artworks,
but it is not all there is to them. Criticism involves
attention to related and/or inferior artworks, and each artwork must occur in the context of others. The notion of attention to the work itself, to its very identity and structure, far from isolating the work from others, necessitates attention to them.
Danto’s claims here dovetail nicely with the more institutionalist aspects of his theory of art.10 For Danto,
institutional context is at least as much of an individuating
factor for artworks as is meaning. The institutional
contextualization of an artwork involves its placement within a
nexus of other artworks. Accordingly, Danto himself would want
to resist premise 3 of the argument from expression of meaning:
evaluation of an artwork does not involve cutting it off from
all others.
Notice also that the above quotation echoes Walton rather
nicely. Just as Walton claims that categorization determines
aesthetic properties, Danto is claiming that that context is
crucial for the establishment of identity and structure. If
Walton’s idea provides a response to the uniqueness approach, as
10 These have been downplayed, unfortunately, in recent literature, replaced instead with attention to Danto’s expressivist leanings. 75 I argued above, then Danto’s should as well—or at least, it should keep the uniqueness theorist from appropriating Danto’s theories.
Here is what I think we should conclude about the argument from expression of meaning. First, the uniqueness theorist would be making a mistake if she were to appropriate Danto’s view wholesale. Only the most casual reading of Danto would provide the needed support for the uniqueness approach. Second, the uniqueness theorist could attempt to formulate an argument by picking out the expressivist aspects of Danto’s view and ignoring the rest. But that would be to leave out the aspects of Danto’s view that strike me, as well as many others, as the most important and deep: his attention to the historical- theoretical context that is required for there to be artworks.
If you think that this context is significant, you ought to reject the argument from expression of meaning. Third, I should reiterate a point made at the end of the previous section. Even if there is something unique expressed by each artwork, whether it is an artist’s emotion or an individualized meaning, this is not enough, by itself, to secure the uniqueness of artworks upon
which the master argument relies. Unless the uniqueness
theorist can find a connection between the expressive aspects of
art and incomparability, she has reached a dead end.
76 3.5 The Argument from Formulization
A recurring theme in arguments for the uniqueness approach is that there is something very special about the practices of creating, interpreting, and evaluating art. In particular, it is often claimed that artistic practices are very different from those of science, on the one hand, and morality, on the other.
The practices of science and morality, the argument runs, are rational and require generalized solutions to repeatable problems. Success in them can be assured by following rules and formulae. The utilitarian’s greatest happiness principle is a formula; so is Kant’s categorical imperative. Following these formulae, their proponents assert, ensures that one is doing the right thing. Science is similar: it presumes and depends on consistency in laws, experimental methodology, and results. The scientific method is nothing other than a formula for achieving success in prediction and explanation given the problems scientists face.
We make a grievous error, the uniqueness theorist continues, if we try to transpose these aspects of the nature of moral and scientific practices onto artistic practices.
Formulae about how art works, how to evaluate art, and how to create successful art are inherently ill-begotten. The problems of art are not like the problems of morality and science.
Artworks and the processes by which they are made and evaluated are unrepeatable, avoidable, irrational, and specific. It just
77 is not the case that if I do what a great artist did, I will make great art (I might not even make art!). I cannot find qualities that good artworks have, reproduce them, and expect the results to be good. As a critic, I cannot come up with formulae to the effect that whenever an artwork has properties p1…pn it is a good one, not even based on the judgment that a
certain good artwork has p1…pn.
Just as in morality, generalization about methodology is
central to science. But, the uniqueness theorist asserts,
generalized theories about how art works and how to create or
evaluate it cannot be proposed or followed without massive
distortion in critical judgments. In Margaret MacDonald’s
words: “Whatever the value of generalization in science, in art
it invariably leads to sheer distortion” (1954, 116).11
So how, according to the uniqueness theorist, do we get the
incomparability of artworks from the foregoing sorts of insight?
Again, the answer comes in a version of the master argument: the
argument from formulization.
1. It is always a mistake to use formulae in practices of artistic creation and evaluation. 2. Because formulaic treatment of artworks is a mistake, one is required to assess each artwork on its own standards. 3. Because artworks must be assessed on their own standards, they are unique in the sense required in premise 1 of the master argument (the sense that entails incomparability).
11 This comment echoes John Dewey’s claim that “Identity of mode of production defines the work of a machine, the esthetic counterpart of which is academic. The quality of a work of art is sui generis . . .” (1934, 108). 78 Premise 1 is crucial. What reasons do the uniqueness theorists offer for accepting it? Let me give a list of relevant considerations.
1. Unlike the objects studied by scientists, artworks are unbreakable wholes and cannot be broken down into their parts for analysis. As MacDonald puts it, an artwork is not “like a cake, whose meritorious features may be picked out, like plums, and exhibited” (1954, 125). Because artworks are unbreakable wholes, it makes no sense to say that an artwork is good because it has a certain feature or group of features. Its features simply cannot be separated out in that way. Accordingly, formulae of criticism are useless, because the features of artworks to which they must advert are not the determinants of artistic value.
2. Hampshire (1954) backs up his version of the argument from formulization with the point that the practices characteristic of art are avoidable. Morality is different; whether one wants it or not, one must confront the problems of morality. Now, there are a number of possible solutions to these moral problems, and all rational creatures must criticize and compare these through arguments (for Hampshire, this is part of what it is to be rational). Arguments must be consistent; if two moral problems are relevantly similar, it is irrational to conclude that they ought to be solved differently. And this,
Hampshire claims, leads to general principles of morality—in effect, formulae: “Anyone, therefore, who moralizes necessarily
79 generalizes; he ‘draws a moral’; in giving his grounds of choice, he subsumes particular cases under a general rule”
(1954, 164). In sum, our status as rational beings demands of us that we adhere to generalized methods in our attempts to solve moral problems, given that we cannot act so as to avoid them.
But we make a real mistake, Hampshire continues, when we transpose these aspects of the nature of moral practices onto artistic practices. The art critic, if she is really doing her job, cannot be a moralist, for the problems of art are not like the problems of morality. In fact, on Hampshire’s view, it hardly makes sense to talk of the problems of art: artworks are made gratuitously, and not in response to any unavoidable or common problem poised.
Since artworks are not solutions to unavoidable problems, it makes no sense to judge that one artwork qua solution to a problem is better than any other. As such, rationality does not demand that we employ generalized methods of criticism. When generalized strategies are mistakenly applied to the arts,
Hampshire writes,
one looks away from the particular qualities of the particular thing, and is left with some general formula or recipe, useless alike to the artist and spectator. One does not need a formula or recipe unless one needs repetitions; and one needs repetitions and rules in conduct [e.g., in morality], but not in art; the artist does not need a formula of reproduction and the spectator does not need a formula of evaluation. (1954, 166)
80 So, on Hampshire’s view, artworks, unlike moral scenarios, resist formulaic treatment. And this grounds their incomparability:
If the works themselves are regarded as free creations, to be enjoyed or neglected for what they are, then any grading is inessential to the judgment of them; if they are not answers to a common problem, they do not compete and neither need be rejected, except on its own merits. (1954, 164)
Hampshire, notoriously, goes so far as to say that this means that there ought not to be a philosophy of art at all.12
3. Finally, the uniqueness theorist will, no doubt, attempt
to support premise 1 of the argument from formulization by
attending to some actual artworks. The idea that creation and
evaluation of art cannot be formulaic seems to be borne out
nicely, for example, by a recent series of artworks made by
Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid.13 Komar and Melamid’s methodology
is to construct professional market research surveys that
purport to measure the artistic preferences of their
respondents—what people like and dislike about various kinds of
art. The artists then use the results of those surveys as
formulae for the production of artworks. The idea seems to be
that if one can ascertain the features of artworks that the
12 By now, I think that Hampshire has been refuted in this claim, for much the same reasons that Peter Kivy adduces in (2004, 4): aesthetics is a healthy, flourishing philosophical discipline that is connected firmly and in interesting ways to many other philosophical areas. Kivy is himself a philosopher of art, so is not without bias in this regard. Nevertheless, it may be interesting to note that Hampshire’s polemic against the philosophy of art, like the logical positivism from which it emerges, is self-undermining. Hampshire is doing philosophy of art himself.
13 See (Komar and Melamid 2004) for more information on their project. 81 public prefers, and one can make an artwork with those features, then the public will judge the artwork to be a good one.
Correspondingly, one ought to be able to make a bad artwork by including in it the features that are most disliked.
Komar and Melamid have polled fourteen different countries, and produced “most wanted” and “least wanted” paintings reflecting the polling data from each. More recently, they have produced most wanted and least wanted songs according to the preferences reported in the United States. For simplicity, I want to concentrate discussion on just one of Komar and
Melamid’s works: their America’s Most Wanted painting.
The survey results upon which Komar and Melamid based this
painting are too complicated to reproduce here, but I can give a
short summary.14 People in the United States prefer dishwasher-
sized, realistic, traditional landscapes that are unchallenging
and nice to look at. They like a lot of blue and green, with
abundant water and forests. And they like to see depictions of
wild animals, children, and historical figures, all fully
clothed (save for, perhaps, the wild animals).
The painting produced to satisfy these preferences (see
(Komar and Melamid 2004) for a reproduction), America’s Most
Wanted, borders on the absurd. It shows a blue lake with mountains in the background. A tree-covered hill is at the left, with a single prominent tree on the right. In the foreground is a meadow, through which a family walks, towards
14 For the full results, see (Komar and Melamid 2004). 82 some deer wading in the lake. Finally, a totally incongruous full-body portrait of George Washington occupies the center of the foreground.
The uniqueness theorist would take America’s Most Wanted to impart a specific lesson. If formulization was a valid strategy for generating art, then by all rights, America’s Most Wanted should be a great painting. But it is not: though rigorously scientific, the process of finding out which individual aspects of artworks people esteem and generalizing on them formulaically has yielded a critical monstrosity. Accordingly, formulaic treatment of art is a mistake. Premise 1 of the argument from formulization is correct, and artworks are unique in the sense that makes them incomparable.
Here is why I think each of these three ways of supporting the claim that formulaic creation and evaluation of the arts is an unsatisfactory way of demonstrating artworks’ incomparability.
First, it just does not seem to be the case that it is impossible to consider the meritorious features of an artwork separately from the others. Art critics separate features of artworks from each other quite frequently: think of the classical music critic considering the harmonic development of a piece (quite apart from its dynamics), or a jazz critic discussing a soloist’s tone (quite apart from her harmonizations). It is odd to suggest that these critics are doing something drastically wrong, for the following reasons.
83 The uniqueness theorist’s claim that valuable features of
artworks cannot be considered separately derives any shred of
plausibility only from a confusion with a very plausible claim.
It is, I would agree, critically irresponsible to separate out
each valuable feature of an artwork and to conclude that one can
simply take one’s isolated assessments to be determinative of
that artwork’s value. Critics do seem to be under some
obligation to consider how the properties of artworks interact
to form a complete whole. But this does not mean that there is
no way critics can isolate artistically valuable properties from
each other, nor that critics’ conclusions about the presence or
absence of these properties can have no bearing on their evaluative judgments about artworks as wholes.
In short, the uniqueness theorist’s inhibitions about picking out meritorious features of art do not provide any robust barrier to comparability. The effects of the interaction of valuable properties on the value of the whole does, however, raise a host of interesting complications, about which I shall have much to say in the next three chapters.
Second, one might take issue with Hampshire’s claim that art does not involve solving problems. It is easy to list examples of the problems that artists face (and much harder to solve them): How can one represent three dimensions on a two- dimensional canvas? How can one convey sadness best using only body movement? When mixing this album, how do we keep the crash cymbal from taking up all the sonic territory of the guitars?
84 Which kind of artistic statements translate best to the common person? Can one make ceramics look like a wooden bridge?
Critics, moreover, have their own set of problems to deal with: What are the appropriate conditions for assessing an artwork? How much background knowledge should one have before approaching an artwork? What is the artwork about? When one experiences a given artwork, upon which of its features should one focus?
Moreover, if the problems of art are “gratuitous,” as
Hampshire claims, this does not entail that they do not ever admit of generalized, formulaic solutions. On this point, I can do no better that to quote a passage from Mary Mothersill’s critique of Hampshire:
It is not only “unavoidable” problems that can be dealt with by “general methods”; consider the case of strategy games. Furthermore, there are “general methods,” rules for mixing colors, rules of counterpoint, principles of composition, and so forth, which are intended to help the artist to solve his peculiar problems and which sometimes do help him. (1968, 207)
It is also not clear that a wedge can be driven between
morality and the arts by noting that the problems of art are
gratuitous while the problems of morality are not. On the one
hand, it seems that there are plenty of things that can avoid
the problems of morality and the problems of art. The former
are the things that are not moral agents; the latter are the
things that are not artists or critics. On the other hand,
there is a sense in which neither the problems of morality nor
85 the problems of art can be avoided. If one is a moral agent, one cannot avoid the former, and if one is an artist or critic, one cannot avoid the latter. If the problems of art are unavoidable for the artist and critic, then on Hampshire’s argument, they admit of rational, and hence general solutions.
Formulae can actually have a place in art as well as in morality.
Hampshire might reply by pointing out that merely copying a good artwork, using somebody else’s solution to an artistic problem, need not produce a good artwork. But, as Mothersill points out (1968, 207), merely copying a morally good action need not produce a morally good action either (this is the whole point of deontological ethics). Accordingly, Hampshire seems forced to say that neither the problems of morality nor art admit of formulaic solutions, or that both of them do.
This brings us back to America’s Most Wanted. How can we explain this painting or other artworks like it without endorsing the uniqueness approach? My view is that the uniqueness theorist’s interpretation of Komar and Melamid’s work is probably a mistake, and that more plausible interpretations of America’s Most Wanted do not accord with the uniqueness
approach at all.
Art has more to it than meets the eye; as Danto and others
emphasize, the meaning of an artwork can be more important to
its artistic value than its appearance. It is a mistake merely
to look at America’s Most Wanted and reach the conclusion that
86 it is of poor quality, and hence that formulization is a mistake. With that in mind, let me suggest three alternate interpretations:
1. The meaning of the painting is not that formulization is a mistake, but that opinion polls are a terrible way to generate formulae (just as they might be the wrong way to generate a just society, or to choose wise and well-informed leaders). Opinion polls necessarily reflect the taste of the public, and the public cannot be counted on to have knowledge about what makes art good. So Komar and Melamid are critiquing a certain kind of formulization, not formulization in general, in which case
America’s Most Wanted does not necessarily support the
uniqueness approach. Moreover, the painting probably turns out
to be good art, given that it conveys its message exceedingly
well.
2. America’s Most Wanted not only has an important message to convey, but its message is intimately related to its appearance: it actually looks good. What keeps us from seeing this is that we are caught up in the grasp of our own cultural elitism. As members of the elite, we value paintings when they are difficult or inaccessible, but this is not how it should be.
Paintings should be made for ordinary people, and the appearance of paintings should reflect their values and concerns. Komar and Melamid are challenging us to revise our elitist critical standards. Opinions polls can be used formulaically to generate
87 good art, but there is a critical myopia that precludes us from realizing this fact. As such, America’s Most Wanted is a direct challenge to the uniqueness approach.
3. The painting’s message is that one cannot simply expect
to arrive at the features that make each artwork valuable by
considering them in complete isolation from each other. Komar
and Melamid’s questions separate what are clearly different
aspects of artworks—colors, subject matter, size, technique, and
so on. One suspects that even the Philistine would recognize
that his preferences conjoined would result in a monstrosity of an artwork—such as, perhaps, the crunchy chocolate hamburger that would be the result of a similarly constructed poll about food. If the poll had been set up in such a way as to make clear that the properties selected as artistically valuable would be combined into a single artwork, the results might have been substantially different, and much more pleasing to the artistic sensibility. On this interpretation, America’s Most
Wanted inveighs not against formulization, but against a kind of critical atomism. Again, it does not support the uniqueness approach, and again, it probably turns out to be good art.
Among these interpretations, my impression is that the artists themselves favor the second,15 while I myself probably
favor the third. Whatever interpretation turns out to be
correct, each is incompatible with the uniqueness approach. At
the least, America’s Most Wanted certainly does not fit neatly
15 See (Komar and Melamid 1994). 88 into the argument the uniqueness theorist wants to advance (and, it should be noted, if this painting does not fit, what artwork could?); at most, it may even show that the uniqueness approach is deeply misguided. For if the argument from formulization is correct, then Komar and Melamid, by virtue of employing formulaic strategies for constructing their work, have not made art at all. The stature of their paintings within the artworld seems to indicate that quite the contrary is the case. It is not even clear, pace those three interpretations I propose, that their artworks are bad.
Is America’s Most Wanted an unusual case? Maybe the uniqueness theorist’s point stands, that in general (even if not always), attention to artistic practices reveals that it is a mistake to use formulae in artmaking. On the contrary: there is at least some evidence that artmaking could accommodate more rather than less formulization, provided that the right formulae are used. Recently, for example, a company called Polyphonic
HMI has created a computer program called “Hit Song Science” that purports to analyze the structures of hit songs since 1956.
We use artificial intelligence applications as well as other methods to analyze the underlying mathematical patterns in music. Our technology does something called spectral deconvolution, which is a fancy way of saying that we can isolate and separate many musical events that occur in a song. Some of these events are patterns in melody, harmony, chord progression, brilliance, fullness of sound, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, and pitch. We then compare the patterns in new music to patterns in recent chart hits and to patterns in classic hit songs going back to 1956. (Polyphonic HMI 2004)
89 Through this process, the company asserts, Hit Song Science
indicates which general similarities successful songs have to
each other. This allows the program not only to predict the
success of a new song, but also to be used to create songs with
hit-making characteristics. When one knows which particular
musical patterns are shared by hit songs, one can reproduce
those patterns in order to produce new hits—formulaically.
