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What work does the artwork do? A question forartChris Smitha & Linden Reillya

a London Metropolitan UniversityPublished online: 03 Jan 2014.

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Journal of Visual Art Practice Volume 6 Number 1 © 2007 Intellect Ltd

Editorial. English Language. doi: 10.1386/jvap.6.1.5/2

Special Edition EditorialWhat work does the artwork do? A question for art

Chris Smith and Linden Reilly London Metropolitan University

AbstractThis article acts as an introduction to the other articles in this special edition of thejournal devoted to the question: What work does the artwork do? It explores theadvantages of this question over the definitional ‘What is art?’ question as avehicle for debating the roles and purposes of artworks – the work artworks do –for arts practitioners in particular. Given the care needed in the forming of ques-tions (since the work questions do is conditioned by such as implicit/explicit epis-temological considerations), it raises as an issue to be considered and attendedto, the matter of the work questions do and, the questions the could usefully beposed and debated in relation to art practices.

The question ‘What work does the artwork do?’ initially emerged out of con-versations between members of what was originally the Art and EpistemologyGroup, became the Art and Praxis Group, and is now the Visual Arts PracticeResearch Group, at The Sir John Cass. Once posed the question immediatelypresented itself as one that avoided certain pitfalls. For a start, it is a questionof situated process rather than speculation about hypothetical abstraction,and as such is in-keeping with a natural epistemology (following Quine 1969),and avoids problems of objectivism and idealism. As such it could beaddressed from a range of perspectives – from the positions of social agentssuch as artists, curators, gallerists, historians, collectors, theorists, critics, arteducators, etc.; the artwork’s producer or its audience or, the particularperspective of a specific individual. It could be addressed using researchmethods appropriate to natural epistemology such as action research ordiscourse theory; or debated using work from Cultural Studies or Sociology,such as Bourdieu of Luhmann. It avoided the ‘What is art?’ question (which isnot only boring but, as we argue below, is problematic when expected to workin certain ways traditional for the question). ‘What work does the artwork do?’talks of ‘work’ done rather than the unsatisfactory concept of ‘meaning’,which resonates with Deleuze and Guattari’s work on ‘work’. But most of all,it struck the particular members of Art and Praxis, who were in the main artspractitioners, as a vehicle for debating what work artworks do for them and,what work they do in general.

In 2002 the question was proposed to Art and Language with an invitationto participate in a show of their work and a symposium, both addressing thequestion of ‘What Work Does the Artwork Do?’ The show and the symposium

5JVAP 6 (1) 5–12 © Intellect Ltd 2007

KeywordsQuestionsdefinitionnaturalised

epistemologyartworkart practice

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were intended to work in conjunction with each other and the debate. Ifuseful work was to be done at the symposium, it was felt that prior workneeded to be done by the participants. A short positional paper by Art andLanguage was circulated to those who were to attend, who were asked for ashort written response either to the Art & Language paper or to the questionposed. The responses were published in a booklet, which ran to three editionscirculated prior to, at the symposium, and subsequently.1 Art and Languageaddressed the question in the show with that name in Unit 2 Gallery of theLMU,2 and the symposium took place in front of this hanging on 22.5.03.3

The symposium raised many questions, including of the efficacy of thequestion we were there to address. One participant, Mel Ramsden, proposedthat the issue was not so much ‘What work does the artwork do?’ as ‘Whatwork do we want the artwork to do?’.

