The Art Instinct_ Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution - Denis Dutton [135]
CHAPTER 3: WHAT IS ART?
Quotations are from Julius Moravcsik (1991). See also Moravcsik (1988) and (1993). The ideas formulated by this Stanford University philosopher mark an important contribution to contemporary aesthetic thought. The Noël Carroll quotation is from Carroll (1994), p. 15.
The first philosopher to describe a “cluster concept” seems to have been John Searle (1958). An early application for art came from E. J. Bond (1975). Blocker (1994) provides what reads as a cluster concept for tribal art, and both Berys Gaut (2000) and (2005) and Stephen Davies (2004) discuss and defend the idea of a cluster concept. My own first cluster proposal was put forward in Dutton (2000), followed by a longer version in (2001). The present list is longer than either of the earlier variations. My friend and colleague the late David Novitz argued in Novitz (1998) that art is indefinable as a natural concept.
Francis Sparshott’s classic treatment of criticism is in Sparshott (1999). A fresh approach to criticism can be found in Noël Carroll’s On Criticism (2008).
See Dissanayake (1990) and (2000), but especially (1992), chapter 3, “The Core of Art: Making Special.”
The first philosopher to describe a “cluster concept” seems to been John Searle (1958). An early application for art came from Bond (1975). Blocker (1994) provides what reads as a cluster concept for tribal art, and both Berys Gaut (2000) and (2005) and Stephen Davies (2004) discuss and defend the idea of a cluster concept.
Paul Ekman (2003) is a central source for the psychology of “basic,” universal emotions.
Levinson (1991) mounts an astute defense of the institutional theory, supporting Diffey (1991), Dickie (1974), and Danto (1981), (1986), and others.
For a superb discussion of art in tribal societies, see Blocker (1994), p. 148; for a review of Blocker, see [w/s denisdutton .com blocker]. Wilfried van Damme’s Beauty in Context (1996) is a sophisticated account of cross-cultural aesthetics.
Another issue for which the cluster criteria list is helpful is the status of bullfighting as an art form. Bullfighting seems to meet enough of the criteria to justify the claims of Ernest Hemingway and others that it is a high and noble art. There is a problem, however, with the last item on the list, imaginative experience. There is no question that Goya’s gory repre sen ta tions of bullfights qualify as high art, while many bullfight posters qualify as not-so-high. But real bullfights are not repre sen ta tions to the extent that they involve actually tormenting and killing an animal. The bull’s palpable suffering pulls bullfighting down from the realm of art and into blood-soaked reality. The French version of bullfighting, where ribbons are artfully plucked from the head of the bull (which is never harmed), is wholly different, as are artistic practices that develop animal skills to beautiful effect, such as dressage. In this respect, the boilerplate message in movie credits “No animals were harmed in the production of this film” is important as an assurance that the art work can be enjoyed as something purely for the imagination. As art, a bullfight is like a production of Hamlet where some of the actors really are poisoned and stabbed to death at the end. Though it involves the fate of a nonhuman animal, bullfighting seems an aesthetic perversion nonetheless.
I owe the lovely Harlem Globetrotters example to Brian Boyd, who has also urged me to include (a) artifactuality and (b) having been made for an audience to my list of cluster criteria. I resist for the reasons given, but his may be the wiser view. Nigel Warburton, who is both a seasoned aesthetics specialist and a dedicated soccer fan, has tried to convince me that