Chapter 3: The Reception of Art

3a. Intentionality

Given the definition of art presented in this thesis, much emphasis is naturally placed on the intentionality behind a given instance of art. The definition reads as follows: Art is a product of human creativity that is not determined by any other motives than that of the creative act itself. It is clear that intentionality becomes an all-important parameter: It is through this that it becomes possible to determine whether a given instance is art or not. This corresponds with George Dickie’s observation that “if the object’s history is unknown, it might be impossible to tell if it’s an artwork.”⁶⁹

The general problem with this is that intentionality is rarely possible to observe in any direct way, since it is often only a thought process that exists in the mind of whomever created the piece, and thus it becomes a difficult parameter to put forth any solid statements about. That it is a hard parameter to handle does not justify not taking it into account at all, however – the sheer vastness of possible interpretations of a given piece is a condition under which the sphere of art exists.

Seeing as how intentionality is sometimes merely an unobservable thought process, it might seem a futile task to try and figure out what the basis of it is. And, true enough, sometimes it will be: Sometimes we just do not know and will never know for sure. As with life itself, encountering such a dead-end is the cause of great frustration for many people, leading them to come up with answers for unanswerable questions – giving detailed accounts of what happens when we die being a prime example of this. In such cases, all that one can do is to operate through the concepts of common sense, logic and probability: We will not ever know, but what seems to be a likely answer? In the context of art, the assumed time and place of the creation of the given piece – along with, obviously, what the actual piece is, how it appears and what other pieces it can be placed in relation to – can be helpful in coming up with such a likely answer, though neither of course give any direct access to the thoughts behind the piece.

Such an access comes in varying degrees – when it is there at all, of course: Reading an interview with the person who made a given piece potentially provides some insight, but being a personal friend of that person and having possibly witnessed the creation of the piece obviously provides even further insight. The more information is available, the bigger is the potential of grasping the piece, though two points must be made here: First of all, even with the same vast amounts of information available to two different analysts, each of them still have to interpret the information and might not reach the same conclusions. Second of all, it should be taken into account that there is a limitation to what the person who made the piece can consciously reveal about the piece and his intentions behind it; the analyst should ideally take the array of subconscious decisions behind the piece into account also.

Taken to a mild extreme, every single piece of art can be seen as part of a given culture and thus analysed anthropologically as well as psychologically and aesthetically, technically being a container of huge amounts of information about both the person who made it and the culture he is part of. This obviously raises the whole issue of analysing art to a highly complex level, making it something whereof one cannot speak and therefore something whereof one must be silent, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, as quoted in the introduction. To actually cover all possible aspects of a given piece of art is considered humanly impossible, making it futile to ever try and make definite, final statements about all aspects of a piece of art.

That said, valuable and valid statements within a given context can still be made, but one should be aware of the limitations of such statements: They will never be definite, but they do have the potential of bringing forth an understanding of a given piece within the given context. An example would be analysing a given piece in the context of several other pieces made by the same person. In such a context, highlighting the similarities and differences between the pieces makes sense in approaching a fuller understanding of them. Another would be to view the pieces made by a person in the context of a major event in his life – maybe moving to a different country, tragically losing a loved one or gaining huge commercial success – and analysing how that affected the production before and after that event. Yet another would be to compare the pieces made by people that are somehow linked together – historically, in terms of genre, philosophically, or something else – and locate similarities and differences between their outputs based on the notion of a linkage between them. And the list goes on. The point here is to illustrate that a reduction of complexity is necessary if valuable analyses are to emerge. Not to thereby say that somewhat thorough and thus relatively complex analyses are not possible, and obviously they have been made in so-called “artist biographies”, but even in such cases, the initial complexity has been reduced and a limited perspective – typically, that of the one person who is making the interpretation of another person’s life – is chosen, consciously or subconsciously, which might lead to illuminating observations about the art in question, but it will never offer definite truth.

