Introduction: Is it possible to define visual art empirically? 

The whole science of aesthetics fails to do what we might expect from it, being a mental activity calling itself a science; namely it does not define the qualities and laws of art. (Tolstoy 1977:61)

                                                  Introduction 

Evolutionary biologists, who know how important definitions are, do not always feel obligated to precisely or objectively define terms they are using, particularly if those terms refer to human behaviors. Richard Alexander (2001: 5), one of the best of the evolutionary scholars, wrote: “I am deliberately vague or imprecise in my usage of a term like ‘culture’ and ‘the arts’ because I wish to err on the side of inclusiveness.” Poets and philosophers are known to claim that the arts "are too intangible and changing to be defined or classified" (Munro 1949"5), 

Making the issue of identifying what art is more complex is the fact that anthropologists are known to claim that indigenous and other non-westernized people have no word for art. “It is almost a cliché (perhaps a little too unexamined),” Murphy (1994) wrote, “to remark that there is no word for art in the language of this or that people” (p. 650-651). Whether or not those people produced objects that closely resemble what we call "art" is apparently irrelevant. 

Making the problem of defining art even more difficult is the fact that the term art is used to refer to so many things -  the art of war, the art of cooking, the art of medicine. These, however, may be mere metaphorical extensions of an implicit definition. 

Three things that we need to try to explain here are (1) is it true that some people don't have a work for art and, if so, do they not produce anything that resembles what we call art? (2) why is it said to be so difficult to define art and (3) Is it possible to propose a definition of art that s more inclusive - that includes both westernized and non-westernized (e.g., indigenous) art and that allows for empirical study.  

The first problem we might not solve to anyone's satisfaction (including mine), but it seems clear that even through people may not have a word for art, they do produce objects that not only resemble what we call art, but that have had an influence on westernized artists. French artists - Matisse, Picasso, were influenced by indigenous art. It only makes sense that indigenous art now is classified by some art historians as a form of contemporary art. 

The second issue is related to the influence that art critics and historians have had. For  decades, they  have written and talked (seemingly endlessly) about the so called aesthetic emotion, an emotion (poorly defined) said to be aroused by viewing and presumably making art.  X is art IFF it arouses a specific emotion (in certain people). If we focus solely on visual art (or the plastic arts), prehistorians have faced a conundrum - there is no way to know if prehistoric art aroused an aesthetic emotion.  The way prehistorians solved this is by saying that art was an inappropriate term to use for objects found in the prehistoric or ethnographic record (see Conkey 1983, 1993; Soffer 1997; Tomásková 1997; White 1992).  We cannot assume, scholars argue, that the primary function of either prehistoric or ethnographic art was or is aesthetic. This is especially true if indigenous people have no term for aesthetic emotion.  So, even though prehistoric "whatever" was referred to for decades as "art," it no longer was art.

In sum, one reason scholars have been unable to define art is that they have focused on an emotion, the so called aesthetic emotion  that indigenous people, if asked about the aesthetic emotion, would just be bewildered. I think the problem is that the term initially was used by art critics and historians to classify art they liked (good or fine art) from art that they dismissed (e.g., non art, bad art, or craft).  Instead of focusing on something like mastery of technique, which most people, regardless of their status, are able to identify, they focused on an elusive emotion said to be aroused only by certain art produced in westernized societies. 

In regard to the third problem, the definition of the term "art", we will not solve that problem here in this blog post. However, to begin, the term art has ancient roots and at the beginning it was an inclusive term. It perhaps came from the Sanskrit word for "making" (Duchamp, cited in Cabanne 1971:16). Later, the Latin word ars meant a craft or specialized form of skill (Munro 1949). Throughout the Middle Ages artists were classified as craftsmen who controlled particular techniques. It was in the 16th century that "artists" came to be distinguished from craftsmen and credited with possessing a particular, individualistic genius that aroused, in the viewer, an aesthetic emotion - an emotion that was not aroused by crafts. It is no accident that it was at this time that the first truly influential art historian, Giorgio Vasari, appeared. His book, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects opened the door to discussions of good art (i.e.., fine art) versus craft. In the 18th century the word aesthetic was coined by Alexander Baumgarten. The root of the word was the Greek word, aisthetikos, which referred to perception of the senses. He used the word that to refer to what he found to be beautiful and what he identified as beauty was perfection. Beauty was something we could perceive and respond to. 

Visual art, in other words, has not always had conceptual attachments to aesthetics, beauty, or emotion. While we can respond to beauty in nature, that does not mean that nature is art or that our emotion is an aesthetic one. That emotion is aroused only by fine art.

Classificatory Definitions

A classificatory definition merely asks whether or not something is or is not a work of art. According to Dickie (1971:41) a classificatory definition attempts to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions needed for something to be a work of art. A  necessary condition for being an X is a characteristic why any object must have in order to  be an X. A sufficient condition of an X is a characteristic which, if that object has that characteristic, it is an X.  Similarly, Socrates argued that if we examine a word's various usage, we will find some element that the common to all of those usages, but not to other things. We then will be able to isolate the element that is the essence of things (McEvilley 1992: 166). To ensure that our classificatory definition is also a scientific one we need to add the requirement that the necessary and/or sufficient qualities must be empirically verifiable. We next will continue that search for a classificatory definition. 

It may seem irrelevant to define art (or any term for that matter); however, unless we have a definition of visual art how can we study it scientifically? How can we know if it is a behavior found solely in certain elite groups of people in westernized societies. How might be identify any possible function? How can we answer the question posed by Plato and Socrates over two thousand years ago: what role does art play "in the well ordered state"?