Abstract
This essay seeks to demonstrate that there are no compelling reasons to exclude non-Western artefacts from the domain of art. Any theory of art must therefore account for the universality of the concept of art. It cannot simply start from ‘our’ art traditions and extend these conceptions to other cultures, since this would imply cultural appropriation, nor can it resolve the matter simply by formulating separate criteria for non-Western art, since this would imply that there is no unity in the concept of art. At first sight, cluster theories of art seem capable of accounting for the universality of art since they (can) start from a broad cross-cultural range of artworks and nowhere seem to extend one conception of art to other conceptions. Yet cluster theories remain unsatisfactory, because they can neither avoid misapplication of the proposed criteria, nor clarify the unity in the concept of art.
Highlights
The question of whether or not much of what we call ‘non-Western art’ is art continues to trouble philosophers, art historians, and anthropologists alike.On the one hand, it seems obvious to see the sculptures, paintings, and songs of other cultures as art
Any theory of art must account for the universality of the concept of art. It cannot start from ‘our’ art traditions and extend these conceptions to other cultures, since this would imply cultural appropriation, nor can it resolve the matter by formulating separate criteria for non-Western art, since this would imply that there is no unity in the concept of art
This article is based on a paper entitled ‘Gaut’s Cluster Account and the Identification of Non-Western Art’, which I presented at the 2011 British Society of Aesthetics Conference
Summary
The question of whether or not much of what we call ‘non-Western art’ is art continues to trouble philosophers, art historians, and anthropologists alike. Denis Dutton, for one, claims that the recognition criteria in his list can be found in the arts cross-culturally: ‘The list could be described as inclusive in its manner of referring to the arts across cultures and historical epochs’.11 These cluster theories seem to show promise when accounting for the universality of art, it will be argued they are not fully satisfactory. 9 See, for example, Dutton, ‘Naturalist Definition’; Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009); Berys Gaut, ‘“Art” as a Cluster Concept’, in Carroll, Theories of Art Today, 25–45; ‘The Cluster Account of Art Defended’, British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (2005): 273–88; Julius Moravcsik, ‘Why Philosophy of Art in Cross-Cultural Perspective?’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993): 425–35. See Dominic McIver Lopes,‘Art without “Art”’, British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (2007): 10. 11 Dutton, ‘Naturalist Definition’, 368
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