Freddy Purcell details, the legendary aesthetician, Greg Currie’s talk on how artworks reveal the skill of their creators.
This March, we were honoured to receive the esteemed Greg Currie, one of the biggest names in aesthetics. Greg is currently an emeritus professor at York and has published on basically everything within the field of aesthetics. This talk was based on some of Greg’s more recent work investigating how art manifests aspects of the artist and their work process.
Greg began by noting that art critics readily move between commenting on the formal traits of an artwork (colours, brush work etc.) and the skills that produced it. For example, an artist might appear to display precision with the brush or judicious choice of materials. Greg then wants to argue that art manifests the skills of artists, which is notably different than directly perceiving their skill. The idea of manifestation is generally connected to religious contexts where an object somehow relates to qualities in the person that produced it and these qualities are more passively perceived, rather than requiring active investigation. Greg therefore suggests that art, as an intentionally produced object, manifests the skill of its producer. Importantly, we can mistakenly think that an artwork manifests a particular skill when it does not. For example, we might look at a painting and think that the colours were well chosen, when in actual fact they were the only colours that the artist had, so in fact do not manifest this skill. Greg therefore suggests that art criticism valuably provides background information for art appreciators to help minimise risk of this kind of mistake.
Applying this idea can help us develop our understanding of the value of artworks. Greg defined the manifestation profile of an artwork as the set of skills that it manifests. If you were then to take two identical paintings, it would then be possible for them to have different manifestation profiles if they had different histories. For example, an original and a forgery would manifest different skills, the former might show originality while the latter might indicate skill at copying. On the other hand, in a philosophers’ hypothetical, if you had a machine that simply copied all of the physical traits of an artwork then the copy would have the same manifestation profile as the original. Greg argued this is the case because the so-called super-copier would not add any additional skill. He therefore suggested that a super-copier would lead to a complete inheritance of a work’s manifestation profile, while a hand-forged copy would not maintain inheritance. While discussion of a super-copier pushed the talk into the abstract, I thought this was a really clear way of explaining the differences in value between an original work and a forgery.
Adding depth to his account of manifestation, Greg suggested that the visible features of a work manifest the skill, but historical context enable such skill to be displayed. For example, someone who pioneered a painting technique would have this visible in the features of the work, but appreciation for the originality and value of this skill is enabled by the historical context of them being a pioneer. This suggests that art history and criticism play an important part in our aesthetic judgements of art.
The idea of manifestation was also used to make an interesting contrast between paintings and photographs. Greg of course accepted that photos manifest the skill of the photographer. However, he suggested that the location of the artistic activity in a photo is where it was taken, rather than the surface of the picture, as in a painting. On this basis, Greg argued that photos might put us in closer contact with the subjects contained within them, but that paintings connect us more closely to the artist. These considerations led to discussion on why we value connection to an artist through their work.
While valuing connection to an artist could be a simple cultural product, Greg wanted to tell a more evolutionary story, looking to the history of stone shaping. Here, scholars have suggested that we developed sensitivity to good craftsmanship as this type of skill would indicate an ability to secure food, find shelter, and generally have all the abilities necessary for survival in the stone age. While Greg argued that this was a stretch, he thought that skills in toolmaking would clearly indicate that the maker was skilled and would be able to pass on such skills. While this would not likely be a culturally universal account, it could suggest some of why we pay such close attention to the value of artists.
Finally, Greg applied the idea of manifestation profiles to debates on the importance of authorship within art. Here, there is a divide between those that think the actual intentions of the artist are important, while others think that only hypothetical, imagined intentions matter. This debate is interesting in cases of artworks that appear to manifest certain traits but actually manifest something else. For example, a painting that appears hastily done, but actually took a lot of time and skill, might apparently manifest carelessness but actually manifest wit and great artistry. In this instance, someone interested in the hypothetical intention of the artist would not change their opinion based on what the artist actually did, while someone interested in the actual skills applied by the artist would. I think we are naturally interested in what the artist does, so I prefer the latter account. However, Greg pointed out that it is often difficult to discover what an artist actually did, posing an epistemic problem.
Questions mostly challenged the idea that a supercopy would manifest the same profile as the original, based on the skill that might go into the creation of the machine, values of originality, and problems about whether Greg’s account would work for other artistic products like music scores. It was a greatly engaging conversation and really seemed to stretch his account productively. I was generally quite convinced by the idea of manifestation profiles and appreciated how Greg applied it to lots of debates within aesthetics. So, thank you for the amazing talk Greg!