Polyphonic HMI claims that its software has actually been
used by record companies to produce songs that have met with
popular success.16 And it notes that similar tools were used by
Terry Rossio, the writer of the popular films Shrek (an Academy
Award winner) and Shrek 2.17
If these claims are correct, and I have no reason to think
that they are not, we have several more cases in which art is
successfully produced via formulae. More importantly, we have
the formulae themselves, from which many more artworks could be
successfully generated—at least in theory. The formulae bear
out Mothersill’s claim, quoted earlier, that there are general
methods and rules artists can use for solving their particular
problems.
16 The company does not identify any such songs—perhaps because of the stigma still attached to the reliance of musical creation on technology (though this is beginning to change: see (Nelson 2004), in which the author claims that popular music fans increasingly prefer lip- synched live performances).
17 Rossio claims to have used literary guidelines developed in the nineteenth century by French author Georges Polti. 90 This is not to say that all art must follow these rules,
nor that brilliant art cannot be made by defying them. The
point is, instead, that it is possible to make good art by following formulae.
At this juncture, the uniqueness theorist is likely to dig in her heels and argue that the popular songs using Hit Song
Science and the Shrek movies are not art, and/or that popular success is never a measure of artistic quality. These are complicated issues, but there seems currently to be a presumption against both claims. Given contemporary critical and artistic practices, both seem too simple and too elitist.
What is it about mere popularity that interferes with an object’s status as an artwork? If opera were to become much more popular (and indeed, opera is on the upswing), would it stop being (good) art? What’s so bad (or so impossible) about
making art that people enjoy?
In short, there seems to be a great deal of evidence
against premise 1 of the argument from formulization, that it is
always a mistake to use formulae in practices of artistic
creation and evaluation. Without premise 1, obviously, the
argument does not go through. The prohibition on formulaic
treatment of the arts cannot be used to ground the uniqueness of
art, nor its incomparability.
Let me close out this section by drawing what I think is
the important lesson that we should learn from attention to
formulae in artistic context. Formulization in the arts,
91 including the process of finding successful generalized criteria for artmaking and evaluation, is not impossible, nor need it be rare, but it is very difficult. Artists and critics cannot reasonably expect easily to hit on formulae that will generate good artworks or correct critical judgments. Komar and Melamid have taught us at least that the rules of artmaking are very hard to divine, and the case of Hit Song Science indicates that it might even take a computer’s staggeringly sophisticated tools of data analysis to arrive at them. Making and evaluating art is not easy, and though formulization might be possible, arriving at good formulae is just as hard as doing without them.
The argument from formulization reveals that one cannot simply make or evaluate art with any old formula and expect to get it right thereby.
3.6 The Argument From Substitutability
Uniqueness theorists could support their view with other arguments, to be sure, but I have only found one other that is somewhat plausible and represented in the literature. The argument from substitutability, as I shall call it, is not (or at least not clearly) a version of the master argument.
A simple way to formulate this argument is as a reductio ad
absurdum. The uniqueness theorist starts by supposing that at least some artworks are comparable. If some artworks are comparable, then it is possible for some artworks to be equal to
92 each other in value. The uniqueness theorist finds this worrisome because it seems that if two items are equal to each other in value, there is no reason why one could not be substituted for the other. For example, if one hundred dollars in cash is the same in monetary value as one hundred dollars in my bank account, and you owe me one hundred dollars, it should not matter to me whether you pay me in cash or via direct deposit. Either will do quite nicely, and if I have the one, there is no need for me to get the other from you as well, or instead.
Similarly, if two artworks are equal in artistic value, there seems to be no reason why one could not be substituted for the other. Suppose that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is exactly as good as his Sixth; in that case, it would be no great loss if the former were to disappear entirely, so long as we still had the latter. Uniqueness theorists think this is an unacceptable entailment of the comparability of art, for two kinds of reasons, some dealing with art-making, some with art criticism.
Collingwood, for example, asserts that to substitute one artwork for another would be to pervert the nature of art-making practices:
The artist is a person who, grappling with the problem of expressing a certain emotion, says, ‘I want to get this clear.’ It is no use to him to get something else clear, however like it this other thing may be. Nothing will serve as a substitute. He does not want a thing of a certain kind, he wants a certain thing. (1938, 114)
93 Given that Beethoven wrote two symphonies rather than one, each was an attempt to clarify a different emotional state. The process of clarification achieved through composition of the
Sixth was not achieved through composition of the Fifth; that is why they cannot be substituted for each other.
MacDonald derives the absurdity of substitution of artworks for each other from the “logic” of art criticism as well as from the conditions under which artworks are created:
There could be twin prize cats, but it seems to me logically impossible that there should be twin masterpieces in art. Works of art are unique. Their performance cannot be repeated even by the artist. In this they seem to differ from certain other performances in which what is produced, though numerically different, may be qualitatively exactly similar. This is not a mysterious natural fact, but simply a characteristic of the way in which we talk about works of art. . . . though Portrait of a Lady and Wings of the Dove are both good novels, it would seem absurd [for the critic] to list their characteristics and suppose them to add up to the same sum. One would not be content to lose either so long as the other were retained. They are not simply substitutable for each other. This would be admitted by any competent critic. (1954, 124-25)
MacDonald, like Collingwood, believes that artworks cannot be equal to each other in value. For both, this is an essential feature of art, stemming from the nature of artmaking and art criticism. Equally good artworks, on their view, would have to be identical to each other (and hence inter-substitutable), but no two artworks can be identical.
The kind of claims made by Collingwood and MacDonald are echoed in some more recent investigations of the value of music.
Davies seems to endorse the idea that the value of an individual 94 musical work is unique to it. No musical work (and presumably no artwork in general) can be replaced with a substitute, for
“The pleasure that may come from appreciating a musical work for itself can be characterized only through a description of features apprehended and appreciated in the musical work”
(Davies 1987, 316).18 Levinson has a similar view (though it is
unclear that he is committed to the uniqueness theory). In
regard to the Allegro of Mozart’s Twenty-Ninth Symphony, he
writes: “There are similar, maybe even roughly equivalent,
pleasures to be had from other movements by Mozart . . . but
there is a sense in which the pleasure of the Twenty-Ninth can
be had only from that work” (1996, 23).
The argument from substitutability that these philosophers
have available to them, in short, is:
1. Suppose that there are comparable artworks. 2. If artworks can be compared, then it is possible for them to stand in the comparative relation of equality. 3. If artworks are equal to each other, then they can be substituted for each other. 4. But artworks cannot be substituted for each other— artworks are indispensable. 5. Therefore, there are no comparable artworks.
A number of objections can be made to the argument from
substitutability. For one, it seems to involve question-begging
circularity. Artworks cannot be compared to each other, it is
claimed, because that implies that some of them are equal in
value, and artworks cannot be equal in value. They cannot be
18 Incidentally, the same notion is operating in Davies’ claims about the intrinsic value of art (see section 2.2). 95 equal in value because they cannot be substituted for each other. They cannot be substituted for each other because they are unique. They are unique because they cannot be compared to each other. And what stands in the way of comparing them?
Nothing, other than the fact that comparability entails the possibility of equality. And around we go.
Another problem with the argument from substitutability stems from the assumption that two equally good artworks must actually be, per impossible, the same artwork. In other realms of evaluative discourse, many equally good objects are not identical. Two equally good racecars may be made by different manufacturers. NASCAR, in fact, tries to ensure that cars made by different manufacturers are equally good. Two baseball pitchers may be equally effective in keeping the opposing batters from scoring, but may do so in very different ways (and, clearly, may still be two different people). One may be a strikeout pitcher, while the other induces easily caught shallow pop-ups. Why should we think that evaluative equality necessitates identity for artworks but not for anything else?
Furthermore, it does not seem to be the case that artworks can never be substituted for each other. Mothersill (1968, 205) gives two examples of contexts in which substitution seems quite appropriate. First, an English department could reasonably stipulate that the required readings for a course include a certain novel—but if that novel becomes unavailable for some reason, instructors are authorized to choose among several
96 substitutes. Second, Mothersill imagines advising a friend to read The Wings of the Dove, with the provision that if she
cannot find it, The Portrait of a Lady would be a good substitute. If these examples make sense, then the notion of substituting one artwork for another is perfectly reasonable.
The proponent of the argument from substitutability might reply that although two novels, for example, might serve the same pedagogical aims or enhance one’s literary sensibility to the same degree, this still does not mean that one could just be lost forever so long as the other exists. That is what uniqueness is about: artworks are not dispensable in same way as racecars.
However, the important (and, it seems to me, true) insight that artworks are in some way indispensable entails neither that artworks are not substitutable, nor that they are incomparable.
The reason why we are reluctant to dispose of one artwork when another is equally good is not that substitution is impossible.
Rather, we do so because each of those artworks is valuable.
All told, it goes without saying that when something is valuable, circumstances are generally such that it ought to be preserved. Two fifty-dollar bills are equally valuable, but I do not throw one away because I have the other. If my baseball team has two equally outstanding pitchers, I do not go ahead and trade one of them because I have the other. I keep them both, if I can, because in baseball, it is good to have as many outstanding pitchers as possible. For similar reasons, we are
97 not going to eradicate all record of Mozart’s Twenty-Ninth
Symphony from the face of the earth because we have his equally good Twenty-First. Since both are valuable, we keep both. And our inclination to keep both has nothing to do with their uniqueness or incomparability.
3.7 A Diagnosis of the Uniqueness Approach
We have now seen the significant problems with each of the individual arguments that uniqueness theorists could plausibly use to show that artworks are unique in a way that precludes their comparability. Many of them fail because the uniqueness theorist has not succeeded in giving any robust support to premise 1 of the master argument, that every artwork is to be assessed on its terms alone. But why are there shortcomings for each of the arguments I have raised? Are there general problems with the uniqueness approach that makes it untenable? And if there are, what lesson should we have learned by exploring the uniqueness approach?
One general difficulty with the uniqueness approach, to foreshadow a bit, is that even if some reasons can be found that compel us to adopt premise 1 of the master argument, we still ought to be highly dubious of premise 2, that objects are incomparable when different standards apply to them. Much of
Chapter 5 is a detailed argument against premise 2. I do not wish to spoil the fun here, but I will place a bee in the
98 reader’s bonnet, so to speak. In essence, the problem with premise 2 is that it seems to be better to fulfill some standards rather than others; for example, it is often thought that it is better to be good than to be rich.
A more crucial failing of the uniqueness approach arises from what its proponents are actually asking us to do. If they are right, then we make a horrible mistake when we compare artworks to each other. In fact, the better part of the history of art criticism, including many contemporary practices, rests on a significant error. For we at least take ourselves to be
comparing artworks to each other rather frequently.
Consider the following claims:
•The first three Star Wars movies are head and shoulders above the new ones. •Coltrane’s music became more interesting when he began exploring his “sheets of sound.” •With a few exceptions, Braque’s cubist works are generally not as successful as Picasso’s. •Despite their boyish charm, the Monkees never made any music as good as the Beatles.
If the uniqueness theorist is right, these either make no sense
at all or are totally irrational, since each of them purports to
compare artworks. However, a reasonable consumer of the arts
would find nothing amiss here—whether she believes the claims to
be true or not, they are the sorts of things she is likely to
advance or debate in critical discussion.
The uniqueness theorist is demanding a complete and utter
revision of the practices of art criticism and evaluation.
Sometimes theories ought to revise practices radically; 99 sometimes, in fact, theories do revise practices radically. But
in such cases, the theory must reveal something profoundly
troubling about the practices. The reasons given for revising the practices must be very good indeed, especially if the
practices are, as in the case of art criticism, pervasive and
deeply entrenched. So has the uniqueness theorist given us
reasons powerful enough to compel us to abandon our critical
practices?
No: this is one of the main explanations for the failure of
the uniqueness approach. It has not been shown that the
uniqueness that each artwork bears hinders comparison, rather
than abetting it. To be a genuine artwork, an object must have
a set of (not necessarily manifest) properties that no other
artwork has. But that kind of uniqueness is itself essentially
comparative: how could we ever know that an object is unique
unless we had a grasp of the features of other, comparable
objects?19
At this point, one might wonder why anyone finds the
uniqueness approach to be appealing in the first place. What
could cause an otherwise reasonable person to endorse it?
One possible diagnosis, I think, has to do with associated
theoretical commitments. The various arguments I considered
above arise from endorsement of certain notions of the nature of
art and art evaluation. The uniqueness theorist employs
definitions focusing exclusively on art’s aesthetic aspects (see
19 See (Jessup 1954, 550) for a good version of this argument. 100 3.2), or expressive aspects (3.3 and 3.4), or the “gratuitous” status of some artistic practices (3.5). And these notions are, ultimately, problematic. The terrain of art is too rich and too varied to be circumscribed by them. Nor do the differences the uniqueness theorist seems to have noticed among artistic and other social practices such as science and ethics (3.5) provide a robust grasp of the nature of all art.
More importantly (given the context of the issue of comparability), it is a mistake to evaluate art exclusively in
terms of the features uniqueness theorists take to be definitive
of it. There may be some plausibility to the idea that if one of the uniqueness theorists is right about her starting point, her theory of art and art evaluation, then artworks are incomparable. It is no surprise that the uniqueness theorist reaches her conclusion given where she begins. But the relevant
“ifs” are very big.
The main point of Chapter 2 was not to give the final definitive account of artistic value, but to point out the plausibility of my account and the implausibility of competing accounts.20 Exactly these implausible competing accounts lead
the uniqueness theorists to their conclusions about art’s
incomparability. Uniqueness theorists concentrate too heavily
on art’s formal features, or art’s expressive features, or what
they suppose are the particular and unique experiences that art
20 My account, to remind ourselves, is: x is an artistically valuable property just in case (1) any object that bears x has the capacity to provide valuable experiences because it bears x, and (2) x is recognized as artistically valuable by some artworld system. 101 and only art can provide. They ignore the variety of art, the many ways in which artistic value can be manifested, and the crucial role of the artworld in determining which properties are artistically valuable.
Once these aspects of artistic value are recognized, the complete incomparability of artworks is revealed as untenable.
If the nature of artistic value is permeated with institutionality, as I have argued, then artworks do not stand apart from each other in the way uniqueness theorists would have us believe. As Danto recognized, each artwork is embedded in a practice that contains a matrix of other comparable artworks, which collectively provide the context in which each can be evaluated.
In sum, the general diagnosis for the failings of the uniqueness approach is that the practices of artistic evaluation are too entrenched to be overturned by arguments based on dubious theoretical commitments. The question now is: Where do we go from here?
If the uniqueness approach is incorrect, we can safely conclude that there are at least some comparable artworks.
Naturally, we now face further issues: Which artworks are comparable? How big is the matrix of comparability in which each artwork is embedded? In the next chapter, I consider the moderate idea that there are restrictions on the comparability
102 of art: artworks cannot be compared unless they meet certain criteria. Though this is probably the prevailing view, I shall argue that it is as mistaken as the uniqueness approach.
Before closing the book on the uniqueness approach entirely, I should insert an important caveat. The issue of generalization is not going to go away easily. The uniqueness theorist is, in fact, quite correct to point out that we cannot expect that when one artwork is good because it has a certain valuable property to a certain degree, all other artworks sharing that property will also be good because of it. I shall return to this insight from time to time, especially in Chapters
5 and 6. For now, I shall just say this: though the presence of a property that contributes to artistic value does not automatically guarantee that the artwork will have such-and-such a degree of value, contributing values can and do add up. The presence of one in a high degree might be enough to trump the absence of another or the occurrence of a disvaluable property.
103 CHAPTER 4
AGAINST THE MODERATE APPROACH
Sit between two stools and you’ll reach the floor.
old Vermont proverb
A natural reaction to the failure of the uniqueness
approach is to adopt a more moderate position. On what I shall
call the moderate approach, legitimate, justified comparisons of
artworks in terms of their overall artistic value are possible,
but not among all artworks. The chief contemporary advocates of
a moderate approach in aesthetics are Bruce Vermazen and George
Dickie.1 These two are the only contemporary philosophers of art who have staked out reasonably well-developed positions on art’s comparability. But as much as there is one, the moderate approach probably deserves to be called the received view. And indeed, pre-philosophical intuitions tend to pull in its direction. Though most of the common folk seem to think that a number of artworks can be compared, any demands to compare
1 For other less prominent versions of the moderate approach, see (Knight 1954) and (Budd 1995, 42-43). 104 radically different artworks are generally met with perplexity.
Nevertheless, it is my contention that the moderate approach is nearly as problematic as the uniqueness approach. The devil is in the details; on close examination, the reasons given for restricting the comparability of art are not good ones.
This chapter has two major components. Sections 4.1 through 4.4 are the exegetical part; I describe and clarify the moderate approach, and, where necessary, make it more plausible.
And sections 4.5 through 4.7 are the critical part, in which I turn to a number of arguments demonstrating that the moderate approach is deeply flawed.
4.1 Vermazen’s First Thesis
Vermazen’s paper “Comparing Evaluations of Works of Art” contains the seminal argument for the moderate approach.
Vermazen starts with some data: our reluctance as critics to compare radically different artworks. Though he does not offer any examples himself, I believe he has in mind statements such as this, from a New York Times article by Greg Allen:
[Some] art defies head-on comparison. Forget apples and oranges; how does one judge the value of Ms. Whiteread's cast fiberglass and rubber mattress relative to Mr. Hirst's deteriorating shark? Or of Maurizio Cattelan's sculpture of a taxidermied ostrich compared with Martin's canvas with the faintest of graphite grids on it? (2005)
105 Vermazen hypothesizes that the best explanation of such
data is that at least some artworks are incomparable.2 His argument takes the form of three theses (all of which Dickie subsequently appropriates). Here is the first:
Thesis 1: Some properties of artworks are valued independently of the other properties of those artworks.
A property of an artwork is independently valued, Vermazen says, when its value is not derived from relations between that property and any other properties of the artwork in question.
