Artistic Value Defended

Abstract

In recent writing within the philosophy of art, it has become common to distinguish artistic and aesthetic value. There are multiple motivations for making this distinction, some of which are indicated below, but a common thread is a rejection of the aesthetic conception of art. That conception received its most refined expression in the writings of Monroe Beardsley.1 There, art is defined in terms of an intention to create an object that provides aesthetically valuable experience; understanding artworks consists in apprehending their aesthetic properties, and most important for the purpose of this article, the value of an artwork is identical to the value of the aesthetic experience it has the capacity to deliver. Each of these claims has been criticized by subsequent philosophers of art, but it is the criticism of the last claim that is pertinent here. There are two main thoughts behind this criticism: first, that there are valuable artworks that lack aesthetic value, and, second, that even among artworks that have aesthetic value, their value as art is not exhausted by their aesthetic value. Both thoughts suggest that we should distinguish between aesthetic and artistic value.

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