The document discusses the nature of art and meaning through a series of quotes and thought experiments. It presents a fable in which a philosopher named Geo unveils an abstract painting to a crowd and insists that the painting is "not about anything" despite attempts to explain what it might be about. The document explores the relationship between artist and audience and how meaning is constructed in the artworld through context and interpretation.

1. Art
Meaning & Being

2. esse est percipi (To be is to be perceived)
—Berkeley
To be is to be the value of a variable.
—Quine
To see something as art requires something the eye
cannot descry — an atmosphere of artistic theory, a
knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.
—Danto

3. Nothing.
What’s it
I think it’s
all about?
upside down.
Can art be meaningless?

4. A Fable What’s it
Imagine Geo, a noted all about?
philosopher who dabbles in art,
unveiling his latest artwork to an
appreciating crowd.
The work is abstract and
prompts the usual remarks about
how dramatic the colors are, it's
smart sense of space, it's playful
use of form and tone. There is,
however, one hard-headed guest
does not get it, and asks “What is
it about?”

5. A Fable
“It’s not about anything.” replies Nothing.
Geo.
This creates an awkward silence,
into which Art, another noted
philosopher says “You mean it is
about nothing.”
“No.” replies Geo, “It’s is not about
nothing, nor about nothingness, it is
just not about anything.”
“Do you mean,” ventures Art, “That
it is not about anything in
particular, but can be about an
indefinite number of things?”

6. A Fable
Really
“No.” replies Geo, “I mean that this
painting is not about anything.”
Not content, Art presses on “Do you
mean that this painting is about not
being about anything?”
Geo shakes his head, the very
picture of an artist who is
misunderstood, and answers yet
again, “No. I simply mean that this
painting is not about anything.”

7. A Fable I think it’s
Art is puzzled and says “It seems upside down.
impossible that something can both
be an artwork and yet not be about
anything.”
Which Geo contests by replying
“Well, it is art and it isn’t about
anything.”
At which point, a the hard-headed
guest points out that he thinks Geo
has made a mistake and hung the
painting upside down, which Geo
agrees to, promptly inverts the
piece, and they move to the dining
room for dinner.

8. Ron Mueck: Two Women

9. Language
Speaker Hearer
Ron Mueck: Two Women

10. Art
Artist Audience
Ron Mueck: Two Women

11. Art
Artist Audience
Language
Speaker Hearer
Language roles are frequently
transitive, art roles less so.

12. Andy Goldsworthy from Rivers & Tides

13. Andy Goldsworthy from Rivers & Tides

14. The Cardsharps
Michelangelo Caravaggio, 1594

15. They’re cheating at cards.

16. They’re doing a magic trick.

17. It’s light reflected off a two-
dimensional surface.

18. I shall now think of pairs of predicates related to each
other as "opposites," conceding straight off the vagueness
of this demode term. Contradictory predicates are not
opposites, since one of each of them must apply to every
object in the universe, and neither of a pair of opposites
need apply to some objects in the universe. An object must
first be of a certain kind before either of a pair of opposites
applies to it, and then at most and at least one of the
opposites must apply to it. So opposites are not contraries,
for contraries may both be false of some objects in the
universe, but opposites cannot both be false; for of some
objects, neither of a pair of opposites sensibly applies,
unless the object is of the right sort. Then, if the object is
of the required kind, the opposites behave as
contradictories.
—Arthur Danto, The Artworld

19. To see something as art requires something the eye cannot
decry-an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the
history of art: an artworld.
—Arthur Danto, The Artworld

20. If F and non-F are opposites,an object o must be of a
certain kind K before either of these sensibly applies; but if
o is a member of K, then o either is F or non-F, to the
exclusion of the other. The class of pairs of opposites that
sensibly apply to the (ô)Ko I shall designate as the class of
K-relevant predicates. And a necessary condition for an
object to be of a kind K is that at least one pair of K-
relevant opposites be sensibly applicable to it. But, in fact,
if an object is of kind K, at least and at most one of each K-
relevant pair of opposites applies to it.
—Arthur Danto, The Artworld

21. A B
A explains his work as follows: the line through the space
is the path of an isolated particle. The path goes from
edge to edge, to give the sense of its going beyond.

22. A B
B explains his work as follows: a mass, pressing
downward, is met by a mass pressing upward: the lower
mass reacts equally and oppositely to the upper one.

23. Contrail Cliff

24. Love's Labour's The Ascendency of
Lost St. Erasmus
There are, of course, senseless identifications: no one
could, I think, sensibly read the middle horizontal as
Love's Labour's Lost or The Ascendency of St. Erasmus.

25. The Holy Family Flight from Egypt
Are these then senseless identifications?

26. Mary Mary
Jesus Jesus
Joseph Joseph
The
The Holy Family Flight from Egypt Donkey
Are these then senseless identifications?

27. Love's Labour's The Ascendency of
Lost St. Erasmus
"Our wooing doth not end like an old play;/ Jack hath not
Jill…."

28. Jack
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Jill
Love's Labour's
Lost
"Our wooing doth not end like an old play;/ Jack hath not
Jill…."

29. A B
In every case it’s light reflected
off a two-dimensional surface.

30. A
"That black line is a black line"
is not a tautology.

31. Christos & Jeane Claude: Running Fence

32. Christos & Jeane Claude: Running Fence