A strong opponent of this emphasis on intentionality is found in Monroe C. Beardsley, who, along with a critic, W.K. Wimsatt, coined the phrase “the intentional fallacy”. They are key figures within New Criticism, a movement within literary criticism that emerged among critics in the 1920’s in the Southern United States, which says that the intention behind a piece of art should be left out of the analysis and judgment of it.⁷⁰

Søren Kjørup delivers what he calls a “slightly expanded but more precise” version of Beardsley and Wimsatt’s argument: “Either the intention of the artist is realized in his work, or it is not realized in his work. If the intention of the artist is not realized in his work, it would be misleading to have any interest in it – and thus methodically wrong. If, on the other hand, the intention of the artist is realized in his work, it would be unnecessary to have any interest in it – and thus also methodically wrong.Conclusion: It will in any case be methodically wrong to have any interest in the intention of the artist; we should and can in either case be satisfied with taking an interest in the work itself.”⁷¹

Kjørup argues against the argument by shifting the focus, so that the goal instead is to examine the relationship between an artist and his artwork, in which it will always be of interest whether or not the intention has been realized. It is simply a shift of how art is viewed, and Kjørup’s alternative is as methodically valid as Beardsley and Wimsatt’s. The two arguments highlight different aspects of the artwork, so even though the original argument is set up in a way to close the discussion, all it takes to change that is, as Kjørup shows, to shift the focus of attention.

As an experiment, one could have one hundred critics analyse the same piece of art and then afterwards reveal an interview with the person who made it, in which he describes his intentions. Will the results of the analyses add up with the intentions? Why (not)? It would be assumed that, typically, many critics would have overlapping results, both with each other and the actual intentions, but also that some would be really far off, just like some might actually be able to locate messages within the piece that the person who made it were not himself aware of but included subconsciously – as pointed out earlier, and also pointed out by Kjørup as he summons Freud and speaks of “the subconscious intention”⁷².

Overall, though, every person involved, both the critics and the artist, would tend to have their take on the piece fit with some larger view on the world, their overall artistic preferences, social outlook, political perspectives, and so forth. In whatever way such an experiment went down, it is highly doubtful that even the most knowledgeable and intelligent critics of the hundred would all arrive at the same results; to analyse (and judge) art is a subjective process. Beardsley and Wimsatt have stripped their argument of this notion when they talk about the analysis of art as a process in which somewhat objective truths about a given piece can be located – even without going beyond the boundaries of the piece itself.

A hypothetical counter-example to the validity of that notion could be a piece of art consisting of two vintage beer cans glued to a plate. Without any information about the piece, one could argue that it glamorises the use of alcohol in Western societies, since “it elevates such ordinary objects to a status of proposed appreciation” or a similar conclusion. Now, upon learning that the parents of the person who made it are both raging alcoholics, one might argue that the beer cans represent the parents “with their vintage character symbolising the cold cynicism of the older generation”. An altogether quite basic example, but one that should illustrate how knowledge of the person who made a piece of art will affect the analysis of it and thereby limit the range of likely answers as to why the piece was made.

Interestingly, Beardsley, as paraphrased by Stephen Davies, admits that “appropriate knowledge” of the “artistic and historical context” of a piece is necessary when approaching it,⁷³ highlighting that the argument of the intentional fallacy does not bear being taken to the tabula rasa point that it implicitly seems to argue for, thereby making the overall argument vague.

Kjørup, with whom there has been general agreement on this topic so far, continues the discussion by claiming that adhering to the intentionality approach automatically makes one think that the people who make the art must be more interesting than the art itself:

“The critic who wants to identify the artistic intention appears to contradict himself as he, on the one hand, claims that what is actually interesting would be the artists, while he, on the other hand, has to claim that artists are interesting because they have created interesting pieces.”⁷⁴

That might be putting too much weight on the artists, however. An intentionalist approach need not consider the people who made the art more interesting than the art itself. The point is, rather, that knowledge of whoever made a given piece of art is useful in trying to grasp that piece.

