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From Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art ed Matthew Kieran

(Routledge 2006)

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FAKES and READYMADES

Gordon Graham

When the painting Supper at Emmaus was found to be by van Meergeren and

not by Vermeer, the world’s estimation of its artistic value fell dramatically. A ‘great

master’ became a mere ‘fake’ (see Werness in Dutton ed. 1983). And yet nothing in

the picture itself changed. In fact, strictly, it was not even a fake, because there

never was any real Supper at Emmaus by Vermeer, and from this it follows that van

Meergeren’s could not have been a fraudulent copy. Rather, his picture, though

certainly in the style of Vermeer, and intentionally so, was an original both in

conception and in execution. But if it was an original work, and nothing in it changed

as a result of the revelation of its true creator, why did the world’s estimation of its

value fall? That it did so is evidence of a general belief that the value of a painting

derives not merely from its internal properties but from the reputation of the pallet

or studio from which it originated.

Fakes

From another point of view, however, this belief could only be the result of

prejudice, the mindless worship of great names. If the picture was at one time good

enough to be exhibited, and if nothing in the picture itself was altered by the identity

of its creator becoming known, how could the facts about its provenance make it

any the less worth exhibiting? Surely the value of pictures lies in what there is to see

in them, and not in their causal origins. And indeed, even if it had been a fake in the

proper sense – a copy of a real painting by Vermeer, now lost perhaps – once

exposed as a fake it would nevertheless retain the aesthetic properties that made it

worth exhibiting.

This sort of case raises a serious question about the relation between the

integrity and independence of estimations of artistic worth and the pressures

brought to bear upon them by conventional reaction to the exposure of ‘copyists’


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like van Meergeren. It is a question that has been widely discussed in the philosophy

of art and considerations have been brought on both sides which taken in isolation

prove both persuasive and inconclusive, it seems. (For a helpful summary of the

arguments see Stalnaker 2001.) Yet, while philosophers can have their doubts about

the supremacy of ‘authenticity’, the exposure of a fake (or even, as in the case of

Van Meergeren, a pastiche) inevitably leads to its downgrading. No director of a

significant gallery could retain a picture in a position of prominence once it had been

shown to have been fraudulently produced. The significance of this fact about the

artworld is one of the things this essay aims to assess.

Ready-mades

For the moment though, I want to point to a parallel between the

phenomenon of the fake and another phenomenon that has also provoked a good

deal of discussion in the philosophy of art and in art criticism more generally, namely

the art of the ‘ready-made’. Duchamp’s Fountain is the first and certainly the most

famous example of this phenomenon. In response to a declaration by the organizers

of an art exhibition in New York that they were open to any and every submission,

the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) submitted a manufactured urinal.

There seems little question now but that this was intended as a jocular way of

putting the organizers’ self–professed freedom from convention to the test. They

meant, no doubt, that they were resolved not to be dictated to by aesthetic

presupposition and orthodox opinion, and Duchamp (probably) meant only to point

up the carelessness with which they articulated this intention. In a sense the

organisers failed his test, since they did indeed reject his urinal. But the joke, if that

is what it was, turned out to have a serious outcome. Notwithstanding Fountain’s

rejection, perhaps because of it in fact, the artworld came to embrace the thought

that ready-mades could indeed be viewed as art and accordingly ready-mades began

to be exhibited in the same way as creative works. Duchamps may have meant his

‘submission’ to be whimsical, but it brought about a great change in aesthetic mores,

one upon which he himself was to capitalize. By the time the turn of Andy Warhol’s


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Brillo Box came round, ready-mades were an accepted art form. So, for example, the

much heralded Tate Modern’s opening exhibition included ‘Tree’, which despite its

name was a half glass of water on a bathroom shelf, both easily purchased from any

DIY store.

