Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
What Art Does: Using Philosophy of Technology to Talk about Art

What Art Does: Using Philosophy of Technology to Talk about Art

Wittingslow, Ryan Mitchell

Hardcover

Series: Global Aesthetic Research

PhilosophyArt Criticism & TheoryGeneral Art

ISBN10: 1538167328
ISBN13: 9781538167328
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: Oct 3 2023
Pages: 136
Weight: 0.83
Height: 0.44 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

We derive a great deal of cognitive pleasure from asking what artworks mean. And yet, despite the seriousness with which we approach these questions, they all too often rely on theories of art that fail to adequately explain how art conveys meaning.

This book proposes a new theory. In contrast to more conventional definitions of art, What Art Does defends the claim that artworks constitute a class of tool. Like other tools, artworks are objects that have functions and that furnish affordances. However, thanks to the particular social and material facts that underpin the creation of artworks, the functions that artworks have and the affordances they furnish are special.

It is thanks to these special functions and affordances that artworks obtain their privileged character and status. Because artworks do things that other tools cannot, we take artworks to be meaning-making objects with something to say.

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