The Abstractness of Artworks and Its Implications for Aesthetics

Abstract

entities such as propositions or theories.2 Just as the theory of relativity is necessarily about relativistic physical phenomena, and the proposition 'Socrates is wise' is necessarily about Socrates, so also is the film Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) necessarily about the fictional character Kane, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is necessarily about the characteristic musical contents of performances of that work, and Picasso's painting Guernica is necessarily about the town of Guernica. The relevant artworks could not be identified as uch independently of their necessary intentional contents any more than theories or propositions could be identified independently of their own characteristic necessary contents. At the same time, in the case of theories and propositions it is universally held that concrete linguistic expressions of them are only contingently related to the relevant propositional and th oretical contents, because of the conventional natur of natural languages. Hence, apart from a few extreme nominalistic doctrines, there is little or no theoretical temptation to identify theories or propositions with concrete linguistic items, because of the clear contingency of their relations. As Saul Kripke has taught us, genuine identity relations must hold of necessity, so that abstract theories and propositions cannot be identified with concrete linguistic entities that are only contingently related to them.3 Hence the status of propositions and theories as abstract entities that are necessarily related to their contents is secure, with no threat of theoretical conflict via a putative identification of such abstracta with the concrete linguistic tokens that express them. However, in the case of artworks, by contrast, it seems to be almost universally assumed that some artworks are indeed concrete entities, such The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66:4 Fall 2008 © 2008 The American Society for Aesthetics This content downloaded from 157.55.39.32 on Sat, 27 Aug 2016 04:25:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 342 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism as physical paintings or statues, and it is also widely assumed that the remaining artworks are types that have concrete artistic tokens as their instances, such as particular book copies or concrete musical performances. So in the case of artworks, it seems that we have a potential conflict. Though artworks seem initially to qualify as abstract entities having necessary contents, similar to theories and propositions, it is also widely held that either they or their instances are all concrete objects or events. Thus in the case of artworks we have at least a theoretically anomalous, if not paradoxical, situation: how should the apparent conflict between the abstract and concrete features of art-