The chapter seems at first to be mainly directed against formalists such as Clive Bell and more importantly, probably, Clement Greenberg, although neither of these are mentioned he simply refers to a group of theorists and artists which he calls "purists" and sometimes "formalists". Goodman wants to show that the purists are wrong that the abstract art they favor does not symbolize. He has a broader notion of "symbolize" such that something can fail to represent or express but could still symbolize if it exemplifies.
All of this mainly seems to be just a matter of semantics, Goodman having a much broader use of "symbol" than the purists. A more important target for the essay is the work of Arthur Danto, although Goodman never mentions Danto. Surely they knew each other: New York is not that far from Boston.
Both Goodman and Danto are trying to account for found art and conceptual art as well as for highly abstract minimalist art. A useful way to see their distinction and implicit disagreement can show in part how Goodman leads us on a path that seems at first to be more world-connected than Danto's and hence more useful for the project of everyday aesthetics. In fact, the two can be used to supplement each other since Goodman focuses on the sensuous and directly apparent aspect of experience, whereas Danto focuses on the cultural meaning aspect which is not immediately apparent.
For Goodman, something is art when it functions as art, and something functions as art when its exhibits an unspecified number of symptoms of the aesthetic although the most important of these is exemplification. Thus objects can move several times in their lifetime in an out of arthood, and thus in and out of the everyday.
Take for example a rock picked up in a driveway Goodman's example. Goodman believes that when the rock is in the driveway it has no aesthetic properties this of course cannot be accepted by everyday aesthetics but that when it is put on a pedestal in an art gallery it comes to exemplify certain properties and so, is symbolic even if it does not represent or express. In doing this it comes to function as art. The relevance of this for everyday aesthetics is that there can be a realm between non-art and art that is aesthetic but not enough so or in enough ways to be art.
Goodman does not define art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but he does talk about what he calls "symptoms of the aesthetic" by which he means symptoms of arthood: these are syntactic density, semantic density, relative repleteness, exemplification and multiple and complex reference.
There is no need here to go into detail about these, except to mention that relative repleteness means that a line in a Hokusai painting is richer in meaning than a similar line on a Stock Exchange chart. I suspect that all of the symptoms of the aesthetic refer basically to one thing: it is the same intuition expressed in different ways. Goodman himself suggests this when he says that all the symptoms "focus attention on rather than, or at least along with, what [the work] refers to. We must "attend constantly to the symbol itself.
Danto I am speaking here just of his view in "The Artworld" would hold that for the art to be art it is not sufficient that it be exhibited in a gallery by an artist, although this can contribute to its arthood.
It must be seen as art by someone with suitable art historical and art theoretical knowledge, i. To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
All Rights Reserved. OSO version 0. University Press Scholarship Online. Sign in. Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. This is the first in a series of posts introducing the aesthetic philosophy of Nelson Goodman, which has been extremely influential in my thinking. Much philosophical aesthetics is terrible. This is unfortunate, because art is profoundly important in our lives: few of us leave the house now without a personally-curated selection of music to fit any mood and enliven any journey, and our culture venerates artists — musicians, actors, film-makers etc.
While some forms of art are struggling to maintain a foothold in culture, one could argue that the new digital media have given people the world over a suite of tools to create artworks which would be the envy of any traveler from the past.
Enter Nelson Goodman. In so doing, he also demonstrates that good philosophy can itself enhance our understanding — showing that progress can indeed be made on philosophical questions, and that the practice of philosophy is extremely valuable if we care about understanding our experience better. Goodman, at the start of his influential work in aesthetics When is Art , makes an elegant intellectual move.
While initially this may seem confusing, we often define things by how they function. What makes a chair a chair?
To answer that question which is more difficult than it might appear! We might be able to agree that the chair below counts as a seat, but what about the boulder next to it?
Is it a seat? Well, we would probably accept it as one if someone was sitting on it. One particular book that has been part of my life in recent years is «Languages of Art» , by the philosopher Nelson Goodman.
Goodman studied at Harvard University, ran an art gallery in Boston while completing his doctorate, and was himself a professor at Harvard from His thought is shaped by that of Carnap, Quine, and Wittgenstein. Goodman differentiates between pictorial and linguistic symbols, exploring their properties and how they relate to the things that they denote.
Concerning questions of image theory and the relationship of images to language and the world, I find the book a constant source of reflection and intellectual unrest.
0コメント