Kjørup asks, among several similarly phrased questions, if Goethe would not have been an equally interesting personality, had he not written Faust?⁷⁵ The answer is quite simple: He would not have been the same person. Whoever he was, he was someone who had to write, among other things, Faust, and that contributes to him being considered “an interesting personality”. So the question is logically absurd and thus unanswerable.

In a discussion of the topic of intentionality, Davies makes the following point:

“I think that anyone who defines art with reference to the artist’s intentions must believe also that artists’ intentions determine the interpretations, or the range of interpretations, proper to understanding and appreciating their works of art.”⁷⁶

There is agreement with this statement, at least when it comes to the understanding of a given piece. In terms of appreciating it, it is not considered “improper” here if an appreciation is different from or goes beyond the intended scope of the piece. But sticking to the core of Davies’ argument, it is agreed that there is a limit to what will be considered a “proper understanding” of a given piece. However strongly and convincingly one might argue for a given interpretation of the piece, if it does not correspond with the both conscious and subconscious intentions of the person who made it, it simply is not right or “proper”, but is, rather, an expression of a desire on the part of the person making the interpretation that the piece would be viewed in a certain way.

A final point to be discussed here is one made by David Favrholdt on failed intentions:

“Sometimes intentions are not fulfilled. A painter can have as a goal to paint a really good portrait of someone, but it is a failure. Sometimes the painter cannot see it himself, but others can. And what is to be said about a case, where an artist has an intention he cannot fulfil and therefore wishes to throw away the failed picture, but where his wife nevertheless submits it to an exhibition at Charlottenborg [a Danish exhibition venue] where it is accepted?”⁷⁷

The notion of failed, or unfulfilled, intentions is an interesting one, but the answer to Favrholdt’s question is fairly simple: Obviously “failure” is a subjective judgment. That the wife of the painter likes the painting and submits it to an exhibition that accepts it does not restructure the original intentions of the painter, nor his original distaste of the painting – although obviously he might grow a liking to it when he realizes that others like it. However, learning the story about the wife submitting it and his original distaste for it has the potential to change the view of it on the part of the recipient, but that is as far as it goes. As for Favrholdt’s first example, it falls apart because of the use of the term “a really good portrait”, which is of course not an objective term. If the painter considers the result a success while others consider it a failure, then nothing more has been exercised than the differing tastes of individuals, and to talk of “failed intentions” is certainly too much in this context. If he considers the result a failure himself, then that is what it technically is, but of course the term is bendable, and since he did manage to produce something, the result is not a “complete failure”, so theoretically speaking it is still art, whereas a “complete failure” – a failure to produce anything – would not be art.

3b. The reception and judgment of art

With the two first chapters dealing primarily with the creation of art, and the previous subchapter on intentionality serving as a transitional discussion, the focus now shifts to the reception and subsequent judgment of art.

To explain the view on reception of art in this thesis, attention is turned to hermeneutics, and specifically existential hermeneutics, as laid out by Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer.⁷⁸ As should already be clear, the reception of art (and everything else for that matter) is a subjective process, which is a central notion in existential hermeneutics. A reception process is at its core an interpretation process, and over the course of this brief overview, the terms “reception” and “interpretation” will be considered interchangeable without any loss of overall clarity. A discussion of the two terms will follow afterwards.

Essential in all interpretations is the fact that the subject who makes the interpretation will always have a pre-understanding of the object he is confronted with, in the sense that the lived life, the experiences, and the social and cultural position of the subject will always be crucial to the interpretation of the object. This pre-understanding cannot be switched on and off – it is always there, and the subject cannot detach himself from it, but he can be aware of it (to varying extent, of course). In the following quote, in which he explains the concept of “pre-understanding”, Gadamer focuses on a text, but naturally it applies to all other phenomena as well, including pieces of art, and even everyday life:

