possess the surface design of Picasso’s, but some of which are molded into
variously jagged or rolling bas-reliefs–then we would in all likelihood find
it “cold, stark, and lifeless...or perhaps bland, dull, [and] boring”in
comparison with otherguernicas; it is only when we regard it (correctly) as
a painting that we feel it to be“violent, dynamic, vital, [and] disturbing.”^60
Which aesthetic properties a work has and displays is a function of which
independently historically established class of works it inhabits. Aesthetic
properties are not immediately evident in perception to the nonhistorical
eye or ear alone. Danto has similarly argued that there can be“perceptually
indistinguishable counterparts”–works that look exactly like each other:
for example, a monochrome red square painted by a follower of Josef
Albers, a canvas primed in red lead by Giorgione (but never painted any
further), and a painting once imagined by Kierkegaard“The Israelites Cross-
ing the Red Sea”(the Israelites have all crossed over, and the Egyptians have
drowned), among other possible“red square”paintings.^61 These works all
look exactly alike, yet they have quite distinct meanings and aesthetic
properties. Giorgione’s primed canvas is a mere thing with no artistic
meaning;“The Israelites Crossing the Red Sea”might be deeply moving.
Beardsley had claimed that“two objects that do not differ in any observable
properties cannot differ in aesthetic value”;^62 given Walton’s and Danto’s
examples, this seems wrong.
Building on such cases, Danto argues further that artworks cannot
be defined or identified as all and only those things that produce a
certain kind of favorable, absorbing aesthetic experience. We have to
know first– on independent historical grounds– whether the thing
before us is an artwork, and if so which one, in order to know how to
feel in attending to it.
If knowledge that something is an artwork makes a difference in the mode
of aesthetic response to an object–if there are differential aesthetic
responses to indiscernible objects when one is an artwork and the other a
natural thing–then...we should have to be able to distinguish works of art(^60) Kendall Walton,“Categories of Art,”Philosophical Review79 (1970), pp. 334–67; reprinted
inPhilosophy Looks at the Arts, ed. Margolis, pp. 88–114 at p. 99.
(^61) Danto,The Transfiguration of the Commonplace(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1981), p. 1.
(^62) Beardsley,Aesthetics, p. 503.
Beauty and form 69