- There is a notable gap between art historians and philosophers in their approaches, with art historians prioritizing specific works and visual analysis while philosophers emphasize abstract concepts. - However, art has become more philosophical in questioning its own nature and boundaries, calling for collaboration between the disciplines in developing aesthetic theory. - An interdisciplinary approach combining philosophical concepts and art historical context/specifics can help comprehend art's salient features and the "incomprehensibility" that needs to be understood, as emphasized by Adorno.

1. Published in: James Elkins (ed.): Art history versus Aesthetics.
New York / London 2006.
Eva Schürmann
Art’s call for aesthetic theory1
The notorious gap between art historians and philosophers, which is evinced once again by
the conversation documented in this volume, is not unlike the problem famously formulated
by Kant: Conceptions without intuitions are empty and intuitions without conceptions are
blind. Not that it would not be objectionable – as Kant perfectly well knew and went on to
demonstrate in the Critique of Pure Reason – if there were such a thing as a pure conception
without any kind of intuition, and vice versa. But however provisional or artificial the
distinction between concepts and visual perceptions, thinking and seeing, might be, it
nonetheless highlights differences in figure-ground-constellations, that is to say: in what in
each discipline is prior and what is background. It makes a crucial difference if, on the one
hand, one is chiefly concerned with forming concepts and elaborating critical definitions, or
if, on the other hand, one’s basic enterprise is to look at particular works in order to find out
as much as possible about their visual features. And even if an art historian temporarily
refrains from notions such as form and style to focus on, say, the circumstances of a work’s
production, he or she still stresses the singular art work. By contrast, it is telling that a
philosopher can, under certain circumstances, work very well without opening the eyes to the
concrete givenness of a specific work.
And yet it would be a simplification to say that art historians are mainly concerned with the
particular – in the sense of uniqueness and singularity – since almost every exponent of the
discipline is worried about what is generalizable in a single work, be it the social and
1
I would like to thank my Chicago colleagues David Wellbery and Robert Buch for their comments and
suggestions.

2. historical context or the ascription to a broader artistic movement. Precisely with his
considerations about ‘art-in-general’2
, Thierry de Duve showed how very general an art
historical approach to the particular became in case of modern art. An art historian without
any systematic account of the role and function of art would be a mere philological
researcher. There are very many ways of practicing art history and of dealing with an art
work, but none of those ways contents itself with a simple description of what is to be seen
there.
Although things lie differently with the philosophy of art – since important and influential
theories indeed consisted in very abstract conceptual formulations, for instance those of
Schelling or Schopenhauer – it would again be too easy to think of philosophy as exclusively
directed toward the general and the universal. Philosophers are not merely subsuming the
particular beneath a general heading when they scrutinize which general is the most suitable
for grasping the sense of a singular. Even the generalistic attitudes of some contextualization
theories – for instance Luhmann’s concept of art as a system or Bourdieu’s hypothesis about
the normative impact society has on what is considered to be art – eventually entail important
insights into a single artwork’s embeddedness in a greater configuration and thereby
contribute to a better understanding of its connectedness. And as art historians cannot help to
generalize philosophers inadvertently stumble onto art historical territory when they have to
refer to individual works in order to explain their ideas.
So apparently those attributions do not lead very far.
But to stress an art historian’s talent for visual discernment and a philosopher’s gift for
conceptual astuteness still helps to point out the different priorities and salient features of both
disciplines in order to get an idea of the systematic reasons for differences and
misunderstandings.
2
Thierry De Duve: Kant after Duchamp. Cambridge MIT Press 1998.

3. I suppose that most philosophers would find rather troubling the genetic and historical link
Thierry de Duve draws between Paul McCarthy and Matthias Grünewald “via Bruce
Nauman, back to Dada, and then even further, back to Courbet”3
. They would be irritated not
because it is Paul McCarthy or an issue of disgust (or because they would think that Matthias
Grünewald is incomparatively stronger than McCarthy …) but because it is as incautious as it
is bold to juggle with such strong philosophical-historical assumptions and to suggest such a
far-reaching genetic continuity without justifying the implicit normative assertions at work in
such an approach. That is not to say that such a thesis would not be interesting and
worthwhile to argue within the context of art historical discussion, but for someone with both
a different academic socialization and a strong claim for conceptual justification it is just not
plausible.
On the other hand, it is not difficult to imagine that most art historians would be rather bored
by philosopher’s exegetical worries about what Kant meant or by the – philosophically very
important – difference between the general and the universal, because that difference would
not be of any applicable relevance to their concerns.
Now, if this is so, then we could say: long live the difference! Both are right to concentrate on
their own concerns. They just have different critical agendas and are dealing with
incomparable issues and Hyman is quite right to recommend each to remain on their own
patch4
. We should then rather concentrate on developing an account of their
incommensurability.
I suppose this would be true and sufficient, if there were not the matter of aesthetics as
precisely the intersection and intertwining of questions crucial to both disciplines. Intersection
does not mean that things are helplessly confused, but that a philosophical theory of art and an
art historical account of art occupy, indeed, very much the same ground. They do so all the
3
Pp. [...] in this volume
4
p.p. .. in this volume