“He, who wishes to understand a text, always makes a draft of that understanding. A draft of the entire meaning of text emerges as soon as the first meaning reveals itself in the text. Such a meaning only appears because the text is read with certain expectations, in the direction of a certain meaning of it. The understanding of what the text says consists of making such a draft, which then of course is constantly revised on the basis of what appears through further uncovering of the meaning.”⁷⁹

Such a revision, in classic hermeneutic terms, is the parts correcting the understanding of the whole, the former being the actual experience and the latter being the overall understanding an individual has – of a text, of a phenomenon, or of life in general. Since a person never can be said to truly not experiencing something, this revision, when speaking of life in general, is constant, though some experiences lead to more significant revisions than others, of course. So, just as the understanding of the whole determines the understanding of the parts, the understanding of the parts affects the understanding of the whole – the process known as “the hermeneutic circle”, and a simple, but complete system of cognition; another example of how that which can be said at all can be said so clearly. There is no desire on the part of the subject to have the whole be important in the understanding of the parts and vice versa; it is simply how the system functions – for everyone, always.

This hermeneutic understanding of the reception of art is supported by Nelson Goodman, who describes the process in similar terms when saying that “we must interpret artworks and reconstruct the world from artworks and artworks from this world. Large parts of our experience and many of our skills must be involved and they are exposed to an undergoing of change in this encounter.”⁸⁰

According to Gadamer, to interpret is essentially to translate – from one format to another; from the original format to one that is easier to understand, but also significantly different. If, however, the original format is understood as it is, then the translation becomes unnecessary, but if it is not, then a translation must take place. Such a translation will, of course, always only be one version of a translation, and even a masterful translation will, according to Gadamer, always be “clearer and more flat than the original” since it will “lack some of the overtones that play a part in the original”⁸¹.

Every translation will then be insufficient in its attempt to grasp the given text (or piece of art, or phenomenon). The seemingly sufficient – or at least the best possible – comprehension can only happen through an understanding of the original format, which makes hermeneutics – interpretation – the second-best option, due to its insufficiency. But seeing as how an understanding of all original formats – or languages, or art forms, or phenomena – is not humanly possible, that serves as the very legitimisation of hermeneutics.

An understanding of an original format is not something that one either strictly does have or does not have – as with any such term in this thesis, it comes in different degrees. A mild version of such an understanding in the context of art could be to previously have seen a piece by the same person who made the piece one is currently confronted with. A more thorough understanding could be to have seen all pieces made by the given person, to have read both his autobiography and all publicly available interviews with him, to have visited his hometown, and perhaps even having met him several times in person. Another similarly thorough yet different understanding could come from having devoted one’s life to analysing not only the production of the person who made the given piece, but to the production of just about everyone within the same time period and genre.

Neither is actually thorough, but it seems evident that the potential of understanding the given piece right away – that is, without having to specifically interpret it – gets proportionally bigger along with the greater understanding of the context that the piece is a part of. The ability to understand a piece right away, however, is of course not equal to having an ability to state any definite truths about the given piece; but it does have the potential of increasing the credibility when providing the likely answers to the questions regarding the intentions behind the piece.

While this point about understanding the “original format” is helpful in trying to illustrate the varying degrees of understanding of the context in which a given piece resides, one must not forget the core observation of existential hermeneutics: That every interpretation is subjective and that it consists of parts that are understood through the whole, the understanding of which is revised through the understanding of the parts. It is with this simple system in mind that the following discussions of the reception and judgment of art will take place.

First of all, it should be made clear what is meant by the terms “reception” and “judgment”. “Reception” was replaced with “interpretation” in the above overview of hermeneutics, because a reception process is believed to be, at its core, an interpretation process. The connotations for the two words are different, though, and they highlight different aspects: “Reception” highlights the actual encounter, whereas “interpretation” highlights a more active decision, on the part of the subject, to make sense of the encounter. No reception is without at least a minimal aspect of trying to make initial sense of the encounter, and obviously no interpretation is possible without some form of encounter. (Hearing about a piece of art, seeing a picture of it or a television programme about it are also forms of encounter, and while of course not optimal ones, they have the potential to be sufficient for a discussion of the given piece.)

