# STYLE AND THE PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES OF ART ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploaded_book_covers/profile_1188016/HIp4DIflVYdSqudWgkyd9Mi5eJMy-PTVAvjSxatwmnM-cove_NKhqb4c.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Kendall Walton]] - Full Title: STYLE AND THE PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES OF ART - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text discusses the importance of focusing on the actions of creating art, rather than just the finished product. It explores how the style of a work is linked to how it appears to have been made. The distinction between apparent artists and actual ones is highlighted, emphasizing the relevance of considering the historical context in art criticism. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168426703 - Source File: STYLE AND THE PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES OF ART.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The very fact that Schapiro and others, in discussions of style, seem to confuse products and processes suggests that there is an intimate connection between styles of objects and styles of behavior. I would suggest that styles of works of art are to be understood in terms of the notion of styles of action. Specifically, attributing a style to a work involves, somehow, the idea of the manner in which it was made, the act of creating it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq52yg2k24fn49ryc2e3pds)) > Our observations so far should make us uncomfortable with what I shall call the cobbler model of the institution of art. The cobbler model has a three-part structure. There is the producer, the product, and the consumer, that is, the cobber, who makes shoes, which are worn by consumers. The point of the process consists in how well the shoes fit the feet and the needs of the consumer; the proof is in the shoes. The cobbler’s work is merely a means to this end. Once the consumer has the shoes he has no reason to concern himself with the cobbler’s act of making them. What is important is the nature of the shoes themselves. Natural objects with the right properties would serve just as well as the cobbler’s artifacts, and it makes no difference whether the wearer thinks that his shoes are artifacts or that they grew on trees. > Applying this model to the institution of art, we have the artist who, perhaps together with a collaborating performer, counts as the producer; the work of art which counts as the product; and the appreciator in the role of consumer. The artist, the work, and the appreciator are supposed to have functions analogous to those of the cobbler, the shoes, and the wearer of the shoes, respectively, although of course the kind of value that the work has for the appreciator is not the same as that which shoes have for wearers. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq5f0yte44w4y5f04r9xk4p)) > A relatively minor deviation from the cobbler model occurs when the object of the appreciators’ interest is not something that the artist produces, but rather the action of the artist itself. In dance and theater our attention is directed to the actions of dancers and actors. > But we should distinguish between the movements of dancers or actors and their (intentional) actions. It may be the movements, the events consisting of bodies in motion, which are the objects of appreciators’ interest, and these movements are “produced” by the performers when they perform the actions. > There are other cases, however, in which it is evident that actions, not mere movements, are objects of appreciation. The clearest examples of this occur in the avant-garde. For instance, the Museum of Modern Art once exhibited “the leftovers so to speak of an event in which artist John Latham took a copy of Art and Culture by critic Clement Greenberg, and shredded and blended it into a kind of book-shake which he and some friends cheerfully gulped down.”5 > It is obvious that what is interesting in this case is the action that Latham performed, not just the movements of his body. If his behavior had been uninten- tional, it would not have had anything like the same sort of significance ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq5jr0drrfnadp3jw28f3cg)) > Some actions that are of interest are actions of making or displaying objects. Latham’s action did include the making of the book-shake, the remnants of which were put on display. But it seems clear that what Latham did, not what he made, is the main object of interest. The same might be said of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and John Cage’s indeterminately composed music. One could argue that the readymades and the indeterminate music are not them- selves very interesting (although Cage disputes this). In any case, Duchamp’s act of displaying the readymades and Cage’s act of using indeterminate means to compose his music certainly are interesting. This is obvious from the enormous volume of literature about these actions. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq5n49rxxpnnt3y98xz7qtt)) > We can understand valuing these objects as mementos of the significant activi- ties that led to their existence, much as we value things like Beethoven’s piano and Rembrandt’s printmaking equipment. Some of the significance of the actions rubs off in this way on the objects. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq5tdvzaj7dtzpej0fzga29)) > Attending a concert of Cage’s indeterminate music may be a way of expressing one’s agreement with the point one takes Cage to have been expressing in producing the music; the listener may be symbolically thumbing his nose at the art establishment, or debunking the “masters,” or affirming a kind of Cagian zest for life. This explanation does not suggest that the product, Cage’s music, for example, is valuable, any more than the bread and wine used in communion are themselves valuable. But it does suggest that there is something significant and important about behaving as though the objects are valuable— performing the music, buying the tickets to hear it, and listening to it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq5vnrc3hc97dvf7k8za3mh)) > Natural objects with the right properties would serve just as well as the cobbler’s artifacts, and it makes no difference whether the wearer thinks that his shoes are artifacts or that they grew on trees. