Philosophy of the Performing Arts

performance art and the performing arts 213
the manifest properties of the resulting performance were like? If a negative
answer to these questions seems appropriate, the pieces in question will turn
out to be conceptual works. They will not, appearances to the contrary, be
performable works with performances that belong to the performing arts,
since their appreciation as the works they are does not depend upon qualities
realized in performances that would enact their prescriptions.
This leaves us with three puzzling cases whose status has still to be deter-
mined: Young’s Composition 1960 #7 , which seems to be a performable work
and which can be, and indeed has been, performed on different occasions;
Acconci’s Following Piece , which seems to be a performable work that has
been performed once, and Cage’s 4 ́ 33 ̋ which again seems to be a perform-
able work that has been performed many times, but which seems to lack
properties that we expect a performable musical work to possess. Let us
consider these three examples in turn.
As we have seen, we face a general problem in our attempts to appreci-
ate many contemporary works of art. We seek to identify a work’s artistic
vehicle in order to determine the work’s artistic content. But this requires
that we establish the relationship between the work and the documentation or
other material presented in a gallery or theater that plays a role in making
the work accessible to receivers. If we had some independent idea as to the
point of the work, this would help us to distinguish between a work’s artistic
vehicle and its documentation. And if we had some independent idea as to
the artistic vehicle of the work this would help us to determine what the
point of the work is. Given this dilemma, we can best proceed by exploring
different ways of reading a work that would ascribe to it particular artistic
contents articulated through particular artistic vehicles. In judging between
these readings, we can appeal not only to their coherence and intrinsic plau-
sibility, but also to clues to be found in other works by the artist, perhaps
in her pronouncements on her works, and in more general features of the
art-historical context in which she was working.^12
In the case of Young’s Composition 1960 # 7, we can be guided in this
exercise by something that is perhaps clearer in the case of the other pieces
making up the larger collection Compositions 1960. The point of these other
pieces seems to be to subject to critical scrutiny certain presuppositions
about the nature of music and of art. If we assume a common thematic
meaning to the pieces making up the collection, this suggests that the
point of #7 depends upon the kind of thing that is prescribed, rather than
on qualities that would be realized in actual performances meeting those
prescriptions. On this reading, #7 would be no less a conceptual piece
than the piece prescribing that one draw a straight line and then follow
it. On the other hand, the musical qualities that are manifest when #7 is
performed prefigure the sound structures in Young’s later pieces, which