more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Maybe, rather than defining art, it would be more fruitful, and more realistic, to seek a general method of identifying works of art.
Gist of Idea
A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition
Source
Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 60)
Book Ref
Wollheim,Richard: 'Art and Its Objects' [Penguin 1975], p.159
A Reaction
The whole enterprise is ruined by Marcel Duchamp! I'm more interested in identifying or defining good art.
| 23927 | Aestheticism invites artist to create beauty, but with no indication of how to do it [Bell,C] |
| 23932 | Art is the expression of an emotion for ultimate reality [Bell,C] |
| 23887 | Art (like philosophy) establishes a relation between world and self, and between oneself and others [Weil] |
| 20440 | Art is a referential activity, hence indefinable, but it has a set of symptoms [Goodman] |
| 22709 | We should first decide what are the great works of art, with aesthetic theory following from that [Murdoch] |
| 20348 | A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim] |
| 20326 | Early 20th cent attempts at defining art focused on significant form, intuition, expression, unity [Lamarque/Olson] |
| 20384 | The idea that art forms are linked into a single concept began in the 1740s [Davies,S] |
| 20390 | Defining art as representation or expression or form were all undermined by the avant-garde [Davies,S] |
| 20392 | 'Aesthetic functionalism' says art is what is intended to create aesthetic experiences [Davies,S] |