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqnmv9vr0pevrh1ebfyg0at)) > But are the actions in these cases aesthetically interesting? My opinion is that nothing is to be gained by pressing either this question or the related question of what qualifi es as “art.”6 But if, for the sake of argument, we assume that a specifi - cally aesthetic kind of interest is to be recognized, a reasonable case can be made for saying that our interest in the actions I have described may very well be aes- thetic. They are easily understood as symbolic or expressive of certain attitudes about life, or society, or the art establishment in very much the way that actions of characters in literature very often are. They are, in fact, strikingly similar to actions of characters in the theater of the absurd. The activities of many avant- garde artists can be, and have been, regarded as a kind of theater. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq9ttxt4e29x20w0md23mqj)) > The cobbler model is misleading even when our interest is directed toward the product of an artist’s actions, rather than the action itself. What matters in the cobbler case is the value of the shoes for the wearer. There usually would be little point in making shoes if they were not to be worn. But works of art are not made exclusively for the sake of their appreciation by spectators, listeners, or readers. One way to appreciate music is by playing it. And musicians frequently do play for the fun of it, with no thought of an audience. > The point here is not just that playing music is enjoyable, for the cobbler may well enjoy making shoes also. The enjoyment of playing music strikes me as very much like that of listening to it; both activities deserve the label of “aesthetic experience” if anything does. Playing and hearing music are simply different ways of appreciating it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqa8r6jxv4ccnte245ech9g)) > Indeed it may be misleading to regard the “aesthetic experience” of the musi- cian or dancer as appreciation of something at all. There is no object of appreciation which is independent of the act of “appreciation” itself (at least if the singing or dancing is entirely improvised and spontaneous—otherwise the abstract song or dance, of which the particular performance is an instance, might be regarded as the object of appreciation). One simply enjoys doing something. One doesn’t per- form the action and also observe and appreciate the sounds produced or the action performed. One doesn’t (necessarily) refl ect on what one does or the sounds one makes in this kind of way. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqafd96vw3mfvjrp8s3e1ep)) > The action we “see” in a work may not correspond to what the artist actually did in creating it; our perception may not be veridical. So it would seem that what the artist actually did, the style or manner of his actual behavior, is not what con- stitutes the style of the work. If we should discover that one of Daumier’s draw- ings was not done by Daumier at all but rather by a machine run by a computer or in some other way, we would (probably) still feel comfortable saying that it is in the style of Daumier. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqapt3d363s93qn2215xrzp)) > The idea I wish to pursue is that it is how a work appears to have been made, what sort of action or actions it looks or sounds or seems as though the artist performed in creating it, which is crucial to the work’s style. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqaq5k21ce8n4rxrmtej09z)) - Note: Do the things we see always appear to have been made in some way? what about cgi/animation? > The sounds of a musical performance seem to listeners to have been made by actions of banging, scraping, blowing, singing, and so on. And they sound as though these actions were performed vigorously or gently, carefully or with abandon. Usually the sounds we hear are in fact made in pretty much the manner they seem to have been. But let us consider just how the sounds sound, the impression they give of how they were made (even when we don’t see the performers), regardless of whether the impression corresponds to the reality. There can be no doubt that much of the emotional impact of music depends on what activities sound to the listener as though they are going on. It is with reference to these apparent activities that we describe melodies or passages of music as tender, nervous, raging, fl owing, or energetic, and that we character- ize musical performances as sprightly or bombastic or timid or ponderous. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqbhjp6xp15my630bgdg5pn)) > Many of us, I think, fi nd much electronically generated music—as compared with traditional music—ethereal, disembodied, unreal, not very expressive (at least not expressive in the way traditional music is). This, I believe, is because the sounds of electronic music usually do not give the listener much of a sense of physical activities by which they were made; they do not sound as though they resulted from any familiar mechanical actions such as scraping, banging, blow- ing, and so forth. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqbkgx8gk1ea3t7szrt5g3w)) > These “aesthetic qualities” are qualities that we identifi ed earlier as being, in many cases at least, qualities of style. So the character of a work’s style is linked in a crucial way to how it appears to have been made. Tentatively, to be in a fl amboyant, sentimental, or timid style is to appear to have been created in a fl amboyant or sentimental or timid manner. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqkdfes1t566j7x4x3byrq6)) > Are all qualities of a work’s style based on the apparent activities of its artist? It is not obvious that describing something as being in a classical or baroque style is to make reference to how it appears to have been made. Wölffl in attempts to defi ne “classical” and “baroque” (or anyway, “Classical” and “Baroque”) in terms of features such as linearity and painterliness, and closed and open form. But it may be that these features are felt to be ingredients of a work’s style because they contribute to how works appear to have been made.13 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqc0k15s1dwtx21wscwa1xt)) > We have the basis here of a fundamental tension between two conceptions of style qualities, corresponding to the different interests of critics and historians. The historian (sometimes) looks through the arts at the culture, whereas the critic looks at the arts against the background of the culture. For the critic the quality of a work’s style is something to be appreciated; for the historian it is a clue to the artist or his society. The critic, concentrating on the products of art, can in certain circumstances allow prior conceptions of its processes full play in his imagination, while the historian, who focuses on the processes, must in similar circumstances ruthlessly exclude his conceptions of the processes from his understanding of the products. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqpjw5rygj57qfw4dpy363z))