Artworks are a type of object that is intended to be beautiful. Artworks can be created using a wide range of mediums, such as painting, sculpture or photography. Some artworks are associated with particular artistic movements, such as impressionism or cubism. Others are associated with a particular artist, such as Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso. Many artworks are considered to be’masterpieces’, which means they are considered to be of great quality or value.
Some philosophers have tried to define art by describing the kinds of properties that are necessary and sufficient for something to be an artwork. One such definition requires that a work of art exhibit both a high degree of skill and a unique aesthetic style. Another required condition is that the work must be consciously designed to achieve a desired effect. A number of philosophers have also attempted to define art by identifying its essential characteristics, such as beauty or truth.
Historically, philosophical debates about art have usually focused on three main types of definitions: representational definitions, expressive definitions and formal definitions. Each of these has its own distinct philosophical arguments and problems.
Representational definitions hold that art is defined by the way it depicts or represents an object. For example, a work of art might be painted to look like an animal or landscape. Expressive definitions, on the other hand, claim that the purpose of a piece of art is to communicate an idea or emotion. Formal definitions, on the other hand, focus on a work’s compositional elements, such as line, shape and space.
Many philosophers have criticised these traditional definitions of art for failing to adequately account for the fact that a wide variety of things can be interpreted as being artsy, even though they lack all the usual properties that are typically regarded as constitutive of artworks. They have also been criticized for overlooking the role of social and cultural context in determining whether or not an object can be characterized as an artwork.
An alternative to these conventional definitions has been proposed by Arthur Danto, who argues that an object can be identified as an artwork if it can be shown to have internal historical relations with other artworks. This view is sometimes referred to as the’resemblance to a paradigm’ definition of art, and it has been defended by various writers.
A further problem with the resemblance to a paradigm view of art is that it makes it impossible to distinguish between objects which merely resemble, and those that possess, the typical features of an artwork. A further worry is that this approach does not address the fact that, in practice, experts’ conferral of art-status on a given object always comes with reasons.
Finally, some philosophers have argued that any attempt to define art in terms of its intrinsic properties is doomed to failure because of the way that humans categorize things. Humans classify things with reference to their similarity to prototypes or exemplars, rather than in terms of their intrinsic qualities (Dean 2003). In addition, a significant body of cognitive science shows that it is not plausible to think of concepts as arising from and being defined by their constituent parts.