Independently valued properties include (presumably) gracefulness, lyricism, expressiveness, harmonic complexity, provocativeness, originality, and so on. In contrast, dependently valued properties of, to take a few examples, a poem
(having a stress on the second syllable of a line), a musical work (having a plagal cadence), or a painting (being twenty feet wide) are not valued on their own. Properties are dependently valued only insofar as they contribute to the occurrence of independently valued properties (perhaps in the foregoing examples, these might include, respectively, having well-handled verse, having grandeur, and being visually immersive).
We can gain a fuller grasp of what this distinction involves by comparing it to Beardsley’s similar distinction between what he calls “primary criteria” and “secondary
2 For those keeping score, Vermazen’s view also seems to entail incommensurability among some artworks, but not noncomparability. 106 criteria” of artistic value.3 Primary criteria are properties
that, when increased in or added to an artwork without a
corresponding decrease in the magnitude of any other valuable
properties will make the artwork more valuable.4 They are valuable independently of their relations to other properties of artworks; they seem to be very much like Vermazen’s independently valued properties. Secondary criteria are
properties that, when increased in or added to an artwork where
a certain set of other properties is present, will make the
artwork more valuable. Similarly, for Vermazen, dependently
valued properties are valued only insofar as they allow for the
occurrence of independently valued properties.
Beardsley’s distinction has drawn criticisms that suggest
modifications in Vermazen’s first thesis. The chief worry, for
our purposes, comes out in an argument made by Dickie (1988, ch.
5) that the distinction between primary and secondary criteria
fails to do its apparent work. Primary criteria are defined in
such a way as to allow for the possibility of their interaction.
Adding elements to a painting to make it more complex formally
can make it less coherent; the addition of one primary criterion
can result in the decrease of another. Moreover, it is possible
that adding one primary criterion and decreasing another can
result in an overall decrease in artistic value; the addition of
3 See (Beardsley 1962, 485).
4 Beardsley subsumes all such properties under the headings of unity, complexity, and intensity, but Vermazen leaves open the possibility of many other independently valued properties as well. 107 primary criteria do not always increase the value of an artwork.
Primary criteria contribute to the value of an artwork only when they interact with other properties in the right sort of way.
But this is just how secondary criteria are defined. Thus,
Dickie concludes, there is really no difference between the two.
For Vermazen to avoid this objection, the distinction he means to draw cannot be the same as Beardsley’s. Vermazen at least claims that independently valued properties (unlike primary criteria) are valued apart from their relations to other properties. If his words are taken at face value, however, there may not be any independently valued properties in actual artworks, in which case all artistically valued properties would be dependently valued (just as all Beardsley’s criteria turn out to be secondary).
Dickie’s argument that there is no distinction to be drawn between Beardsley’s notions of primary and secondary criteria carries with it a commitment to the view that the properties of an actual artwork are not independently valued. They are only valued insofar as they interact with the other properties of that work. In that case, artworks do not have independently valued properties in Vermazen’s sense, contradicting Thesis 1.
It may be possible to reframe Thesis 1 in a way that avoids this difficulty. Instead of asserting (incorrectly) that artworks have properties that are actually valued independently
108 from other properties, one might propose that artworks have properties that are valuable independently from their other properties:
Thesis 1*: Some properties of artworks are such that, if isolated from the other properties of those artworks, we would find them to be valuable.
Dickie seems to have something like this in mind when he
proposes in a different context (1988, 89, 158) that properties
with positive artistic value are those that we find to be
valuable considered in isolation from other properties.5
Though Thesis 1* is more plausible than Thesis 1, it leads
to complications about arriving at the valuable properties of
art. Psychologically speaking, it seems to be difficult to
isolate one property of an artwork conceptually (not to mention
physically) from all other properties in order to see whether
one finds it to be valuable. This is exactly the claim that the
uniqueness theorist made in order to support the argument from
formulization (see 3.5).
Maybe the uniqueness theorist is on to something here.
What would it be, for example, to consider the value of
gracefulness in and of itself? Prima facie, it is hard to
conceive of gracefulness in isolation. If asked to isolate
5 Dickie’s own term for these properties (which I will eschew to avoid confusing the issue) is “positive criteria of artistic value.” I should note that Dickie does explicitly recommend rephrasing Vermazen’s theses in terms of independently valuable properties (Dickie 1988, 164), but he does so for a different purpose than what I have in mind here. He wants to speak of independently valuable properties in order to avoid any implication that artworks are intrinsically, rather than instrumentally valuable. 109 gracefulness, one would first want to know, “Gracefulness of what?” And though one may attempt to perceive gracefulness aspectually in some object, it seems difficult to determine that it is gracefulness that one is valuing and not some other property, or the interactions of gracefulness with some other properties. What would it be to attend to the gracefulness of a landscape painting and nothing else? Or to the melodic qualities of a song without attending to its dynamics? Similar problems arise with the idea that one can contemplate gracefulness qua Platonic universal.6
These difficulties may be resolvable. (In fact, I think
that they are, as I shall argue in 6.2). The point I wish to
make here is just that though Thesis 1* is more plausible than
Thesis 1, neither is as simple or straightforwardly true as
their proponents seem to have realized. But let us move on.
4.2 Vermazen’s Second Thesis
Independently valuable properties seem to be what Vermazen is really after, so I shall replace Vermazen’s original second thesis with its more suitable variant:
Thesis 2*: Artworks almost always have at least two independently valuable properties.
6 Not to mention that this move would be sure to offend the sensibilities of philosophers with more frugal ontologies in mind. In any case, this solution is probably not available to Dickie, who for epistemological reasons tends to markedly anti-Platonist. 110 Thesis 2* depends a great deal on Thesis 1*. If there are
no independently valuable properties, then artworks cannot have
at least two of them. Let us suppose for now that something
very like Thesis 1* is true. Is it the case that artworks
generally have more than one property of the kind to which that
first thesis would apply? Or, amounting to the same question,
is there almost always more than one property in virtue of which
we attribute value to an artwork?
Vermazen argues for an affirmative answer based on
induction–all the artworks we commonly think of derive their
value from multiple artistically valuable properties.7 Vermazen also cleverly shifts the burden of proof here. One could only attempt to challenge Thesis 2* by pointing to a large class of artworks with only one independently valuable property. And even then, Thesis 2* will probably be unaffected. Its role in
Vermazen’s argument is only to support the claim that many typical artworks are incomparable in terms of artistic value.
Even if there are some artworks that can be compared on the basis of their one and only artistically valuable property, this would not imply (given the rest of Vermazen’s picture) that all artworks are comparable.
Though the question of whether Thesis 2* is correct cannot be fully ignored, I suggest that any serious problems with it
7 Thesis 2* is also supported by the theory (held by Beardsley and Dickie) that artworks have of necessity such standard properties as unity and complexity (Beardsley would also include intensity), and that these always have some value. If this is the case, then artworks have more than one artistically valuable property necessarily. An interesting consequence of this view, which I shall not investigate here, is that all artworks have some positive artistic value. 111 will come from Thesis 1*. If artworks do not have independently valuable properties, then they cannot have two or more. That said, Thesis 2* or something like it seems plausible enough.
When we give overall evaluations of artworks, we do seem to be required to pay attention to multiple properties. To come to an assessment of a film as a whole, for example, we cannot in good conscience attend to the way in which montage techniques are employed but ignore altogether its narrative coherence.
Furthermore, if Thesis 2* or something like it were true, we would have a partial explanation for our difficulties in isolating artistically valuable properties from each other. If artworks could be such as to have only one property relevant to their value, then there would undoubtedly be cases in which we could isolate that property for contemplation, as Dickie’s proposal requires. Given that the problems of isolating properties seem to be genuine, it should be unsurprising that in practice artworks generally have more than one artistically valuable property.
4.3 Vermazen’s Third Thesis
Again, I shall rephrase Vermazen’s original thesis in terms of independently valuable properties.
Thesis 3*: Although it is usually possible to rank two artworks A and B with respect to one independently valuable property, it is not usually possible to rank them with respect to a number of different independently valuable properties. 112 Our discussion at this point will get more, rather than
less complicated unless I introduce some terminology. Let us
use “value properties” to refer to the properties (whatever they
turn out to be) in virtue of which artworks are artistically
valuable. The artistic value of an artwork as a whole may be
understood in terms of what I shall call, with Vermazen, its value bundle. The value bundle of each artwork consists in its value properties taken together with a numerical value assignment that corresponds to the magnitude of each of those properties in the artwork. For example, the value bundle for artwork A may consist in value properties V, Vm, and Vn, together with the numbers 1, 2, and 2 given as the respective value assignments. Dickie, unlike Vermazen, discusses the way in which these value assignments are to be made, an issue to which I shall return in the next section.
The fundamental point of Thesis 3* is this: artwork A, with value properties V, Vm, and Vn, cannot be compared rationally in terms of artistic value to any artwork B that does not have all the same value properties. If a symphony is valuable because of its motivic development and balanced arrangement of instrumentation, we cannot rank it in comparison to a painting that is valuable because of its gracefulness and emotional evocativeness (nor can either of these be compared to a song valued for its motivic development and emotional evocativeness).
Dickie makes explicit a natural corollary of Thesis 3*.
Even if artworks share all the same value properties, it may
113 still be the case that they cannot be compared rationally to each other. If artwork A has 1, 2, and 2 assigned to V, Vm, and
Vn respectively, and artwork B has 2, 1, and 2 assigned to those same properties, then A and B are incomparable.
Thesis 3* and Dickie’s corollary imply that there is only one circumstance in which we can rationally compare artworks.
Though neither Vermazen nor Dickie uses the term, let us call this:
The Pareto condition on comparability: For all artworks x and y, x can be compared to y if and only if (a) they have all the same value properties, and (b) each of the value assignments given to the value properties of x is equal to or greater than each of the value assignments given to the value properties of y.8
Two artworks may be Pareto-comparable in two different ways. If
A and B are Pareto-comparable and have all the same assignments to their corresponding properties, then they are equally valuable. If A and B are Pareto-comparable and at least one value assignment to a value property of A is greater than the value assignment to the corresponding property of B, then A is
Pareto-superior to (better than) B. Otherwise, A and B are
Pareto-incomparable, and hence, on the Vermazen/Dickie approach,
are not rationally comparable at all.
Placing a Pareto condition on comparability seems intuitive
enough. It gives flesh to the idea that items that are very
8 The name comes from the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, who thought that social policies ought to be considered on the basis of whether or not they would make a society at least as good for all and better for some. 114 different cannot be compared, and that there is something distinct about different types of value that cannot be captured in a comparative ranking. Nevertheless, the Pareto condition is misguided. Before I explain why this is so, let me go quickly into a few ways in which Dickie has expanded on Vermazen’s theses. I think, by the way, that Dickie’s discussion is fair to Vermazen’s view and generally represents ideas that Vermazen would be likely to accept.
4.4 Dickie’s Expansions of Vermazen’s Theses
Dickie points out that although not all artworks are comparable in terms of artistic value, it is always possible to rank a given artwork along that value dimension with respect to a number of other artworks. That is, we can place any artwork in what Dickie calls a comparison matrix. In a comparison matrix, the value assignments given to a base artwork’s value properties locate that artwork relative to a number of actual and/or possible artworks, each of which shares all and only the base work’s value properties. The higher in the matrix an artwork is, the better it is artistically. Works that occupy the same level of a matrix are either equal in value or incomparable.
For example, suppose a painting’s artistic value depends on gracefulness, formal complexity, and emotional expressiveness, with 1, 2, and 2 given as value assignments to each of those
115 properties respectively. We can locate this painting on a comparison matrix of other artworks that we value for their gracefulness, formal complexity, and emotional expressiveness.
Among artworks worse than the base painting, located lower on the matrix, we would include those with value assignments of (1,
1, 2); (1, 2, 1); and (1, 1, 1) given to the properties in question. Better works (higher on the matrix) would include those given the value assignments of (2, 2, 2); (1, 2, 3); (1,
3, 2); (3, 2, 2), and so on. On Dickie’s picture, we would place at the same level as the base work both works of equal value (with the (1, 2, 2) assignment) and works that share the value properties of the base work but are not Pareto-comparable with the base work (e.g., with assignments (2, 1, 2); (2, 2, 1);
(1, 3, 1); (1, 1, 3), and so forth).
Dickie uses the placement of a work within its comparison matrix as a way of arriving at and justifying what he calls strong conclusions about artworks. These are judgments wherein one attributes to an artwork a certain magnitude of value (like being excellent) rather than merely saying (in a weak
conclusion) that it is the bearer of some unspecified degree of value. Taking his cue from J.O. Urmson’s paper “On Grading”
(1950), Dickie proposes that we rank artworks in much the same way as we do apples or term papers. Excellent works are very near the top of the matrix, terrible works are at the bottom,
116 and good, fair, mediocre, and poor works are in the middle.9 All our strong conclusions about artistic value involve comparison matrices, although we may not always realize that we are using them, which means that all evaluation is comparative.
Dickie does not tell us whether a work that is good in light of its own comparison matrix is better than a work that is poor given its location in some other comparison matrix involving artworks with different value properties, or whether works can be rationally compared only to others in their own matrices. If he holds the former, then he holds that works can be rationally compared that are not Pareto-comparable. Since
Pareto-comparability seems to exhaust rational comparability of artworks for Vermazen and Dickie, I presume that Dickie holds the latter.10
Two more important aspects of Dickie’s view should be
noted. First, unlike Vermazen, Dickie addresses the issue of
how we make value assignments. The size of the numerical scale
for a value property (and the corresponding height of the
comparison matrix for an artwork that has it) will depend on the
number of perceptual discriminations one can make for that
property. That is, if one can discriminate between three
different magnitudes of property V, one’s value assignments to
that property will be made on a scale of 1 to 3.
9 Note that on this analysis of strong conclusions, even when artworks are comparable, they are incommensurable: we are not able to say precisely how much one is better than the other.
10 This will lead to a significant problem (see 4.8). 117 Second, Dickie offers us ways of putting many more works on
a comparison matrix than Vermazen seems to have countenanced.
Interactions between value properties can be given value assignments. (Interactions of properties, remember, are important for Dickie’s argument against Beardsley’s attempt to distinguish primary and secondary criteria.) If value properties V and Vm interact, we can make a value assignment to the value property constituted by their interaction (a property
Dickie would refer to as “VVm”). Moreover, Dickie allows for assignments of 0 for value properties. If artwork A has properties V, Vm, and Vn, to which are assigned magnitudes 1, 2, and 2, and B has properties V and Vm to which are assigned magnitudes 1 and 2, we could assign to B a magnitude of 0 with respect to Vn, and locate A and B on the same matrix. Finally,
Dickie says that we can give negative numbers as value assignments. These would reflect the presence and magnitude of a disvalued property that diminishes the artistic value of a work.
Let me wrap up the foregoing exegetical business by briefly taking stock of where we have arrived. The moderate approach espoused by Vermazen and Dickie is built on three theses.
Formulated in their most plausible variants, these are:
1) Some value properties of artworks do not derive their value from their relations to other properties of those artworks. 2) Artworks almost always have more than one value property.
118 3) Although it is usually possible to rank two artworks with respect to one value property, it is not usually possible to rank them with respect to a number of different value properties.
Taken together, these three theses are supposed to show that artworks that have different value properties or have their value properties to incompatible degrees are Pareto- incomparable. Some but not all artworks are in this situation with respect to each other. For Vermazen and Dickie, Pareto- comparability is all there is to comparability. Accordingly, not all comparisons of artworks along the dimension of artistic value are legitimate, even though some comparisons are.
4.5 Three Unexpected Limits on Comparison
One of the virtues of the moderate approach seems to be that it saves a great deal of our critical practices. It allows us to compare a lot of artworks while ruling out the possibility of making comparisons many critics would find to be bizarre. On close inspection, however, we shall see that the Vermazen/Dickie view places restrictions the comparability of artworks that go well beyond what is sensible.
Think for a moment about the Pareto condition. Even among artworks with exactly the same set of value properties, there are only two possible circumstances in which they are comparable. They are comparable if all of their value properties occur in equal magnitudes. And they are comparable
119 if one is at least as good as the other with respect to all their value properties but better with respect to at least some.
The former circumstance presents a peculiar problem for the moderate approach; the latter circumstance may hardly ever occur.
Take the first: both artworks are exactly equal.
Experiments in signal detection theory conducted by John Swets and others have shown that if there is a difference between stimulus-prompting signals, no matter how slight, a human subject will be able to perceive that difference: there seems to be no sensory threshold below which perceptual discriminations cannot be made.11 Though the subject may be unable to recognize
that she is tracking the difference, Swets shows that a certain
regularity arises: given a sufficient number of trials, subjects
will report detection of an actual difference in prompting
stimuli more often than not. The only plausible explanation for
this statistical regularity seems to be that subjects track the
differences in prompting stimuli to an indefinitely fine-grained
level.
If human beings have the capacity (given a sufficient
number of trials) to make indefinitely many discriminations
among different perceptual properties of objects, then at the
least, this makes Dickie’s view about how to construct the
comparison matrix more complicated. He holds that we arrive at
11 See (Swets 1964) and, on the same point, (Hardin 1988, 169-82). My thanks go to Diana Raffman for drawing my attention to this research and its implications. 120 the scales that are used to make value assignments to each value property by adverting to the number of perceptual discriminations we can make for those properties. As such, his view implies that each scale must be dense. That is, if one experiences any value property enough times, or for enough time
(providing oneself with enough trials, so to speak), one will need to make the numerical scale on which the artistic value of each property is measured such that between any two possible value assignments there will be a third. An infinite or near infinite amount of numerals must be available for assignment to each value property.12
The density of each scale causes a worry. Suppose my
initial judgment is that two artworks are of equal value. Under
the Pareto condition, this means that they are comparable (in
fact, their comparability must be in place for me to be able to
judge that they are equal). As a responsible art critic, I want
to be sure that I have made a good judgment, so I immerse myself
in the presence of the artworks, gaining as much experience of
them as I possibly can. After a number of these “trials,” I
come to realize that artwork A is ever so slightly better than B
in respect of value property V1. I revise my initial judgment: A
12 The notion of density here is somewhat reminiscent of Goodman’s concept of semantic density (see (Goodman 1976)), a “symptom” of the aesthetic. In a semantically dense symbol system, there is between any two compliance-classes (basically, the class of objects to which a symbol could refer) a third. Goodman puts this to a very different use than I will; since our system of pictorial representation is semantically dense, he says, we cannot say exactly what a given picture represents. I claim, in contrast, that if the Vermazen/Dickie theory is correct, density precludes us in the majority of cases from saying conclusively that two artworks are of equal value. 121 is the better of the two—but they are still comparable.
