The Art Instinct_ Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution - Denis Dutton [31]
III
Taken individually or jointly, the features on this list help to answer question of whether, confronted with an artlike object, per performance, activity—from our own culture or not—we are justified in calling it list identifies the most common and easily graspable “surface of art, its traditional, customary, or pretheoretical characteristics are observed across the world. Not included in the list are elements technical analysis more likely to be used by critics and theorists, such the analytical terms “form” and “content.” In this respect, a chemist’s analogy for the list would be the enumeration of the defining features liquid, rather than the defining features of methanol. Through and prehistory, people have had an immediate understanding of difference between a liquid and a solid, without needing scientists to the difference to them. Whether a liquid contains methanol, however, requires technical analysis that might escape ordinary observation. Moreover, while there are borderline cases of liquids, methanol has unambiguous technical definition: CH3OH. We may need expert opinion to tell us whether something is methanol or whether it has methanol in it; we need no experts to tell us whether methanol is a liquid.
In this sense, “Is it art?” is not a question that ought to be given over experts to decide for us. The question, in fact, normally provokes thoughts as, Does it show skill? Does it express emotion? Is it like other works of art in a known tradition? Is it pleasurable to listen to? More expert-oriented technical questions, such as “Does it have form and or “Is it written in iambic pentameter?” are not a first line of inquiry that comes to mind in trying to figure out whether something is art.
Again, might it happen one day that neurophysiologists will discover a new, technical method for identifying artistic experiences (through brain scans or suchlike) or that physicists will invent some kind of molecular analysis that allows them to distinguish, say, works of art from pieces ordinary whiteware or automobile parts? An absurd speculation, perhaps, note that if science ever achieved such a method for identifying instances of art or of art experiences, it will be in the position of matching scientifically determined properties with a description of art understood in terms of the cluster criteria on my list or on another similar list. The cluster criteria tell us what we already know about the arts. The may be adjusted at the edges, with items subtracted or added to it, but the can be expected to remain largely intact into the foreseeable future, governing what counts as investigation into the arts by neurophysiolo-gists, phi losophers, anthropologists, critics, or historians.
Other nontechnical features might have been included on this list. H. Gene Blocker, who has written about the criteria for art in tribal societies, regards it as significant that artists are “perceived not only as professionals but as innovators, eccentric, or a bit socially alienated.” Having observed this in New Guinea just as Blocker has in Africa, I can agree, there are over the world too many innovative-yet-non-socially-alienated artists, as well as too many eccentric non-artists, for Blocker’s feature to be a useful way to recognize art. The same could be said being rare or costly. As I shall discuss in chapter 7, many works of art are rare, are made of costly materials, or incorporate enormous labor costs, and this is often a component of their interest to audiences. Many, however, are none of these things—for instance, cheap reproductions in the form of prints or MP3 files. Costliness is relevant to art, but it is not a criterion for recognizing it.
My list excludes background features