Abstract
Every artwork is simply an object like other objects, but even if it were physically and perceptually indistinguishable from other objects, it would be an object of a peculiar kind. While the value of all other objects is intelligible only instrumentally and thus extrinsically in terms of their specific functions, the significance of an artwork can be explained in terms of its predisposition to be intrinsically enjoyable. Whatever else an artwork may be thought to be, it is an object primarily for appreciation. Paintings, sculptures, songs, plays and poems exist necessarily as objects to be appreciated. As Wollheim points out, 1 part of the meaning of an artwork is it’s being “an object for appreciation.” We visit museums, go to theaters, and read literature, it is assumed, primarily and ultimately in order to appreciate these works.
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Notes
Richard Wollheim, Art and its Object, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 160.
See Marcia M. Eaton, Basic Issues in Aesthetics (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1988), p. 143 and Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 221.
Davies, ibid.
See Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964) and his many other works on this subject matter.
Clive Bell, Art (London: Chatto and Windus, 1914), p. 26.
Rainer Maria Rilke, quotes from, “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Bridge,” in Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 171–172.
Vasily Kandinsky, quoted in Joseph-Emile Muller, L’Art moderne (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1963), p. 101. (My translation.)
Ibid., p. 96.
Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language,Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 34.
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 78.
See Bachelard, The Poetics of Space,op. cit.
See Ynhui Park, “The Function of Fiction” in Phenomenology and Philosophical Research,March 1982; also Ynhui Park, “The Ontological Modality of Artwork” in Contemporary Philosophy, October 1986.
See Nelson Goodman, The Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie, trans. Daniel Russel (Boston: Beacon, 1969), p. 163.
See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976).
Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of Aesthetics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 15. (My emphasis.)
See H. Gene Blocker, Philosophy of Art (New York: Scribners, 1979).
Eaton, op. cit., p. 145.
Davies, op. cit., p. 221.
See Goodman, The Ways of Worldmaking, op. cit., pp. 139–140.
Muller, op. cit., p. 175. (My translation.)
John Golding, Cubism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 11.
Karsten Harries, The Meaning of Modern Art (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 53.
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), p. 29.
Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie, op. cit., p. 161.
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Park, Y. (1998). The Artistic, The Aesthetic and the Function of Art. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Reincarnating Mind, or the Ontopoietic Outburst in Creative Virtualities. Analecta Husserliana, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4900-6_19
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