Doggedly, however, I press on. After more effort, I come to perceive that B is ever so slightly better than A in terms of V2.
The differences here between A and B for V1 and V2 alike are infinitesimal. Nevertheless, for Vermazen and Dickie, A and B are actually incomparable: the situation does not meet the
Pareto condition.
But how could this be? It defies reason to conclude that though two equally good artworks are comparable, artworks that are incredibly close to being equal are not.13 Vermazen and
Dickie base their Pareto condition on large differences: the
intuition is that very different artworks are incomparable.
What they do not realize is that the Pareto condition also
entails that nearly identical artworks can turn out to be
incomparable. Because evaluative differences of such a small
magnitude simply cannot trigger incomparability, there must
accordingly be something wrong with the Pareto condition. If
there is not, our intuitions about which artworks are comparable
are horribly misplaced.
Leaving those difficulties behind for the time being, let
us consider the other circumstance under which the Pareto
condition has it that artworks are comparable: one is Pareto-
superior to the other. I agree that these artworks are likely
to be candidates for comparison. But I worry that the moderate
13 Chang makes a similar suggestion—see (2002, MCC, 127-28). 122 approach has not saved as much of critical practices as it might seem. Pareto-superiority may not really describe the relation of many artworks at all.
Consider an argument Gombrich makes in The Story of Art about how artmaking proceeds. The history of art, Gombrich holds, shows us that artists set themselves problems (or have their problems set for them in virtue of their circumstances) that they then attempt to solve.14 An artist may be trying to
represent an object’s solidity, to show how objects appear
through four dimensions, to explore the way that colors mix in
the eye, or any number of other tasks. Gombrich argues
convincingly that reaching an acceptable solution to any given
problem involves making a corresponding trade-off. For example,
solving problems about light, as impressionist painters can be
understood to have done, tends to require the sacrifice of the
portrayal of a sense of mass that one tends to find in paintings
like those of Cézanne.
If Gombrich is right, then when an artist strives to
increase the magnitude of one value property in her work, she
generally sacrifices another. Suppose that artworks A and B
have exactly the same value properties and the value assignment
to V1 is higher for A than for B. Gombrich’s argument implies that it is likely that both artworks will share some value property Vn such that the value assignment to Vn for A is lower than the value assignment to V1 for A. The fact that the
14 Note how different this idea is from those of Stuart Hampshire we saw in 3.5. 123 assignment to V1 for A is higher than for B may well be an indication that the maker of B sacrificed V1 for the sake of a corresponding increase in Vn. That increase would push the value assignment to Vn in B beyond the assignment to Vn in A, making the works incomparable under the Pareto condition.
Pareto-superiority is the most clear-cut case of comparability. But it can only occur when solutions to one artistic problem in an artwork do not reduce the magnitude of a corresponding value property below the magnitude of that property in whatever other work is to be compared. It may be that such solutions are reached in works of genius, but as a whole, there is a very real worry that Pareto-superiority is rare. For example, an attempted comparison of a Monet and a
Cézanne could not result in Pareto-superiority, given the sacrifices that each of them made to solve rather different representational problems. The moderate approach has lost some of its appeal if it does not allow us to compare Monet and
Cézanne; we would have been precluded from making comparisons that are the bread and butter of art history departments around the globe.
Problems about equality and small differences provide one criticism of the Pareto condition, while careful attention to
Pareto-superiority provides another. In each case, too many restrictions are placed on comparability. To close out this section I would like to look at a third restriction, one that emerges from the claim that comparable artworks must share all
124 their value properties, together with Dickie’s claim that we can give value assignments to the interactions of value properties.
Every artwork has what we might call an interactive
property, which consists in the way in which all its other value properties interact. The interactive property can be understood in two distinct ways. There is a de dicto reading: for every artwork, there is an interactive property that it has. And there is a de re reading: there is an interactive property such that every artwork has it. Let us consider these in order.
The de dicto reading seems natural if we take Dickie’s
theory of interaction at face value. If an artwork has three
value properties, V, Vm, and Vn, it will have a property Dickie
would call VVmVn, which would not necessarily be shared by any
other artwork. VVmVn, for Dickie, is itself a value property,
and so needs a value assignment. So, for example, if a dance
piece is graceful, delicate, and poignant, there will be a way
that grace, delicacy, and poignancy interact in it (its de dicto interactive property) that will itself be valuable to a certain degree.
Now imagine a second dance piece very similar to the first in that it is graceful, delicate, and poignant—it is even valuable in each of these to the same degree as the first piece.
Since we are operating under the de dicto reading, there is no guarantee that the two pieces will be equally valuable with respect to their interactive properties. The first-order value
125 properties of the first, suppose, interact to magnitude n, whereas the same value properties of the second interact to magnitude n-1.
The fact that one piece has its interactive property to a greater magnitude than the other is a consideration relevant to assessment of the artistic value of each. All else being equal, it would mean that one artwork is better than the other. Being relevant to artistic value is just what it is to be a value
property in the sense I have been using the term. So the
magnitudes to which each piece has its individual interactive
property are themselves value properties.
If that is all correct, then the two dance pieces are, it
turns out, incomparable on the Vermazen/Dickie theory, despite
the fact that each is graceful, delicate, and poignant to the
same degree. The pieces have one different value property: the
magnitude to which their other value properties interact. And
if artworks have any different value properties (as they do when
their interactive properties receive different value
assignments), they are incomparable, on the Vermazen/Dickie
theory.
Vermazen and Dickie might reply here that their theory does
not apply to higher-order properties like the interactive
property. But this just seems false: their view is about value
properties in general. For Vermazen and Dickie, if two artworks
have different value properties, then they cannot be compared,
no matter the level at which those properties occur.
126 Accordingly, the Pareto condition mandates yet another
restriction on comparability: the only comparable artworks have
exactly the same value properties, where (a) the value
assignments to the interactive properties of each are the same,
or (b) the interaction of the value properties of the artworks
in question has no bearing on their artistic value. The same
conclusions reached earlier in this section apply here as well:
the circumstances under which (a) and (b) occur seem hardly ever
to happen. For interactive properties cannot easily be ignored.
Could we ever come to a legitimate judgment of a musical piece
as a whole without considering the ways in which the harmonic
development interacts with shifts in dynamics? Could we
evaluate a building without attention to its blend of form and
function? Consideration of interactive properties, in the way
that we are understanding them here, indicates again that
Vermazen and Dickie’s position on comparison is less than
moderate: it leans progressively towards the view that artworks
cannot be compared.
But what about the de re reading? Here, the focus is on a property that all artworks share: having their value properties
(whatever they may be) interact to some degree or other. When we consider this property, oddly enough, there seems to be some impetus towards a universal comparability of artworks. Every artwork would have the same interactive property, and for each of them, it would be a property that encompasses and takes into consideration all the artwork’s other value properties. What
127 could stop us from using that property to compare all artworks, even in situations where their other value properties differ?15
Although the de re understanding of the interactive
property actually leads towards the theory I shall endorse in
the next chapter, I think it is the wrong way to get universal
comparability. Foreshadowing a bit, its basic problem is that
we should not endorse a theory of comparison that ignores the
particular value properties of the artworks in question. It is
better for artworks to have some properties rather than others.16
The interaction of the properties that an artwork has is indeed of paramount importance in evaluation, but this must be tempered by the fact that we may rate some properties themselves as more
valuable than other properties before we even consider
particular value assignments to them.
Note that even if I am wrong to brush aside the de re interactive properties, they do not fit well with the moderate approach in any case. If my argument against using them to get universal comparability fails, then the Vermazen/Dickie theory also fails, for comparability will no longer be restricted to the Pareto condition.
15 Perhaps this property is what we would use to ascertain whether an artwork “works” in the sense that Vermazen (1975, 710-11) attributes to Albert Hofstadter.
16 Using Frank Sibley’s terms (Sibley 1983), we could say that some aesthetic properties have stronger polarity than others. 128 4.6 The Zero Assignment and the Zero Method
Another problematic area for the Vermazen/Dickie theory emerges from Dickie’s idea that assignments of 0 can be given to value properties, in combination with the idea that every artwork can be located on some comparison matrix comprised of actual and/or possible works. Together, these imply that any works, even those with radically different properties, can in principle be located on the same comparison matrix.
Suppose that artwork A has value properties V…Vn, and B has different value properties V*…Vn*. We can give 0 assignments to
V*…Vn* for A, and likewise give 0 assignments to V…Vn for B.
Effectively, we are attributing all the same value properties to both A and B, but saying that some of these are present to degree 0. By using this zero method, we can place any two artworks, no matter how different, on the same comparison matrix. In the example above, notice, A and B would even occupy the same level of the matrix.
Neither Dickie nor Vermazen wants to allow for works with
different value properties to be comparable with respect to
artistic value. But since we can use the zero method, the
legitimacy of such comparisons is hard to resist. Consider the
similarities between artworks A and B in the previous paragraph:
• They have all the same value properties. • They are located in the same comparison matrix. • They occupy the same level of that matrix. • Each has an equal number of actual and/or possible works that are better or worse than they are. 129 Though A and B appeared at first to have different value properties, and hence to be incomparable on the Vermazen/Dickie theory, it is now very tempting to judge that A and B are of equal artistic value.
In fact, Dickie’s theory of arriving at and justifying strong value judgments seems to necessitate such treatment.
Dickie thinks (see 4.4) that we do this by noting the position of artworks within their comparison matrices; the nearer to the top of the matrix, the better each item to be graded is.
Grades, ranks, or strong conclusions, call them what you will, are comparative judgments. If correct, they tell one how good a work is with respect to others. Dickie’s theory seems to demand that works at the same level in the same matrix are equal in value.
Dickie could reply here by co-opting an argument from
Chang. Chang contends (1997, 26-27) that there are more than three evaluative relations that can hold between comparable alternatives. Better than, worse than, and equal to do not exhaust the territory: alternatives can also be on a par with each other. Parity, on Chang’s view, can occur because comparative rankings are not linearly ordered. Better than and worse than are linear relations, but it is also possible for items to be evaluatively different in an unbiased way. Parity is the unbiased relation; when alternatives are on a par, they are on the same level of the comparison matrix, but are not
130 equal to each other in value. So perhaps it is a mistake to assert that Dickie is committed to holding that items on the same level are equal.
It is my view that Chang’s concept of parity is virtually incoherent. But my arguments to that effect are too complex to go into in the context of this project.17 Be that as it may,
Dickie has a problem even if Chang is right about the possibility of parity. On Chang’s picture, when alternatives are on a par, they are comparable. In employing parity, Dickie would not have shown that alternatives on the same level of the comparison matrix, put there via the zero method, are incomparable (as the Pareto condition would imply).
It seems that if we can get artworks on the same comparison matrix, there is no good reason why we cannot compare them. The main obstacle to comparability, given the possibility of the 0 assignment, now appears to be that sometimes artworks will not be able to be placed on the same matrix. However, the possibility of the 0 assignment, it turns out, also reveals that
Dickie’s picture of placing individual works on smallish comparison matrices is incorrect.
If we can in principle put any two works on one comparison matrix, as the zero method enables us to do, then we can place all works on a single matrix. This comparison matrix is going to be of enormous (perhaps even infinite) size, dependent in part on how many possible artworks there are. It will be big in
17 See (Pratt [2004]) for the full arguments. 131 both dimensions. Its vertical size will result from the human ability to make very fine-grained distinctions between properties and the corresponding need for a dense ordering of artworks (see the previous section). Its horizontal size will result from the enormous number of actual and possible artworks
(those we place on the matrix using the zero method) at each level.
Investigating the matter a bit more, Dickie’s comparison matrices (or matrix, it now seems) begin to get very odd indeed.
Let us use the term “initial value properties” for any value
property of an artwork that is given a non-zero value
assignment. Works with different initial value properties,
which require the zero method to place them on the same matrix,
are invariably going to be of the same value, because they occupy the same level of the same matrix.
This leads to a remarkable problem. Suppose that artworks
A and B have the same initial value properties, and that B is
Pareto-superior to A. According to the Vermazen/Dickie theory,
A and B are comparable. Suppose that artwork C has different initial value properties from A and B. Using the zero method, we can place C on the same matrix as A and B. But C will be on the same level as both A and B (!), despite the fact that B is better than A, and that A and B occupy different levels. If C is equally as good as A and equally as good as B, then A and B must be equally good. But, ex hypothesi, they are not.
132 Consequently, the Vermazen/Dickie theory violates a
condition on comparatives that John Broome calls extended
transitivity. In Broome’s words: “For any x, y, and z, if x is
Fer than y and y is equally as F as z, or if x is equally as F as y and y is Fer than z, then x is Fer than z” (1997, 71).
Broome, plausibly, takes this to be a primitive principle of the
logic of comparatives. It seems inadvisable and contrary to
common sense to reject extended transitivity. A single
dimension of value is a linear ordering of rank. Denying the
transitivity of value seems bizarre in the case of monetary
value, for example: if one pound is more valuable than one
dollar, and one euro is equal in value to one dollar, then one
pound must be more valuable than one euro.
Vermazen and Dickie could attempt to avoid the foregoing
problem in three ways. First, they could reject the extended
transitivity of comparatives. It is sometimes alleged that
certain examples show that comparison is not transitive: I may
prefer skiing to hiking, hiking to a day at the beach, and a day
at the beach to skiing. I do not find these examples
convincing, for the same reason that Chang rejects them.18 The
problem with them is that they all depend on an illicit shift in
relevant evaluative parameters. I prefer skiing to hiking as an
exercise, but I prefer hiking to a day at the beach as a way of
getting closer to nature, and I prefer a day at the beach to
18 See (Chang, MCC, 2002, 4-5). 133 skiing as a way to relax. It is not the case that I prefer all three in the same respect, which is what I would have to do in order for transitivity to fail.
Second, Vermazen and Dickie could claim that putative cases of the violation of extended transitivity are really just cases of incomparability. This is what their theory is supposed to entail, after all. But I think they cannot make this move. The possibility of the 0 assignment in combination with the other aspects of the theory forces this odd situation to occur, in which there is really only one gigantic non-transitive comparison matrix for artistic value.
Hence, the most natural defense that Vermazen and Dickie could mount is the third—to reject the possibility of the 0 assignment altogether. Vermazen, in all fairness, never proposed the 0 assignment in the first place; that was one of
Dickie’s elaborations of the original theory. In fact, Dickie might not even be so guilty after all. In a later reconsideration of his ideas about artistic evaluation, Dickie actually retracts this part of the theory. He writes:
In some of the comparison matrices I used zero to indicate that a work lacked a particular independently valuable property. This was a mistake because this use of zero is not a ranking which is the only use that the numbers in the matrices can have. (2001, 80)19
19 In a footnote here, Dickie says that this mistake was pointed out to him by Vermazen, at a conference in 1988. It is possible that Vermazen saw what would happen once the 0 assignment was allowed. 134 One can understand why Dickie would want to renege on his claim that 0 assignments can be given. What is really worrying him here, I think, is that the 0 assignment allows us to increase the range of artworks that can be put on each matrix.
When we do so we are placing them there by adverting to a property that the artworks do not actually have to some positive degree (one that is not an initial value property). Dickie may be thinking that making a 0 assignment to value property V for artwork A goes too far above and beyond saying that A does not have property V.
But in what sense is this going too far? The only real worry I can think of is that use of the 0 assignment can lead to a kind of metaphysical extravagance. It is tantamount to ascribing to objects properties that they do not actually have.
And in fact, taken to its extreme, using the 0 assignment means that every object (artworks included) will have every possible property, but will have most of them to degree 0.
Though some may indeed be troubled by the multiplication of properties, I am not among them—at least in this circumstance.
For without the 0 assignment, we lose any easy technical way of expressing some comparisons that we really do want to be able to make. Here are some examples. Babe Ruth was a better hitter than any candy bar. Cheese is a better appetizer than the musical pitch associated with 440 hertz. Pushpin is better than philosophy for developing hand-eye coordination. Les
Demoiselles D’Avignon is better as a painting than a phone book.
135 Structurally, these examples all have something in common.
One of the objects in the comparison bears the value property in
question to some positive degree: Babe Ruth was a good hitter,
cheese is a good appetizer, pushpin is good at developing
coordination, and Picasso’s work is a good painting. The other
object does not bear the value property in question to any positive degree. Candy bars cannot hit baseballs, an A natural cannot be tasted, philosophy has no relationship to hand-eye coordination (unless I am gravely mistaken), and Les Demoiselles
D’Avignon contains no names or phone numbers.
Now, these are not the sorts of comparisons we are called on to make very often. I imagine that this is because the outcomes are so obvious that there is no practical need to consider them. Nevertheless, the comparisons are not senseless—and, I take it, represent conclusions with which any normal person would agree. The 0 assignment or its functional equivalent is the only feature of a theory of comparison that allows these comparisons to make sense. How else could we possibly represent the idea that an object can be completely without positive or negative merit with respect to a certain value dimension?
If I am right about the indispensability of the 0 assignment in comparison, then it turns out that there is no non-comparability. Non-comparability, to reiterate a bit of
Chapter 1, occurs when a failure of comparability is due to the fact that one of the alternatives is not the sort of object that
136 can bear the value property in question. On my view, all objects bear all value properties, but many of them are borne to magnitude 0.
