Philosophy of art assignment

Non-Western Art and Art’s Definition

Stephen Davies, Philosophy, University of Auckland

Important note: This is a final draft without endnotes and differs from the definitive version, which is published in Theories of Art Today, Noël Carroll (ed), (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 199-216. I have been assured by the University of Auckland's research office that if they have made this publicly available then it does not violate the publisher's copyright rules.

Non-Western Art and Art’s Definition

The members of all cultures always have engaged in storytelling, drawing, carving and whittling, song, dance, and acting or mime. Frequently these activities are tied to social functions, such as the production of tools, the enactment of ritual, the preservation of a historical record. Their pervasiveness suggests that they are integral, not incidental, to the social ends they serve. Whenever items with handles are made, those handles are decorated; once pots are thrown, they are marked with depictions or patterns; when a couple is married, there is singing and dancing. Moreover, the skills displayed in the exercise of these activities—for instance, in the carver’s treatment of his chosen medium—are widely respected and valued.

It seems evident that these practices arose independently within geographically separated societies, rather than being invented once and subsequently transmitted through cultural contact. No doubt there has long been intercourse between societies concerning such matters, but this must often have dealt with innovations in types of action that already were familiar.

The practices just described can reasonably be called artistic, I believe, and their ubiquity suggests that art is universal. Artistic activity may not be necessary for human social life, but, if not, it appears to be an inevitable spin off from things that are. Its constant presence indicates that it answers and gives expression to deeply ingrained human needs and patterns of experience.

This first observation should be coupled with another, the significance of which is easily overlooked. We are capable of recognizing that art is made by people in cultures other than our own and of identifying many of their artworks as such. I am impressed by how accessible to Westerners is much sub- Saharan music, Chinese painting, and woven carpets from the Middle East. If art relies on a complex semiotic system, or on an atmosphere of theory, this

recognition would be surprising, for such things are culturally arbitrary. If art were as this view supposes, we might learn or infer that other societies have it, or something like it, through very close contact and study, but as outsiders who are largely ignorant of the beliefs and values prevailing in those societies, we could have no immediate access to their art. That we do have this access suggests that the properties crucial in inviting an art-regard sometimes are ones that can be perceived with very little culture-specific background knowledge.

This is not to deny that there is likely to be much more to the art of other societies than is available to an outsider. After considering ethnographic features of art in ten cultures, Richard L. Anderson concludes: “Art is culturally significant meaning, skillfully encoded in an affecting, sensuous medium.” I do not doubt that he is correct in this observation. But even if art “skillfully encodes culturally significant meanings” that the outsider is in no position to appreciate, something more universal and basic must be involved if we are to explain the outsider’s response. In this vein, Denis Dutton suggests that Picasso was validly reacting to vivid aesthetic aspects intrinsic to African carvings he viewed at the Palais du Trocadéro in 1907, though he knew little of the context in which they were produced or of the social purposes they served. The outsider might be incapable of fully understanding the artworks of other cultures where these deal in “culturally significant meanings” but, nevertheless, often can recognize the “artiness” of such pieces and enjoy at least some aspects of this.

In this chapter I discuss non-Western art and, in particular, what follows from the capacity of Westerners to identify and respond to such pieces as art. This commentary has implications for the philosophical definition of art, as I outline in the last section. But before addressing these issues, I look more closely at challenges often raised to the idea that there is non-Western art as such. It might be thought that the notion of art is a Western one that cannot be applied, except ethnocentrically and inappropriately, to the products and practices of other cultures. If this were so, the kind of recognition and response that I have described above would reveal, not the presence of art in other societies, but the tendency of Westerners to impose their conceptual categories upon contexts to which they do not apply.

I

It has been held by some anthropologists that there is no non-Western art. The concept is a Western one. Other cultures have different, possibly parallel, concepts of their own. The artifacts of non-Western cultures become art only by being appropriated by Westerners to their own art institutions.