Although a reception can be viewed quite formalistically – that is, with a person viewing a piece of art in an undisturbed setting and thus being able to put his full intellect to work in trying to grasp the piece – it will not be regarded in that way here. Instead, a reception is considered to take place as soon as there is an awareness of the given piece, again having a term that is bendable in various degrees: Seeing a piece from afar and not spending more than a fleeting moment thinking about it is quite different from examining the piece up close for three hours, but both are forms of reception.

This reading of “perception” is closely tied together with the reading of “judgment”, which goes as follows: It is not (only) grandiloquent assessment of the qualities of a piece of art made by “experts”, but (also) what happens when any person to himself or someone else consciously or subconsciously states the direction in which the taste-based perception of a piece of art (or anything else) is going: The emergence of an awareness of how something corresponds with one’s taste.

A judgment falls into one of three major categories: Positive, negative – or indifferent. Phrased as statements, they could go like this: “I like it”, “I don’t like it” and “I don’t care about it”. Much emphasis has previously been placed on the first two categories, but here additional emphasis will be placed on the latter. As Davies points, out: “Many artworks are boring or, at best, evoke indifference.”⁸² This category deserves attention, because it is what essentially ensures that the institution of art is able to regulate itself, as explained in the end of the previous chapter.

It is also through the concept of “boring art” (that is, art that is considered boring by someone – not art that is universally boring) that an understanding of provocative art becomes clearer. Favrholdt argues strongly against provocative art, as already revealed in the first chapter. He talks about how provocative art has made “the screams become louder”⁸³, and he says that “the misery of provocation knows no boundaries” and states “that provocations in the long run only can lead to complete indifference towards them and perhaps even – unfortunately – an indifference towards contemporary art in general.”⁸⁴

A somewhat pessimistic take on the concept, but the cause of provocative art is seen as a result of – at least in Western culture – indifference being considered a worse outcome than a strictly negative reaction. First of all, because the negative reaction is naturally a stronger one and thus one that results in more attention being given to the person who made the given piece; an attention that could lead to notoriety and financial gain.

Second of all, because of the very fact that the given piece is able to make the recipient feel something, it must be because it touches upon something important. A reading that is in alignment with the following definition, as given by American musician David Crosby: “My definition of good art is: Does it makes you feel something? It can be anything. Triumph, fear, hate, anger, love – but if it makes you feel something, it’s good art.”⁸⁵ Without holding up Crosby to be anything more than one person with an interest in art, his view clearly shows that emotions generally considered negative – fear, hate, and anger – has the potential to be preferred over feeling nothing – over indifference.

This also illustrates how the terms “positive” and “negative” easily get clouded: Having a “negative” experience – one that leaves one feeling fearful, hateful or angry – can be considered a “positive” thing. That it is, in the end, a “positive” judgment, shows that the three main categories still hold up, although increased awareness of how a judgment ends up in what category is required. Goodman points out how focusing on “satisfaction” rather than “pleasure” can help out when the terms get clouded⁸⁶, to which there is agreement here – satisfaction, not least the intellectual kind, might emerge from an experience that is not specifically pleasant.

According to Favrholdt, “normal people prefer beauty over ugliness”, and he asks if any artworks exist “where the aesthetically ugly or even the disgusting and hideous would be the dominant trait”⁸⁷. Works by Paul McCarthy and Trent Reznor will serve here as obvious counter-examples to this rather peculiar claim – one that falls apart as soon as the concept of “normal people” is introduced, since it hints that one must be weird if one finds any joy in witnessing ugliness. “Ugly”, “disgusting” and “hideous” are of course evaluative terms, but in terms of Paul McCarthy, for example, his aesthetic approach appears to be one that directly operates with such terms, based on (at least) cultural conceptions of what is “ugly” and so forth.