‘What Work Does the Artwork Do?’ show and symposium of 2003 hasso far led on to a number further events, in collaboration with Art &Language. ‘Artworks’, a performance of an Art and Language text at theWhitechapel Art Gallery by Art and Language, Chris Smith, and LindenReilly on 13th May 2004. A second symposium and show addressing thequestion ‘What work does the artwork do?’ which took place in July 2005,this time at the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London (the paper ‘Now theyare surrounded’ by Art & Language in this edition comes from thissymposium). The symposium took place over 2 days with contributionsfrom Mary Anne Francis, Robert and Roberta Smith, Chris Smith andLinden Reilly as well as Art and Language. The collaboration between ChrisSmith, Linden Reilly and Art and Language also produced a show entitled‘Now they are surrounded’ at the Guildhall Art Gallery. The third symposiumaddressing this question ‘What Work Does the Artwork Do? 3’ was at ZKM,Karlsruhr Germany, had contributions from Art & Language and TheJackson Pollock Bar. As the debate has unfolded there have been contributionsfrom numerous people, in various forms – discussions, artworks, papers,shows, even songs – only a fraction of the papers are published here.

Below we will set out the issues and considerations which formed thecontext in which the question was posed and taken up in the first place, andwhich led to the events above. The question arose, as is often the case withresearch, from conversations held in both formal and informal settings.They maintained a momentum which took us away from questions that weredefinitional by nature and, was to an extent conditioned by debates we hadhad about epistemology and art, both by the nature of those discussions andan aversion to them. The discussion had emerged, after all, amongst practi-tioners of art – some theoretically orientated others with an orientationtowards looking at theory/practice relationships through writing or practiceor, indeed, both. Concerns of the latter type increasingly turned on theconcept of PRAXIS. Such is the practical nature of enquiry. Yet this does littleto explain the particular shift of the discussion in relation to the question,‘What work does the Artwork Do?’ Much of the reason for this shift lies withthis concern with praxis.

In the flyer left on the seats of the symposium in 2003, Mary AnneFrancis quips that the question ‘What is art?’ elicits groans from colleaguesand is banned from her place of work, the art school. In art schools anddepartments the question is posed repeatedly, but seems to go nowhere

6 Chris Smith and Linden Reilly

1 ‘What work does theartwork do?’ 3rdedition, published bythe Sir John CassDepartment of Art,Media and Design,2003. ISBN: 1-899764-38-0 A selection ofcontributions is available at<http://jcamd.londonmet.ac.uk/Whatworkd-oestheartworkdo2/contents.html>.

2 Art and Language,‘What work does theartwork do?’ Unit 2,2.5.03–21.5.03

3 A transcript of thesymposium isavailable at:<http://jcamd.londonmet.ac.uk/Whatworkd-oestheartworkdo2/contents.html>.

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before coming around again. Instead of reiterating this question that doesnot seem to deliver the anticipated result (whatever that may be), we questionit: What work do we want the ‘What is art?’ question to do? Is the work itsets us up to do, the work we want to do?

Henri Bergson (1946) counsels care in the finding and inventing of prob-lems, taking care with the terms in which the problem is stated, not becausethe problem is more important than the solution, but because the solution isset up by the problem. As Deleuze neatly puts it ‘…the problem always has thesolution it deserves, in terms if the way in which it is stated (i.e. the conditionsunder which it is determined as a problem)…’ (Deleuze 1988: 16). Bergsonconceives the relation of the problem to the solution to be so close that theissue of truth and falsity needs to be brought to bear on the problem itself.

What are the conditions under which the question ‘What is art?’ is deter-mined as a problem, and that are implicit in the terms in which it is statedor conceived? What work does ‘What is art?’ do as a question? The questioncan be used to consider what may be classified as ‘art’ or, the conditionsunder which anything can be classified as ‘art’ at all: the former is a matterof the application of the definition of art, the latter not only raises the definitionof ‘art’ as a matter to be questioned and explored, the nature of ‘definition’,and of the entity defined e.g. ‘word’ or ‘concept’ simultaneously becomean issue. The question of the definition of art is often answered in termsthat apply and are conditioned (or are arguably related to4) what has cometo be known as the classical theory of concepts (Laurence and Margolis1999: 3–81). In view of recent challenges to the classical theory of concepts,has ‘What is art?’ outlived its usefulness? We will consider three differentways of conceiving the ‘What is art?’ question, both in terms of the condi-tions under which the question is asked, and the work the question does.