Now, if the claim is that they have their concepts and we have ours, just

as I have my beliefs and you have yours, it is innocuous enough. To make the Wittgensteinian point, this reveals something about the “grammar” of possessive pronouns. It does not show that the non-Western concept must be different from ours, or that we cannot share the same concept. But if the claim is that theirs is a different concept—not solely in being theirs as opposed to ours, but also in its content—that needs to be substantiated. (Otherwise the claim looks no less ethnocentric than the position it sets out to debunk in that it assumes that only the West has achieved art creation, which is an activity highly valued as the mark of civilization.) Several arguments that have been offered for this conclusion are reviewed and rejected below.

In the West, art often is distinguished from craft. This dichotomy is stressed in the writings of Plato, Hegel, Tolstoy, and R. G. Collingwood, for example. It is widely claimed that art lacks “utility,” being made for contemplation distanced from social concerns; that artists should be indifferent to worldly matters in pursuing their muse; that artworks have an intrinsic value and should be preserved and respected. If these views characterize the Western concept of art, many non-Western societies must lack that concept, for their approach and attitude are different. In them, all artifacts or performances are created to meet socially useful functions—masks are worn in religious rituals, carvings propitiate the gods or decorate items for domestic use, songs lighten the burden of repetitive labor, and so on. Nothing is created solely for aesthetic contemplation. Either most people are “artists” or the relevant social roles are occupied by people who are regarded neither as requiring a special spirituality nor as meriting a respect beyond what is due to the skills they bring to their work. In many cases, pieces are discarded once they have served the particular purpose for which they were created.

In reviewing this position we might question whether the Western ideology of art corresponds to its reality. Is it the case that we think artworks are useless? That “artist” names a spiritual calling? That art making is unaffected by the market? That artworks are appreciated only when abstracted from the moral, political, and social settings within which they are generated? If the answer to these questions is “no” (as I believe it to be), this ideology would be exposed as a fiction, irrelevant to the heart of our concept of art.

Rather than develop this line, however, I take a different tack. I accept that the notions listed above characterize what has come to be known as fine or high art. The fine arts were described and typed at the close of the eighteenth century, and the associated notion of the artist as a genius unfettered by the rules of a craft, as well as by social conventions, was presented at much the same time. Along with this went the idea that the aesthetic attitude is a psychologically distinctive state of distanced contemplation. The creation of art museums and an interest in the works of past eras date from the same period.

Prior to that time, Western artists were employed as servants and worked mainly to order. Their art was expected to be functional. Its purposes were to illustrate and instruct, to uplift or delight, to glorify God or art’s patrons, to improve the social environment or, at least, to make it more pleasant. Now, if it is silly (as I think it is) to suggest that Bach’s music or Michelangelo’s statues or Shakespeare’s plays became art retrospectively, only when they were appropriated by the art establishment and thereby were abstracted from their original settings and functions, it must be accepted that there is a broader notion of art than is covered by the rubric of fine art. Fine or high art is art. It is art with a capital A. But it is only one kind within a wider genus. So, we can agree with the anthropologist who argues that non-Western cultures do not share the Western notion of fine art without also accepting that this shows them to lack art or its concept. The crucial question is whether non-Western cultures self-consciously create art with a small a, something that is properly called art for what it shares with our basic concept, though their practice might not be institutionalized and ideologically freighted to the extent that ours is.

A second argument tending to the conclusion that non-Western societies are without art relies on a linguistic claim: that the languages of these cultures lack a single term that translates readily to our “art.” This interpretation of the linguistic data misses what is at issue, however. The crux concerns the concepts possessed within non-Western cultures, not the vocabularies of their languages. It may be that a culture employs a complex phrase instead of a single word. That we use “second cousin once removed,” not a solitary term, does not mean that we have no concept of that familial relationship. Or, more likely, it may be that the culture uses a word with a reference that is apparently too broad, one that covers all ritual artifacts or all crafts as well as artworks. But again, this does not show that it does not make the relevant conceptual distinctions. The ancient Greek techne referred both to arts and to more mundane crafts, but the Greeks acknowledged significant differences between the products of the activities covered by the general term. And the French “conscience” corresponds to both “conscience” and “consciousness,” but this does not entail that the French do not discriminate between morality and mentation.

