A scientific approach to art appreciation seeks to uncover general truths about our engagement with art, not just characterizations of particular responses to unique works. Many studies in so-called empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics seem to purchase such generalizations about art at the great explanatory cost of ignoring both its historical dimensions and its radical variability beyond a very narrow range of canonical but hardly representative examples. The welcome development in Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) framework is the recognition that a feature that, arguably, all art does share, artifactuality (Davies Reference Davies1991a), imposes certain requirements of historical awareness on the exercise of art appreciation. However, there are two lacunae in B&R's characterization of the conditions governing artistic appreciation. I will discuss these in turn.
First, the authors must more clearly distinguish among two relevantly different kinds of appreciation – understanding and evaluation – that may vary as a function of appreciators' sensitivity to art-historical contexts. In some places, B&R refer to understanding and appreciation as distinct, yet equally historically informed, kinds of responses. In other places, they identify understanding as one constituent of appreciation alongside another constituent that is, broadly speaking, evaluative: that which is indicated in, for example, emotional responses and expressions of preference and pleasure. However, understanding and evaluation need to be disentangled and their relations of dependence identified for it to be clear that different studies of artistic appreciation are addressing the same thing. Prima facie, artistic understanding is a precondition of artistic evaluation, even if the two approaches proceed simultaneously.
For the identifying operations constitutive of understanding a work (such as recognizing its functions and discerning its meaning and expression) are required for the evaluative appreciation of the work to be made in light of the properties it has qua art. Whether, for example, the cheap hardware-store paint used by the abstract expressionist Franz Kline is, as such, a thematic element in his compositions – expressing hostility to the refinement and preciousness of other traditions – or only the medium he happened to employ, is a determination necessarily prior to any evaluation based on that feature of his canvases. Of course, one's ordinary awareness of the genre or category to which a work belongs can often serve as a proxy for such identification. For placing a work within a given category – such as still life, pop art, royal portrait, detective story, and so on – reflects an implicit explanatory commitment to certain kind-specific conventions and regulative ideals having been recognized by the artist in creating the work.
Second, although they eschew the normative mode of appreciation that they identify with art criticism and the comparative assessment of art, B&R need some such characterization, as found in Budd (Reference Budd1995), of what kinds of responses, under what conditions, count as competent exercises of appreciation. Such a normative conception is required to distinguish the appreciation of art qua art from appreciation of it from artistically irrelevant points of view. According to a normative account of appreciation, an artistic evaluation can be distinguished from a mere liking or preferring by being answerable to reasons. We challenge, revise, and approve of artistic judgments on the basis of reasons that speak to facts about a work of art that ground those judgments, for example, facts about its appearance, effects on suitably qualified audiences, satisfied functions, and relations to other works. Of course, appreciators often cannot cite reasons in support of their responses, but those responses – for example, emotional expressions – may correctly pick up on artistically relevant features of a work that are, in principle, identifiable.
No doubt, different theories of artistic value propose competing accounts of what considerations are relevant in judging art qua art. However, not just anything goes. That a work has great monetary value or is preferred by others in one's social milieu are not, in themselves, appropriate reasons supporting an artistic evaluation. Without a normative account specifying the proper conditions under which artistic appreciation is exemplified, the psycho-historical framework may count spurious forms of appreciation as genuine. Such spurious appreciation is made especially vivid in the demonstration that subjects tend to attribute a higher valuation to works that they are more familiar with (Cutting Reference Cutting, Locher, Martindale and Dorfmann2006) but the appreciation of art in light of features irrelevant to artistic value is widely exhibited. Kruger et al. (Reference Kruger, Wirtz, Van and Altermatt2004) provide evidence that appreciators use an effort heuristic to rate the quality of artworks. This, as B&R note, reflects the design stance that is requisite for artistic appreciation. However, that sensitivity to effort is mistaken or distorting in response to many works, such as the appropriation art of Sherrie Levine or Richard Prince, for which effort in the physical or creative sense is neither evident nor intended to be. Likewise, pleasure felt before a work is often a good guide to its artistic or aesthetic value (hence its use as a measure of appreciation); however, it can often instantiate a failure of proper response. For some works of art (such as the disgusting and rebarbative performances of the Vienna Actionists) may be designed to cause one a feeling of distress, without any compensatory pleasure. Moreover, in the case of many works, such as conceptual art and art that aims for cognitive or moral enlightenment, it may be a mistake to assume that their artistic value is always or only a hedonic dimension intrinsic to our experience of them. The merits of such works may not be appropriately characterized in an experiential sense (Gilmore Reference Gilmore2011).
B&R may propose that a robust adoption of the design stance in the above cases would guide appreciators toward discerning the appropriate bases for their evaluations. However, just because that stance might show that a work of art realizes some sought-after value or satisfies some intended function does not entail that it should be evaluated for that value or function. No scientific account of artistic appreciation can do without a normative conception of when a response to a work of art is properly grounded in features of the work that merit that response.