In the next chapter, I explain how the 0 assignment fits into my theory of the comparability of artworks. For now, the morals of this section are twofold. First, by using the zero method, we can get very different artworks on the same comparison matrix. An abstract painting has narrative coherence to degree 0, and can be ranked lower along that value dimension than something with a positive degree of it (like a novel).
Second, the 0 assignment leads to a number of deep internal tensions for the Vermazen/Dickie theory. I do not think that this means that the 0 assignment must be abandoned, but rather that the other features of their theory cause the trouble. If I am right that the 0 assignment is a plausible and important tool in comparison, those other features must be jettisoned or revised.
4.7 Rejecting the Pareto Condition Through Critical Scenarios
In this section, I would like to point to one last problem with the moderate approach (just in case the previous considerations were unconvincing) and offer some scenarios that motivate the view I support in the next chapter.
137 One of the best objections to the moderate approach and
Pareto conditions in general comes from Chang.20 On her
terminology, some bearers of value are nominal and some are notable. The former have very little of whatever value is at issue, while the latter have very much of it. For instance, I am a nominal banjo player, while Steve Martin is a notable one.
It might be thought that certain notable bearers of a value are incomparable (indeed, that is an entailment of the Pareto condition). The example Chang uses is about Mozart and Picasso: though both were certainly geniuses, their works were so different that on the face of it their artistic merits cannot be compared at all.
But that is only on the face of it, and here is why. Chang asks us to consider the case of a very nominal classical composer, whom she aptly dubs “Talentlessi.” Talentlessi has all the same attributes as Mozart, just to a massively lower degree. On the moderate approach, the artistic merits of
Talentlessi and Mozart can be compared. But, contrary to the
Pareto condition, is there any reason why we should not be able to compare Talentlessi to Picasso? Even though their quality as artists comes from different sources, Picasso was a genius and
Talentlessi was not. It seems strange to resist the judgment that Picasso is the better artist, and even stranger to refuse to compare them at all.
20 See (Chang 1997, 14-17, 32-33). 138 If Chang is right, then Talentlessi and Picasso have
comparable levels of artistic talent.21 This already spells
trouble for the Pareto condition, but Chang does not end there.
Talentlessi+, a composer who is only slightly better than
Talentlessi, also seems to be comparable to Picasso. The reason
why brings us back to an argument I used in section 4.5: a very
small difference in value cannot trigger incomparability.
Small differences in value add up to large differences. On
Chang’s view, we can construct a continuum of composers,
starting with Talentlessi, and going through Talentlessi+ all
the way up to Mozart. None of the steps in the continuum
triggers incomparability. Hence, because Talentlessi is
comparable to Picasso, and each of the “improved” Talentlessis
is as well, Mozart (the very best Talentlessi, so to speak) is
comparable to Picasso.
Proponents of the Pareto condition might respond that
Chang’s argument just amounts to a sorites case, and that
comparability is a vague concept. Chang explicitly responds to
that worry,22 but I do not think we need to go into the details
of her response. For we do not need to concentrate only on
small improvements, which are the sort of improvement that lead
us down the path to vagueness. Chang has not noticed that large improvements do not seem to trigger incomparability either. How
21 Vermazen (1979, 711-12) actually seems to admit at one point that such comparisons are possible. But this is inconsistent with his other theoretical commitments.
22 See (Chang 2002, PP, 679-88). 139 could making an artwork a lot better than it was previously make it incomparable to previously comparable artworks? Intuitively, large improvements in an artwork would just change its status with respect to other artworks—it would become better than some it used to be worse than, equal to some it used to be worse than, and so on.
The strongest reply Vermazen and Dickie could make here would be to stick to the idea that changes in contributory values, even small ones, can trigger incomparability. But this defies not only the idea that Mozart and Picasso are comparable, but also that Talentlessi and Picasso are comparable. It rules out all nominal-notable comparisons where the values contributing to the covering value are different. Here are a few scenarios I offer to show that differences in contributory values do not interfere with comparability.
Suppose that one of my friends, Dave, claims that Jim Hall is a better jazz guitarist than Al DiMeola. Both players, he explains, have achieved a great deal of technical facility, and in some ways DiMeola is a better player on those grounds (he does play a good deal faster, for example). But despite any technical deficits, this is more than overcome by the intuitive sense of emotional lyricism and melody that Hall’s playing reflects and DiMeola’s often lacks.
Whether he is right or wrong (or can even be right or wrong, from the objective point of view), Dave is making a judgment about artistic value that seems to be supported in a
140 legitimate, rational way. Yet while he is basing his judgment of artistic value on the value properties of technical facility and lyricism in each case, Dave has not judged Hall’s playing to be Pareto-superior (or even Pareto-comparable) to DiMeola’s, since he says that Hall is better than DiMeola in one respect but worse in another. (So much the worse for the
Vermazen/Dickie theory.)
Not only do we make artistic value comparisons like Dave’s, where we do not find Pareto-comparability, but we make them in situations where artworks are valuable in virtue of very different properties—the contributory values are diverse.
Imagine that Stella is trying to decide between two courses of action for the evening. One option is to go see the latest
European art house movie. Stella has it on good authority that this film is formally inventive, tells a dramatic story, and provides an occasion for rumination about life’s many vicissitudes. Alternatively, she can go to the local coffee house and hear a poetry reading. Stella does not know the poets and has not read their work, but is fairly certain she can predict what it will be like, since she is familiar with the venue and its denizens. The poems will probably feature youthful exuberance (or, alternatively, youthful angst), a tight rhyme scheme, and perhaps campy humor, but probably will not make a lot of sense or have any deep meaning to impart.
Stella is bent on making her decision based on the potential merits of the two artistic events. And she opts for
141 the film: she thinks it will be better than the reading. This is despite the fact that the film and the poems have very different properties (which implies that they cannot stand in a relation of Pareto-comparability). Has Stella done anything wrong, or irrational, or illegitimate here? Oddly enough, on the moderate approach, she has.
In the next chapter, I shall have more to say about what is really going on in these kinds of examples. But I want to point out here that the cases of Dave and Stella are not just ad hoc or unusual—the sorts of elaborate cases philosophers concoct to make some kind of esoteric objection. Producers and consumers of art alike are often put in choice situations where decisions must be made among artworks whose value derives from a diverse array of sources. When put in those choice situations, one’s obligation seems to be to base one’s choice on the individual artistic merits of the artworks involved. One can, of course, change the terms of the choice situation–for example, when a decision between two artworks is especially difficult, one may decide to use monetary expense as the relevant parameter. But the fact that one can switch to a different choice situation in
this fashion is no indication that the choice focused on
artistic value cannot be made legitimately, or that it makes no
sense to ask people to make decisions on this basis.
Furthermore, there seems to be an understanding within our
artworld culture that legitimate choices among diverse artworks can be made. That is, if one follows the appropriate
142 methodology (a methodology I shall explain in the next chapter), one’s judgments make sense and ought to be taken seriously.
At the end of the day, it seems as if Vermazen and Dickie have got hold of a nice bit of theory, one built on the simple but powerful Pareto condition. The allure of the theory is enough to make them look for practices that conform to it. But critical practices as we know them are grounded in comparison, and much of this does not fit comfortably with the moderate approach. Vermazen and Dickie think that they are salvaging critical practice from the sorts of attacks we saw in the last chapter. In reality, however, they end up trying to conform the practice to their theory, and not the other way around. There are circumstances where practices ought to be overturned on philosophical grounds. But, like the uniqueness theorists, proponents of the moderate approach have not given us reasons compelling enough to conclude that the practices of artistic evaluation constitute one of those circumstances.
143 CHAPTER 5
THE UNIVERSAL COMPARABILITY APPROACH
Seminole Sam: What we must do, and I spawn this salmon egg downstream hoping it may leap up over the falls to a happy hunting ground, we must take the truth by the horns... Howland Owl: A dilemma. Seminole Sam: Right! We’re standing with our feet buttered on a pool of ball bearings. The truth is tricky ... one man’s truth is another man’s cold broccoli... and our job, chief, is to make the truth tasty. Yes... tasty to all...
Walt Kelly, Pogo
In the last two chapters, I have argued that the uniqueness approach and the moderate approach fail. Those theories lead to trouble because the restrictions they place on the comparability of artworks are just too severe. They preclude us from comparing artworks that it really seems reasonable to compare.
In this chapter, I describe a theory of comparison that is designed to avoid those problems.
As a starting point, take Vermazen and Dickie’s idea that legitimate rankings given to artworks depend simply on the magnitudes we assign to the various value properties the artworks have. It is certainly the case that one of a critic’s
144 most important tasks is to ascertain the degree to which each artistically valuable property is in an artwork. This is what critics are doing when they think about how balanced a painting is, how well a drummer keeps the beat, how a novel coheres, how well a film is shot, how well a ballerina holds her form, and so on. Many critical arguments occur on this level—think of the late Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert’s famous disagreements about, e.g., whether the acting in a film is any good.
But there is a level of criticism that Vermazen and Dickie,
(along with the vast majority of philosophers of art) tend to ignore. Opera critics discuss the importance, to opera in general, of the music compared to the libretto. Comics readers think about how much the success of that artform depends on the stories, and how much depends on the pictures. When evaluating pop music, critics weigh the comparative merits of songwriting, skillful playing, production, and so on.
In these and similar cases, the critics are not worried about the degree to which those properties occur in artworks.
So what is going on here? The answer can be found in a little- noted passage in Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste.” Hume writes:
It is impossible to continue in the practice of contemplating any order of beauty without being frequently obliged to form comparisons between the several species and degrees of excellence, and estimating their proportion to each other. A man who has had no opportunity of comparing the different kinds of beauty is indeed totally unqualified to pronounce an opinion with regard to any object presented him. (1979, 493-94. Emphasis mine.)
145 Hume recognizes that the critical task (as I shall soon
illustrate) necessitates attention to the comparative merits of
artistically valuable properties themselves (species of
excellence, kinds of beauty). This is another entire level of critical concern beyond assessing mere degrees of excellence, and without it, no critic can evaluate art. Unless one knows what one is looking for in art, and how to treat art that has
whatever those features are, one cannot come to an informed
judgment about artworks’ goodness.
If I am right about how criticism actually proceeds, then
we have an explanation for the failures of the moderate
approach. To look merely at how much of each value property an
artwork has and how those properties interact in it is to fail
to engage artworks at a sufficiently deep level. It is this
failure that precludes, for Vermazen and Dickie, comparisons
that are intuitively legitimate (e.g., nominal-notable
comparisons).1
For the rest of this chapter, I am going to explore a
theory of comparability that encompasses rankings of
artistically valuable properties. After explaining in 5.1 and
5.2 what this theory would look like, I relate it in 5.3 to some
concrete cases of evaluation. Finally, in section 5.4, I draw
1 To be fair, both Vermazen and Dickie make tantalizing gestures Hume’s move. Vermazen mentions the possibility of judging that two poems are of roughly equal value on the basis of different but commensurable properties that they share (1979, 712). Dickie talks of the ability to value-rank properties (1988, 161), and of “rankable pairs of different properties” (1988, 166). Neither Vermazen nor Dickie, however, carries these ideas out any farther than that. 146 out the consequences of this theory when it comes to the limits of legitimate comparison among artworks. I argue that we have here the underpinning for universal comparability.
5.1 The Theoretical Apparatus
This section and the next are going to be fairly technical.
A natural response will be to charge that I am thereby being lost in the grasp of a theory that, while interesting, does not reflect the actual methodology of art criticism. Perhaps I can forestall some worries by noting that in 5.3 I shall apply the theory in a way that, the hope is, will allay these concerns.
The first step of the theory is to provide resources for being sensitive to critical methodology by allowing for value assignments to be given to value properties themselves apart from the degree to which each is present in an artwork. (Value assignments, remember, are simply a ranking expressed numerically.) Let us call this particular kind of value assignment a P-assignment. The larger the P-assignment one
gives to a property, the more artistic value one associates with
it—the more heavily it contributes (ceteris paribus) to artistic value.
When evaluating art, critics can represent P-assignments to themselves in a number of ways, most of which are unlikely to be made explicit. For mathematical convenience, more than anything else, suppose that P-assignments are made on a dense numerical
147 scale from –10 to 10, including 0. Considerations that arose in
Chapters 2 and 4 drive the need for both density and the 0 assignment. Density is important if we are to leave open the possibility that the artworld could evolve to encompass a new artistically valuable property intermediate in value between two previously known properties.2 And the 0 assignment is necessary because a given artworld structure may not sustain talk of certain properties being counted as artistically valuable; a given property may count neither for nor against artistic value.
It is unlikely, for example, that being bulletproof was considered an artistic value in the fifteenth century (nor is it at present). One of the important ramifications of the discussion of artistic value in Chapter 2 is that though there are at the most very few properties that cannot be relevant to artistic value, in practice, there may be properties that are not relevant. The theory of comparability should leave this possibility open. We should be able to say that being bulletproof is of little or no artistic value given the current artworld climate, and we can do so if we allow for a P- assignment of 0 for that property.
For similar reasons, we should allow negative numbers for
P-assignments. These reflect the degree to which a property
2 Discoveries of the type I have in mind here, of new artistically valuable properties, are discussed nicely by Danto in terms of a “style matrix” (see (Danto 1973)). 148 tends to be artistically disvaluable (in virtue of its disposition to provide disvaluable experiences). I shall have more to say later about how P-assignments are made in practice.
We need a parameter separate from P-assignments to reflect the aspect of artistic evaluation upon which Vermazen and Dickie focus: the attempt to determine the degree to which each artistically valuable property is found in a given artwork. In
Chapter 4, I used the term “value assignments” to refer to this degree. Since “value assignments” is ambiguous between the degree to which properties are found in artworks and the degree to which those properties are valuable themselves (P- assignments), let us now call the former “A-assignments.”
On Dickie’s view, remember, one bases the scale upon which
one makes A-assignments on the number of discriminations that
one can make for each individual value property. We saw in 4.5
that it is theoretically possible for (perhaps infinitely) many
such discriminations to be made, so the numerical scale for A-
assignments as well as P-assignments should be dense.
We should also be careful to avoid a needless confusion
inherent in Dickie’s view. If, as an art critic, I think I can
distinguish between fifty magnitudes of property V but only
three magnitudes of property Vm, an A-assignment of 2 to each
property will mean two very different things. But is there anything really to stop us from making all A-assignments on a dense scale from 0 to 10? An A-assignment of 2 to a given value property of an artwork would achieve a more universal status on
149 this theory: it would always mean that the work in question has little of that value property in comparison to most other actual or possible artworks.
The choice of a 0 to 10 scale here is once again arbitrary, but is adopted for simpler mathematics. If a critic were to make an A-assignment of 10, on this scale, she would be asserting that no artwork could have the property in question to a higher degree. To make an A-assignment of 0, in contrast, would be to say that the artwork has none of the property to which the A-assignment is made. When the A-assignment is 0, the property in question does not contribute at all to the value of the artwork.
Note also that A-assignments do not require negative numbers, unlike P-assignments. It would be quite odd to say that an artwork had a negative amount of a value property.
Negative judgments about artworks are expressed instead through positive A-assignments to negatively charged value properties
(expressed in P-assignments).
The final step for the basic theoretical structure of comparison is to combine P-assignments and A-assignments in a way that allows us to calculate the overall value of an artwork.
Combining P-assignments and A-assignments is exactly what critics do in evaluating art (as I will show later with a number of examples). Now, there are probably a number of ways to think about how they are combined, but to my mind, the most natural is to think of P-assignments as a multiplier. For P-assignments
150 act as a way of weighting the artistically valuable properties that actually occur in artworks (expressed in A-assignments) in terms of their importance to that overall value.
Multiplying the P-assignments and A-assignments for each value property of an artwork gives us an abstract representation of how highly we value the degree to which each artistically valuable property occurs in it. Finally, it seems natural to add the results of those multiplications together for every value property, to produce an assignment of value to the artwork as a whole (yes, there are problems of interaction here. More on this later).3 Let us call the final result the W-assignment.
Formally speaking, for an artwork with value properties V…Vn,
W-assignment = (P-assignment for V X A-assignment for V)+ ... +(P-assignment for Vn X A-assignment for Vn).
If it is possible to give a W-assignment for any given
artwork (as I shall argue), then universal comparability will
have been achieved. As long as artworks have artistically
valuable properties (they always will, given the possibility of
the 0 assignment), to which one can give P-assignments and A-
assignments, they will be able to be ranked in terms of artistic
value.
3 If we wanted to, we could build into the theory the requirement that this number be divided by the number of properties each artwork has. But this turns out to be unnecessary. If we allow 0 to be used as an A-assignment, then all artworks will have the same number of properties anyway. Even if we divided by this number, artworks would still be ranked the same way with respect to each other, and in the same proportion. Moreover, it is hard to say what this number could even be (how many properties are there that are actually or potentially artistically valuable?). 151 With this in mind, the success of this picture of comparison depends a good deal on how well the following challenges can be met:
1) There are several technical details to be worked out, notably issues surrounding the 0 assignment and interaction of value properties.
2) The theory must be shown to describe accurately our evaluative practices and the associated phenomenology. The case must be made that it is possible to assess artworks in this fashion, and that when we reach rational, legitimate comparative judgments of artworks we are in fact operating according to a methodology consistent with the above. This is the subject of section 5.3.
3) There are some general and specific objections that need responses. I shall deal with the most pressing of these in
Chapter 6.
5.2 Some Technical Elaborations
In this section, I want to tidy up some loose ends of the theory of comparison just proposed, and to remark on some of its more interesting and unusual aspects.
First, it should be noted that a critic ought to think carefully before making a P-assignment of 10 or -10. To do so would be to say that no other property could be more valuable or more disvaluable respectively, and that would foreclose on a
152 certain critical flexibility. Though it is probably a bad idea for critics to be constantly revising their P-assignments (it bespeaks of a lack of confidence), what matters most is the relative position of each artistically valuable property compared to the others. Accordingly, faced with a property that one does find to be more valuable or more disvaluable than a property to which one had assigned 10 or -10, one could always revise one’s assignments. Correspondingly, one should be hesitant to make A-assignments of 10, unless one is confident that the property in question could not be present to any higher degree.