Were the organizers of the New York exhibition really mistaken in rejecting

Duchamp’s urinal? Can ready-mades be art? These questions raise precisely the

same issue as the earlier one about fakes and pastiche, though in the opposite

direction. The urinal, when it lay in the ironmonger’s store, had no aesthetic merits,

nor were any claimed for it. (I leave aside here the important and interesting topic of

the aesthetics of design.) But once placed in an art exhibition, it assumed (or was

accorded) a different role, as something to be ‘appreciated’. Yet how could mere

change of location effect this dramatic transformation from the functional to the

aesthetic? Is it possible for ordinary objects from everyday life to be transformed

into artworks not by the addition of any intrinsically artistic properties but by a mere

change of place?

Here too, though, while we can ask whether there is any satisfactory

philosophical or aesthetic justification for the art of the ready-made, it is simply to

be recorded as a fact about the contemporary artworld that ready-mades have long

been accepted and assigned a respected place within it. The opinion of the artworld

is not the last word, of course. In so far as it is inarticulate, which it often is, it rests

upon an intuitive judgement or feeling rather than a theoretical understanding, and

this means that it can be confronted by, and in itself is no better than, a contrary

judgement or feeling – usually the feeling and judgement of the ‘man in the street’.

This conflict is not based solely upon intuitive conviction. Both sides can call

upon considerations that do something to support them. The modern artworld is

quick to make use of the category of the ‘challenging’ in defence of its productions.

According to this defence, since all great art challenges the general public’s

preconceptions, we should expect truly novel art to be rejected by those whose

minds are formed by and constrained within ordinary ways of thinking and feeling;

and it was always thus. Now while there is a frequent tendency for this line of

defence to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent -- all great art offends


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ordinary sensibilities, therefore all that offends ordinary sensibilities is great art -- it

is certainly reasonably easy to assemble a large number of historical instances when

genuinely innovative art has been rejected by the viewing (and listening) public, only

to be succeeded first by acceptance and then by adulation. Beethoven’s music was

found ‘difficult’ by contemporary audiences; today it is one of the best programme

choices from the point of view of filling the concert hall.

On the other side of the debate, however, defenders of ‘the public’s’ response

to ‘modern’ art, can point to the fact that it is only recently (in that same art history)

that painters, composers and writers have assumed to themselves what we might

call the super-autonomy of ‘art for art’s sake’. It is thus only recently that art has run

any serious risk of intellectual and social isolation. When art was sponsored by

patrons and bought by customers, its justification with the public beyond the

artworld was secure; it was wanted. Of course it is true that the artist’s public (like

every other public) tends to be conservative in its tastes, with the result that quite

often innovative styles have taken time to be accepted. But ‘modern’ art in many of

its forms faces a new sort of inward looking isolation. Who cares about the Turner

Prize (for example) now that it is given by artists to artists, who reserve to

themselves the sole authority to declare it to be art of importance and value? It may

or may not be significant that this is a condition in large part confined to the

‘conceptual’ movement visual arts and music. Notoriously, audiences drop

dramatically when the programme is exclusively the ‘modern’ classical music

favoured by composers and critics, and the public will not pay to see the winner of

visual art competitions in the way that it will pay to see the winner of the Cannes

Film Festival (Tarrantino’s Pulp Fiction, for example) or buy the novel that takes the

Booker Prize (Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, say).

These too are facts that the defenders of ‘the man in the street’ can call upon.

Yet they have little bearing on the issue of fakes, and indeed with respect to the two

cases under discussion – fakes and ready-mades – there is some dissimilarity

between the view of the art world on the one hand and that of the general public on

the other. The art world rejects fakes and accepts ready-mades. In the world beyond

artists and professional critics, attitudes to fakes on the one hand and ready-mades


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on the other tend to differ. It is quite generally supposed that fraudulent pictures

hitherto thought to be from the studios of great masters ought indeed to be

removed from positions of admiration and repute, even if they retain considerable

interest. By contrast, there is deep suspicion of ready-mades and an inclination to

think that they too are frauds (of a different kind) and should be removed from

galleries and other places of public approval.

