What Is a Work of Art?

Abstract

Art teachers are ordinarily content to accept as works of art the objects to which we are exposed in art classes, museums, galleries, and artists' studios. However, on occasion when they come upon a strange and novel denizensuch as a lump of lard in an art exhibition, Robert Barry's Tbougbts, or Sam Hsich's year-long clock-punching performance-art teachers are called upon to face the question What is a work of art? A large number of art educators accept the position that art has no definition and there is no single property or properties that are common to all works of art. About all that one can say in response to the question What is a work of art? is that a work of art is anything any member of the artworld calls or may call art. Many art teachers find this answer attractive, for it sounds democratic and open-minded, it removes the need to supply a plausible account of what sets art off from nonart, and it avoids having to defend ideas against hostile criticism which might lower the status of the art teachers. An increasing number of art teachers, however, find this answer acceptable because of the theoretical basis they believe exists for it. Kenneth M. Lansing, in a recent article in this journal, reviews the primary theoretical basis for the view that art has no definition.1 It is the Wittgenstein-Weitz theory that art is an open concept and thus cannot be defined. Though he writes that this theory creates more problems than it solves, he concludes that any proposed definition of art is no more than an attempt at an honorific definition. Such definitions treat the concept of art as if it were closed by restricting it to certain honored or selected referents despite the fact that the term is used to refer to a wider set of things. Thus, though Lansing is critical of the Wittgenstein-Weitz theory, he comes to the same conclusion about any attempt to define art as those who favor the theory.