Philosophy of the Performing Arts

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
widespread assumption that classical music provides us with a model for the
performing arts as a whole. This model, which we may term the “classical
paradigm,” provides the framework for our explorations in the first part of
this book. We look at what the model involves, the questions that it raises
in the musical case, and the plausibility of thinking that it extends to other
musical genres, to theater, and to dance.
In bringing out certain disanalogies between performances of classical
music and other kinds of artistic performances, we establish the framework
for our explorations in the second part of the book. We begin by looking at
performances conceived as artworks in their own right. We then examine
certain dimensions of artistic performance – improvisation, rehearsal, the
role of the audience, and the embodied nature of the artistic performer –
and note interesting similarities and differences between the performing
arts. In the final chapter, we bring our general way of thinking about the per-
forming arts to bear upon some of the most puzzling cases in contemporary
art usually classified as “ performance art.”
In a couple of places in this book, I draw, with permission, on material that
has appeared elsewhere or is forthcoming. The general framework for thinking
about the performing arts set out in Chapter 1 was first sketched in chapter 9
of my Art as Performance (Blackwell, 2004), where I also looked at some of the
examples discussed in Chapter 10. The notion of “artistic regard” defended in
Chapter 1 is spelled out in more detail in “Pornography, Art, and the Intended
Eye of the Beholder,” due to appear in a forthcoming collection on Aesthetics
and Pornography edited by Jerrold Levinson and Hans Maes (Oxford University
Press, Oxford). In Chapters 6 and 8, I draw on “Rehearsal and Hamilton’s
‘Ingredients Model’ of Theatrical Performance,” Journal of Aesthetic Education
43 (3) (2009), 23–36. A slightly modified version of the discussion of embodi-
ment in Chapter 9 is forthcoming as “ ‘I’ll be your mirror’? Embodied Agency,
Dance, and Neuroscience,” in Elisabeth Schellekens and Peter Goldie (eds),
Aesthetic Psychology (Oxford University Press, Oxford). And in Chapter
10 I draw on “Telling Pictures: The Place of Narrative in Late-Modern Visual
Art,” in Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens (eds), Philosophy and Conceptual
Art (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007), and on “Performance Art,” in
Stephen Davies et al (eds), A Companion to Aesthetics , 2nd edn (Wiley-Blackwell,
Oxford, 2009), 462–465.
I would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement I have received
in pursuing this project from Philip Alperson, the series editor, and from Jeff
Dean and Tiffany Mok at Wiley-Blackwell. Jeff gave valuable feedback on early
drafts of some chapters, and Jeff and Tiffany provided a very helpful framework
that helped me to complete the first draft of the manuscript. I would also like
to acknowledge the assistance I have received from all those people who have
critically responded to some of the ideas in this book over the past couple
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