A theory of art is intended to contrast with a definition of art. Traditionally, definitions are composed of necessary and sufficient conditions, and a single counterexample overthrows such a definition. Theorizing about art, on the other hand, is analogous to a theory of a natural phenomenon like gravity. In fact, the intent behind a theory of art is to treat art as a natural phenomenon that should be investigated like any other. The question of whether one can speak of a theory of art without employing a concept of art is also discussed below.
The motivation behind seeking a theory, rather than a definition, is that our best minds have not been able to find definitions without counterexamples. The term "definition" assumes there are concepts, in something along Platonic lines, and a definition is an attempt to reach in and pluck out the essence of the concept and also assumes that at least some people have intellectual access to these concepts. In contrast, a 'conception' is an individual attempt to grasp at the putative essence behind this common term while nobody has "access" to the concept.
A theory of art presumes that each of us employs different conceptions of this unattainable art concept and as a result we must resort to worldly human investigation.
Aesthetic response
Theories of aesthetic responseDominic Lopes, Aesthetics on the Edge: Where Philosophy Meets the Human Sciences, Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 85. or functional theories of artPeter Lamarque, Stein Haugom Olsen (eds.), Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition, An Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, 2018, p. 50. are in many ways the most intuitive theories of art. At its base, the term "aesthetic" refers to a type of phenomenal experience, and aesthetic definitions identify artworks with artifacts intended to produce aesthetic experiences. Nature can be beautiful and it can produce aesthetic experiences, but nature does not possess the intentional function of producing those experiences. For such a function, an intention is necessary, and thus agency – the artist.
Monroe Beardsley is commonly associated with aesthetic definitions of art. In Beardsley's words, something is art just in case it is "either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording an experience with marked aesthetic character or (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of arrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity" (The aesthetic point of view: selected essays, 1982, 299). Painters arrange "conditions" in the paint/canvas medium, and dancers arrange the "conditions" of their bodily medium, for example. According to Beardsley's first disjunct, art has an intended aesthetic function, but not all artworks succeed in producing aesthetic experiences. The second disjunct allows for artworks that were intended to have this capacity, but failed at it (bad art).
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is the paradigmatic counterexample to aesthetic definitions of art. Such works are said to be counterexamples because they are artworks that do not possess an intended aesthetic function. Beardsley replies that either such works are not art or they are "comments on art" (1983): "To classify them [Fountain and the like] as artworks just because they make comments on art would be to classify a lot of dull and sometimes unintelligible magazine articles and newspaper reviews as artworks" (p. 25). This response has been widely considered inadequate (REF). It is either question-begging or it relies on an arbitrary distinction between artworks and commentaries on artworks. A great many art theorists today consider aesthetic definitions of art to be extensionally inadequate, primarily because of artworks in the style of Duchamp.Monroe Beardsley, "An Aesthetic Definition of Art," in Hugh Curtler (ed), What Is Art? (New York: Haven Publications, 1983), pp. 15-29
Formalist
The formalist theory of art asserts that we should focus only on the formal properties of art—the "form", not the "content".Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction, Routledge, 2012, p. 148. Those formal properties might include, for the visual arts, color, shape, and line, and, for the musical arts, rhythm and harmony. Formalists do not deny that works of art might have content, representation, or narrative—rather, they deny that those things are relevant in our appreciation or understanding of art.
Institutional
The institutional theory of art is a theory about the nature of art that holds that an object can only become art in the context of the institution known as "the art world".
Addressing the issue of what makes, for example, Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" art, or why a pile of Brillo cartons in a supermarket is not art, whereas Andy Warhol's famous Brillo Boxes (a pile of Brillo carton replicas) is, the art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto wrote in his 1964 essay "The Artworld":
According to Robert J. Yanal, Danto's essay, in which he coined the term artworld, outlined the first institutional theory of art.
Versions of the institutional theory were formulated more explicitly by George Dickie in his article "Defining Art" (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1969) and his books Aesthetics: An Introduction (1971) and Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (1974). An early version of Dickie's institutional theory can be summed up in the following definition of work of art from Aesthetics: An Introduction:
Dickie has reformulated his theory in several books and articles. Other philosophers of art have criticized his definitions as being circular.For example,
Historical
Historical theories of art hold that for something to be art, it must bear some relation to existing works of art.Arthur C. Danto, George W. S. Bailey, Theories of Art Today, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, p. 107. For new works to be art, they must be similar or relate to previously established artworks. Such a definition raises the question of where this inherited status originated. That is why historical definitions of art must also include a disjunct for first art: Something is art if it possesses a historical relation to previous artworks, or is first art.