A third and final argument claims that members of traditional societies are unconscious of their culture. Simply, they do what they do, regarding it as natural while remaining oblivious of the history of their practices, of the influences that shaped them, and of the “latent functions” served by the maintenance of their traditions. It is only in confrontation with the “other,” with an intrusive alien presence, that the society is forced to define itself, to reflect on its own character. “Construction of culture,” creative self-definition through contrast, is the result.

The view is exemplified in this passage by Adrian Vickers:

Tourism defines what Balinese culture is in a context where such definitions have hitherto not been needed. . . . Tourism encourages Balinese to reflect on their own culture. Members of a culture usually learn and express their culture unconsciously—it is something they have grown up with, a matter of habit. Balinese culture has long been an object of study. For over a century various Balinese have had to make statements to outsiders, first Dutch scholars and civil servants, then tourists, describing their culture and the elements of their religion. This process of articulation has meant that the Balinese have had to be conscious of their own culture, producing both a sense of pride in their cultural identity as Balinese, and an ability to sum up what may be considered as the essential aspects of culture . . . in a way that can be conveniently understood by others. Tourism is only one element in this process of externalising culture, and nowadays the Indonesian Government plays as big a role as tourism in the process, since the government requires formal rationalisations and criteria in order that cultural and artistic activities can be bureaucratically described and supported.

Now, if the creation of art must be self-conscious, it will follow that members of non-Western societies, in being blind to their own cultures, could have no basic concept of art as such. If they acquire one, it will be through exposure to Western views, and their notion will be affected by ours. Moreover, their artlike cultural practices will have no defense against outside influences, whether good or bad. According to Maud Karpeles, folk music develops mainly unconsciously, with cultural insiders lacking awareness of the history and values of their tradition. As a result, untutored singers (in the Appalachians early this century) adapt indiscriminately from traditional and external sources; the natural selection by which the folk tradition evolves then cannot operate freely, because the ordinary process of musical change is continuously subverted.

I regard this third argument to be insupportable. The enactment of culture might be largely unconscious in that a society’s members do not have to describe to themselves, or to those who share their cultural habits, what they are doing, or why, as they act. They call on behavioral repertoires and values that have been thoroughly assimilated and which, therefore, do not need to be justified or worked out each time they are pressed into service. Also, the transmission of culture clearly depends more on imitation and rote learning than on social analysis. It does not follow, however, that a society’s members are unconscious of their culture in the further sense of being incapable of articulating, if occasion requires, their practices and mores. (After all, sociology would not exist unless Westerners could do this!) Neither does it follow that

they are unable to reflect on the bases and functions of the strands that make up their social fabric. Social practices may be “unconscious” in one sense, that of being enacted unthinkingly under normal circumstances, but not in another, that of being beyond the agent’s ken. In fact, surely the evidence suggests not that societies are indifferent to their own histories and values, or that they are insensitive to outside influences, but the reverse.

Even if it is accepted that cultural self-consciousness inevitably presupposes awareness of the “other,” of the outsider, it is hard to imagine the society that is without this. The most closed groups recognize distinctions of sex, tribe, clan, and family. And most have long known of the wider world. To take Vickers’ example, the Balinese have been explaining their culture to outsiders, such as the Javanese (with their different languages, religion, customs, music, dance, carving, and so on), for more than five centuries.