Those who are more in sympathy with contemporary art than they are with

the mindset of ‘the man in the street’ can plausibly claim that the public’s attitude to

fakes is hardly consistent with its attitude to ready-mades. If translation to the

gallery cannot bestow artistic value on ready-mades, mere removal from the gallery

cannot deprive erstwhile exhibitable paintings of it. The general public cannot have

it both ways. Of course, if this is indeed a contradiction it could be readily resolved

readily. Just as the art world consistently rejects fakes and accepts ready-mades, so

the common opinion of the viewing public could be made consistent by accepting

fakes at the same time as rejecting ready-mades, and refusing to see paintings (or

other artworks) relegated on the basis of extrinsic facts about them. Yet this solution

to the inconsistency is unlikely to be taken up. The truth is that the viewing public

wants it both ways. Can it have what it wants? Can the rejection of fakes and the

rejection of ready-mades be consistent?

Aesthetic empiricism

In answering this question it is obvious that intuitive judgement and feeling are

not enough since these are usually equally strong and equally able to call upon a

supporting rhetoric. We need to dig deeper, to uncover and resolve the

philosophical differences that lie beneath. There may in fact be several such

differences, but the one I want to explore at some length relates to the doctrine

known as ‘aesthetic empiricism’. This is the view that any estimation of the artistic

merits of a work must be based upon the intrinsic properties of that work and not

upon facts external to it. Plainly, those who want to defend the attitude of the art

world will do best to reject aesthetic empiricism. Both the rejection of fakes and the


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acceptance of ready-mades depends upon its being the case that facts extrinsic to

the works in question can rightly be called upon in the assessment of artistic merit.

However, it is important that there be no question begging here. The acceptance of

ready-mades as works of aesthetic interest and merit presupposes the falsehood of

aesthetic empiricism; it does not show it to be false.

This is the weakness in the argument David Davies advances in his paper

entitled ‘Aesthetic Empiricism and the Philosophy of Art’. Davies essay aims to show

that indirect arguments against aesthetic empiricism (such as are to be found in

Gregory Currie’s An Ontology of Art) are not decisive. Instead he appeals to the

rejection of fakes and the acceptance of ready-mades as a direct refutation; the

actual practice of the art world shows aesthetic empiricism to be false. This

contention begs the question however. The acceptance of ready-mades pre-

supposes the falsehood of aesthetic empiricism, for the simple reason that if it is

true, the acceptance of ready-mades by the art world or any one else is based upon

error. The existence of the practice cannot be taken as a decisive ‘fact’ independent

of the beliefs underlying it. In short, as far the logic of Davies’ ‘refutation’ is

concerned, what we have is a case of ‘one person’s modus ponens is another

person’s modus tollens’.

What Davies’s argument does do, however, is point up a weakness in the

alternative view that wants to reject ready-mades and at the same time reject fakes,

because it presents it with a dilemma. If aesthetic empiricism is false the most

obvious ground upon which to reject ready-mades is lost, while if it is true, the

rejection of fakes seems irrational. Either way the view of the art world wins out. Or

so it seems. We need to consider the philosophical issues more closely.

Contextualism

Those who doubt the truth of aesthetic empiricism generally believe it to be

inadequate to our experience of art. Works of art are not to be considered in

isolation. Each of them has a history and a context and if we are to see or to hear

them as works of art we have to be aware of this context and history. The aesthetic


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empiricist supposes falsely, this critic alleges, that aesthetic appreciation is best

served by an ‘innocent’ eye, one uncontaminated by anything other than the ‘pure’

experience of the work. But ‘innocence’ here could only mean the sort of naivety

that depends upon ignorance. This is not something peculiar to the arts. Students

coming new to philosophy, for example, can be impressed by an argument their

teacher advances; they will be less impressed once they learn that the argument in

question has been the stock in trade of philosophers since the time of Plato (say).

Had they known this already, they would not have been much impressed at all. So

too with painters and composers. Music in the style of Handel is attractive and

sophisticated. Composed two centuries later, it lacks the originality of imagination

and conception that is a large part of the reason that we praise Handel and his

contemporaries. Pastiche differs from that of which it is a pastiche not in terms of its

intrinsic properties, but in terms of its place in a creative sequence.