Second, there seems to be no upper or lower limit to the numbers that can be given as W-assignments, because there seems to be no way of determining the limit on the number of value properties an artwork could have.4 The lack of such bounds is a good aspect of the theory, I think; it reflects the fact that artistic comparisons are made relative to other artworks. It is possible that a new artwork could be created whose artistic value exceeds that of the artworks previously known to us—it sets a new standard. In such a case, we would want to revise downwards our judgments of the value of various extant works.
This actually happens, for good or ill. Think about how
4 In practicality, it is difficult to conceive of an artwork with an enormous number of value properties. For through interaction some of these seem to interfere with each other. Gracefulness, for example, is probably not going to interact well with quirky humor. Also, I am betraying my (controversial) bias towards theories on which there can be any number of artistically valuable properties (see Chapter 2). If there were only three artistically valuable properties (as Beardsley thinks—complexity, intensity, and unity), then there would be a maximum W-assignment after all: 300. 153 Giotto’s discovery of linear perspective caused paintings to be reevaluated, or (my favorite example) how earlier styles of heavy metal seemed markedly inferior when Metallica emerged.
The lack of an upper or lower bound for W-assignments raises a problem concerning strong conclusions about artworks.
Strong conclusions, to recall a notion of Dickie’s discussed in
4.4, are judgments that reflect the magnitude of value of an artwork, in contrast to weak conclusions to the effect that an artwork is of some value or other. The lack of upper and lower bounds precludes us from knowing the value of the best and the worst artworks, so we seem to be unable to locate any artwork precisely on the matrix with respect to all others. If Dickie is correct that strong conclusions are made on the basis of the position of each artwork with respect to others that occupy the same matrix, then it seems that we can never arrive at any strong conclusions in the first place. And that would be contrary to the purpose of the theory I am offering here.
My reply to this worry is that it is entirely possible to secure a strong conclusion for any actual artwork without having to locate that artwork with respect to all possible artworks.
There are plenty of logically possible artworks (conceivable in one sense) that, as a matter of fact, are such that one cannot conceive of them occurring within one’s own art-historical context. Danto and Gombrich have taught us that artistic practices are deeply rooted in the present.5 We are creatures of
5 See (Danto 1964), (Gombrich 1968, ch. 2). 154 our own time. We can only conceive of the existence of artworks for which the artworld is ready: Warhol’s Brillo Boxes would
have been inconceivable in to Titian in 1559.
Reason does and should not require us, when seeking strong
conclusions, to consider artworks of which we cannot currently
conceive given the structure of the contemporary artworld. One
does not (nor is one required to) make value judgments based on
works of which one has no conception, because the range of
possible artworks exceeds the imagination of any person. Nor
can we really predict which objects will arise as art–it takes
the next genius to make the next radical change. Even so, at
least some people are qualified to evaluate art. How could this
be unless the appropriate comparison class is limited to
conceivable and not merely possible artworks?
I want to turn now to a few comments about my retention of
the 0 assignment, an obligation given the criticisms of the
Vermazen/Dickie theory I offered in 4.6.6 Their problem, remember, was that if the value of an artwork is to be assessed on the basis of its position in the comparison matrix, allowing for the 0 assignment forces us to reject the condition of extended transitivity on artistic value. The root of this
6 The 0 assignment, remember, can be given for both P-assignments and A-assignments. An interesting side issue is whether a W-assignment can turn out to be 0. I tend to think that it can. At the least, all objects that do not have artistically valuable properties will receive a W- assignment of 0 (because all their P-assignments will be 0). It may be that all artworks have at least some magnitude of at least one artistically valuable property. But this need not result in the conclusion that all artworks have a non-0 W-assignment (as Beardsley and Dickie think, among others, though not in those terms). It is always possible for an artwork’s valuable and disvaluable properties to cancel each other out exactly, in which case the artwork would have a 0 W-assignment. 155 problem is that when the zero method is used, many (perhaps infinitely many) artworks with what seem to be radically different value properties are placed at the same level of the comparison matrix. And though artworks A and B occupy the same level in virtue of 0 assignments (and seem to be equal in value as a result), artwork C may be Pareto-superior to (and hence better than, for Vermazen and Dickie) A but not B.
The inclusion of the 0 assignment in my theory has very different results. There is no breakdown in extended transitivity. Using 0 as a P-assignment or A-assignment for a given property of an artwork merely removes the property from counting towards that work’s artistic value. As such, 0 assignments do not generally require the placement of artworks on the same level of the matrix.
For instance, if artworks A and B have A-assignments of (2,
1, 0) and (2, 0, 1) respectively to the same three value properties, this does not necessitate (as it does for Vermazen and Dickie) that they are found on the same level of the matrix.
They could be on the same level, but only if the P-assignments to the latter two value properties were equal. In any case, if
A and B are equally good, an artwork C that is better than A will be better than B. The superiority of C will be due to a higher W-assignment for it than for A, and if the W-assignment is higher for C than for A, it is higher for C than for B. This preserves the condition of extended transitivity.
156 Having seen how my proposal avoids problems with the 0
assignment, let us move on to the issue of interactive
properties. As I argued in 4.5, such properties seem to be
important in evaluating artworks, but this causes trouble for
the Vermazen/Dickie theory. If we emphasize the particular
properties that interact in each artwork (the de dicto reading),
then artworks usually have different value properties, for the de dicto interactive property is a value property. Because
Vermazen and Dickie think that artworks with different value properties cannot be compared, their view tends towards unacceptable restrictions on comparability.
My theory is immune to this problem. The use of P- assignments allows for properties themselves to be ranked with respect to each other. Accordingly, it allows for the possibility that artworks with different value properties, even the de dicto interactive property, can still be compared. This is good, for there are many cases (some of which I will raise in what follows) where it is common practice to compare artworks that derive their value from different sources.
In 4.5, I also considered the de re reading of the interactive property; we could understand it as the property of having, to some degree or other, whatever value properties an artwork has. All artworks would share this kind of interactive property, exerting a pull towards universal comparability. We are now in a position to understand why I rejected this strategy even though I am arguing for universal comparability myself.
157 Responsible art criticism demands attention to the particular
properties of artworks. We esteem some properties more than
others, as our P-assignments reflect. Though having properties
interact well is important in evaluation, which properties are interacting certainly seems to be relevant to the value of an artwork. If we take seriously the idea that some properties contribute towards artistic value more heavily than others, we ought also to recognize that it is better to have some properties interacting than others.
For those reasons, I think that what should concern us is the interactive property in the de dicto sense rather than the de re sense. Because de dicto interactive properties contribute to the value of an artwork, they must receive P-assignments and
A-assignments themselves. Notably, my theory is actually compatible with the view that artworks derive all their artistic value from their de dicto interactive properties. Whatever
properties turn out to be the artistically valuable ones are
factored into assessment of artworks, and it may be that
interactive properties exhaust these.7
7 Anyone who holds that the interactive properties of artworks are all that counts towards their evaluation could just make P- and A-assignments to that property of each artwork, and multiply them together, resulting in a product that can be used as the W-assignment (with the maximum value of 100). However, anybody who endorses such a theory is going to have to explain which properties it is that do the interacting, and why some of these are relevant (e.g., harmonic complexity) rather than others (e.g., being performed on a Thursday). The natural answer here seems to be that the properties whose interaction counts towards artistic evaluation are the artistically valuable properties. In that case we might as well assign at least some value to the artworks that have them on the basis of having them. 158 5.3 Theory and Practice
One of the main themes of this project so far has been this: Any philosophical theory that purports to address adequately the comparability of art must take the practices of artistic creation, criticism, and evaluation as central. The theory can start from nowhere else, and nothing else can plausibly provide confirmation for it. This is not to say that all artistic practices must ultimately conform to the theory, or that no artistic practices are subject to theoretical revision.
But a theory of the comparability of art must be sensitive to
the ways in which the artworld operates, and artworld practices
should only be overturned by theoretical considerations when
there is very compelling reason to do so.
So one might have the following kind of concern. Does the
theory I have offered really have anything to do with the ways
in which critics actually evaluate art? The proposed apparatus
supposedly to be used in comparisons is quite Byzantine. Not
only are mathematical equations involved in all assessments of
artistic value, but we end up with three different types of
value assignment, a comparison matrix that may be infinitely
large, and artworks that have innumerable value properties. It
is extremely unlikely that any person engaged in artistic
evaluation will think explicitly in terms of P-assignments, A-
assignments, W-assignments, mathematical calculations based on
dense scales, and so on. Nobody is going to evaluate the
159 comparative merits of artworks with the aid of a calculator.
Thus, even though the theory may be of some technical interest, it might well be irrelevant to art-critical practices, and thereby useless.
Dickie, on his own behalf, offers a reply to the same sort of objection. His theory, he says, is
not supposed to be an exact account of what it is that critics do when they compare and evaluate works of art specifically. My remarks are a philosopher’s account of the logic that underlies critics’ evaluations and what such evaluations would be like if they were made as precise as they could be made. (1988, 181)8
At root, Dickie’s response is that he is exploring the technical limits of rational comparability of artworks. Though we may never reach these limits (and may never need to do so) in ordinary critical practice, there exists a theoretical basis upon which we can make comparisons up to those limits.
Dickie’s idea is to the point here, and it could be applied
readily to my rival account (though I, of course, am going to
set the limits of comparability much further afield than he
does). But Dickie and I seem to have different goals in mind.
His reply places emphasis on the greatest extent to which we
could possibly make legitimate comparisons. Though this is a
significant portion of my project as well, it is my view that
the limits of artistic comparison must stem from attention to
critical methodology. Unlike Dickie, I actually do want an
8 See also (Dickie 2001, 89). 160 “exact account of what it is that critics do when they compare and evaluate works of art.” Without that, it is hard to see what possible basis there could be for the “philosopher’s account of the logic that underlies critics’ evaluations.”
Happily, I think a good case can be made that the apparatus
I have laid out is a close approximation of the actual process of art evaluation used by careful critics. By way of argument, let me first offer four short examples, then a longer, more detailed case.
1. We have already seen, in 4.7, a few cases relevant here.
Remember Dave’s judgment that Jim Hall is a better player than
Al DiMeola? I argued that, intuitively, his evaluative conclusion seems to be perfectly legitimate, despite that fact that those guitarists are ranked according to very different value properties. What lies behind our acceptance of Dave’s judgment, I think, is that we recognize that he holds lyricism to be a more significant value property for an artwork to bear than technical facility. These are Dave’s P-assignments—he finds the occurrence of lyricism to be more valuable, ceteris paribus, than the occurrence of technical facility. Then he evaluates Hall and DiMeola on the A-assignment level, and finds that even though DiMeola’s playing has a high magnitude of technical facility, this is not enough to overcome Hall’s lyricism.
2. Stella’s case (also in 4.7) is similar. She has ranked a film more highly than a poetry reading, though they are
161 valuable for very different reasons. What legitimates Stella’s choice is her judgment that the value properties the film is likely to have are better than the value properties the poems are likely to have—the P-assignments to the value properties of the film are higher. It is not the case that the magnitudes of the value assignments to the properties of the film (the A- assignments) will be higher than the comparable magnitudes assigned to the reading, but that given the value properties of each, the film has more potential for artistic goodness.
3. There is occasionally a debate among opera lovers about the relative importance of the music and the libretti to operas’ quality. There are also those who focus their attention on the interactive property—the way the music and libretto (in addition to their individual merits) go together. For whatever reason, the music of an opera is usually judged to be a more significant contributor to the overall artwork than the libretto. This is reflected in the fame of composers relative to librettists.
Everybody knows that Giacomo Puccini composed La Boheme, but
hardly anybody knows the librettist, despite the fact that La
Boheme is one of the most popular operas of all time.9 Be that as it may, the best way to understand this critical discussion is as a debate about P-assignments. Should they be higher for musical or textual aspects of opera, or even the interactive property, and if the music is more important, how much more
9 Actually, La Boheme has two librettists: Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. 162 important is it? Only after this question is dealt with can opera critics go about their business of assessing each opera on its individual merits.
4. A traditional comic has two complimentary components, the story and the artwork (often created by different people—like Marvel’s famous writer/artist team of Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby). Comics aficionados split into two camps (at least, but I shall simplify a bit): those who prioritize the drawing over the story, and those who prioritize the story over the drawing. Like the opera case, I think the only way to make sense of this disagreement is to think about the comparative merits of properties themselves: P-assignments.
The question comics aficionados are trying to answer is:
What sort of property contributes most significantly, ceteris paribus, to the value of a comic? Once this question is answered, one has an idea of what to look for in comics. If the drawings are more important, something like Frank Cho’s Liberty
Meadows might turn out to be more successful than Daniel Clowes’
Eightball. If the writing is more important, the opposite judgment is likely to be the result. It will be apparent to anyone who walks into a comic book shop that comparisons of this type are among the central elements of what comics lovers do; again, this is a case of ranking properties as fundamental to critical practice. And unless something much like my theory of comparison is operating, it is hard to see this could be done.
163 Now for a more involved example. In the course of
“Evaluating Art: A Feminist Case for Dickie’s Matrix System,”
Peggy Zeglin Brand argues that Dickie’s theory of comparison of
artworks has an important merit. It provides an apt framework
for incorporating the referential qualities of artworks (their
truth to life, their power to educate the perceiver about the
world, or their reflections of the artist’s own experiences)
into the domain of artistic value.
What interests me about this article is not Brand’s
conclusion, for I (obviously) believe that Dickie’s theory is
deeply problematic, but rather the case study she undertakes.
Brand’s focus is a critical controversy surrounding two
paintings that depict the same Biblical scene: Caravaggio’s
Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598-99), and Artemisia
Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes (1620). Brand relates that some critics (including John Ashberry, Robert Hughes, and, notably, Francis Haskell) claim that the former work is better.
I shall call these critics “traditionalists.” In contrast, feminist critics like Mary Garrard prefer the latter work
(Gentileschi’s).10
Brand frames this disagreement in terms of Dickie’s matrix
system. Traditionalists and feminists, on her view, give
inverse assignments to the degree to which the Caravaggio and
the Gentileschi are complex, unified, balanced, and valuable
because of truth to actuality and expressiveness of personal
10 Garrard, Brand tells us, wrote the first full monograph on Geltileschi (see (Garrard, 1989)). 164 suffering. According to the traditionalists, Caravaggio’s painting exceeds Gentileschi’s in each of these respects—it is
Caravaggio’s genius that is reflected in Gentileschi’s works, and not the other way around. The feminists reach the contrary judgment: Gentileschi’s work, unlike Caravaggio’s, actually depicts the sort of strength and leverage Judith would have needed to cut off a head. Moreover, Gentileschi’s painting has expressive qualities that Caravaggio’s cannot match, given that the artist had good reason for an abiding proto-feminist anger towards men (having been raped in her father’s studio as a teenager).
I think, however, that the disagreement between traditionalists and feminists goes deeper than that. They are not merely arguing about the relative merits of the paintings
(the only sort of dispute that Dickie’s theory can encompass), but also about the relative importance of various valuable properties themselves (P-assignments). Traditionalists are prioritizing formal properties (complexity, balance, unity), while feminists are prioritizing referential properties
(expressiveness, truth to actuality).
At points, Brand seems to be tracking this aspect of criticism. She writes, for example:
. . . feminist critics [are not] engaged in the task of “proving” that works by women possess unity or complexity or beauty: criteria traditionally utilized for determining masterpieces of “genius.” Rather, their task is to undermine and, in some cases, entirely discard the traditional apparatus of evaluation. . . .
165 . . . [Feminists] are nearly exclusively interested in moral value to the exclusion of an interest in aesthetic value. In other words, in spite of their uneasiness with the given categories, one could say that feminists prefer to rank the cognitive properties over the aesthetic properties in importance. This naturally precludes ranking aesthetic properties as equal to or more important than cognitive properties. Thus, a feminist approach differs drastically from traditional approaches like Monroe Beardsley’s, which favors aesthetic properties exclusively. . . . feminists build in an implicit hierarchy in which moral (or political) value always outweighs aesthetic value. (1994, 95-96, emphasis added)
These passages, as I read them, present compelling evidence for the conclusion that attention to the value of properties themselves, together with attention to the degree to which those properties are present in artworks, is an essential component of art criticism. Regrettably, Brand accepts Dickie’s limited theory of comparison while simultaneously lamenting that “Since there seems to be no way to build some sort of hierarchy of properties into the matrix system, it leaves works like
Artemisia’s at a distinct disadvantage when assessed by critics like Haskell” (1994, 101).
Naturally, bringing a hierarchy of properties into the system, as P-assignments allow us to do, negates at least one of the feminist’s disadvantages. The debate about the comparative merits of the Caravaggio and the Gentileschi does not all have to occur on the level of A-assignments (as Dickie would have it); this is good, for if it did, there would be an inherent bias towards Caravaggio. The possibility of P-assignments is what allows feminists to challenge the dominant conception of what is valuable about art. Feminists may still have a 166 disadvantage because of their position within the patriarchal structure of art criticism; it is unlikely that Garrard will convince Haskell of the error of his ways. But claims like
Garrard’s about the merits of the Gentileschi, or general feminist demands for a revision of the artistic canon are not hopeless.
In short, Brand’s case study is a poor argument indeed for
Dickie’s matrix system (which is only to be expected, given the many flaws with that system). It is, however, an excellent argument for the theory I have proposed in this chapter.
