Despite trying I have never found a satisfactory definition of Art that would encompass elements that are both necessary and sufficient and to which no exception can be found. Until the last 150 years most definitions were based in some concept of beauty or other aesthetic value, but such definitions have been abandoned in large part due to so called ready-mades, the most famous of which is Duchamp’s Fountain, and to Warhol’s pop art Brillo Boxes, which have gained entry into the western artistic canon. In the 1960’s Arthur Danto, a philosophy professor at Columbia University and, for many years the art critic of The Nation, put forward a notion that Art is what the so called Art World says it is, which became known as the institutional theory of art. The Art World are the taste makers, gallerists, museum curators, critics. It is the rare collector who will plunk down large sums of money to buy a work of art without it having the imprimatur of a respected gallerist or critic. Some have criticized the institutional definition of art as circular reasoning: Art is art because I say it is art.
Also, because the institutional theory of what defines some work as art relies on value judgements, the definition is fungible, in that future leaders of the Art World will change what they deem worthy and could, at least in principle, remove a work from what would be considered art, although I am not sure this has ever happened. Old works are simply enshrined in museums and private collections. The set of things that are considered Art is continually expanding.
Duchamp’s fountain
Danto wrote several volumes formulating, refining and explaining a philosophy of art that led him to what he considered a valid definition. His reworked definition, in brief, defined a piece of art as any object created with intellectual intent, explicit or implied, such that the piece is imbued with some meaning because it is purposefully created. The meaning may or may not be easily stated in words, but it is inherent in a piece of art. The definition is devoid of any aesthetic consideration. Duchamp entered his Fountain for an exhibition (it was rejected by the Art World of the time) in which he was debunking the notion that art must be beautiful and that anything found can be made into something artistic. Warhol’s Brillo Boxes formed a statement about commercialism and visual marketing. A pile of newspapers that I once saw in the San Francisco MOMA was making a statement about the accumulated burden of news that may end up as insignificant trash whereas a similar pile in my house was simply fodder for the recycle bin. The Fountain, the Brillo Boxes, MOMA’s pile of newsprint had a significance beyond the objects themselves. My pile of perused editions of the New York Times did not. I thought Danto’s definition was a pretty good one.
Danto was not trying to differentiate good versus bad art and he allows that both would fit his definition. Value judgements are left to the critics and the monetary value is left to gallerists, auctioneers and those people who are willing to pay for a piece. Just like a house, a piece of art, good or bad, is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.
I recently saw a report that presents a challenge to Danto’s definition. Earlier this month the New York Times, and other publications, reported that a picture generated solely by artificial intelligence had won a prize at Colorado’s State Fair in the category of Emerging Digital Artists. There are several publicly available programs that allow anyone to “create” a piece of art simply by entering a few key words. The program will then search a vast pictorial data base and assemble something that can be printed, exhibited on a computer, hung on a wall or sold as an NFT. One can even specify a style that the program will attempt to mimic, such as impressionism or realism. It is difficult if not impossible to ascribe intellectual intent to what an AI program generates. Just by entering a few seed words into a computer program does not imbue the output with intent and meaning since there is no direct control over what a program generates. But wait, isn’t a piece generated by an inanimate program art, just like a ready-made piece is? I think not. Ready-mades are assembled and presented by an autonomous person who essentially transforms a common object into something different from what it was by taking the object out of its usual context and giving it a new significance. Similarly, while Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings embody a large element of chance and lack of control, he at least could pick the colors, the texture of paint and where to drip or where to splash, all to display color and texture in a non-representational indication of the artist’s intentions.
Ultimately it will come back to what the Art World decides. If AI generated art makes it into the galleries of Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, Zwirner or others it will be bought, made valuable and it will enter the realm of Art and the person who types a few seed words will be, by fiat, an artist. If an AI piece is hung in the New York MOMA or Tate Modern it will enter the highest echelons of worthiness, at least for the moment. Whether it is good or bad art will be left to you, but it is and always will be the Art World, not the philosopher, who will decide what Art is. AI is not going away and I bet someone in the Art World will accept it and promote it, as there will be money and new reputations to be made.
You caught the tail of the tiger with the word "meaning," Rick. Art is art because of its meaning, and there is no "meaning" for AI, at least in the sense of meaning as nature intended, "red in tooth and claw" (to quote Tennyson). The proximity of the human to his or her art is what matters to me. GPT4 is a crutch, a brilliant imitative crutch, that can fuse schools of art at a human's whim to produce something apparently "new." But it is neither new nor felt. Art derives directly from human meaning in its peculiar uniqueness and nothing else. There may be beauty that hails from other sources (a natural bridge or a nebula), but that is not human art.
So, is art is like poetry in both standing on its own but allowing a great deal of subjectivity?