It also differs in intention, and necessarily so. A contemporary composer could

not write Baroque music de novo. To be able to compose with such sophistication

he, or she, must have a knowledge of composition, and such knowledge inevitably

brings with it an awareness of the tradition out of which it has grown. But precisely

because of this knowledge, the resultant ‘baroque’ compositions must be, not copies

of works certainly, but imitations of a style. And this is their artistic defect. Modern

‘baroque’ composers will have failed, as the original baroque composers did not, to

find an authentic voice of their own. This is a serious limitation of creative

imagination, and hence an artistic and aesthetic defect. But we the audience can

only know this if we hear the works in historical context. Listening to them in

isolation will not reveal this. The same point can be made about painting. Painters

like van Meergeren, even if they are not in the strict sense forgers, are copyists who

have to master the style and methods of the past in order to create their copies.

Accordingly, they both lack originality, and since they knowingly do so, lack

authenticity.

Now neither the judgement of unoriginality nor inauthenticity can be ‘read off’

the painting or the score by mere acquaintance. By the same token, once we know

of them, we cannot look at the painting or hear the music with the same ears. It is


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difficult to say whether this ‘cannot’ is a psychological or a logical one. Does our

knowledge of context alter the content of the experience, or merely the judgement

we base upon it? This is an issue that might repay further examination, but for

present purposes it is enough to observe that there is this impossibility, that we

cannot view a pastiche in the same way once we know it to be a pastiche.

I shall dub this the ‘contextual’ objection to aesthetic empiricism, and it

certainly seems a strong one. Authenticity, originality and imagination are

unquestionably important concepts in aesthetic judgement and artistic evaluation

and if what has been said is correct, they inevitably imply a context. However, while

the contextual objection appears to show that there is reason to re-evaluate fakes in

the light of newly discovered extrinsic facts about them, it cannot be made to

support the acceptance of ready-mades so easily. Indeed, on the contrary, the very

same point can, in a different way, be made to reveal a deficiency in the art of the

ready-made.

The Kantian aesthetic

Aesthetic appreciation is not best secured by an ‘innocent’ eye. This is the

heart of the contextualist objection, and it takes exception to the idea that aesthetic

experience and evaluation are confined to the viewer in the presence of the work. It

rejects, in effect, the long dominant Kantian conception of aesthetic experience as

essentially a contemplative attitude that ‘plays upon’ the object of contemplation. In

the third Critique Kant locates aesthetic judgement halfway between the logically

necessary and the purely subjective. “The judgement of taste is . . . not a cognitive

judgement, hence not a logical one, but is rather aesthetic, by which is understood

one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective” (Critique §1). On

the other hand, aesthetic apprehension is not merely subjective for while “the

person making the judgement feels himself completely free with regard to the

satisfaction that he devotes to the object, he cannot discover as grounds of the

satisfaction any private conditions, pertaining to his subject alone, and must

therefore regard it as grounded in those that he can presuppose in everyone else;


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consequently he must believe himself to have grounds for expecting a similar

pleasure of everyone. Hence he will speak of the beautiful as if beauty were a

property” (§6) This aesthetic pleasure or feeling of approval is to be contrasted both

with the feeling that something is ‘agreeable’ and with the feeling that something is

‘good’. The mark of the agreeable is that it is purely a matter of personal taste

(Kant’s now familiar example is a preference for Canary-wine), and those who make

such appraisals have no reason to expect others to share their preference. By 'the

good' Kant here means what is useful and accordingly holds that judgements of this

sort arise “from the concept” of the end that is to be served; given an end in view,

whether something is good (i.e., useful to that end) is not a matter of taste but a

matter of fact. It follows that the peculiar value of aesthetic delight lies in this: it is

composed of a judgement that is disinterestedly free, free that is to say from both

practical and cognitive determination. It is not a judgement of either personal liking

or general usefulness but a judgement arising from the “free play of the

imagination”.

How is such a judgement possible? How is a judgement based upon subjective

feeling to command universal assent in the way that a claim to knowledge does? The

answer lies in a sensus communis or shared sensibility among human beings, which is

both awakened and invoked when a judgement of taste is made (§§ 22 and 40).