I hope to have shown, through the foregoing examples, that art criticism involves coming to the artworks we are evaluating with certain beliefs in mind. We are already thinking about which properties we find to be artistically valuable—those are the properties we look for in artworks—and we have ideas about the comparative importance of those properties to artistic value. These beliefs correspond to the P-assignments described in my theory. The other crucial part of evaluating art, the examples show, consists in ascertaining the degree to which each artwork has the properties that one believes to be artistically valuable. The ultimate step of artistic evaluation, it seems, is to consider the totality of the value of the artwork, expressed by how much it has of each of its valuable properties and how those come together. Aside from additional technical jargon, this is nothing over and above the W-assignment.
167 What this all means is that although the theory of
comparison of artworks I have offered in this chapter might seem
only to be a philosopher’s wild speculations, quite the contrary
is in fact the case. Art critics employ the same kind of
methodology my theory details. Accordingly, my theory accords better with critical practices than competing views. I have offered cases where comparisons seem to be made legitimately even across genres and among artworks with very different properties. My theory explains why such comparisons are possible and how they are made. The uniqueness approach (where no artworks are comparable) and the moderate approach (where
Pareto comparability exhausts the comparability of artworks) do not.
5.4 The Universal Comparability Approach
I have now presented a number of arguments against extant approaches to comparison of artworks and proposed an alternative theory. So where does my view fit when it comes to the issue with which we began: the extent to which artworks can be legitimately compared?
Well, to begin, very similar artworks can still be compared. The idea I am exploring is broader than Vermazen and
Dickie’s moderate approach, and so ought to be able to encompass any artworks they would judge to be comparable. So, to take some examples, we can compare Picasso and Braque in their
168 Analytical Cubist phases, Schoenberg to Webern, Aerosmith to Led
Zeppelin, and Beverley Hills 90210 to The O.C.. All of these
comparisons are relatively easy to make, because in each case,
the artworks are very alike when it comes to their category.11
Within a fine-grained categorization, one looks at basically the same set of properties for determining A-assignments, making the critical task relatively simple.
So what about fairly different artworks? These would be
works that are part of the same general category (painting, dance, jazz) but are different enough to merit inclusion in divergent sub-categories (Analytical Cubism as opposed to
Futurism, modern ballet as opposed to contact improvisation, hard bop as opposed to free jazz).
A nice example of comparisons like this (which are, by the way, quite common—another knock against the moderate approach) is provided by movie reviews. In newspapers, magazines, television programs, Internet publications, and annual books such as The Video Hound, reviewers regularly assess the
comparative merits of films regardless of sub-category. Movies
are awarded stars or some similar device—not “stars qua science fiction” or “stars qua historical romance,” but just stars.
My theory of comparison allows for these comparisons across
sub-categories. Horror movies, tear-jerkers, comedies, and so
on each have different properties that contribute to their
11 For the most prominent discussion of categorization in art, see (Walton 1970). See also (Graves 1997) for a nice discussion of the interrelations among artworlds, to which I would closely link categorization. 169 merits, and when reviewers compare them as movies, they have (at least tacitly) a hierarchy of those properties in mind. It is precisely because this is how criticism proceeds that movie reviewers can go about their business.
The final frontier for comparison is very different
artworks—those that belong not only to different sub-categories,
but to different general categories as well. For the same
reasons that comparisons within sub-categories ought to be taken
as legitimate, I contend that comparisons across broad
categories can also be legitimate. After all, from the
evaluative point of view, the real differences among artworks of
different categories (regardless of the scope of those
categories) are in the properties that determine their artistic
value. P-assignments, together with the 0 assignment, enable us
to compare artworks whose value is determined by different
properties. So a major ramification of my view is that all
artworks are comparable; that is why I call my theory the universal comparability approach.
The idea that any artworks whatsoever can be compared may
seem shocking. It is, after all, an extreme position, a
departure from the comforting safety of the moderate approach.
Yet given that neither the moderate approach nor the uniqueness
approach is plausible, the universal comparability approach
seems to be the only remaining alternative.
There is more work to be done yet, however. I have already
given a number of examples that support my theory, but I have so
170 far been avoiding a crucial question: should a theory of
artistic evaluation allow for universal comparability? Are
there aspects of artistic practices that would be de-legitimated
if this were somehow impossible? In the next (final) chapter, I
argue that comparisons that would seem quite radical (and
impermissible) from the perspective of the moderate and
uniqueness approaches comprise crucial aspects of artistic
creation and evaluation. In addition, I defend the universal
comparability approach against some last-ditch objections, and
contemplate some ways in which that approach can be applied to
other outstanding problems in aesthetics and other areas of
philosophical discourse.
171 CHAPTER 6
SUPPORTING AND APPLYING THE UNIVERSAL COMPARABILITY APPROACH
Albert Alligator: By Jing, I just solved the mortal most problem ever solved by a human bean. Grizzle Bear: Wozzat? Albert Alligator: How to get a pot off your head. Grizzle Bear: Any numbskull could of thought of that. The thing is how could you of got it on in the first place?
Walt Kelly, Pogo
Offering the final, definitive word on a philosophical problem is nigh impossible. There will always be loose ends, objections to handle, tangents to explore, and connections to be found. Be that as it may, in this final chapter, I shall do what I can to complete my discussion of the comparability of artworks. To that end, I shall do four things. First, I shall show, in 6.1, that there is a good deal of data that bear out the need for comparisons across categories of art—that there is a need for the universal comparability approach. Second, in
6.2, I shall show that some remaining general objections to my theory are unfounded. Finally, in 6.3 and 6.4, I show how the
172 universal comparability theory applies to issues about the objectivity of artistic evaluation and some other problems in aesthetics and beyond.
6.1 Evidence for the Universal Comparability of Artworks
As I said all the way back in Chapter 1, the universal comparability approach is likely to seem counterintuitive to many. Vermazen, remember, bases his theory on a data point: our reluctance to make certain comparisons. Moreover, it seems that there are some artworks we are just not called upon to compare, and we might wonder why this is so if artworks are universally comparable.
I think, however, that the range of artworks that we actually compare is much broader than most philosophers have recognized. In this section, I shall raise a number of relatively common cases of comparison that bear out a need for the universal comparability approach. Then I shall offer an explanation of the seemingly conflicting data upon which my opponents base their theories.
One common comparison is of individual films to their source material.1 Contemporary Hollywood is rife with films that are adaptations of something else: other films (Gus Van Sant’s
1 Though I will not discuss it further, these comparisons also happen in the reverse case—when films inspire other works of art (such as the Snake Plisskin comics about Kurt Russell’s character in Escape from New York, or the many Star Wars novels). 173 shot-for-shot remake of Psycho), comics (Spiderman and Batman movies, Ghost World), video games (Final Fantasy, Mario
Brothers), novels (High Fidelity, The English Patient, Lord of the Rings), Broadway musicals (Chicago, Phantom of the Opera), rock albums (Pink Floyd’s The Wall), amusement park rides
(Pirates of the Caribbean), and so on. It is entirely natural
to compare these films with the material from which they are
adapted.
Movies generally seem to fare worse than their counterparts
(Dune and The Hulk certainly did), but at least sometimes they
break even (as in, to my mind, the X-Men films, or The Wizard of
Oz). More rarely, the movie surpasses its source (The Maltese
Falcon, The Shining, and Gone With the Wind might be good
examples2). Why this last phenomenon is uncommon, I can only speculate. Perhaps it is because the temporal constraints for watching films mean that crucial bits of source material must be left out, or because we prefer what we imagine to what we are shown, or because movies are a popular artform and must thereby be watered down to meet the demands of an uneducated public.
Of course, what is important in this context is not how films and their sources tend to stack up evaluatively—the key is that they stack up. Based on artistic practices, even Vermazen and Dickie would be hard pressed to claim (as it turns out that they must) that such comparisons are illegitimate, even though the comparisons cross broad categories of art.
2 Many thanks to Rick Groshong for these suggestions. 174 One natural response is that these cases do not show that universal comparability is an important feature of a theory of comparison. Although some categories are crossed here, others are not. Novels and the films that are based on them, it might be pointed out, both fall into the category of narrative art.
They are comparable because they are evaluated on the same basis—how well each tells the story. So the need for comparative evaluation of films and their sources does not show that comparison of art transcends categories.
But do I need to show that comparison transcends all categories of art? It seems entirely plausible to claim that for any two artworks, there is some category or other into which they both fit. There are many different (and fluid) genres within the scope of art that can plausibly play the role of overarching category here. Modernism, for example, is a category that can encompass radically different artworks—artworks whose value derives from very different properties. Or think of Pop Art as a category—one that handily includes such varied artworks as Lichtenstein paintings, Warhol films, and the first Roxy Music album. I am not claiming that comparisons are common practice within these categories, but only that there actually are categories that range over very different artworks.
A further objection might be that comparison is only possible within a certain range of categories (e.g., films, narratives), into which the broad categories of Modernism and 175 Pop Art do not fit. But how are we ever to determine, in terms of breadth, which categories do and which do not matter when it comes to comparability? This is like a widely noted problem faced by ethical relativists: how are we ever to determine the scope of the particular societies to which right and wrong is relativized? In the case of relativism, we are faced with the possibility of a society of one person with her own distinctive moral standards—a troubling idea since relativism entails that she would be above moral criticism so long as she lives up to those standards.3 Similarly, in the case of art, we are faced with the possibility that the categories within which comparison will be allowed will each be comprised of only one artwork. And that would be to say again that no artworks whatsoever are comparable, a consequence I view to be absurd.
Furthermore, there are a number of cases that go beyond the film examples above in that comparison seems legitimate despite the absence of an obvious common category such as narrative.
Music, for many of its practitioners, seems intimately associated with a number of visual artforms. Take some claims made by rock musician David Bowie:
Ever since I was very young, I’ve seen music in visual terms. I see the textures that I’m hearing, and I equate certain sounds with the relative roughness and smoothness or density and transparency of color. I really see it in painters’ terms. . . . I see each note or cluster of notes as objects within a landscape: a tree, a fence. I describe instrumental parts in visual terms: “The first part should be like a moor with a light fog. As we approach the
3 For one good articulation of this problem, see (Stace 1986). 176 chorus, it shouldn’t emerge as a clear figure, but as an approaching object in a darker gray than the gray of the fog. It takes on recognizable features by the time it gets in close to you.” . . . [Bowie claims he sees the song “Look Back in Anger” as a cathedral.] I said the central part should have a spire, but it should have flying buttresses that are as strong, but not as empathetic, as the spire itself. (Bowie and Gabrels 1997, 49)
Bowie is not alone in conceptualizing music architecturally
and describing his work by employing architectural discourse.
Musicians often report the feeling of building structures out of
sound. Contemporary digital recording technology, which allows
for direct waveform editing, reinforces this feeling. Producing
and mixing a record on a program such as Digidesign’s ProTools,
to me at least, seems very much like moving around small blocks
in physical space and shading them with the right colors.4 I would also be unsurprised if architects sometimes think in musical terms. For example, one will occasionally read a reference to the “rhythm” of a building.
All of this seems to indicate that there is a need to compare musical works with buildings, paintings, sculptures, and landscape design. The key is that music’s most informed practitioners exploit what they view as fundamental similarities between their art and these others in the creation and description of their artworks. For a critic to ignore these similarities in the practice of evaluation would be a mistake; if a critic were to attempt to evaluate Bowie’s music without
4 It is also interesting that color talk gets imported into the music world to describe timbres. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar tone, for example, is said to have a “brown sound.” 177 taking the architectural connections under consideration, her judgment would be incomplete. The critical resources for a
comparison of a song to a cathedral are ready at hand, and only
the most a doctrinaire aesthetician indeed could insist that
their use is illegitimate.
Lest the reader think that the connections between Bowie’s
music and architecture are too idiosyncratic to reinforce the
need within artworld practice for the sorts of cross-genre
comparisons my opponents would disallow, let me offer two more
examples.
Here is a case where another rock musician, Ben Folds,
explicitly compares his songs to photography:
I love photography, and I liken my new album [Songs for Silverman] to a collection of Wynn Bullock prints. With Ansel Adams, everyone's going to go, "Wow! Ansel Adams! Big, big landscapes! Huge! Amazing! Yeah, Ansel Adams!" Wynn Bullock... "Yeah... uh... not... no." Because he just built very subtle, simple prints that are lasting. Over the course of time, they are proven to really hang in there. They're understated. And I made my name being overstated, smashing pianos. Now I'm making more understated music sometimes. You listen to it the first time, and maybe you're compelled to listen to it again at some point, but it's not going to do the trick on the first listen. (2005, n.p.)
Folds is not just claiming, as it might be thought of Bowie’s
comments, that he thinks about another artform when he is making
music. Rather, he is saying, in effect, that he has become the
Wynn Bullock of rock music. Comparatively speaking, Folds
178 asserts that his work and Bullock’s are of at least roughly equal quality and merit (though it is unclear whether he thinks he is better or worse than Ansel Adams).
Another case focuses on the twentieth-century African-
American artist Romare Bearden. Bearden worked in a number of different styles of visual art (and was even a songwriter for some time), but is most famous for his collages and photomontages.5
What makes Bearden relevant for our purposes is Romare
Bearden Revealed, an album saxophonist Branford Marsalis made in his honor. (A number of Bearden’s works were named after jazz songs or depicted jazz musicians.) Here (at some length) are comments Marsalis makes about this album:
Before I was approached to do this record, I saw a Marc Chagall exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. I was knocked out by the way they set up the show, because you could see his progression from being a classical painter to his interest in Picasso’s ideas, to his adoption of Gauguin, and I was struck by the way he put his work together through these borrowings. When I saw Bearden’s work I saw the same thing, someone who was more interested in the process than the product. . . . [Thelonious] Monk’s compositions were brilliant, and [Charles] Mingus’s were too, but that was mainly the group interplay, which is why his compositions don’t usually come off when they’re covered by other musicians. But Duke [Ellington] had such a worldview. Monk had a worldview too, and when you listen from song to song, the melodies are so genius. But when you listen to Duke, the stuff he
5 Through this medium, as Arthur Danto puts it, in an article called (ironically?) “An Artist Beyond Category,” “Bearden was liberated by Pop to find his own language, and the urgency of black liberation gave him his subject. He became a leading artist of the black experience” (2004, 29). 179 wrote in the 1920s was so different from what he wrote in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and that’s what he shares with Romare, that emphasis on process over product. (2004, 34)
Marsalis is comparing Bearden as a painter and collagist not only to an artist working in roughly the same genre
(Chagall), but to a number of jazz musicians. In the second of the paragraphs quoted above, Marsalis makes it clear that he sees some kind of equivalence between the works of Bearden and
Ellington.
Two points need to be made about this equivalence. First, the comparison that Marsalis is making here seems to be perfectly reasonable. The interviewer does not respond with some sort of metaphysical horror about the violence being done to the nature of art, nor would a normal reader have that response. Accordingly, Marsalis seems to be well situated within a body of acceptable artworld practices. Second,
Marsalis’ comments are at least partially evaluative. He implies that Bearden shares the same kind of brilliance as
Ellington—and that both artists are superior to Monk and Mingus.
If this is the correct interpretation of Marsalis’ claims, then we have found another case that reinforces the theoretical possibility of comparisons across broad categories—music and visual art. Because these comparisons can be and are made, the apparatus of artistic comparison ought to encompass them. And,
180 again, note that attention to the valuable properties of art on both the level of P-assignments and A-assignments is fundamental to this apparatus.
If the kinds of cases I have discussed in this section so far are indeed legitimate, why have so many philosophers thought otherwise? Why did anyone ever buy into the uniqueness and moderate approaches? As I suggested in both Chapter 3 and
Chapter 4, the views about comparability in competition to mine seem largely driven by theoretical considerations apart from the practicality of art criticism. Uniqueness theorists and
Vermazen and Dickie alike begin with ideas about the nature of art and artistic value that lead to problematic conclusions about comparability. It is because these philosophers pay more attention to their theories than artistic practices that they are in this situation. Still, they are right to point to cases in which it seems intuitively strange to make artistic comparisons. How can I account for our reluctance to compare certain artworks?
There are two factors, I think, that might inhibit comparisons of artistic value in actual practice. One is epistemological. In practicality, it may be difficult always to arrive at determinate evaluative judgments about artworks—especially given the dual obligation to rank the comparative merits of their properties themselves and to ascertain the degree to which each of those properties is present. This difficulty explains not only the reticence to 181 compare, say, Hendrix to Giotto, but a good deal of critical disagreement. It explains in part why the traditionalist and feminist critics discussed in section 5.3 can both make strong cases for their opposite rankings of Caravaggio’s and
Gentileschi’s paintings. What the critics are trying to do is hard—but, crucially, it is not impossible.
Nothing in the theory I am advancing here implies that in every actual case one will at that time have the ability to situate a given artwork in the comparison matrix. I have only said that any work can theoretically be so placed—something my opponents all deny. Sometimes one just does not know which assignments to give.6 This happens with P-assignments: I may have difficulty deciding whether I esteem melodicism more or less than having well-handled verse. And it happens with A- assignments: I may have difficulty in determining the degree to which a work is harmonically complex (especially, pace Swets,
when my initial inclination is to say that two works are equally
harmonically complex). Where one does not arrive at either P-
assignments or A-assignments for an artwork, one will not arrive
at its W-assignment.
The second inhibition on comparison comes in the form of
underdeveloped practices that correspond to unusual choice
situations. Sometimes we do not compare artworks because there
is no need to do so. Though Vermazen is right to point to our
6 This may even happen a good deal of the time, especially to those of us who are not expert critics. 182 reluctance to compare symphonies to buildings,7 this is not due to metaphysical limitations on the comparability of artworks, but to the fact that social practice has not developed in such a way that we are often asked to compare symphonies and paintings.
Nevertheless, the presence of such a choice situation within an artworld context would indicate that a corresponding art- critical practice has developed or is being developed. Within that practice, the resources for making that choice would be present or forthcoming, or the choice could not have come up.
The practice would need resources for giving more weight to some artistically valuable properties than others, and for figuring out how much of each property the symphony and the painting have. The theory of comparability I have developed makes sense of the legitimacy of these choices. And the competing accounts do not.
