Image and Artistic Value

Abstract

The difficulties facing the philosopher who wants to reflect on art today are daunting. In 1900, the aesthetician would have had to worry about paintings, which could be on canvas, on wooden panel, on walls in mural form, and on objects of use and decoration; or about works on paper, such as watercolors, drawings, and prints in various media; or about sculptures, which would be shaped by the artist himself or by his assistants in bronze, stone, wood, plaster, or wax. In all of these works, the visual image would enjoy pride of place. The dramatic changes on the picture plane and in sculptural form that began to occur shortly after 1900, although certainly posing difficulties for traditional philosophy of art, did not threaten the central role of the image in any fundamental way. The threat was not long in coming, however. In retrospect, one finds it in the Dada movement, and particularly in Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, the first of which was “produced” in 1913. The readymades, ordinary manufactured objects such as a snow shovel or urinal—selected by Duchamp, usually inscribed by him with some sort of title, and inserted into the context of the art world—are now widely taken to be works of art. The readymades and the Duchampian spirit they represent have had countless heirs in contemporary art. The readymades are, of course, visual objects, in the sense that one can see them, just as one can see any snow shovel. Whether or not they and their progeny, such as the works of conceptual artists, are visual images, however, is another matter.