A scientific approach to art appreciation seeks to uncover general truths about our engagement with art, not just characterizations of particular responses to unique works. Many studies in so-called empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics seem to purchase such generalizations about art at the great explanatory cost of ignoring both its historical dimensions and its radical variability beyond a very narrow range of canonical but hardly representative examples. The welcome development in Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) framework is the recognition that a feature that, arguably, all art does share, artifactuality (Davies Reference Davies1991a), imposes certain requirements of historical awareness on the exercise of art appreciation. However, there are two lacunae in B&R's characterization of the conditions governing artistic appreciation. I will discuss these in turn.
First, the authors must more clearly distinguish among two relevantly different kinds of appreciation – understanding and evaluation – that may vary as a function of appreciators' sensitivity to art-historical contexts. In some places, B&R refer to understanding and appreciation as distinct, yet equally historically informed, kinds of responses. In other places, they identify understanding as one constituent of appreciation alongside another constituent that is, broadly speaking, evaluative: that which is indicated in, for example, emotional responses and expressions of preference and pleasure. However, understanding and evaluation need to be disentangled and their relations of dependence identified for it to be clear that different studies of artistic appreciation are addressing the same thing. Prima facie, artistic understanding is a precondition of artistic evaluation, even if the two approaches proceed simultaneously.
For the identifying operations constitutive of understanding a work (such as recognizing its functions and discerning its meaning and expression) are required for the evaluative appreciation of the work to be made in light of the properties it has qua art. Whether, for example, the cheap hardware-store paint used by the abstract expressionist Franz Kline is, as such, a thematic element in his compositions – expressing hostility to the refinement and preciousness of other traditions – or only the medium he happened to employ, is a determination necessarily prior to any evaluation based on that feature of his canvases. Of course, one's ordinary awareness of the genre or category to which a work belongs can often serve as a proxy for such identification. For placing a work within a given category – such as still life, pop art, royal portrait, detective story, and so on – reflects an implicit explanatory commitment to certain kind-specific conventions and regulative ideals having been recognized by the artist in creating the work.
Second, although they eschew the normative mode of appreciation that they identify with art criticism and the comparative assessment of art, B&R need some such characterization, as found in Budd (Reference Budd1995), of what kinds of responses, under what conditions, count as competent exercises of appreciation. Such a normative conception is required to distinguish the appreciation of art qua art from appreciation of it from artistically irrelevant points of view. According to a normative account of appreciation, an artistic evaluation can be distinguished from a mere liking or preferring by being answerable to reasons. We challenge, revise, and approve of artistic judgments on the basis of reasons that speak to facts about a work of art that ground those judgments, for example, facts about its appearance, effects on suitably qualified audiences, satisfied functions, and relations to other works. Of course, appreciators often cannot cite reasons in support of their responses, but those responses – for example, emotional expressions – may correctly pick up on artistically relevant features of a work that are, in principle, identifiable.
No doubt, different theories of artistic value propose competing accounts of what considerations are relevant in judging art qua art. However, not just anything goes. That a work has great monetary value or is preferred by others in one's social milieu are not, in themselves, appropriate reasons supporting an artistic evaluation. Without a normative account specifying the proper conditions under which artistic appreciation is exemplified, the psycho-historical framework may count spurious forms of appreciation as genuine. Such spurious appreciation is made especially vivid in the demonstration that subjects tend to attribute a higher valuation to works that they are more familiar with (Cutting Reference Cutting, Locher, Martindale and Dorfmann2006) but the appreciation of art in light of features irrelevant to artistic value is widely exhibited. Kruger et al. (Reference Kruger, Wirtz, Van and Altermatt2004) provide evidence that appreciators use an effort heuristic to rate the quality of artworks. This, as B&R note, reflects the design stance that is requisite for artistic appreciation. However, that sensitivity to effort is mistaken or distorting in response to many works, such as the appropriation art of Sherrie Levine or Richard Prince, for which effort in the physical or creative sense is neither evident nor intended to be. Likewise, pleasure felt before a work is often a good guide to its artistic or aesthetic value (hence its use as a measure of appreciation); however, it can often instantiate a failure of proper response. For some works of art (such as the disgusting and rebarbative performances of the Vienna Actionists) may be designed to cause one a feeling of distress, without any compensatory pleasure. Moreover, in the case of many works, such as conceptual art and art that aims for cognitive or moral enlightenment, it may be a mistake to assume that their artistic value is always or only a hedonic dimension intrinsic to our experience of them. The merits of such works may not be appropriately characterized in an experiential sense (Gilmore Reference Gilmore2011).
B&R may propose that a robust adoption of the design stance in the above cases would guide appreciators toward discerning the appropriate bases for their evaluations. However, just because that stance might show that a work of art realizes some sought-after value or satisfies some intended function does not entail that it should be evaluated for that value or function. No scientific account of artistic appreciation can do without a normative conception of when a response to a work of art is properly grounded in features of the work that merit that response.