1 Class 3: Properties of Art Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam! (1963) Source for Whaam!

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Class 3: Properties of Art

Roy Lichtenstein,Whaam!(1963)

Source forWhaam!

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Frank Sibley: “Aesthetic Concepts”Thesis:

Aesthetic concepts are not positively rule-governed. You can never conclude from a list of features that a work is graceful, elegant, etc. There is no ‘enough-is-enough’ condition.

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Aesthetic Terms and Concepts

• “A Clockwork Orange focuses on a deviant teenager in a dystopian future.”

• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is primarily black and gray, but also has blocks of yellow, red, and blue.”

• William Carlos Williams’ poem, “This is Just to Say,” is 28 words long, three of which are “were.”

We describe works of art in two kinds of ways:

• “A Clockwork Orange is both disturbing and revealing.”

• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is balanced and has a certain repose, but is generally lifeless.”

• William Carlos Williams’ poem, “This is Just to Say,” is elegant, delicate, and sentimental.

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• “A Clockwork Orange focuses on a deviant teenager in a dystopian future.”

• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is primarily black and gray, but also has blocks of yellow, red, and blue.”

• William Carlos Williams’ poem, “This is Just to Say,” is 28 words long, three of which are “were.”

These are the sorts of things that might be pointed out to anyone with normal eyes, ears, and intelligence.

Aesthetic Terms and Concepts (cont’d)

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• “A Clockwork Orange is both disturbing and revealing.”

• “Mondrain’s Tableau No. IV is balanced and has a certain repose, but is generally lifeless.”

• William Carlos Williams’ poem, “This is Just to Say,” is elegant, delicate, and sentimental.

These require the exercise of taste, perceptiveness, sensitivity – of aesthetic discrimination or perception.

Aesthetic TermsAesthetic Terms and Concepts (cont’d)

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• Require an exercise of taste.- Some words function only or predominantly as aesthetic

terms: graceful, delicate, dainty.- Some terms are appropriated metaphorically for aesthetic

use: dynamic, balanced, melancholy, and are now standard aesthetic terms (dead metaphors).

• Aesthetic qualities depend on the formal features of a work.- We point out formal features of a work to justify our use

of aesthetic terms to describe it: “The poem is graceful because of its use of rhythm, meter, and rhyme.”

Aesthetic Terms and Concepts (cont’d)


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Sufficient and Necessary Conditions• Some terms, like “intelligent,” have sufficient, but not

necessary conditions – eventually, after listing qualities an individual has, “enough is enough,” and we consider that individual intelligent.- But there is no such sufficient (enough-is-enough)

condition for establishing aesthetic qualities.

• “[T]here are no non-aesthetic features which serve in any circumstances as logically sufficient conditions for applying aesthetic terms.” (424)- In this respect, aesthetic concepts are not condition-

governed at all.


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Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)• “Things may be described to us in non-aesthetic terms as

fully as we please but we are not thereby put in the position of having to admit (or being unable to deny) that they are delicate or graceful or garish or exquisitely balanced.” (426)

• However, a list of the formal features of a work may, in some cases, be enough to disqualify certain aesthetic terms:- If I describe a work as a large block, painted in uniform

gray, and set upon the floor, we can reasonably disqualify it as being graceful or dainty, for instance.

- In this sense, aesthetic terms might be governed negatively by conditions.


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Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)• “Though on seeing the picture we might say, and rightly,

that it is delicate or serene or restful or sickly or insipid, no description in non-aesthetic terms permits us to claim that these or any other aesthetic terms must undeniably apply to it.” (427)

• Some features will count for or against the application of a given aesthetic term, but none will be definitive.- Angular, large, and brightly colored are not usually

associated with grace or delicacy.


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Alexander Calder, Steel Fish(1934) 115 x 137 x 120 in.