The philosopher primarily associated with the historical definition of art is Jerrold Levinson (1979). For Levinson, "a work of art is a thing intended for regard-as-a-work-of-art: regard in any of the ways works of art existing prior to it have been correctly regarded" (1979, p. 234). Levinson further clarifies that by "intends for" he means: "[M]akes, appropriates or conceives for the purpose of'" (1979, p. 236). Some of these manners for regard (at around the present time) are: to be regarded with full attention, to be regarded contemplatively, to be regarded with special notice to appearance, to be regarded with "emotional openness" (1979, p. 237). If an object is not intended for regard in any of the established ways, then it is not art.
Anti-essentialist Some art theorists have proposed that the attempt to define art must be abandoned and have instead urged an anti-essentialist theory of art.Elizabeth Millán (ed.), After the Avant-Gardes, Open Court, 2016, p. 56. In 'The Role of Theory in Aesthetics' (1956), Morris Weitz famously argues that individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions will never be forthcoming for the concept 'art' because it is an "open concept". Weitz describes open concepts as those whose "conditions of application are emendable and corrigible" (1956, p. 31). In the case of borderline cases of art and prima facie counterexamples, open concepts "call for some sort of decision on our part to extend the use of the concept to cover this, or to close the concept and invent a new one to deal with the new case and its new property" (p. 31 ital. in original). The question of whether a new artifact is art "is not factual, but rather a decision problem, where the verdict turns on whether or not we enlarge our set of conditions for applying the concept" (p. 32). For Weitz, it is "the very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and novel creations", that makes the concept impossible to capture in a classical definition (as some static univocal essence).
While anti-essentialism was never formally defeated, it was challenged, and the debate over anti-essentialist theories was subsequently swept away by seemingly better essentialist definitions. Commenting after Weitz, Berys Gaut revived anti-essentialism in the philosophy of art with his paper '"Art" as a Cluster Concept' (2000). Cluster concepts are composed of criteria that contribute to art status but are not individually necessary for art status. There is one exception: Artworks are created by agents, and so being an artifact is a necessary property for being an artwork. Gaut (2005) offers a set of ten criteria that contribute to art status:
(i) possessing positive aesthetic qualities (I employ the notion of positive aesthetic qualities here in a narrow sense, comprising beauty and its subspecies); (ii) being expressive of emotion; (iii) being intellectually challenging; (iv) being formally complex and coherent; (v) having a capacity to convey complex meanings; (vi) exhibiting an individual point of view; (vii) being an exercise of creative imagination; (viii) being an artifact or performance that is the product of a high degree of skill; (ix) belonging to an established artistic form; and (x) being the product of an intention to make a work of art. (274)
Satisfying all ten criteria would be sufficient for art, as might any subset formed by nine criteria (this is a consequence of the fact that none of the ten properties is necessary). For example, consider two of Gaut's criteria: "possessing aesthetic merit" and "being expressive of emotion" (200, p. 28). Neither of these criteria is necessary for art status, but both are parts of subsets of these ten criteria that are sufficient for art status. Gaut's definition also allows for many subsets with less than nine criteria to be sufficient for art status, which leads to a highly pluralistic theory of art.
In 2021, the philosopher Jason Josephson Storm defended anti-essentialist definitions of art as part of a broader analysis of the role of macro-categories in the human sciences. Specifically, he argued that most essentialist attempts to answer Weitz's original argument fail because the criteria they propose to define art are not themselves present or identical across cultures. Storm went further and argued that Weitz's appeal to family resemblance to define art without essentialism is ultimately circular because it does not explain why similarities between "art" across cultures are relevant to defining it even anti-essentially. Instead, Storm applied a theory of social kinds to the category "art" that emphasized how different forms of art fulfill different "cultural niches."
The theory of art is also impacted by a philosophical turn in thinking, not only exemplified by the aesthetics of Kant but is tied more closely to ontology and metaphysics in terms of the reflections of Heidegger on the essence of modern technology and the implications it has on all beings that are reduced to what he calls 'standing reserve', and it is from this perspective on the question of being that he explored art beyond the history, theory, and criticism of artistic production as embodied for instance in his influential opus: The Origin of the Work of Art.Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980) This has had also an impact on architectural thinking in its philosophical roots.Nader El-Bizri, 'On Dwelling: Heideggerian Allusions to Architectural Phenomenology', Studia UBB. Philosophia, Vol. 60, No. 1 (2015): 5-30
Aesthetic creation