Firstly, that which Davies calls ‘functionalist’ definitions of ‘art’ relate quiteclosely to the classical theory of concepts. Davies (1991) classifies theoriesof art produced since 1964 as functional, procedural, and historical.Functional theories define art in terms of its essential function or purpose, aclassification which applies to many (perhaps most) theories before 1964as well. For instance, ‘art’ was defined by Croce (1953) as intuitive expression,and by Collingwood (1938/1979: 113) as ‘…the expression of emotion…’.This way of conceiving a concept corresponds and is conditioned by theclassical theory of concepts, which holds that ‘[m]ost concepts (…) arestructured mental representations that encode a set of necessary and sufficientconditions for their application…’ (Laurence and Margolis 1999: 10). Thenecessary and sufficient conditions operate as a defining essence whichdetermines inclusion within, or exclusion from this container-like entity.The relation between functional theories of art and classical theories of theconcept is made clear by Davies conception of the reasons this form ofdefinition is inadequate in relation to art: ‘There are two ways in which thedefinition of art could be inadequate: by listing a property that not all artworks possess, or by identifying a set of properties that is not exclusive toart works’ (2001, 170). The inadequacy of this approach has been arguedwithin art by Weitz (1956) and others5, and within philosophy by many6:such arguments brought to bear on the ‘What is art? question itself (notjust on its solution), arguable render the question false if it is accepted thatit is conditioned by a discredited theory of concepts.

7What work does the artwork do? A question for art

4 We are not claiminghere that the classicaltheory of concepts isalways applied whenaddressing the question of the definition of art, butthat two other ways of conceiving theproblem that will beconsidered below –procedural theories of‘art’ such as the institutional theory;and prototype theoriesof concepts – are bothrelated to the classicaltheory; the former toits failure in relation to ‘art’, and the latterto its failure as a theory of ‘concepts’.However, what isdebatable is how useful the ‘What isart?’ question is thefurther it is removedfrom the classical theory of concepts:when the question is no longer conceivedin terms of art’simmutable essence,but in terms of whatart may happen to be ‘art’ for and in relation to a particularinstitution (such as agallery or theorist) or, in relation to a particular example of the acceptedcannon of ‘art’ (suchas Duchamp’s‘Fountain’), does thequestion loose its usefulness andpower? In otherwords, when the‘What is art?’ questionis no longer conceivedas encompassing allof ‘art’, but merely asa local ‘art’ debatehow useful is it?

5 For a discussion of Weitz anti-essentialism inrelation to other contributions of asimilar perspectivesee Davies 1991, chapter 1.

6 Laurence andMargolis (1999) give

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But before moving on from the classical theory of concepts in its moststraight forward form, to two strategies for conditioning the ‘What is art?’question that have emerged in the wake of its failure, we will briefly considerthe work the ‘What is art?’ question does. Sweetser (2000), building onthe work of Searle and Austin, differentiates between utterances that aredepictive and those that are performative: depictive utterances attemptto make the words fit the world; while performative utterances attempt tomake the world to fit the words. For instance a cave painting of a buffalohunt may be a depiction of a scene that its painter has witnessed or, it mayhave been painted in an attempt to bring about the success in the hunt thatis represented. We can use this distinction to differentiate between twotypes of work the ‘What is art?’ question can do: a depictive utterance workingto define ‘art’; or a performative utterance working to propose, manifestolike, what ‘art’ should or could be. Collingwood for instance knew that notall of that which he explored and was then classified as art fitted his notionof ‘art proper’, but he aimed to explore and propose what art should be,what he valued most in art, to make the world fit his words not the other wayaround. While approaches to the definition of art conceived as performativeutterances, to aims for and with art, can be very useful for arts practitioners,we suggest that such questions are phrased in terms that exclude theproblematic classical theory of concepts. Such as, for instance, ‘What work dowe want the artwork to do?’

