tecture from the ancient grouping of mimetic arts and from the first formal classifica-
tion of the “fine arts,” see What Art Is, 191–93, 420 note 18, and 421 note 22; on the dis-
tinction between the mimetic and the decorative arts, 200–213.
Scholars often claim that “fine art” is a peculiarly Western European concept, with
no counterpart in other cultures. That claim is only superficially true, however. Although
there may not be a precise equivalent for collective terms such as “art” or “fine art” in
the Chinese language, for example, there is a long tradition in Chinese philosophy and
aesthetic speculation of observing and commenting upon fundamental similarities
between the major art forms, the same forms initially canonized as the “fine arts” in the
West. Like Western philosophers, Chinese thinkers recognized that music, dance, poetry,
painting, and sculpture are basic modes of human expression, which serve to convey
thoughts and feelings about life through imaginatively transformed representations of
reality. Though they tended to place greater emphasis on emotion than Western theorists,
they nonetheless recognized that cognition, too, plays a key role in the arts, in both the
creative process and the experience of works of art. Also like Western thinkers, they
often drew analogies from one art form to another—thereby indicating an implicit sys-
tem of classification, lacking only the linguistic tag to designate it explicitly (such a lack
was probably due mainly to their less abstract habits of mind). Illuminating sources on
Chinese art and aesthetics are Li Zehou, The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese
Aesthetics, tr. Gong Lizeng, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994; and Osvald
Sirén, The Chinese on the Art of Painting: Translations and Comments, New York:
Schocken, 1969. Similarities between Western and Chinese (as well as other non-
Western) thought on art are further considered in my recent book, Who Says That’s Art?
A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts, New York: Pro Arte Books, 2014.
- Among numerous other instances, the question But Is It Art?appears as the title
of a popular Oxford University Press book (2001) by philosopher Cynthia Freeland,
cited above, note 3. As is so often the case when the question is raised in a title, it is never
dealt with head-on in the text. Freeland nevertheless seems to imply that the answer is
always Yes, for she discusses as “art” twentieth-century examples ranging from Andy
Warhol’s Brillo Boxesto the French “performance artist” Orlan’s surgical manipulations
of her own body and the scenarios with “counterfeit currency” enacted by another post-
modernist, J.S.G. Boggs. Though Freeland is critical of some aspects of such work, her
tacit assumption appears to be that all of it is art. On the relationship between such
“hard” cases and “institutional” definitions of art, see Stephen Davies, Definitions of
Art, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, 37–47. For a critical review of Freeland’s
book, see Louis Torres, “Judging a Book by Its Cover” (Aristos, May 2003
http://www.aristos.org/aris-03/judging.htm). - Ironically, Ayn Rand probably knew nothing of Baumgarten, and had no idea
how close her own theory of art came to that proposed by Kant—whom she held in noto-
riously low esteem. The four essays outlining her theory of art are included in The
Romantic Manifesto, rev. ed., New York: New American Library, 1975. Her statement
regarding the function of art appears in the first of the essays, “The Psycho-
Epistemology of Art,” ibid., 19–20. For an in-depth critique of Rand’s theory, see Torres
and Kamhi, What Art Is, as well as our responses to a Symposium in the Journal of Ayn
Rand Studies: Kamhi, “What ‘Rand’s Aesthetics’ Is, and Why It Matters” (Spring 2003)
http://www.aristos.org/editors/jars-mmk.pdf; and Torres, “Scholarly Engagement:
When It Is Pleasurable, and When It Is Not” (Fall 2003 http://www.aristos.org/
editors/jars-lt.pdf). For an illuminating analysis by a cognitive psychologist of Rand’s
Notes to Pages 41–43 203