Art and its Objects
Art and its Objects
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DOI：
10.2307/430358
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发表时间：
1968
影响因子：
19.9
通讯作者：
R. Wollheim
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Wollheim
1 “什么是艺术？” “艺术是艺术作品的总和或总体。” “什么是艺术作品？” “艺术作品是一首诗、一幅画、一首音乐、一件雕塑、一部小说。 ……”“什么是诗？一幅画？一首音乐？雕塑？一本小说？ ……”“一首诗是……，一幅画是……，一首音乐是……”一座雕塑是……“一本小说是……”我们很自然地会认为，只要我们能够填补这段对话最后一行的空白，我们就应该找到人类文化中最难以捉摸的传统问题之一的答案：艺术的本质。当然，这里的假设是，正如我们上面所说的那样，对话是必然的。目前，我将继续假设这一点。 2 然而，有人可能会反对说，即使我们能够成功地填补本次对话结束时的空白，我们仍然无法对传统问题找到答案，至少正如传统上所希望的那样。因为这个问题一直需要一个统一的答案，一个“艺术是……”形式的答案；而我们现在所能希望的最好的结果就是找到多种答案，就像我们最初区分的艺术或媒体一样多。如果现在有人反驳说，通过将所有特定的答案放在一个大的析取中，我们总能从我们当时拥有的东西中得到一个统一的答案，那么这就没有抓住要点。因为传统的要求肯定（如果不是总是明确地）旨在通过具有这种程度的复杂性的答案来排除任何事物：准确地说，“单一”一词的使用是为了表明，不想要的是任何形式为“艺术是（无论一首诗是什么），或（无论一幅画是什么），或……”的东西。 对于艺术或不同的艺术，除了高度复杂的艺术概念之外，我们必须放弃对任何事物的希望吗？
1 ‘What is art?’ ‘Art is the sum or totality of works of art.’ ‘What is a work of art?’ ‘A work of art is a poem, a painting, a piece of music, a sculpture, a novel. …’ ‘What is a poem? a painting? a piece of music? a sculpture? a novel? …’ ‘A poem is …, a painting is …, a piece of music is …’ a sculpture is …‘ a novel is …’ It would be natural to assume that, if only we could fill in the gaps in the last line of this dialogue, we should have an answer to one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture: the nature of art. The assumption here is, of course, that the dialogue, as we have it above, is consequential. This is something that, for the present, I shall continue to assume. 2 It might, however, be objected that, even if we could succeed in filling in the gaps on which this dialogue ends, we should still not have an answer to the traditional question, at any rate as this has been traditionally intended. For that question has always been a demand for a unitary answer, an answer of the form ‘Art is …’; whereas the best we could now hope for is a plurality of answers, as many indeed as the arts or media that we initially distinguish. And if it is now countered that we could always get a unitary answer out of what we would then have, by putting together all the particular answers into one big disjunction, this misses the point. For the traditional demand was certainly, if not always explicitly, intended to exclude anything by way of an answer that had this degree of complexity: precisely the use of the word ‘unitary’ is to show that what is not wanted is anything of the form ‘Art is (whatever a poem is), or (whatever a painting is), or …’ But why should it be assumed, as it now appears to be, that, if we think of Art as being essentially explicable in terms of different kinds of work of art or different arts, we must abandon hope of anything except a highly complex conception of Art?