Favrholdt has established a way of judging if a piece of art is good – or even art at all. There is no agreement whatsoever with the approach that is put forth, but a brief discussion of it will shed additional light on the position that is believed to be more reasonable.

Talking about the reception of art, Favrholdt states the following:

“When I look at an artwork [...] I experience it the way I experience it. Others can experience it differently. But what we are experiencing, the colours and structures, is something about the physically existing painting that we are experiencing. So we are experiencing the same thing, but in our own individual ways.”⁸⁸

A statement to which there is agreement here. But that is where, in this context at least, the agreement ends. To universally judge all kinds of art, Favrholdt lists ten parameters: Integration, diversity, technique, aesthetic beauty, human touch, repeatability, intellectual appeal, emotional appeal, other suggestive qualities, and the unspoken message (which great artworks tend to contain, according to Favrholdt).⁸⁹ Each of these is given a score between 1 and 10, but Favrholdt points out that the score numbers are somewhat arbitrary, and that they could be different ones.

To illustrate the use of the parameters, Favrholdt has chosen four artworks that he quite likes, and four that he strongly dislikes. In the first category are three paintings and a collage. They score between 44 and 60 points out of 90. (For some reason Favrholdt did not include repeatability in the scoring chart.) In the latter, there is a can of human excrement, dead pigs sown together, a television with a rock on top, and a photo with a group of persons, one of which is taking a leak. These score 3, 3, 2 and 2 points out of 90, respectively.⁹⁰

A rather conservative taste in art has been revealed, if not over the course of the previous pages of his book, then at least here. It would have been somewhat more interesting if Favrholdt had been able to pick a selection that could have been distributed more evenly over the entire scale, instead of simply having them clutter up in two groups. Then, perhaps, it would be possible to get a more sophisticated grasp of Favrholdt’s basis of judgment. As of now, it renders an image of someone who likes pictures within wooden frames, but much more passionately dislikes modern art.

The fact that the four latter pieces get a score of zero within so many of the parameters clearly illustrates that Favrholdt is unable to illustrate why there could be any interest in any of these four pieces, which there obviously has been. Overall, the usefulness of Favrholdt’s parameter-based way of judging art seems strictly limited to those with a similar taste to his – and even then the parameters basically only tell them what they are most likely already aware of.

One useful point can be derived from Favrholdt’s endeavour, though: That individuals might generally have similar parameters by which they judge art, although most likely less strictly and probably only metaphorically in most cases. That the selection of such parameters is different for every individual – that what is considered good art is a subjective judgment – is a main claim in this thesis, and it is what renders Favrholdt’s approach unhelpful. In other words: Art is not per definition “good”. Art can be the target of any range of judgments without losing its status as art; that is the view that is referred to in this thesis, when it is stated that “art” is not an evaluative term.

Dickie quotes two people, Ben Tilghman and Sebastian Gardner, who disagree with this point of view:

Tilghman: “To call something a work of art is to suggest it is worth contemplation.”⁹¹

Gardner: “It is simply a mistake to mistake the classificatory sense of art from the evaluative. [...] We do not first classify objects as art, and then discover that they happen to be aesthetically rewarding: conceptually, there is only one move here.”⁹²

Dickie, who does not consider “art” an evaluative term either, points out some of the obvious issues.⁹³ It might be easy, if one agrees with Tilghman and Gardner, to separate, say, a piece of driftwood from a painting, and thus say that one is not art, but the other is. However, when you have pieces in front of you that are more or less the same, although one is slightly more aesthetically appealing to you, how is the border between art and non-art then drawn? This is different from the argument about “indistinguishables”, as made famous by Arthur C. Danto⁹⁴ – these pieces are distinguishable, but in the same context, whereas Danto’s argument focuses on indistinguishable objects, but in different contexts. Tilghman and Gardner may have made a valid observation as to how some people use the term “art” in everyday language, but such a use is not considered valid in this context – rather, it is considered to express exactly a judgment of art; in fact that use is stating that something is “good art”, although technically the word “good” is left out. Also, that others use the term in a non-evaluative sense in everyday language is pointed out by Dickie when he says “the theory of art has to allow for a way for a way of talking about mediocre and bad art because people sometimes talk this way about some art.”⁹⁵ Evidently both uses of the term appear in everyday language, and since both cannot be right, the discussion here is one that seeks to argue why one use is correct while the other one is less so.