The second way of conditioning the ‘What is art?’ question that we wish toconsider involves what Davies (1991) calls ‘procedural’ theories. Probablythe best known examples of proceduralist theories are institutional theoriesof art. For Davies ‘…proceduralists hold that something becomes an artwork only if it is made according to the appropriate process or formula,regardless of how well it serves the point of art’ (2001: 171). The relationshipof procedural theories to the earlier functional approach (and the classicaltheory of concepts) is made clear: ‘Art might have been functional at theoutset, but subsequent history shows that the concept operates procedurally.(In the same way, the notion of private property serves important individualand social functions, but it is more or less impersonal procedures and con-ventions that determine who owns what and when).’ The question we wantto raise in relation to approaching the ‘What is art?’ question in proceduralistterms is: what work does it do for art practice? While procedural theoriesare undoubtedly more credible as descriptions of art, and as a means fordifferentiating art from non-art, they achieve this at the cost of any consid-eration of the roles, functions, and value of art. ‘Whereas functionalismmakes the value of art central to its nature, proceduralists’ definitions arepurely descriptive and non-evaluative.’ (Davies, 2001, 171) What work doesthis do for practitioners? If an adequate procedural definition of art is adescription of art’s social operation, does it become social description? Intheir attempt to make the definition of art work, has the philosophy of artmoved so far towards social description that it now addresses similarissues and problems as sociology? In short, has it become sociology? Andhow does this help the arts practitioner engage with debates about thenature and aims of art. This approach does not work as a vehicle artists canuse to address their ambitions for and with art, as the earlier functionalapproach to definition had. For all its undoubted advantages over the earlier

8 Chris Smith and Linden Reilly

an overview of thenumerous andcomplex criticisms of classical theories of the concept in chapter 1.

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flawed functionalist approach, it has ceased to operate as a vehicle fordebating the values and purposes of art. Conceiving the definition of art interms of institutional procedure gives it the random quality of institutionaloperations: the reason why one work is defined as art and another not maybe nothing to do with the quality of the work but may depend on whetherthe artist is known by a gallery for instance.

The third approach is the emerging debate about the definition of artwhich uses a prototype theory of concepts. Prototype theory has recentlyemerged as a serious alternative to the classical theory of the concept. Thissupplants the idea of a ‘concept’ as a container the contents of which areorganised by necessary and sufficient conditions of the classical theory,with the idea that concepts have a radial structure, derived from the differentaspects of an idea being elaborated and extended. As Lakoff explains inrelation to the category ‘mother’ – given that a ‘concept’ is a type of category:

… there is a central subcategory, defined by a cluster of converging cognitivemodels (the birth model, the nurturance model, etc.); in addition, there arenoncentral extensions which are not specialised instances of the central subcat-egory, but rather are variants of it (adoptive mother, birth mother, foster mother,surrogate mother, etc.). These variants are not generated by the central modelby general rules; instead, they are extended by convention and must belearned one by one. But the extensions are by no means random. The centralmodel determines the possible extensions…(1987 : 91)

Dean (2003) proposes that ‘artwork’ has a similarly radial structure:

1. There is a central subcategory (consisting of canonical and generally uncon-tested works) … or more broadly, whatever are understood to be standardartistic aims and practices at a given point in history), and there are non-centralextensions of the central subcategory (such as anti-aesthetic art, activistart, etc.). The noncentral cases do not, in many cases, share any (artisticallyrelevant) features with the central cases…

2. There is no rule or set of rules that determine these extensions…3. Finally, although there are no rules that determine the extensions, they

are thoroughly motivated; not just anything for any reason, can be a work ofart … (31–2)

While the use of prototype theory of a ‘concept’ in relation to the ‘conceptof art’ has many advantages over the increasingly discredited classical theory,the matter of whether or not Dean’s or any other version of a prototype theoryof art can be used to generate an adequate or useful representation of theconcept of art is not the issue here: the question we wish to raise is whetheror not this type of approach to the definition of art is an adequate vehiclefor honing and debating the function and purpose of art? While Dean’sthird point above raises the issue of the artist’s motivation, this is for thepurpose distinguishing art from non-art, and of developing a theory whichpermits this distinction to be made. For all the advantages of using proto-type theory to condition and address ‘What is art?’, the work it enablestakes us closer to social description, not artists’ aims and ambitions forand with art.