However, if this shared sense is not to be converted into the affirmation of

objectively verifiable propositions about classes of things, and thereby lose its

distinctive aesthetic character, judgements of taste must be “invariably laid down as

a singular judgement upon the Object”. This is why 'delight' in the beautiful takes the

form of the contemplation rather than the intellectual classification of objects.

This Kantian account has been enormously influential, and there are a number

of elements in it that have virtually assumed the status of the self-evident – the

aesthetic as a mode of contemplation, and the autonomy of art as purpose without

purposiveness, for instance. But in the present context, the aspect most worth

focussing on is the supposition that aesthetic judgement is a distinctive mental act –

the free play of the imagination. Now if this is indeed the nature of aesthetic

judgement, then within the bounds set by the sensus communis the imagination is


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free to play where it will. This would imply that the relation between art and the

aesthetic is a purely contingent one. No doubt it is also fortuitous one -- artefacts

deliberately intended to be ‘art objects’ are those upon which the imagination finds

it easiest to play -- but the point is that there is no intrinsic connection between

works of art and aesthetic appreciation. Even if the aesthetic attitude is more easily

assumed with respect to art objects, evidently it is not confined to them.

This is the importance of the Kantian conception for present purposes.

Precisely because it does not confine aesthetic judgement to intentional works of

art, it licences the art of the ready-made. Encouraged to let its imagination play upon

a manufactured urinal, the mind may discover within itself the feeling of approval

that is to be contrasted both with the feeling that something is ‘agreeable’ and with

the feeling that something is ‘good’. In short, the removal of the urinal or the Brillo

box from the ironmonger’s shop to the exhibition hall is a signal to the imagination

to let itself play freely, and the fact that neither was originally intended as an art

object is no bar to its doing so.

In short, the art of the ready-made has an ally in the Kantian aesthetic, and

consequently one line of defence for aesthetic empiricism is to contest the that

aesthetic. And it does indeed seem contestable, for while it shows aesthetic

judgement to be possible, it cannot give us a satisfactory account of aesthetic

criticism. What I mean is this. If aesthetic judgement is indeed a mode of

contemplation, in sharp contrast to other types of judgement it cannot arise from or

be based upon inference. When I judge the accused to be guilty of the crime, for

example, my judgement is based upon, and inferred from evidence. So too when I

judge a scientific hypothesis to have been refuted by experiment, or when I judge

the experiment designed to test it to have failed. It is not always the case that such

patterns of reasoning are conclusive, and so not always the case that the judgement

is logically compelling. Nevertheless, it is the existence of such patterns of reasoning

that enables us to discriminate between better and worse judgements and to

question the judgement of others. None of this seems possible on the Kantian

conception. What is possible is a kind of analysis by which we identify specific

features of an object that the imagination may play freely upon. Thus the form of


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‘criticism’ is not ‘X is aesthetically good because a, b and c’, but ‘a, b and c in X are

the elements at which to direct aesthetic attention’.

It seems then, that within the Kantian scheme of things aesthetic judgement is

quite unlike other kinds of judgement, to the point where it can scarcely be thought

of judgement at all, since it is not a kind of thinking but a kind of looking. This radical

difference, in my view, should lead us to wonder whether the underlying

philosophical project of trying to identify a distinctive ‘aesthetic’ mental state is not

mistaken. A legal judgement is to be distinguished from a scientific judgement not in

terms of the kind of mental act it is, but in terms of the kind of object it judges. If we

deploy the same concept of ‘judgement’ in the case of the aesthetic then it seems

that we will locate its distinctiveness in the nature of the object contemplated, and

not in a special attitude of contemplation. On this view there is no identifiable

psychological experience to be described as ‘aesthetic’ any more than there is a

‘philosophical experience’ which arises when the mind encounters a philosophical

argument. Judgement is judgement. Not all objects are art objects. From this it

follows, pace Kant, that aesthetic judgement is not a matter of the imagination

playing freely where it will.

Aesthetic engagement

It is time to return to the main issue, and show how the rejection of

Kantianism bears upon aesthetic empiricism and the issue of fakes and ready-mades.

The connection is to be made through what I earlier labelled ‘contexualism’.