More particularly, we should challenge Karpeles’ assumption that a mindless process of evolution explains the maintenance of, and change in, folk traditions. Her line, like that of the anthropologists who conceive of their studies as dealing with “latent functions” not appreciated by their subjects, reduces the artifacts produced within these cultures to the level of aesthetically pleasing objects shaped by the forces of nature. Denis Dutton (in discussing analyses of the pottery and rain dances of the Amerindian Hopi) has taken this approach to task for ignoring levels of intention manifest in what is achieved. Although art production does not always involve the explicit articulation of goals and intentions, it does not follow that these are absent. The preservation and development of cultural traditions indicate care, attention, commitment, concentration, and deference—for the material and the heritage of works, genres, and styles—on the part of native practitioners and their audiences. Such traditions survive only by being carefully passed down. (This is not to insist that innovation and novelty must always be excluded from living traditions. Instead, it is to maintain that, where these are sanctioned, it is because they are valued within the history of the tradition in which they occur.)

As just indicated, there is a tendency for those who would deny that non- Western cultures share our concept of art to describe the products of those cultures in a fashion that ignores the artistic goals, intentions, and achievements that such pieces manifest. This kind of reduction creates the conclusion that art is absent from non-Western cultures because it factors out the “artiness” of their artworks. But this reveals more about the methodologies employed than the cultures studied. As illustration, consider Alfred Gell’s requirement that the anthropologist adopt “methodological philistinism.”

Methodological philistinism consists of taking an attitude of resolute indifference towards the aesthetic value of works of art—the aesthetic

value that they have, either indigenously, or from the standpoint of universal aestheticism. Because to admit this kind of value is equivalent to admitting, so to speak, that religion is true, and just as this admission makes the sociology of religion impossible, the introduction of aesthetics (the theology of art) into the sociology or anthropology of art immediately turns the enterprise into something else. . . . [T]he anthropology of art has to begin with a denial of the claims which objects of art make on the people who live under their spell, and also on ourselves.

Now it may be appropriate for the anthropologist to put aside his own (perhaps ethnocentric) values, but, pace Gell, it cannot be appropriate to the study of non-Western art as art that he also puts aside a concern with the aesthetic judgments of the local culture, since their art is such only because it possesses the relevant properties. Because he takes his methodological philistinism so far as to reject “the claims which objects of art make on the people who live under their spell,” Gell cannot analyse non-Western art on its own terms. In trying to save anthropology from becoming “something else,” he turns art into something less than it is. In his view, it is “a component of the technology of enchantment.” My point is this: if it is essential to something that it is created to possess properties of a kind that can be recognized only by those prepared to make the relevant judgments, then identifying putative instances of the type requires reference to such evaluations, even if that process of identification does not require the identifier to share the relevant values.

II

If non-Western societies were without cultural self-consciousness, and if their artlike practices were controlled only by natural evolution, rather than human design, then, indeed, there would be grounds for supposing that they do not possess a concept of art. While non-Western cultures and their products have been described in such terms, these accounts are unconvincing (and insulting as well). I have argued above against the claim that non-Western cultures do not have the concept of art and do not create art, small a, within their own artworlds. It remains now to offer a positive characterization of non-Western art, and to do so in a way that explains the ability of cultural outsiders to recognize (if not to thoroughly understand) it as what it is.

I begin by considering a position sketched by Arthur Danto. He is impressed by the fact that some Western artworks are perceptually indistinguishable from nonartworks to those who are unaware of their provenance. The most graphic illustration of the point is provided by Duchamp’s readymades, in which a “mere real thing” attains the status of art without alteration in its physical properties. This leads Danto to conclude that

what differentiates art from other things is “an atmosphere of theory the eye cannot de[s]cry.” By this he seems to mean an art-historical context. He applies his idea to non-Western art by means of a “philosopher’s example” concerning two nearby but isolated African tribes, the Pot People and the Basket Folk. Both make pots and baskets, and the pots and baskets of the Pot People are not perceptually discriminable from those of the Basket Folk. Nevertheless, the pots of the Pot People are artworks, whereas their baskets are not, and vice versa for the Basket Folk. Whereas the artworks in both cultures have deep spiritual importance for the tribe, symbolizing their relation to the cosmic order, to life and death, and so on, the nonartworks lack special significance, being no more than practical objects. The tale illustrates Danto’s theory, as it is designed to do. What makes something art, whether in an African tribe or in the United States, is an “atmosphere of theory,” not properties perceptible to someone ignorant of that conceptual context.

