Ogodei_Khan posted:

The issue seems to be how you conceptualize of the ontology of aesthetic features. For example, if aesthetic features can subsist independently of the artist then you can seperate the artist and their features from the piece. This is a separate issue from whether art can found into a concrete particular like a script or different performances are different art . Th objects. The issue would be cashed out differently also in how we view aesthetic features. For example, if we hold that aesthetic features are some type of transcendental realist feature in the Kantian sense, like how sour a candy is , saying "something like (1) "this is Beethoven's Fugue" would be a descriptive claim but (2) "Beethoven's Fugue is beautiful" would be a claim about aesthetic properties. Karl Robert Von Hartmann in his Aesthetic Philosophy of Beauty from 1888 makes this type of claim. The result of this type of view is that when I say (2) descriptions are about my imagination and not directly connected to the artist who made it. Someone like Arthur Danto in his instituional phase will claim that (2) is a statement about myself and the institution I participate in. John Dilworth will treat (2) as an event that can only be understood by an individual. An older model is attached to Christian philosophy of Icons. This view stands out because in it piece of art has its own ontology and because it is a response to earlier aesthetic claims made by those like Parrhasius and John of Damascene. This is related to the concept of Ekpharasis. This model claims that art object exists on its own or fails to correspond or exhaust some objects identity. So rather than suspending disbelief the difference between the art object, the viewer and the artist is heightened. In the early models the artist did not even matter. The academic work Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity by Tsakiridou explores the aesthetic and philosophical development from historical theological views. If you want to skip the historical stuff chapter 14 deals with contemporary aesthetics in that piece. Clement Greenberg's content oriented view seems to track the ontology of an aesthetic piece through its content and not its form. This means there are some cases where the artist will become part of the piece.