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Neither approaches to the definition of art using a procedural theoriesnor prototype theories function as simultaneously a vehicle for debating anambition or aim for art, and a basis for distinguishing between art and non-artas functionalist definitions of art conditioned by classical theories of theconcept once did before the classical theory lost its credibility.

Deleuze and Guattari suggest that instead of asking what things (concepts,words, artworks) ‘mean’, we ask what they do, and how they work.

We’re strict functionalists: what we’re interested in is how something works,functions – finding the machine. But the signifier’s still stuck in the question‘What does it mean?’ – indeed it’s this very question in a blocked form. Butfor us, the unconscious doesn’t mean anything, nor does language. Functionalismhas only failed where people have tried to introduce it where it doesn’t belong,into great structured wholes that can’t themselves come about, be produced,in the same way they function. Functionalism does rule, however, in the worldof micro-multiplicities, micro-machines, desiring machines, molecular forma-tions. On this level there isn’t this or that kind of machine, a linguisticmachine, say, but linguistic elements along with other elements in all themachines.

(Guattari in Deleuze 1995: 21–2)

While we have no wish to conflate concepts of ‘meaning’ and ‘definition’(they have their own particular problems attended to in, for the most part,distinct debates), they are both examples of ‘great structured wholes thatcan’t themselves come about’: the attempt to define art as a great struc-tured whole rather than a complex multi-medium assemblage is futile –the whole is mythical. Arguably, a casualty of this failure has been debateabout the functions and purposes of art. But posing questions in terms of‘work’ done allows us to escape any residual restriction of the question tointentionality in attending to the artwork’s function or purpose: to debatethe work the artwork does, or that we want it to do, does not restrict debateto that which the artwork may have at some point been intended to do. Forinstance: if an artwork is put to work to prop up the end of the table, or roofa dog kennel, this may not have been its intended purpose (or perhapsit was?), but it is still work (though it may no be art work?) The point is, thatthe notion of ‘work’ opens up the debate beyond narrow assumption thatan artist’s function is to produce artwork, and the function of the artworkis to be looked at in a gallery, to unintended, unconscious, or unacknowl-edged possibilities; the work the artwork does may be to go with the curtains,or to generate income for the artist, or to be part of a collection.

It is our contention that questions treating the definition of art nolonger function for artists as vehicles for debating their ambitions for andwith art, and other questions need to be formed to facilitate this work.Procedural definitions of art and prototype theories of art, in their greatercomplexity come closer to adequate social description, but loose the potentialto work as a vehicle for debating issues of the value and function of art. Thedefinitional question is a machine that no longer works as a vehicle forartists attempting to hone their ambitions for and with artworks, but maynow operate to mark the limits artists can go within the category of art? It nolonger identifies organising principles (other questions are needed for that),

10 Chris Smith and Linden Reilly

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but might be useful to identify and police art’s farthest edges and bound-aries? If disciplines are characterised by questions, is art characterised byquestions, and if so which questions? And is art (practice) a discipline?

The articles in this edition of the JVAP generate from the considerationof the question, ‘What work does the Artwork Do?’, except in the case ofHoward Riley’s article which is related tangentially, in terms of the con-sideration of pedagogy which in turn centres on the nature and purposes ofart practice.

Art & Language talk about the framing of issues of the institutional theoryof art, internality and autonomy, and their sense of their relatedness. Theyclaim that artworks have the capacity for internality and autonomy, and howin a sense the artwork works in resistance to institutional definitions. Theyconsider this in regard to a work of theirs, ‘Now They Are Surrounded’.

Mary Anne Francis emphasis is on work that art might do outside of any(false) consideration of its own autonomy making use of Michael Linger’sconcept of ‘post – autonomy’. It proposes work that art might do in theworld considered in regard to ‘relative autonomy’.