Dutton raises this objection to Danto’s tale: If a tribe makes pots that have developed over many generations into their most treasured art, they will be meticulous about the construction and decoration of these.

They would presumably work according to an evolved canon of excellence . . . [P]ot making would be a central element in a whole culture, with much thought and worry going into obtaining the perfect clay for making them, firing them for exactly the right kind of finish. Why? Because people just behave in those ways when they create things that mean something to them.

If a group has a practice they value as art, it has a great importance to them. This is reflected—usually, if not for every instance—in the serious care they invest in its creation and reception. This results in perceptible properties that distinguish most examples of their art types from the products of other, less culturally significant, activities. Contrary to Danto’s hypothesis, it is incoherent to imagine that the artworks of a society would be indistinguishable from merely utilitarian objects.

I think that Dutton succeeds in calling into question the plausibility of Danto’s scenario. His argument is that artisans take pains over perceptible features of the artifacts that are of central importance to the culture (and that they will be less inclined to do the same with trivially utilitarian objects). As it stands, however, that suggestion would apply as readily to culturally significant nonart items as to artworks. How can we distinguish culturally significant practices in which art is absent from those in which it is present? One suggestion, with which I agree, is developed by Dutton and H. Gene Blocker as a result of their communications respectively with carvers in New Guinea and Africa. The crucial claim is that, even if non-Western artists’

carvings are utilitarian and not created for “distanced” contemplation, those artists (and other members of their culture) are vitally concerned with the aesthetic nature of what is produced. Their work involves achievements that are aesthetic in character. It is appreciated within the culture in light of these and it is valued for displaying them. As Dutton puts it, art involves accomplishment; it displays persistent intelligence and directedness in realizing aesthetic goals. And Blocker writes:

the primitive peoples who make and use such artifacts manifest enough of the artistic and aesthetic attitudes and dispositions to warrant and justify us in calling such artifacts “works of art” and treating them as such.

From my point of view, this account displays an important virtue: it stresses aesthetic properties—qualities such as beauty, balance, tension, elegance, serenity, energy, grace, vivacity. Traditionally, philosophical aesthetics has conceived of aesthetic properties not only as central to the character of art, but also as not requiring for their apprehension a detailed knowledge of the social context of production. If (some) non-Western items qualify as art by virtue of displaying humanly produced aesthetic features, this allows us to explain how outsiders, despite their ignorance of the wider sociohistorical context in which such items are created, might recognize them for the artworks they are. To put the claim more broadly: There is a transcultural notion of the aesthetic; aesthetic properties have interest and appeal for humans in general. It is this cultural overlap that licenses the judgment that non-Western cultures make art (small a) for, in valuing the attainment of aesthetically pleasing effects, their members reveal themselves to be concerned with the artistic character of their products.

I am inclined to supplement the account offered so far, because I do not think that it is sufficient to distinguish artworks from other items that display humanly created aesthetic properties. I suggest that, in the case of art, the aesthetic effects achieved must be integral to the whole, rather than minor or incidental side features. A tool handle does not become an artwork merely by having a minuscule, but aesthetically pleasing, carving added to it. In addition, I think that the aesthetic character of an artwork must be regarded as essential to its function, so that it cannot be evaluated properly without taking into account the aesthetic achievement it involves. Its function need not be solely that of providing pleasure through the contemplation of its aesthetic properties. Much more often in non-Western cultures, artworks serve socially useful purposes in rituals and the like. They are for use, not contemplation. They substitute for gods, serve to ward off spirits, are offerings intended to guarantee the fruitfulness of the marriage at which they are presented, and so on. In this way, art might always be utilitarian. But it remains distinguishable from mere craft in terms of the totality and functional significance of the aesthetic

properties it is created to possess. Mere craftworks lack aesthetic properties, or are not made to have them, or are made to have them in a manner that is incidental or trivial with respect to their intended function.

