Art and Philosophy: Conceptual Issues in Aesthetics by Joseph Margolis (review)

242 Books concise history of the cafb, its origins, the artistic activities it organized and the artists who met there follows. Special emphasis is given to Picasso and the influences he received from Modernism0 in general and especially from Casas, Rusifiol and Nonell. The main section of the catalog is devoted to reproductions of the 55 works exhibited-which date from 1890 to 1909 and include posters. book and magazine illustrations and prints as well as drawings and paintings-with a description and analytic commentary on each, discussing not only the individual work but often its relationship to other works by the same or different artists. A selected bibliography completes this useful volume which’ presents to the public many interesting artists who are little known outside of Catalonia and gives a picture of the enthusiasm and creativity of this group of artists in Barcelona at the turn of the century. Art and Philosophy: Conceptual Issues in Aesthetics. Joseph Margolis. Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ. U.S.A. 1980.350pp. $25.00. ISBN: 0-391-00645-2. Reviewed by David Carrier* Artworks, Margolis argues, are culturally emergent entities. The painting, though embodied in a physical object, is not identical with that object. What the artist makes and the critic describes is something possessing properties ‘other than those ascribed to the physical object in which it is embodied’ (p, 40). We cannot, if we are to be coherent, allow incompatible descriptions of a physical object; something cannot be both ‘square’ and ‘not square’. But since artworks are not just physical objects, there may be no clear distinction between what is ‘actually in a painting and what is only plausibly imputed to it’ (p. 122). Different incompatible descriptions of one artwork may be allowed.This does not mean that in art criticism anything goes. All legitimate interpretations must ‘meet criteria of critical plausibility’ (p. 163);they must correctly describe the work, and take their place within the traditions ofcriticism. If correct, Margolis’ thesis is important. He takes up the central questions of aesthetics, and his answers to these questions are. he argues, different in important ways from thosegiven by all other aestheticians. But his presentation is hard to follow. Margolis’ own positive account emerges only as almost the byproduct ofdisagreements with many other philosophers. In the seventeen pages of the first chapter, for example, he argues against Strawson, Danto, Beardsley, Sibley. Diffey, Dickie, Goodman and others. When one is trying to understand his thesis these arguments are somewhat distracting. What he says about other aesthet.icians is often debatable or too brief. To mention only three examples, I think his critiques of Goodman on expression and exemplification (pp. 12- 13.98-99) and Wollheim onexpression (p. 179) mistaken; and I do not understand his objections (p. 22) to Danto’s discussion of artistic identification. Though these debates bring a rich array of references into this book, they make the argument hard to follow. When in three pages (pp. 195- 198)he argues against Gombrich’s theory of representation, criticizes Arnheim’s ‘platonist theory of perceptual forms’ and rejects Gibson’s account of perception, it is easy to find these individual claims too rushed, and their relation to his larger concerns unclear. Certainly it is important to note how Margolis’ analysis differs from similar seeming accounts; and what he says about issues apparently tangential to his main argument-such as whether art can be defined and the nature of artistic genres-is interesting. But the price of this comprehensiveness is that some relatively straightforward questions about his concept of cultural emergence never get answered. I remain unclear, still. about why the artwork is in some sense not that physical thing made by the artist; and, what exactly determines the restrictions on admissible interpretations of artworks is not entirely clear. The parallel-repeatedly mentioned, but never developedbetween this account of artworks and persons as discussed in hisPersons and Minds (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979) is suggestive. and elaborating it might be helpful. Margolis’ book will be much discussed by aestheticians, and is potentially of interest to art historians and critics as well. His own ‘Robert Morris: His Art and His Theory’, in Arr Criricism, 1, 2 (1979...