As Dickie also points out, which was already touched upon in the introduction: There is no valid answer as to what name should be given to that which is attempted art, but does not meet the requirements. “Works of failed art”, “works of nonart”, “art falsely so called”, “bad art”, “mediocre art”, “amusement art”, and “magic art” – examples listed by Dickie⁹⁶ – all make use of the term “art”, thus not semantically escaping the term they are trying to escape. Also, as Dickie points out⁹⁷, there is no satisfying term for the larger class of objects containing both the art and the failed art.

A notion by Danto struck Dickie as successful in pointing out the problem with evaluative uses of the term “art” and he states his agreement with Danto’s argument, to which there is also agreement here:

“Any term can normativized in this way, as when pointing to a certain handsaw we say ‘That’s what I call a handsaw’, meaning that the tool ranks high under the relevant norms. But it would seem queer for objects, which rank low under those norms, to be exiled from the domain of handsaws, and in general normativization must drop out of the concept, leaving a descriptive residue. It is with reference to this residue that works of art were tacitly held to be recognizable among and distinguishable from other things.”⁹⁸

An additional point that should serve to highlight the semantic invalidity of the evaluative use of the term: Every piece of art has the potential of causing both a positive and negative judgment of taste. There are, of course, pieces that are perceived to be magnificent by a broad audience, which could then be considered to be “great art”, just like there are pieces that lead to the opposite perception (though, obviously, pieces that barely anyone considers worth dealing with will often naturally remain in the shadow – as pointed out in the discussion of “indifference” and the institution of art regulating itself).

A majority ruling is not a philosophically valid claim, however. The fact that Mona Lisa draws the attention of vast masses every year does not once and for all settle that the painting is, in and of itself, a “good” piece of art. It is considered to be so by many people, but that is irrelevant. It might just as well spark a negative judgment of taste; one where the recipient is not particularly impressed with the motif, where the technical aspects simply do not appeal, or where the hype surrounding the piece severely affects the perception of it negatively. Or perhaps all of the three, or completely different reasons. Whoever likes it does not necessarily do so for one reason, either. Again, the motif, the technical mastery of the paint, the history surrounding the painting, the mass appeal, and so on – these are some of the basic reasons why people might consider Mona Lisa a good piece of art.

But the exact relation between an individual and any piece of art is unique. This creates a seemingly endless (though theoretically speaking it is finite) amount of relations between individuals and pieces of art. Every individual has his own subjective border between what is good art and what is not, and this should be embraced, rather than be semantically blurred by culturally biased visions of what “good art” is or should be.

However, to have any strict border between good and bad is a theoretical tool that has very little to do with the real world, where the vast middle section of indifference replaces the strict border. The whole discussion appears to be based on an idea that someone somewhere would actually be able to operate without any grey areas when it comes to taste. It seems obvious that mainly pieces of art that spark a somewhat strong emotion in either direction of the positive/negative scale are of interest in this context, which is of course convenient, since it makes it all that more easy to separate the two categories from each other, but the dichotomy, if it was to be considered valid, would have to be able to separate two pieces, having one just making it to the positive side of this theoretical border, and having the other one be on the negative side, as close to the border as possible. As argued, it seems unlikely that this would ever truly be possible in any general sense.