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Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)- “[A]n object which is described very carefully, but

exclusively in terms of qualities characteristic of delicacy, may turn out on inspection to be not delicate at all, but anaemic or insipid.” (428)

• Some features will not count toward or against any aesthetic features, necessarily.- “[O]ne poem has strength and power because of the

regularity of its meter and rhyme; another is monotonous and lacks drive and strength because of its regular meter and rhyme.” (429)


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Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)• Some concepts are defeasible – for any set of non-aesthetic

terms, there is always an open list of defeating conditions, any of which might rule out the application of the concept.

- A work is not delicate because it has pale colors, nor graceful because it has a curved outline, but because it has those colors, or that outline.

• But, with aesthetic concepts, there are no sufficient conditions: these concepts are not, except negatively, governed by conditions at all.

• Sufficient conditions cannot be derived from past examples: “No such features logically clinch the matter.” (431)


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Sufficient and Necessary Conditions (cont’d)

- The lines and colors of a work seem to make it graceful or bold, where the qualities of an individual do not make him intelligent.

• The formal qualities of a work seem to be responsible for the aesthetic qualities.

- The same features that help make one work may spoil another entirely – “the aesthetic quality depends upon exactly this individual or unique combination of just these specific colors and shapes so that even a slight change might make all the difference.” (434-5)

Relationship Between Formal & Aesthetic Qualities


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“Seeing” Aesthetic Qualities• Our ability to discern aesthetic features depends on our

possession of good senses, but people with good eyesight, hearing, etc., may still fail to see them.

• We attempt to justify our use of aesthetic terms by pointing out elements of the work: “When someone is unable to see that the book on the table is brown, we cannot get him to see that it is by talking; consequently it seems puzzling that we might get someone to see that the vase is graceful by talking.” (439)

- Supervenience: aesthetic qualities supervene on non-aesthetic qualities (every aesthetic difference in the work must indicate a non-aesthetic difference).

Relationship Between Formal & Aesthetic Qualities (cont’d)


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“Seeing” Aesthetic Qualities (cont’d)• Methods of the critic for getting us to “see” aesthetic

qualities:(1) Pointing out non-aesthetic features.(2) Mentioning aesthetic qualities.(3) Explicit linking of aesthetic and non-aesthetic features.(4) Similes and metaphors.(5) Contrasts, comparisons, and reminiscences.(6) Repetition and reiteration.(7) Accompanying verbal discussion with gestures, tone, etc.

• We tend to learn how to “see” aesthetic qualities through the same methods that the critic uses.


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Questions & Problems(1) Does literature provide problems for Sibley’s account?

Can one point to the character or plot of a novel?


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Kendall Walton: “Categories of Art”Thesis:

The aesthetic properties that a work actually possesses are those that are found in it when it is perceived correctly.

Background:• Walton is responding to views like Sibley’s, where the

properties of a work of art are “perceptual”. - Despite the persuasiveness of such views, critics tend to

discuss the histories of works in justifying their aesthetic judgments – some elements of a work’s history seem crucial to the merit of a work.

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• [A] work’s aesthetic properties depend not only on its nonaesthetic ones, but also on which of its nonaesthetic properties are “standard,” which “variable,” and which “contra-standard”.” (338)

Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties

• Works of art can be placed in categories, which are perceptually distinguishable by the audience, and determined solely by features that can be perceived in a work when it is experienced in the normal manner.- Categories include media, genre, styles, forms, etc.


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- Standard: Determinate feature of category membership (e.g., ‘painterly’ qualities tend to be standard to members of the painting category)

Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)• Features of a work are standard, variable, or contra-standard

with respect to a given category:


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Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait detail(1889)


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- Variable: Feature irrelevant to category membership (e.g., shapes and colors don’t tend to point to any given category)




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Pablo Picasso, La Celestina(1904)

Alexander Calder, Six Dots over a Mountain (1956)


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- Variable: Feature irrelevant to category membership (e.g., shapes and colors don’t tend to point to any given category)

- Contra-Standard: Features which tend to negate category membership (e.g. kinetic elements tend not to be found in sculptures)




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Arthur Ganson, kinetic sculptures


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Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)• “To perceive a work in a certain category is to perceive the

“Gestalt” of that category in the work.” (340) This involves more than momentary recognition of the Gestalt quality (the “ah-ha!” moment) – it is a continuous state.

