What Makes a Kind an Art-kind?. (6th August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Xhignesse, Michel-Antoine
• Is Part Of: British journal of aesthetics. Volume 60:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 471
• Page End: 488
• Publication Date: 2020-08-06
• Subjects: Aesthetics -- Periodicals; 111.85
• DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayaa027
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0007-0904

Abstract

Abstract: The premise that every work belongs to an art-kind has recently inspired a kind-centred approach to theories of art. Kind-centred analyses posit that we should abandon the project of giving a general theory of art and focus instead on giving theories of the arts. The main difficulty, however, is to explain what makes a given kind an art-kind in the first place. Kind-centred theorists have passed this buck on to appreciative practices, but this move proves unsatisfactory. I argue that the root of this dissatisfaction stems not from the act of kicking the can down the road, but from not kicking it far enough. The missing ingredient, I argue, is a notion of convention which does the work of marking the difference between art and non-art for a given physical medium.