Ontology of Art

Abstract

Ontological questions are questions about existence: Which things are truly existent? Into which fundamental categories do they fall? One seeks, not just an inventory of reality, but a map of it, one that could help to structure and navigate one’s other philosophical concerns. In the case of art ontology, we seek to understand where artworks fit into this wider organization of reality. We might wish to know, for example, whether they are just material things, or mental in some way, or even abstract entities of some sort. Such questions have a clear bearing on the epistemology of their appreciation, which is often our central aesthetic-philosophical concern. The category of art is, however, wildly heterogeneous. It includes paintings, musical theater, films, improvisations, earth-works, novels, poems, pottery, dance, videos, installations, conceptual art of various stripes, and much more besides. It appears that art is not itself an ontology category, but a status achieved by items from a variety of ontological categories. Definitions of “art” attempt to clarify this status, but are not a properly ontological investigation. The work left to ontologists involves characterizing those items that achieve this status, identifying commonalities and differences in the kinds of objects that form the media of different arts. There is interest both in finding whether all artworks belong to one, two, or more fundamental categories, and in identifying what makes the objects of the individual arts different from one another. The former, “fundamental” question has centered on the phenomenon of repeatability. While works in some arts, like painting, appear to be particular individuals, work in other arts, those like classical music, theater, and printmaking, involve multiple performances or prints or, more generally, occurrences. Since each occurrence cannot be the work, a real puzzle about the ontological character of the work itself emerges. Perhaps for idiosyncratic reasons, Western classic music has been the central case of this sort under discussion. Musical examples have also driven the latter, applied investigations, although here attention has often been drawn to musical practices that differ, in some important regard, from the classical cases so often found at the middle of disputes about the fundamental ontology.