Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that discusses art and aesthetic experience. Starting with Aristotle’s theory of imitation, various theories have explored the nature and definition of art, including Romanticism, representationalism, formalism, art undefinability, and institutionalism. These philosophical discussions have a profound impact on the creation, evaluation, and appreciation of art.
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that discusses concepts and theories about art and aesthetic experience, and the question of defining art is an important one. The history of aesthetics reveals a variety of approaches to understanding the nature and value of art. In the early days, Aristotle’s mimetic theory, which saw art as imitating nature, was dominant. In his Poetics, Aristotle saw art as a way for humans to understand and experience the world, and argued that through imitation, we can achieve emotional purification. This theory of imitation is premised on the transparency theory of representation, which states that the object and its representation should resemble each other.
However, Romanticism, which emerged at the end of the 18th century, led to the decline of mimeticism by allowing artists to express original emotions and distorted representations. Romanticism emphasized the importance of the artist’s subjective experience and inner feelings as a creative act that goes beyond mere reproduction. Art was no longer perceived as a mere imitation of nature, but as an original work of art that revealed the artist’s personality and creativity. This led to the need for a new theory to recognize Romantic art as art that did not require imitation as a prerequisite.
In the early 20th century, Collingwood proposed a theory of representation that defined art as the sincere ideas or feelings of the artist. He argued that a true work of art is a mental object that does not need to be constructed from physical materials. Collingwood believed that art is not simply an imitation of the outside world, but a process of expressing emotions that come from within the artist, and through which the viewer gains empathy and understanding. Around the same time, a formalism developed that emphasized the inherent form of the work itself. Bell’s formalism viewed art as a work that evokes aesthetic emotions through an undefinable “meaningful form” that only art-savvy critics could intuitively identify and define.
In the mid-20th century, when Duchamp’s toilet was recognized as a work of art, and it became impossible to explain why an ordinary toilet with no formal difference from it was not recognized as art, two counter-theories emerged. The first is Waits’ Undefinable Art Theory, which argues that art, theater, literature, music, etc. are so disparate from each other that there is no common element that unites them, making it impossible to define art. Weitz represents the view that existing theories about the definition of art are pseudo-propositions that take the form of apparent propositions, but are actually false propositions that cannot be determined to be true or false, making the discussion of the definition of art unnecessary.
The second is Dickey’s institutional theory. This defines a work of art as an artifact that has been qualified as a candidate for appreciation by people who belong to a social institution called the art world. Dickey’s view is a categorical theory that says that anything that goes through certain procedures and conventions can be considered a work of art. According to institutional theory, a work of art is defined within an institutional framework formed by the interaction of various social actors, such as artists, critics, and viewers. It suggests that art is inherently a social construct, and that its definition is not fixed, but is subject to changing social and cultural contexts.
These discussions are an attempt to find a common essence among works of art and to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions of art. These philosophical debates about the definition of art are not just of academic interest, but also have a profound impact on the actual practice and appreciation of art. Attempts to identify the nature of art play an important role in understanding what artists should strive for in their creative endeavors, what criteria critics should apply when evaluating works, and what attitudes audiences should have when viewing art. Therefore, philosophical inquiry into the definition of art is an essential part of deepening our understanding of various aspects of art and exploring the nature of human experience through art.