- Familiarity with members of that category.- What others have said regarding works we have

experienced.- How we are introduced to a given work.

• There may be several causes for perceiving works in a certain category:

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Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)• Representation:- Standard properties are normally irrelevant in

representation. “The properties of a portrait which make it so different from, so easily distinguishable from a person – such as its flatness and its painted look – are standard for us.” (344) The same is true of sculptures, film, and so on.

- What makes a portrait representative of the sitter are the variable properties – color, shape, etc.

- A photograph of an athlete appears to be in action, and may depict a “frenzy of activity,” but if such a static picture appears in a film, the person depicted does not appear to be in motion.

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Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)- Properties that are standard for one category will be variable

or contra-standard for another.Guernicas

• “Imagine a society which does not have an established medium of painting, but does produce a kind of work of art called guernicas. Guernicas are like versions of Picasso’s “Guernica” done in various bas-relief dimensions. All of them are surfaces with the colors and shapes of Picasso’s “Guernica,” but the surfaces are molded to protrude from the wall like relief maps of different kinds of terrain.” (347)

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Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)

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Guernicas (cont’d)• “Picasso’s “Guernica” would be counted as a guernica in this

society – a perfectly flat one – rather than as a painting. Its flatness is variable and the figures on its surface are standard relative to the category of guernicas.” (347)

• As a guernica, “Guernica” will strike the society as cold, stark, lifeless… but certainly not violent, dynamic, vital, or disturbing, as “Guernica” does to us.

Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)- Some characteristics will be variable as regards a particular

category (tempo, size, etc.), but a certain range will be standard.

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Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)


- Some standard characteristics are not the result of limitations of a given medium, but of “rules” for producing works in a given category.

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perspective

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counterpoint

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Standard, Variable, and Contra-Standard Properties (cont’d)


- Contra-standard features often appear shocking, upsetting, and controversial: sculpted paintings, black-and-white paintings, films without movement, etc.

- When features are no longer controversial, they become standard, extending the category or creating a new one.

- When a work differs too much from standard works, we don’t perceive it as belonging to the purported category.

- Contra-standard features are not merely rare, but are misfits, threatening the category, itself.

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• In at least some cases it is correct to perceive a work in a certain category, and incorrect to perceive it in other categories: our judgments of it when it is perceived in one category are likely to be true, and in others false.

Correctly Perceiving a Work


• The following conditions count toward its being correct to perceive a work in a given category:

(i) The category with regard to which the work has the most standard, and the fewest contra-standard, features.

(ii) The category in which the work comes off best.(iii) The category in which the artist intended the work to be

perceived.(iv) The category in which the artist’s contemporaries

perceived the work.

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Correctly Perceiving a Work (cont’d)


- In almost all cases, at least one of the historical conditions, (iii) or (iv), will trump the others: it cannot be right to say that a work falls into a category with which the artist was utterly unfamiliar, even if it comes off better in that category.

- Simply because a work would come off better when perceived in some hitherto unknown (ad hoc) category, it does not make sense to assign it to that category.

- Many works fall between well-established categories.

• The aesthetic properties that a work actually possesses are those that are found in it when it is perceived correctly.

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Questions & Problems(1) What are these categories? Is “paintings” a category?

What about “cubist paintings”? What about “cubist paintings by Picasso” or “cubist paintings by Picasso in 1907”?

(2) Can we ever ignore an artist’s intentions? That is, can condition (ii) ever trump condition (iii)?


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1 Class 3: Properties of Art Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam! (1963) Source for Whaam!

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