Philosophy of the Performing Arts

210 performance as art
artistic performances in our first sense. The actions of the performers are
the artistic vehicle of a performance-work. Nor should we have any prob-
lem identifying the performance by the Miles Davis Quintet as an artistic
performance in the second sense. The actions of the performers serve to
instantiate a performable work whose artistic content is thereby articulated.
We can also enfranchise as artistic performances the kinds of events that
fall under what Carroll terms “performance art.” For these are simply more
radical extensions of theater, which is indisputably a performing art whether
we view the performances as falling under the classical paradigm, or under
Hamilton’s ingredients model. Indeed, we discussed some examples of
Carroll’s “performance art” in Chapter 6, where we considered the applica-
bility of the classical paradigm to modern theater.
What of our remaining puzzling cases? We can begin by looking at
LeWitt’s wall drawings. While, for fairly obvious reasons, these will not turn
out to involve artistic performances, exploration of possible ways of viewing
the wall drawings will be helpful in determining the status of other more
puzzling cases.
The wall drawings are puzzling pieces in a number of respects, something
well brought out by Kirk Pillow (2003) in a paper on this subject. For exam-
ple, in his comments on the pieces, LeWitt sometimes talks of the “same work”
as being multiply “performable,” much as musical works can be multiply per-
formed (1984, 21). At other times, however, he maintains that each materi-
alization of the constraints for a wall drawing is a distinct work (LeWitt 1971,
376). Again, there are what seem to be conflicting claims as to the bearing of the
finished wall drawings on the being and being appreciated of LeWitt’s pieces.
On the one hand, in his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art , he says the following:
I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In
conceptual art, the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.
When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning
and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.
This kind of art ... is usually free from dependence on the skill of the artist
as a craftsman. (LeWitt 1967)
On the other hand, in “Doing Wall Drawings,” he avers that “the explicit plan
should accompany the finished wall drawing. They are of equal importance,”
and that “ideas of wall drawings alone are contradictions of the idea of wall
drawings” (LeWitt 1971, 376).
What, then, is the artistic vehicle in the case of a work like LeWitt’s
Wall Drawing No. 623 , and what bearing do our aesthetic responses to the
manifest properties of the painted surface of its solitary realization – in the
National Gallery of Canada – have upon the appreciation of this piece? At