Even with the amendments I have suggested, it might be thought that the position I have advocated is too liberal, for it seems to admit to the realm of art such things as fine Italian cars. As a first response, I would grasp the offered nettle. If (and I am not sure about this) their aesthetic attributes are essential to their evaluation as cars, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris are artworks (small a). To accept this is not to encourage undue expansion of the concept of art but, rather, to stress that the notion has (always had) a wider scope than that of fine art. Under the influence of the ideology of fine art, the Western notion of art has atrophied. Acknowledgment of the artistic character of these vehicles involves the reclamation of lost ground, not territorial expansion. And a second response builds on this first. Over time, art practices can become regularized and institutionalized. If cars manufactured by Maserati, Lamborghini, and Ferrari do not qualify as art, this could be because they are not created within the context of the Western art institution. But now, if that art institution is best to be seen as establishing a social context for the production of fine art, this concession is not harmful, for I stressed earlier that I was interested in a broader conception of art.

In summary: The care devoted to the production of art typically concerns features of the kind that is called “aesthetic.” That is, the creators of art within the culture make some of their choices for the sake of creating qualities that are aesthetically pleasing. Just which aesthetic properties count for the art in question, and how they will be structured and conditioned by conventions, depend on the medium and on traditions and practices established for the relevant genre. The local appreciation and evaluation of such pieces will take some account of the success or otherwise with which they are created to realize the desired properties. This is consistent with the possibility that all artworks have a place in socially important practices, such as religious observances. In discovering whether a people possess the concept of art, what matters is not that they separate art from other important concerns but that they make items presenting humanly generated aesthetic properties which are essential to the main purposes served by those items. Moreover, such artworks often will be recognizable as such to cultural outsiders, who are not prohibited by their ignorance of life within the culture from noting the aesthetic effects they manifest, perceiving that these concern the whole, seeing that they are humanly created, and observing (or inferring) that such effects are deemed essential to the nature and purpose of the items in question.

III

It remains to investigate the implications of the preceding for the philosophical enterprise of defining art. I consider two questions.

1. If the presence of humanly created aesthetic properties is crucial to our acknowledging that other cultures have art and to our ability to identify at least some of their artworks, must reference to such properties feature in a successful definition? That is, should “aesthetic” definitions be preferred to other varieties?

I answer “no.” Though I have stressed the importance of aesthetic properties in addressing the issue of how we know that other cultures have art, it is not my view that the possession of these is essential for something’s being art. I accept that conceptual pieces can qualify as art, though these do not possess perceptible aesthetic attributes, and I also accept that ordinary objects might be appropriated to the artworld, as Duchamp’s readymades were, so that their being art does not depend on the aesthetic properties they happen to display. Indeed, it could be that, over time, art practices change so that the emphasis falls on the creation of theory-dependent, historically conditioned artistic properties that have little to do with aesthetic properties as these were traditionally described. All that follows from my argument is that works that are without aesthetic properties, or that attain their art status for some reason other than their possessing the aesthetic properties they display, will not be identifiable as art by cultural outsiders.

More needs to be said, though, because I do not mean to leave the impression that there could be an art-making tradition that at no time focused on the realization of perceptible aesthetic effects. I do not believe that a culture could have a tradition generating artworks all of which are nonaesthetic, or are only incidentally aesthetic, in character. I suspect that a concern with achieving aesthetic effects is historically necessary in the development of art practices, though not logically necessary to any particular item’s being an artwork. It is no more easy to imagine a culture that begins with nonaesthetic art than one that develops mathematical calculus before it cultivates counting and measurement. I commented at the outset that the universality of art marks its creation as a response to deep-seated human needs and experiences. At that level—that is, at the level of the lowest denominators common to human existence—it is more likely to be the intrinsic, sensuous appeal of aesthetic properties than the cognitive interest of culturally arbitrary symbols that explains why art making, or the activities that preceded it, first occurred.

