Defending ‘the Artist’s Theory’: Wollheim’s Lost Idea Regained?

• Authors: McFee Graham
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper considers an argument of Richard Wollheim's, originally presented in a 1976 symposium with Goodman and Wiggins, which disappeared when the symposium contribution was 'reprinted' in the supplementary essays to the expanded edition of Art and Its Objects (Wollheim, 1980). It lays out the argument's original context, locating its objectives by means of a comparison with Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction, with its attendant discussion of the 'history of production', and presents Wollheim's defence of 'the artist's theory'. This defence coheres in interesting ways with Wollheim's aesthetics emphasis on the importance of the artist's intention (suitably understood) as part of a specification of what the work itself is. This conception reinforces the importance Wollheim grants both to the fulfilled intentions of the artist and to a suitably positioned, suitably informed, and suitably sensitive spectator. Both should be modelled as operating under the aegis of the artist's theory, a notion this 'missing' argument serves to emphasize.

Keywords

EN

ALLOGRAPHIC; ARTIST'S INTENTION; AUTOGRAPHIC; GOODMAN N.; HISTORY OF PRODUCTION; INTENTION; INTENTIONALISM; WIGGINS D.; WOLLHEIM R.

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 3-26
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

McFee Graham

• Graham McFee, California State University Fullerton, Fullerton, United States; http://dlib.lib.cas.cz/5862/

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10CZAAAA082521