148 performance as art
use Thom’s terminology, as a distinct object of aesthetic contemplation. But
events meeting the requirements for being both a work-performance and
a performance-work seem more readily available in a performed art like
theater where there is a looser conception of what a performable work pre-
scribes. If so, then we can freely acknowledge many theatrical performances
as performance-works without denying their status as work-performances.
This suggests that, in theater at least, the scope of the ingredients model is
less extensive than Hamilton takes it to be. But it also suggests that the ingre-
dients model may be more widely applicable in music, something we shall
explore in the next chapter.
Notes
- From Mike Dibbs’s documentary Keith Jarrett: The Art of Improvisation (Euro Arts
2005), cited in da Fonseca-Wollheim 2008. - I shall, again for convenience, speak of the focus of our artistic appreciation as
itself a work of art, and thus of a performance-work as a performance that, qua
focus of appreciation, is itself an artwork. As noted in Chapter 1, I have argued
elsewhere (2004) that artworks in general are not themselves the focuses of
appreciation specified by artists, but the actions that artists perform in specifying
those focuses. Since nothing here rests upon this distinction, I conform here to
the standard understanding of such matters. - In some cases, the apparent “improvisation” is in a more literal sense a perform-
ance of a repeatable production, the performer repeating on different occasions
a preconceived “improvisation” on a given number. For some examples of this,
see A. Hamilton 2007, 201–204. - As we shall see in our more detailed examination of improvisation in the next
chapter, that Jarrett’s performance was entirely spontaneous in the sense specified
is quite compatible with his having drawn, both structurally and in the selection of
motifs, upon his prior performances and rehearsals, not to mention his under-
standing of generic and harmonic conventions. - Alperson credits Denis Dutton, in conversation, with this observation. For a
similar point, see Thom 1993, 65–66. - In our attempts to appreciate artworks, we also take an interrogative interest
in the individual elements of which the artistic vehicle is composed and through
whose individual features the content of the work is articulated. These elements
are not themselves artworks, of course, but our interrogative interest in them
refers them to artworks – the artworks to whose articulated artistic content
we assume they are designed to contribute.