Miller is much better here. He is more interesting and smarter
because he raises questions from the content instead of attaching
his (usually pejorative) judgments up front.
I've always liked Weitz because he seemed to explain Wittgenstein
(in terms of art) better than others. But I need to agree that
just because "a family resemblance" cannot be pinned down to an
explicit common feature or concept does not mean that the concept
has already been fully examined or defined. We can't sidestep the
issue by saying there are open and closed concepts. We can't be
sure that a concept is closed but we are always right when we say a
concept is open. I agree that nothing (in art) has been fully
explicated. I turn again to a master of such thinking among
artists, E. Delacroix: "That which has been done has not yet been
done enough".
So why not just admit that the art concept is always open? Why not
admit that the "family resemblance" is always an evolving one --
like nature, remoter genes are reduced to near zero, if not zero,
and newer ones seem all new -- or as with metamorphosis, a real
change occurs. One can imagine a cluster of "closed concepts"
within an ever expanding "open concept".
Follow nature. Here's another quote from Renoir: "Take your
theories (of art) to Nature and she knocks them all flat".
wc
________________________________
From: Chris Miller <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2009 8:55:40 AM
Subject: Reading Kivy: Chapter Two - Wittgenstein and Weitz
"A concept is open if its conditions of application are emendable and
corrigable; i.e. if a situation or case can be imagined or secured
which would
call for some sort of decision on our part to extend the use of the
concept to
cover this, or to close the concept and invent a new one to deal
with the new
case and its new property. If necessary and sufficient conditions
for the
application of a concept can be stated, the concept is a closed one"
(Morris Weitz - following Wittgenstein's "Philosophical
Investigations")
""Art" is an open concept . New conditions (cases) have constantly
arisen and
will undoubtedly arise; new art forms, new movements will emerge,
which will
demand decisions on the part of those interested, usually
professional critics, as to whether the concept should be extended
or not"
(Morris Weitz)
"The primary task of aesthetics is not to seek a theory but to
elucidate the
concept of art. Specifically, it is to describe the conditions
under which we
employ the concept correctly. Definitions, reconstruction,
patterns of
analysis
are out of place here since they distort and add nothing to our
understanding
of art" (Morris Weitz)
..........
.
.......
........
Kivy first notes that Weitz has not clarified whether his claim is
epistemic
(what we know) or ontological (what really is) I.e, "it might well
be that we
tell whether something is a work of art by noting family
resemblances (the
epistemic claim) even though, in fact, what makes it a work of art
is some
(unknown) property common to all artworks (the ontological claim)"
Kivy suggest that Weitz has acknowledged this oversight, but In
either case,
the Wittgensteinian student of aesthetics will be "looking for the
elusive
common property" - "noting family resemblances to paradigm cases" to
continually modify the cluster concept being assembled.
And then Kivy, with no further explanation, suggests "my advice to
the
Wittgensteinian, then, would be the same as to the traditional
theorists: give
resemblance a rest. My theme is differences"
Perhaps realizing that this advice is a bit irrelevant, Kivy then
launches
into a sharper attack -- noting that "The Wittgensteinian move in the
philosophy of art was never a popular one, and at the present it is
not a
going concern"
Unfortunately, as with his dismissal of Schopenhauer, Kivy seems to
once again
accept that the popular reception of a philosophy as the final
word on its
value.
But to apply the coup de grace, he finally adds "There is a
simpler, less
philosophically expansive reason why I reject the Wittgensteinian
model for
art. It is simply that the only argument for its being a proper
model is a
bad argument"
And that "bad argument" is that any traditional definition
"forecloses on the
very conditions of creativity in the arts"
Why is this a bad argument?
Because "even if (say) representation were a necessary condition
for an art,
it could hardly foreclose on "originality" or "creativity", since
both (and I
assume that they are not synonymous) can be exhibited with the
constraints
of
representation and, as far as I can tell, can continue to be
exhibited ad
infinitum: there are infinite changes to be rung on the theme of
"representation""
(BTW - those who claim that representation has already
accomplished all that
it ever could would not agree with this assertion -- but I do - and
I would
take it even further, and say that originality and creativity can
be exhibited
ad infinitum within every specific style: Impressionism, Chinese
landscape,
Russian icons, etc)
Kivy then notes that Weitz , possibly realizing that he goofed, has
somewhat
retreated from his "bad argument" by dropping the word
"creativity" from his
subsequent statement in 1977:
"My argument against theories of art was (and is) that any attempt
to state
