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Is Art explainable?

The concept of art functions as the foundation for many specialized discourses, like the philosophy of art, aesthetics, and art-critical practice. Increasingly, artists claim their practices go beyond autotelic aesthetic ends to embrace an ethical mission and justify external economic support from governments and philanthropists.

Furthermore, the nature of digital technologies has brought new perspectives that, in the present day, almost all cultural production should be considered art. Expanded concepts of art both extend the social base of economic support for artists and open new conceptual spaces and possibilities for philosophical exploration. Nonetheless, common sense also recognizes a need for a clear definition of art as a qualifier of practices, objects, or performances, if only to distinguish them from other similar cultural productions.

Although almost a decade has gone by since the completion of this project, many of the insights remain valuable today. But now, as growing numbers of individuals from different cultural backgrounds have more access to the circulation and promotion of their creative production through digital media and networks, the bases of the persisting modern concept of art in ancient Greek philosophy are perhaps disappearing.

It is the object of the essay to question whether a universal concept of art’s generative role needs to defend or dissimulate normative ethical positions at all, or in any way, in order to fulfil its explanatory function in contemporary society and to express its normative values. Yet the exploration could have very different implications for the construction of personal identity, the politics of culture, and the social rates of exchange on enhanced interactive platforms of creative production.

Perspectives on Art

Definitions of art are as numerous as the contexts in which they appear. The etymology of the word is both broader and more far-reaching than is generally assumed, since it has developed from being neutral to becoming the label for the province of aesthetic human activity. Having as its roots the Greek word for ‘craft’, art represents through this term an activity connoted as the manipulation of objects to produce useful results.

Historical semantics show, however, the evolution of the craftsman’s intellectual skills that develop into the realms of philosophy, law, science, and other creative spheres. The meaning that art develops is not rooted in the object of art.

Whereas the range of techniques, surfaces, and conventions is multiform and infinite, the object of art always refers to pure intuition: holding imagination, sensibility, and emotional insights. Already in the ancient Greeks, art acquired an independent status, but this does not mean that it was completely cut off from the sphere of techniques and crafts.

Art was considered a higher form of craftsmanship, incorporating technical undertakings and elitist performances, which then were considered within the Aristotelian framework as craft or praxis. The problem of establishing a definition for art does not have its roots in the ancient world only. Already, it was pointed out that definitions should represent the essential nature of things, and the importance of the idea of unity to a complete understanding of art was emphasized.

Debates and Definitions

The emphasis on knowledge and understanding has led some philosophers to define art in terms of its content and its education.

A work of art serves two functions. Its primary function is the transmittal of knowledge and understanding of its content from artist to audience.

Implicit in this first function is the requirement that the knowledge be knowledge of the artist’s outlook; it is to be identified as knowledge of a particular kind of outlook by the public availing themselves of that understanding. Implicit also is the requirement that such knowledge and understanding be acquired by its recipient in a unique evaluative experience.

The second intrinsic function of art is that of cognitive educative transmittal from artist to audience. Here a work of art teaches its audience to find knowledge and understanding in actual situations of a specified kind.

This kind is the kind intended by the artist. The artist’s intention is that his work function to make the world of his experience available, as regards its insight, to the audience that he addresses. While core contemporary epistemological and psychological theories challenge the appeal to knowledge concepts, other recent philosophers assert “the whole point of making a work of art, in general, is to tell, show, or exemplify something about some set of aspects of the world.”

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