2. Do current theories, most of which are prompted by reflection on Western art practice, accommodate non-Western art? That is, can the contemporary crop of definitions be applied perspicuously to the art of other cultures? In discussing these questions, I review the definitions of art proposed

by George Dickie and Jerrold Levinson.

Dickie’s institutional theory holds that something is art if and only if it is enmeshed within a complex set of institutionally structured social relations. Art status is achieved by an item only if it is appropriately situated within an institutional matrix involving the roles of artist and public, along with artworld practices. What is distinctive to the institution in terms of which art is defined is its structure, not its history or function.

Dickie is exclusively concerned with the institutional aspect of Western art, though he describes this in terms that are rather general. He does not apply his theory to non-Western cultures, but it is easy to see what this would involve. For these cultures to be art-producing ones, they would have to contain art institutions of the kind Dickie outlines. In particular, those institutions would have to manifest the structure that he describes as distinctive to artworlds.

I readily allow of the Western art institution that it is an informal arrangement reaching beyond government councils, official academies, and the like. And I accept that in some non-Western cultures—those of Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Iran, and Iraq, for instance—art has long been formalized and professionalized in some respects. In many other societies, however, I doubt that art is served by a distinctively structured institution; rather, it is an inseparable aspect of wider social practices concerning kinship, religion, commerce, ritual, and government. I conclude, therefore, that the institutional theory is not adequate to explain the presence of art in these cultures. I do not deny the power and attraction of Dickie’s theory as one that limns central features of Western fine art, but I do not think that it lends itself to the definition of non-Western art, or of art (small a) in general.

Jerrold Levinson offers a recursive account of the extension of “artwork” according to which something is art if it is intended for regard in one of the ways prior artworks have been correctly regarded. He allows that the artist’s intention can be referentially opaque; that is, he accepts that something intended for a particular regard would be art in the case where that regard was invited by earlier artworks although the intender was not aware of this fact. On non-Western art, he says this:

We can only hope to say anything about art in other cultures, or in historically remote circumstances, by trying to understand our own concept as surely as we can, and then gauging the extent to which it can be made to fit with or to illuminate what we find in those cultures and circumstances. To put this more pithily, if another culture has art, it must have art in our sense, more or less—whatever the inevitable differences between its art and ours in terms of materials, structure,

expressiveness, ritual-embededness, object-orientedness, and so on.

I agree, though for the sake of political correctness and appropriate emphasis I prefer the wording “if another culture has art, it must be that our two cultures share the same concept.”

Levinson’s definition makes no explicit appeal to the intender’s cultural location. For that reason, it appears to be indifferent to social boundaries and, thereby, to claim a universality that would have it applying to all artworks, whatever their provenance. But this impression is misleading.

Suppose a Chinese person in the fourteenth century intended a piece to be regarded as were European paintings in the thirteenth century, though she was entirely ignorant of the existence of Europe and its artworks, and, further, no extant Chinese artworks called for that kind of regard. Levinson’s definition would appear to entail that the Chinese person creates an artwork via cross- cultural reference. This result strikes me as extremely implausible, and I doubt that Levinson would embrace it. Quite rightly, he emphasizes that artists’ art- regarding intentions usually are self-conscious in invoking or referring to past art. He allows for the case in which the intention is referentially opaque not in order to cut art making adrift from its cultural history but, rather, to acknowledge that the required connection might be made, if not by the artist herself, then by other members of her culture. The recursive character of Levinson’s definition aims to stress the extent to which art making is rooted within a historicized, culturally unified practice, not to admit the possibility of cross-cultural art creation that rides roughshod over the artistic traditions of the respective cultures. He means to indicate how art draws on (or sets out to repudiate) its cultural forebears, so that what is possible within the art of a culture depends on what has been previously accepted as art within that same culture. In consequence, Levinson’s account must be seen as committed to a kind of cultural relativism in art production, not as espousing universalism. It presupposes a historically continuous tradition to which the art-defining intention relates the newly created piece. His theory assumes the background of a historically and culturally unified body of works to which the artist’s intention relates the candidate work. In other words, Levinson makes art relative to what Danto may have had in mind when he coined the term “artworld.”

