Values of Art: Pictures, Poetry and Music. - book reviews

Mind, Oct, 1996 by Jerrold Levinson

I

Much evident in recent aesthetics is the reemergence of the issue of value in art, an issue given noticeably short shrift in the analytic philosophy of art of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Having devoted considerable and fruitful attention to investigations of matters not obviously evaluative, e.g. the definition and ontology of art, the logic of aesthetic description, and the nature of artistic representation, analytic aestheticians have now begun to direct their energies to those strategically sidelined, yet perhaps most important questions, those of why the arts are valuable at all, what sorts of value they exemplify, and what are the grounds of such value when present. There has been in the past five years or so a small explosion of work in this vein (see, notably, Walton 1993 and Goldman 1995).

To this is now added Values of Art, by Malcolm Budd, one of the foremost contemporary aestheticians. Values of Art consists of four chapters, the first devoted to the notion of artistic value in general, and the remaining chapters devoted to the ways and means of artistic value in three particular artforms. Budd's treatment of these matters is eminently sane and judicious, even wise, and deserves the attention of all philosophers concerned with the question of what makes art valuable.

II

In his opening chapter Budd offers a completely general conception of the artistic value of an individual work of art, meant to cover works of art in any artform. Budd's aim is to identify the artistic value of a work in such manner as to differentiate it from other values a work may possess, e.g. as social record, religious artifact, or financial investment. What he propose is that the artistic value of a work of art, that is to say, its value as art, is determined by or is a function of the intrinsic value of the experience the work offers (p. 4).

By "the experience the work offers" Budd means an experience in which the work is fully and correctly understood, its individual nature grasped for what it is. As he rightly notes, this involves more than just delectation of an aesthetic surface, and encompasses appreciation of the artistry and achievement inherent in a work viewed in its historical context of creation. By "the intrinsic value of the experience" Budd means the value of having such an experience for its own sake, rather than for the sake of any effects or consequences the experience may have.

What is excluded from the artistic value of an artwork is thus (i) anything about the work not directly reflected in the right sort of experience of it, and (ii) any value of such experience that is not purely intrinsic, i.e. is in some way instrumental, such as a benefit afforded the subject of experience in virtue of having the experience. Budd hastens to caution, though, that "... many of what are thought of as benefits of the experience of art are intrinsic to the experience, not merely products of it" (p. 7).

Though Budd's proposal is certainly substantially right, capturing what is perhaps central to artistic value, there are three grounds on which it might be challenged. One concerns the presupposition of a viable division between the effects or consequences of an experience, and the parts or elements of an experience, a division that may in many cases be difficult to sustain. Two concerns using the intrinsic value of the experience a work offers as sole gauge of a work's value as art, a restriction that appears inadequately justified. And three concerns the confinement of artistic value to that which is manifested in or through experience of a work, a confinement that seems at odds with certain firmly grounded judgements of artistic value. I elaborate on these in turn.

The distinction between an experience and its effects, though unproblematic on its face, has some tendency to dissolve under scrutiny. Experiences often have no unequivocal beginning and ending points. Characteristically, experiences neither start up with the sharpness of a pistol crack nor close with a full stop. Many experiences have indeterminate beginnings, and take shape slowly; many, rather than ceasing abruptly, simply fail to continue developing or ramifying. This blurriness-around-the-edges is evident enough with traumatic experiences, such as losing a loved one, but attaches, if less blatantly, to many more ordinary experiences, appreciative ones among them.

The endpoint of the experience of a musical work in audition, for example, is fairly fuzzy, with no clear cut-off between the experience itself and what may be fittingly called its echoes and reverberations. The experience of a lengthy novel does not conclude with the reading of its final paragraph, but continues for some indefinite period thereafter, during which it comes readily to mind or otherwise manifests itself in one's mental life. Even the experience of a painting may develop over the course of hours and days, not all of them spent face to face with it, making it difficult to say when the experience itself has left of f and its effects begun. If we cannot demarcate with assurance the boundaries of appreciative experiences, we cannot comfortably rule certain mental states merely effects of such experiences, rather than remote parts of them, and so cannot easily pronounce on their irrelevance to the artistic value of works in connection with which they arise.