Contextualism is the view that aesthetic appreciation and evaluation often requires

us to locate a work of art in an art historical tradition. Only by so doing can we

properly evaluate the originality and authenticity of a work of art and avoid the

danger of acclaiming fakes. This means that aesthetic appreciation must go beyond

the contemplating the intrinsic properties of a work and make reference to extrinsic

facts about the history of its creation. It must therefore reject the Kantian concept of

free play of the imagination as an adequate account of aesthetic judgement.


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But by the same token, ready-mades are to be rejected as works of art because

it is precisely a Kantian-style aesthetic that the art of the ready-made assumes.

Duchamp’s Fountain ceased to be a joke or a whimsy when it came to be believed

that we could take up towards it the same sort of attitude that we normally reserve

for intentionally created artworks, that we could ‘contemplate’ it aesthetically. The

same idea is at work in John Cage’s (silent) 4’33’’ which invites us to give to the

sounds around us the same sort of attention that we give to the deliberately

produced sounds in the concert hall. (The fact that Cage wrote a piece entitled

‘Music for Duchamp’ shows that he was aware of the affinity and meant to draw

attention to it.) But the mistake is the same in both cases. Aesthetic judgement is a

form of engagement, not just a form of attention, and the trouble with the sounds

around us or the ready-made urinal is that there is nothing in them to engage us

aesthetically.

Why not? This distinction between ‘engagement’ and ‘attention’ is plainly

crucial. What it is meant to convey is the idea that aesthetic experience is a meeting

of minds – the mind of the artist and the mind of the audience – and not the activity

of a single mind ‘playing’ upon an object. This means that an art work is the

embodiment of aesthetic purpose, and the activity of aesthetic appreciation is one

of both understanding and evaluating that purpose. Since neither the chance sounds

around us, nor a purely functional urinal has any intentional aesthetic purpose,

neither will repay aesthetic attention, properly so called, even though either might

be made to generate a certain measure of contemplative interest.

Aesthetic cognitivism

This cognitive alternative to the Kantian conception has several important

implications. For instance, it inevitably raises a doubt as to whether nature can be

appreciated aesthetically, a subject much discussed of late, and it further implies

that we can identify a specific aesthetic purpose among the various purposes human

beings pursue. Nor have I done much more than assert its superiority in the light of


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the difficulties in Kantianism briefly alluded to. But these are issues that must remain

unexplored here.

The position we have arrived at is this. Contextualism explains why the

rejection of fakes makes sense, and in its turn this seems to imply the falsehood of

aesthetic empiricism. But if aesthetic empiricism is indeed false, there appears to be

no ground for rejecting ready-mades as art. The consequence is that the inclination

many people have to reject both fakes and ready-mades as aesthetically worthless is

inconsistent. When it comes to fakes and ready-mades the most coherent position

seems to that of the contemporary art world -- that fakes are to be rejected but

ready-mades can be regarded as works of art. Upon further analysis, however, it

emerges that the idea of the art of the ready-made relies upon a Kantian aesthetic

which the belief in contextualism will also lead us to reject. In short, contextualism

underwrites the public’s inclination, and endorses the rejection of both fakes and

ready-mades. Where though does this leave aesthetic empiricism?

The cognitivist alternative to Kantianism construes aesthetic appreciation and

evaluation as a form of understanding rather than contemplation. When we stand in

front of a Jackson Pollock action painting, or one of the extraordinary productions of

Juan Miró, it is certainly possible to let our eye run along lines and over colours in a

sort of aesthetic ‘savouring’, something akin to tasting wine on the tongue. But such

an attitude gives us no ground to ask, and no means of answering, what seems like

an obvious critical question: what is Pollock or Miró about here? What is the

meaning or the point of their paintings? At the same time, the aesthetic purposes we

seek to understand must be realized in and not merely through the works of art. The

appeal of Kantianism derives in part from an important insight incorporated within it

– that aesthetic judgement is essentially sensual. This is why there is something odd

about the idea of conceptual art, at least as some of its exponents interpret it.

Conceptual art in many of its manifestations quickly implies the elimination of art

since it seems to represent the medium as merely causally related to the message, a

sort of psychological ‘prompt’ that awakens thoughts in the viewer. This is the

difference my distinction between ‘in’ and ‘through’ is intended to capture.