I have already claimed that artworlds are themselves the products of particular cultures with their individual histories. There may be as many independently generated artworlds as there are distinct cultures. The acknowledgment that different cultures produce their own artworks comes precisely to this. So, if definitions such as Levinson’s are committed to seeing art as relative to an artworld, and if they focus narrowly on the Western one,

they leave non-Western art and the notion of art in general underanalyzed.

In reply, it might be pointed out that the proposed definition is at a level of generality that allows it to explain, if it is correct, how something might become art within any artworld. What makes something art is the maker’s intention that it be regarded in a fashion appropriate to the prior artworks of the creator’s culture, whether it is the Western artworld or the artworld of some African tribe within which the artist operates, and whether the art regards appropriate to prior art in the one artworld resemble those in the other. According to this suggestion, it is the structure of the intentional relation, not the content of the relevant intention, that is crucial. Something is art within a given culture if it is intended to be regarded as its predecessors were regarded, regardless of the kind of regard that is intended.

As it stands, this approach is inadequate. A definition that characterizes art making as artworld-relative and that also concedes the existence of autonomous artworlds must explain how artworlds are of a single type. An account is required of what makes the various artworlds artworlds. Without this the definition is incomplete at best. While it might identify a factor necessarily common to artworlds, reference solely to the structure of the intentional relationship—that the maker intends the present object to be viewed as similar predecessors have been—is not sufficient to explain how artworlds are of a distinctive kind. Many practices that are not art-making ones are historically reflexive in a similar way and thereby exhibit the same structure of intention.

Levinson does not apply his definition to the autonomous art of other cultures, but he does consider how his intentional-historical conception of art might assimilate Western activities that are like, but marginal to, Western fine art. (As examples, he mentions handmade furniture, sculpted masks, commercial design, ritual music, and baton twirling.) For that case, he allows that identifying ‘simply the same structure of connectedness, of intentional invocation, whether immediate or mediate, of predecessor objects or the treatment they were accorded’ is too weak to do the job. A stronger suggestion, Levinson thinks, holds that the content of the relevant intentions is the same or similar between, say, handmade chairs and art sculptures. That is, not only are both projected for regards appropriate to predecessors of the same ilk, but also the regards invited by handmade chairs include ones paradigmatic for art sculptures.

These remarks show how Levinson would attempt to extend his definition to the case of non-Western art. Probably he would maintain that at least some of the regards intended for artworks are common to all the artworlds there are and that it is this feature that unifies these artworlds as of a single

type. In the case of activities that are marginal to art-making ones, the resemblance in intended regards only needs to be partial. When it comes to artworlds, however, the resemblance in intended regards must be substantial. Only then will it be revealed as a feature possessed independently by each artworld that is essential to its being an artworld.

Is there a kind of regard projected for artworks that is common to all artworlds and that is such as to explain how artworlds can be recognized for what they are? In effect, this is what I aimed to establish earlier in this chapter. The discussion with which I began provides the key element missing from definitions, such as Levinson’s, that are artworld-relative but which do not explain what it is that allows us to identify the many artworlds there are. Initially if not always, artworks in all cultures are projected for aesthetic regard —that is, for consideration of the aesthetic achievements they are created to display, where these effects concern the whole and are essential to the function the article is designed to serve. This is to say, there is a historically primary regard for which at least some artworks in all artworlds are intended. And this is such a striking feature of art making, viewed across the spread of human cultures, that it explains how we can perceive all cultures as art-making ones and, hence, as having artworlds.