It has been argued as early as in the introduction, that while “art” as a term is not an evaluative one, but that the instances within it – pieces of art – are indeed evaluable, or else the concept of “good art” would make no sense. This is a point also made by Dickie, who states that “a work of art is not necessarily valuable in any particular degree but it is the kind of thing that is subject to evaluation”⁹⁹. He claims that not everything is subject to evaluation, giving the example of a predator – specifically a shark – killing its prey and how that is not subject to moral evaluation. First of all, it might be too much to say that there is not some person somewhere who would claim that the shark is “evil” for killing the “innocent prey”. Second of all, even if it is not subject to moral evaluation, the action itself can be subject to, for instance, aesthetic evaluation – someone might comment on how “beautiful” or “horrific” it was to witness the action – and a biologist might evaluate it in all kinds of scientific terms; evaluating the mode of attack, the choice of prey, the physiological appearance of the shark, and so forth. Overall, it seems as if everything can always be evaluated in some way or other, and in this context it is important to point out that a given piece of art cannot only be judged – or evaluated – aesthetically, but also, for instance, technically, historically, anthropologically, psychologically, biologically, or in some other way. The point is to differentiate between the term “art” and the instance of art. The term “car” is not evaluative either, but a car is obviously subject to evaluation – also in several ways, and at least aesthetically and technically. “Masterpiece” and “dream car” are examples of terms that are indeed evaluative in the sense that they go beyond logic classification to point out that they are instances that rank highly within the concepts outlined by the non-evaluative terms.

Shifting focus to the actual judgment of art, obviously a more or less infinite amount of factors are at play, and what an individual thinks of a given piece is dependent on the lived life of that individual – with the piece being the “part” and the life being the “whole” in hermeneutic terms. Although cultural analysts can divide a population into age groups and consumer segments and thereby predict to some extent what collectives are likely to find a liking to, such predictions do not work on the level of the individual. With the definition of art given in this thesis and the concept of purity in mind – the degree to which the creativity that leads to a piece of art is pure, in the sense that it can be controlled by motives that go beyond the creative act itself – it will be claimed that this concept of purity, in some form or another, affects the reception of art, or at least has the potential to do so.

The discussion of “purity” can take on many forms. It can, indeed, be one about the commercial aspect – whether the given piece is motivated by a desire to make money; the political aspect – whether it is made to fit a certain political agenda; the social aspect – whether the person who made the piece appears to be trying to please others so that he will fit in with them; and so on and so forth. A core concept is authenticity: Having a sense of whether or not the person is acting according to his own desires and beliefs and thus appearing authentic.

There is no guarantee, however, that any special attention is paid to the purity of the given piece of art. Realistically, many people probably do not consciously care about such an aspect at all. So, the sole claim in this context is that if attention is paid and the recipient perceives the given piece to be “impure” (whether it technically is or not – a piece might have commercial motives projected onto it by a recipient even though such motives did not exist), then that will affect the reception negatively.

Finally, the focus will shift to a claim about the reception of art made by Goodman. He says that the involved emotions in the reception of art – what he calls “an aesthetic experience” – compared to those involved in “a real battle or a painful loss, a defeat or a victory” are “toned down or indirect”¹⁰⁰.

Generally speaking, then yes, Goodman is believed to be right – there are typically stronger emotions involved in actually, say, losing someone than in watching someone lose someone in a movie, reading about it in a book, hearing about it in a song, or wherever one might encounter such a narrative in art. Nevertheless, the potential of being emotionally blown away by art does exist, and that it might not be as frequent an experience is irrelevant.

With the reception of art being an encounter between the given piece and the life experiences of the recipient, there is no reason to believe that a person cannot have an experience with art that puts especially happy or painful experiences in a perspective that causes a strong emotional reaction, which matches or is even stronger than the one that emerged when the actual experience was had. Perhaps the person has been in denial, has tried to suppress the experience, or has felt alone with the experience, and then, upon encountering the artistic representation of a corresponding experience, the emotional outburst happens – in a very direct way, not in a “toned down or indirect” way.

This is how things might happen; the potential is there.

Proceed to Chapter 4: The Challenges of Art