6.2 Some Final Objections
I have shown, I hope, that the universal comparability approach is warranted by the data from art-critical practices.
But now I need to say a few more things about why my particular way of articulating the universal comparability approach is correct—why universal comparability ought to be cashed out in the way I proposed in Chapter 5. Many of the potential objections my theory of universal comparability faces are about
7 See (Vermazen 1979, 708). 183 the novel and crucial notion of P-assignments. In this section,
I try to provide some of the answers that my critics are likely to demand.
The possibility of arriving at P-assignments depends on our ability to consider valuable properties of artworks independently both from each other and from the individual artworks in which they may be found. (Similar considerations have come up in two places before—first in the context of the uniqueness theorist’s argument from formulization discussed in
3.5, and second in the context of Vermazen’s original first thesis in section 4.1.) How is independent consideration of valuable properties possible, epistemically speaking? Is it really the case that we can come to rank the value of a property in isolation, independent of its realization?
The way to avoid this predicament, I think, is through attention to a further question: is there really a need in a theory of comparison to rely on the independence of the value properties to which it adverts? Or, to put it a different way, is there any need to distinguish in this context between independently and dependently valuable properties? I suggest that there is not.
The dichotomy between properties valuable on their own and properties valuable because they contribute to other valuable properties is not crucial here. Properties have relevance to comparisons of artistic value regardless of their putative dependence or independence. This cuts off epistemological 184 worries about isolation at the source. We do not have to
isolate properties from each other completely before we make P-
assignments. Those assignments are not made in a vacuum, but in
full recognition of the fact that each property combines with
others in actual artworks to produce the artistic value of those
works.
The ideas put forth by William Lycan and Peter Machamer in
“A Theory of Critical Reasons” may be useful here.8 (In a few more paragraphs, it will become clear why this is not merely a digression.) On their view, critical reasons (which refer to the properties of artworks that ground their artistic value) are found on a continuum, ordered in a way corresponding to how indefeasible they are as reasons why the artworks to which they apply are good (how “loaded” those reasons are). At one end of the continuum, we find what Lycan and Machamer call the nondetachable properties, which count strongly towards an artwork’s value: being well organized, beautiful, expressive, and so on. At the other end are detachable properties, the presence of which in an artwork provide much weaker reasons for its value: being green, representing a boat, being painted when the artist was in Rome, and the like. Somewhere in the middle are other properties like having forceful lines, or being painted using thus-and-such a technique.9
8 See (Lycan and Machamer 1973).
9 Most of these examples are Lycan and Machamer—see (1973, 100-03). 185 It strikes me that Lycan and Machamer’s notions of nondetachable and detachable properties correspond respectively to the notions of independently and dependently valuable properties. Nondetachable and independently valuable properties: (a) are found in artworks because those artworks have detachable/dependently valuable properties, (b) are detected through attention to detachable/dependently valuable properties, and (c) are attributed with justification in critical judgments through reference to detachable/dependently valuable properties.
If I am right about this conceptual correspondence, Lycan and Machamer’s paper can be used to amplify my response to the worries about independence of properties and P-assignments. As
Lycan and Machamer point out, properties occur on a continuum of loadedness. There is no hard and fast distinction to be drawn among them, and accordingly no need to detach properties from their context while rating the strength with which they underlie critical reasons.
Moreover, all of the properties adverted to in the continuum of critical reasons are evaluatively relevant— detachable or nondetachable, each makes a contribution to artistic value. Criticism, then, is not all about the independently valuable properties of artworks. Dependently valuable properties (presuming that these correspond to detachable properties) also count, and also merit and require P- assignments. 186 Lycan and Machamer’s continuum is also useful when
considering issues about the ordering of properties in terms of
their P-assignments. A natural move is to suggest that the more
positively loaded a property is, the higher the P-assignment. I
believe this idea has merit because, intuitively, the
nondetachable properties, at the top of the continuum of
loadedness, ground stronger reasons to the conclusion that an
artwork that bears them is good. And P-assignments are meant to
reflect the same thing: the degree to which a property, ceteris paribus, is likely to increase the value of an artwork.
Issues about independence aside, something needs to be said about how P-assignments can be made: on what grounds is one justified in making the decision to rank one property higher than another? There had better be a good answer here. If there is not, the theory of universal comparability I am endorsing is open to a serious objection. If there can be no justification for property rankings, there can be no justification for evaluative judgments that employ those rankings, and hence a barrier to legitimate comparisons of artworks.
One might opt here for a Platonic solution; P-assignments are justified based on how well they track connections of properties to the Good, or the Beautiful, or some other universal. Those who prefer a Platonic metaphysics are welcome to this answer. But the pragmatism that motivates much of what
187 I have said thus far about artistic value and comparison moves us towards another alternative. One arrives at justified P- assignments through one’s experiences of artworks.
At first blush, this seems problematic, in that it contains a circularity. P-assignments come through experiences of artworks, presumably by recognizing what is good in them. But making judgments about the artistic value of a particular work requires one to have P-assignments at hand already.
What appears to be a circle in my view is not as bad as it might look. One develops a hierarchy of P-assignments through one’s experiences of artworks, but not necessarily through comparisons of artworks in terms of their overall value. That is, my exposure to a number of paintings with the feature of gracefulness leads me to believe that gracefulness is of a certain positive value. But although I have to arrive at a conclusion about how much of the paintings’ overall value is produced by their gracefulness, I do not also have to arrive at a conclusion about the comparative merits of the paintings themselves. The latter is an additional step, unnecessary at this stage, and it is only through this step that we would be caught in a real circle (to compare artworks in terms of their overall value we need P-assignments, and to get P-assignments we need to compare artworks in terms of their overall value).
Furthermore, there seems to be a process of mutual adjustment between the value of artworks and P-assignments that
188 helps avoid the circle.10 One does not need to evaluate artworks
comparatively and arrive at P-assignments all at once, but can
go back and forth between them. When I assess an artwork, I
have some sense of the properties I am looking for in it. I
attempt to ascertain the degree to which those properties
contribute towards its value, and attend to any additional
properties that I had not previously thought to be artistically
valuable. My experience of the artwork may prompt adjustments
in my P-assignments. With those adjustments in mind, I visit
and revisit other artworks to see if my P-assignments have
merit. If not, I revise them again according to my new data.
Though it is necessary to experience artworks in order to
arrive at justified P-assignments, the processes are not the
same. One worry now, however, is how it all gets started. If
the activities of arriving at P-assignments and evaluating
artworks occur through a process of mutual adjustment, how do we
ever begin to evaluate artworks or get P-assignments in the
first place?
This is what education is for. We are taught: artworks are
put before us with the judgments that some of these are good and
some are bad. Moreover, an education about the arts has the
role of informing the student about P-assignments—what to look
for, what to listen for, what background to think about, and so
10 Many thanks go to Andrew Arlig for suggesting this response. 189 on. We do not have to start the process ourselves from scratch, and that allows each individual to break out of the alleged circle.
To follow out this line of reasoning completely, we would have to examine two more questions. First, how did art and art evaluation get started in the first place (given the possibility of the circle)? I want to put this aside because I do not think it is philosophical. Rather, it is a matter for historians and anthropologists.
The second question is more interesting philosophically.
If arriving at justified P-assignments crucially involves learning, is there any way to separate this process from indoctrination? Is there really a fact of the matter about the
P-assignments we ought to make, and is it true that some
properties and artworks are better artistically than others? I
do not think there is an objection to my view here, because
these concerns are not about comparability. What they are about is the objectivity of judgments of taste. The universal comparability approach has some interesting applications when it comes to the objectivity issue—applications I trace out in the next section.
6.3 Comparability and Objectivity
As I said at the outset of this project, I think that problems about the comparability of artworks merit more 190 attention. Philosophers of art have spent much more effort on the problem of the objectivity of value judgment. But what they have not realized is that which theory of comparability one endorses determines, to a certain extent, the range of views about objectivity that one can consistently accept. Moreover, the universal comparability approach has a nice application here: it seems to provide a grounding for some of the most prominent theories of the objectivity of critical judgments.
Hume (1979, 486-89) poses the classic problem: On the one hand, judgments about the value of an artwork seem to be personal, a matter of taste. And there is no disputing taste.
On the other hand, we do dispute judgments about artistic value.
As Hume pointed out through a number of examples, we view those who invert judgments about nominal and notable artworks as deserving of criticism and even scorn. Modernizing Hume’s insight, it seems sensible to claim that anybody who thinks that
Justin Timberlake’s music is as good as Stevie Wonder’s is making a serious mistake—he or she might as well be asserting that Rhode Island is bigger than Alaska.11 Cases like these, of
widespread agreement in taste, reveal the allure of the search
for an objective standard for evaluative judgments of artworks.
The search for an objective standard of taste is important,
and merits the attention it has been given. But what
philosophers of art have not recognized is that there are
important connections between the claim that assessments of
11 To his credit, I do not believe that Timberlake himself would make either of these claims. 191 artworks can be objective and claims about the comparability of artworks. Most prominently, some theories about the comparability of artworks are incompatible with an objective standard.
Consider the uniqueness approach. If there is no legitimate way for us to compare any artworks whatsoever, then even if it is objectively the case that one artwork is better than another, we can never know about it. We can never come to realize that artworks are ranked in a certain way, so it is hopeless to find out what the objective standard would be.
Moreover, if, as the uniqueness theorist thinks, none of us as individuals can make comparisons in terms of artistic value, it would not even be true that some artworks are better than others relative to each individual critic. It might look like the uniqueness approach would fit an extreme relativism, in which each of us is welcome to our individual tastes and no critical disputes among us can be solved. But the consequences of the uniqueness approach go much deeper than that. For the uniqueness theorist, even from the perspective of an individual critic, there are no standards that cover more than one artwork.
This means that the uniqueness approach is incompatible with views like those of Hume and Kant, where the objectivity of value judgments is founded on a (nearly?) universal subjective response. Because the uniqueness theorist does not allow for
192 the possibility of legitimate comparisons of artworks, she cannot allow for the possibility of objective legitimate
comparisons of artworks.
Accordingly, any who believe that evaluative rankings of
artworks can be objectively correct or incorrect have a good
reason to reject the uniqueness theory. It is hard to see how
one could endorse both views and still be consistent.
The moderate approach, in contrast, does not have this
complication. Unlike the uniqueness approach, the moderate
approach entails that some (if not all) artworks admit of
legitimate comparisons. Accordingly, the moderate approach is
compatible with the possibility of objective evaluations of (at
least some) artworks.
However, the moderate approach may not go far enough to
satisfy those who endorse the objectivity of artistic
evaluation. Under the moderate approach, the case could be made
that the awful composer Talentlessi is objectively worse than
Mozart. But as I argued in 4.7, the moderate approach cannot
encompass such nominal-notable comparisons when we cross
categories. Talentlessi could not be judged to be an
objectively worse artist than Picasso. Any who share the
intuition that such judgments are a possibility had better not
endorse the moderate approach.
193 But what is left? Nothing other than the universal
comparability approach. The more objectivity one thinks there
is to be found in artistic value judgments, the more one should
be eager to adopt my view.
Whenever there is no possibility of legitimate comparisons
of artworks on the personal level, there can be no possibility
of such comparisons on the objective level. As such, the
universal comparability approach seems to be a necessary
condition for establishing the objectivity of the kinds of value
judgments that have traditionally concerned philosophers of art.
One might wonder at this point whether the implication goes
the other way. Is the universal comparability approach sufficient for certain theories of objectivity? I do not think so. The universal comparability approach is compatible with both theories according to which there are objective standards of taste and theories according to which all taste is subjective. For the universal comparability approach only entails that all artworks are comparable, not that there are objective facts of the matter about which artworks are better or worse.
So are there ways in which issues of objectivity have implications about theories of comparability? Well, if one were serious about the objectivity of artistic evaluation, one might have good reason to be concerned, in particular, about the objectivity of P-assignments and their consistency across artworlds. Formal properties might be very important in the 194 context of one type of art but unimportant in another. Or, for a more concrete example, the National Rifle Association could comprise an artworld that places a very high value on the property of being bulletproof, whereas this is clearly not a priority in other artistic contexts.12 Does this mean that P-
assignments can have no kind of objectivity, but should instead
be altered according to the circumstances?
At the least, there is no breakdown in comparability here.
The critics from the NRA might disagree with those from other
artworlds about how good it is for art to be bulletproof, and so
there would be disagreement about the comparative merits of a
painting and a sculpture made from Kevlar. But if the NRA
critics were disagreeing with the others, both sides would still
have to be taking the painting and sculpture to be comparable.
There is an echo here of the conflict raised in Chapter 5
between the traditionalists and the feminists: though they
disagree about what makes art good and the comparative merits of artworks, they agree about the artworks’ comparability.
Furthermore, there are some strategies that can be used to secure objectivity in judgment even when faced with disagreement among artworlds about P-assignments. One could deploy criteria for disregarding the preferences of an artworld. Perhaps there are reasons for saying that an artworld is sufficiently deviant that the P-assignments characteristic of it do not conform to
12 My gratitude goes to William Melanson for suggesting this example and prompting me to think about this issue. 195 the actual norms definitive of artistic value. Perhaps there are even ways to say that deviance of a certain kind marks a practice out as something other than an artworld properly-so- called. (Can the NRA really constitute an artworld?) These tactics require examination of tremendously difficult problems about what makes an artworld an artworld and not some other
social practice—problems too deep to go into here,
unfortunately.
Concerns about objectivity are important and worthy of the
attention they have received in the philosophy of art. However,
whether artworks turn out to have objective merit or not does
not determine the extent to which they are legitimately
comparable. The main lesson to be learned here is the opposite:
comparability is a precondition for objectivity (and is
compatible with the lack of objectivity).
6.4 Connections, Directions, and Conclusion
I hope that the arguments I have offered thus far for the
universal comparability of art are interesting, provocative, and
airtight, but I realize that there is still a good deal to be
done. It is one thing to come to a conclusion about the
comparability of artworks, and quite another to apply that
conclusion in an interesting way. Let me use part of this
196 section to indicate some research directions still outstanding and some applications of my view to other areas and problems in aesthetics and philosophy at large.
Aside from the specific connections to be explored between the theory of universal comparability and the objectivity of artistic value judgments, the theory feeds naturally into several other problems related to art and aesthetics. First, why is it harder to arrive at determinate evaluative comparisons in some cases than others? Some artworks are just plain easy to compare, while others, especially in cases where categories are crossed, prove to be perplexing and baffling, at least at first.
I speculate that this is explained by the relative difficulty of ranking the values of properties themselves—but that just pushes the problem along. Why are some properties more difficult to compare than others? Is this a philosophical problem, having to do with deep-seated facts about the metaphysical structure of value, or is it psychological?
Second, as I noted earlier, sometimes comparisons are inhibited by underdeveloped artworld practices and placement in unusual choice situations. It would be interesting to investigate the reasons why some evaluative scenarios
(comparisons of movies) are much more common than others
(comparisons of musical works to buildings). Why did the artworld evolve in the way that it did, to present us with the choices we actually end up facing? Maybe we just need to do
197 some art history here, or maybe there are real metaphysical reasons for why the artworld turned out the way it did.13
The views I have expressed here also have interesting
connections to a number of debates within the burgeoning field
of rational choice theory. For example, one large issue is
about which evaluative relations exist: when items are
comparable to each other, in how many different ways can they be
compared? Though I cannot argue for it here, I share with
others14 the view that one item can only be better than, worse
than, or equal to an item to which it is comparable. A
different group of philosophers (including Chang), however,
think that there is a fourth relation, often called parity.15
If there is a fourth relation, then it may be easier to
explain hard cases of comparison in the arts. If we cannot make
up our minds about which of two artworks is better or whether
they are equal, we have a further option—and it is an option
that preserves comparability. If, on the other hand, there are
only three kinds of comparisons, what can be said about these
hard cases? Perhaps there is even a failure of comparability to
be found when it cannot be determined which of two artworks is
better (or that they are equal). Or perhaps there is room
within a trichotomy of evaluative relations for vagueness. If
13 The intuition that there are such reasons, I think, prompts Wollheim’s objection to institutional theories of art (see Chapter 2).
14 See, for example, (Parfit 1984), and (Pratt [2004]).
15 See, e.g., (Chang 1997, 23-27). 198 two artworks stand in an indeterminate evaluative relationship, they still stand in an evaluative relationship, and so are comparable. But this casts doubt on the apparatus of comparison
I proposed earlier, which does not seem to take vagueness into account. This is a very interesting cluster of problems that could prompt developments in the theory of universal comparability, but they are of a complexity that merits a large- scale document of their own.
Lastly, the universal comparability approach has interesting ramifications when related to problems of comparison in other, non-artistic contexts. Comparative evaluations have become crucial in socio-political discourse. How many lives is it worth to overthrow a tyrannical regime? How much should industries be allowed to pollute, given the goods they produce and the health costs they inflict? Perhaps these are futile questions; perhaps there is no way to compare the value of human life to the value of a just regime, or the value of a robust penguin habitat to the value of economically priced electricity.
It may be that interesting challenges to the universal comparability approach will arise from attention to allegations of the presence of incomparability outside the arts. On the other hand, if the universal comparability approach can be made to work in one area of evaluation, perhaps the same strategies can be employed to make sense of the comparisons that are sought in other areas.
199 There is a vast and sometimes lightly explored territory for research here. Be that as it may, I hope to have achieved at least a few things already. To me, at least, the comparability of artworks is an exciting topic for those working in the philosophy of art, and I hope to have conveyed that excitement. The conclusion I have reached, that artworks are universally comparable, is one of the extremes, and if I am able to use it to provoke a further philosophical dialogue, I will have met an important goal.
Finally, most of all, I hope that I have shed some light on the activities of artists and critics, by investigating the metaphysical apparatus of comparison that must be in place in order for their practices to be legitimate. In the end, I think, this and similar endeavors are among the most important that philosophers can undertake.
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