for literature.^22 That call was soon taken up by music critics who are also
accomplished in philosophy, sociology, and literary theory, such as Susan
McClary^23 and Lawrence Kramer.^24 At the same time, close formal analysis
and explication of works of music does not go away, and McClary and Kramer
typically include such analyses within their broader readings.^25 In painting,
studies of iconography and iconology in the style of Panofsky are balanced by
the historically informed but more formally focused readings of Michael
Fried and the formally sophisticated but more sociopolitically focused read-
ings of T. J. Clark.
In general, knowledge of the personal, cultural, and social conditions of
production of a work (including knowledge of sociopolitical antagonisms
under which that production takes place) provides useful knowledge of just
what artists are doing and why. As Dewey observes^26 and as Walton and
Danto have aptly argued,^27 we need to know the cultural and political
situation and the artistic tradition of a work in order to discern what is
represented and expressed in it.The special importance of the elucidation of
formal-semantic elements
Among the strategies considered for the understanding of art, however, the
close elucidation (making use of relevant historical knowledge) of the formal
arrangement of the elements of the work so as to bring out what it represents
and expresses in a distinctive way is especially pertinent to the understand-
ing of art as art. As Dewey puts it, “Knowledge of social conditions of
production is, when it is really knowledge, of genuine value. But it is no
substitute for understanding of the object in its own qualities and(^22) Joseph Kerman,Contemplating Music(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).
(^23) See Susan McClary,Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality(Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 1991).
(^24) Kramer,Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge.
(^25) For one example of a spectacularly successful integration of formal analysis withbroader
historical and sociopolitical reading, see Rose Rosengard Subotnik,“How Could Chopin’s
A-Major Prelude be Deconstructed?,”in R. R. Subotnik,Deconstructive Variations: Music and
Reason in Western Society(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 39–147.
(^26) Dewey,Art as Experience, pp. 310–11.
(^27) See the discussion of their criticisms of formalism in Chapter 3 above.
156 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art