4. more since art itself became philosophical. Not only since Duchamp’s ready-mades but
already with paintings that make their own mediality a subject of discussion (e.g. Turner, the
Impressionists etc.) art started to ask philosophical questions that have to be reflected in terms
of aesthetic theory. Duchamp’s bicycle wheel persistently asks: what distinguishes an artwork
from a non-artwork? Jasper Johns’ painting raises the very intricate question: is it a flag or is
it a painting? Magritte makes us nervous by incessantly questioning the difference between
the medium and the mediated. And so does Josef Beuys by shifting the boundaries between
art and life. Those questions became partly more important than the single work. This
becoming-philosophical of art that Danto repeatedly pointed out – for instance when he
described Warhol as a philosopher5
– is the reason why it would be absurd if art historians
would content themselves with leaving aesthetics to philosophers.
For it is art itself that makes claims for aesthetic theory. With its development towards self-
reflexivity, it calls for the approximation of art and philosophy. We need this discipline for
art’s sake and we would be very wrong to resign ourselves to inherited disciplinary
boundaries and differences. What Adorno appropriately called art’s dependency on
commentary makes aesthetics an indispensable enterprise that requires skills philosophers and
art historians can best provide together. Philosophy yields insights in what could serve as a
common denominator of art’s great diversity, disclosing thereby the shared aesthetic ground
for various research projects. Art history can render such insights more specific with regards
to concrete instances by taking into consideration the historical origins, settings and
circumstances of individual works. Only together can philosophical concepts, in their capacity
to disclose previously unnoticed connections, and art historical approaches, in their historic
considerations and visual perspicacity, ensure that we come closer to art’s salient features.
Aesthetics, not in the narrow sense of either Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgement or of any
kind of ideologically overdetermined reading, but as an approach that seeks to develop
5
Arthur Danto: Philosophizing Art. Selected Essays. Berkeley University of California Press 1999.

5. theoretical distinctions while remaining devoted to what Jim Elkins emphasized as the
irreducibly visual and ungeneralisably singular character of works of art.6
One has reason to
think that it is precisely this irreducibility that can scarcely be conceptually determined and
that is in itself something unknown, as Elkins pointed out. But then we are to understand how
indeterminate and unknown it is. It is the work’s “incomprehensibility that needs to be
comprehended”7
as Adorno said.
We could have learned from the Greeks the very notion of theoria as a form of intellectual
vision. Likewise this is what some versions of phenomenology could have taught us. Then
aesthetic theory is already based on concepts as well as on intuitions, that is to say, on their
inseparability. For the antinomy of conceptions and intuitions is in itself a concept. Kant
provided the insight into their very connectedness and mutual condition. And significantly
this is as well an insight provided by art, as again Adorno rightly emphasized: „Art is no more
concept than it is pure intuition, and it is precisely thereby that art protests against their
separation“.8
It is art, thus, that urges us to collaborate in forging aesthetic conceptions that
are not only not empty, but seeing.
The author lives and works at the department of philosophy at the University of Darmstadt,
(Residenzschloß, G - 64283 Darmstadt, Tel: 0+49 (0)6151-16-5366, Schuermann@phil.tu-
darmstadt.de ) She has published a book on the art of James Turrell and the perception theory
of Merleau-Ponty: Erscheinen und Wahrnehmen. Munich 2000. ISBN: 3-7705-3473-5
6
See: James Elkins: Why don’t art historians attend aesthetics conferences? Pp…
7
Theodor W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory. Newly translated, edited, and with a translator’s introduction by Robert
Hullot-Kentor. University of Minnesota Press 1997. p. 118
8
Theodor W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory. Newly translated, edited, and with a translator’s introduction by Robert
Hullot-Kentor. University of Minnesota Press 1997. p. 96

6. Eva Schürmann ist Professor for Philosophy at the University of Magdeburg. She studied
Philosophy, Art history and Comparative Literature at the University of Bochum, in Paris and
in Cambridge (U.K.) Master 1994 on Spinozas Ethics. Dissertation 1998 on Perception in
Merleau-Ponty und James Turrell. In 2004 she was visiting professor at the university of
Chicago. From 2009-2011 she was professor for aesthetics at the University of applied
sciences Hamburg.
Recent publications: Sehen als Praxis. Suhrkamp 2008.
eva.schuermann@ovgu.de