Amanda Beech in her article examines the ethic of institutional critique,and pursues her argument by questioning the efficacy of the question,‘What Work Does the Artwork Do?’ seeing in its construction a separationbetween the political and cultural. Moreover, she examines the condition ofcritique without the figure of institution. The concern is when critiquebecomes the institutional figure. Further, the article considers, as Amandahas puts it in the article, ‘…the ways in which we can think through cultureand politics without rationalising a distinction between the two or makingone instrumental to the other. Central to this is how we are to understandthe work of knowledge (critique) within such a configuration where eitherthe possibility or the impossibility of absolute knowledge is not a requiredprecursor for agency, but instead we are faced with knowledge withoutthese grounds, as techne.’

Francis Halsall argues that by using Niklas Luhmann’s account ofmedium we may well provide a means of answering the question, ‘Whatwork does the artwork do?’ Francis argues from this analysis and applicationof Luhmann’s ideas that the work that art does is bound up with the onto-logical question of what is doing the doing.

Howard Riley’s article seems, at first, like a call to the barricades of theart school circa the 1970’s with a demand for the proper consideration oftheory integrated with practice. Yet, in demanding a consideration ofthe relationship between theory and practice in the art school curriculumhe powerfully argues the contemporary concern that we should have withthe question of art’s worth as work that places itself in cultural and socialmilieu and how such work may be more appropriately developed. He doesthis through a manifesto like conclusion that proposes dialogue in regardto contemporary art pedagogy.

ReferencesBergson, H. (1946), The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, (trans.

Mabelle L. Andison), Saucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press.

Collingwood, R. G. (1938/1979), The Principles of Art, London, Oxford, and New York:Oxford University Press.

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Croce, B. (1953), Aesthetic, A Science of Expression and General Linguistic, (trans.Douglas Ainslie), London: Vision press, Peter Owen.

Davies, S. (1991), Definitions of Art, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

—— (2001), ‘Definitions of Art’, in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (eds. BerysGaut and Dominic McIver Lopes), London and New York: Routledge.

Dean, J. T. (2003), ‘The Nature of Concepts and the Definition of Art’, The Journal ofAesthetics and Art criticism 61: 1, Winter, 29–35.

Deleuze, G. (1991), Bergsonism (trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam),New York: Zone.

—— (1995), Negotiations (trans. Martin Joughin), New York: Columbia UniversityPress.

Lakoff, G. (1987), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, Chicago and London:University of Chicago Press.

Laurence, S. and Margolis, E. (1999), ‘Concepts and Cognitive Science’, in Concepts(eds. S. Laurence, and E. Margolis), Cambridge, Massachusetts and London,England: The MIT Press.

Quine, W. V. (1969), ‘Epistemology Naturalized’, in Martinich, A. P. and Sosa, David(eds.) (2001) Analytic Philosophy, An Anthology, Massachusetts and Oxford:Blackwell.

Sweetser, E. (2000), ‘Blended Spaces and Performativity’, Cognitive Linguistics 11,305–333.

Weitz, M. (1956), ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’, The Journal of Aesthetics andArt Criticism 15, 27–35.

Suggested citationSmith, C. and Reilly, L. (2007), ‘What work does the artwork do? A question for art’

Journal of Visual Art Practice 6: 1, pp. 5–12, doi: 10.1386/jvap.6.1 5/2

Contributor detailsChris Smith is Principal Lecturer at the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media, andDesign, and editor of the Journal of Visual Art Practice. Contact:E-mail: <c.d.smith@londonmet.ac.uk>

Linden Reilly is Senior Lecturer in theory related to art practice and CourseOrganizer of the MA by Project. Her research interests include: theories of visualart practices and epistemology; the roles of sensation and experience in theoryand knowledge. She is a member of the Visual Arts Practice Research Group.Contact: Sir John Cass department of Art, Media and Design, London MetropolitanUniversity, Central House, 59-63 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7PF.E-mail: <l.reilly@londonmet.ac.uk>

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