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If we are to preserve the essentially sensual nature of art in what I have called

the cognitive alternative to Kantianism, therefore, what is required is a conception of

aesthetic understanding for which the sensual – the sound of the music, the line and

colour of the painting, the rhythm of the poetry, and so on – is ineliminable. There is

much more to be said (and asked) about such a conception than would be strictly

pertinent here. The point to be emphasized for present purposes is this.

Kantianianism construes aesthetic judgement as a form of contemplation, partly

because it sees that aesthetic judgement applies to sensually rather than

intellectually apprehended objects; the proper objects of aesthetic judgement are

not concepts or propositions but sights, sounds etc.. Now the view I have called

‘contextualism’ rejects the first of these contentions but not the second. It holds that

aesthetic judgement is not a matter of ‘playing upon’ a presented object, since there

are occasions when it can and ought to involve appeal to facts extrinsic to the object.

The relevance of such extrinsic facts, however, can still lie in their bearing upon the

apprehension and evaluation of the sensual object, how we see it and hear it.

It is easiest to illustrate the point with an example. Suppose that towards the

end of a piece of music a melody is repeated but with a different orchestration – in

the woodwind rather than the strings, say. Second time round the music is different,

but to apprehend the structure of the whole piece, it is essential that we hear the

passage in the woodwind as a repeat of the earlier passage in the strings. To identify

the second passage as a different version of the same melody is to hear it in the light

of something that is strictly speaking extrinsic to it – the first version of the melody.

No one, I imagine, would think this an odd claim to make; we do hear things

differently when we hear them as repeats. Yet this example is simply another

instance of ‘contextualism’. As in the case of the van Meegeren, there is a sense in

which the music does not change when placed in context, and another sense in

which it does. Its being a repetition, however, is an aesthetically relevant property of

the composition. And so too, I would say, the van Meegeren’s being a pastiche of

Vermeer is an aesthetically relevant property, and to apprehend it correctly, which is

to say sensually, is to see (literally) it in light of this fact.


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The same cannot be said about ready-mades. The move from the ironmonger’s

shelf to the gallery wall is a change of context, certainly, but it is not a context that

has a bearing on the aesthetic purposes realized in the ready-made, for the simple

reason that there are no aesthetic purposes realized in the ready-made; the

purposes of its creator were entirely functional. Of course, it might be contended

that Warhol (for example) had an aesthetic purpose when be put the Brillo Box on

display, and perhaps he had. But whatever these purposes they were not realized in

the sensual properties of the box. They could not be since Warhol had no part in

giving it those properties. We can say, certainly, that its being put on display makes

us see it in a different way, but even when this really is the case, it makes no

aesthetic difference, and we are only inclined to think it does insofar as we assume

an erroneous view of something called ‘aesthetic experience’.

So aesthetic empiricism is defensible at least to this extent. If aesthetic

judgement is comparable with other forms of judgement it must be inferential, and

the basis of the inference is the sensual properties of the object. Such a contention, I

have argued, is consistent with the contextualist objection to what we might call the

naïve version of aesthetic empiricism, which accepts too easily a Kantian assumption

about aesthetic experience. In turn this implies that there is a distinction to be

drawn between fakes and ready-mades such that, contrary to initial appearances,

the attitude that rejects both fakes and ready-mades as artistically worthwhile

objects can be made consistent. And the same conclusion implies that the

contemporary artworld still has some work to do to show that ready-mades have a

real claim on aesthetic attention.

References

Currie G. (1989) An Ontology of Art, New York, St Martin’s Press Dutton Dennis ed (1983) The Forger’s art: forgery and the philosophy of art, Berkeley: University of California Press Stalnaker N. (2001). ‘Fakes and Forgeries’ in Gaut B and Lopes D M ( Eds) Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, London, Routledge. Davies D ‘Aesthetic Empiricism and the Philosophy of Art’ Kant I. (2000) Critique of Judgement (P. Guyer & E. Matthews, Trans.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Original work published 1790)