3. Contemporary art is kept alive only by a steady, intravenous supply of money and wealth; it is but a braindead patient exploited by a market dressed in scrubs.

4. In contemporary art YOU ARE NOTHING UNTIL YOU HAVE BEEN BRANDED.

5. Art has been reduced to the enhancement and display of status.
6. A forest infected by parasites must burn to the ground to allow new life to thrive; therefore art must be freed from the circle of institutionalization and markets.

WE DON’T DEFINE NOR DO WE WANT TO DEFINE THIS NEW ARTWORLD, WE PRESENT THE TRUTH.

LET THE ARTS CREATE THEIR OWN FUTURE.

In order to understand what is art, first, one must determine the definition for arthood and furthermore, consider the question of what or who has the authority to declare something as art.

In his “Institutional Theory”, George Dickie lays out, what is art and defines the institutional system called “artworld”, where the works of art are embedded. According to the Philosopher an object becomes “a work of art”, if it is (1) an artefact and (2) possesses a set of aspects of which has had conferred up on it the status of candidate of appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution”, the artworld. Short, a work of art is an artefact of a kind, created to be presented to an artworld public”

How can we differ art from non-art?

Dickie introduces three senses of how an object is classified as art: In the primary or classificatory sense, in the secondary or derivative sense or in the evaluative sense.
The evaluative sense describes how the shared properties of an object are found valuable as art by the viewer. If a person or group declares something a work of art in evaluative sense, it means that the object has valuable qualities. The classificatory sense refers to artifactual or paradigm works (paradigm= a typical example or pattern of something) like sculptures, paintings etc. and simply indicates that something belongs to a certain category of artifacts. The secondary or derivative sense deals with non-artifact cases, that share properties with primary artifactual works. (A piece of driftwood looks like Brandusi’s “Bird in Space”)

For arthood artifactuality is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Further, there is a second condition needed to define art: The non-exhibited properties. A piece must be embedded in the artworld-reality. Danto stated that “To see something as art requires the eye cannot descry – an atmosphere of art theory, a knowledge of art history, an artworld.” According to Dickie this indicates the institutional nature of art.

Badges, like titles, untitled or certificates are symbols of non-exhibited properties.

That means we need an artworld as a multitude of art systems for this definition of art. The nature of this artworld is institutional. It can be seen as a broad social institution, a shared belief system, where members share knowledge and history. Both players and the audience are involved and make up the institution. The artworld can be seen as an established practice, under which limitless systems (Theatre, painting, music, sculpture etc.) exist and subsystems, more specific categories under which art may be classified in the future (action painting, happenings, dramas etc.). Following Dickie the concept of art is closed but it provides space for unlimited additions. All of these have its own origin and history and are a framework for presenting works and conferring the status of candidates of appreciation. Pieces are candidates of appreciation if the members of the artworld are experiencing the qualities of these pieces and find them valuable.

Just as the christening of a child has as its background the history and structure of the church, conferring the status of art has as its background the complexity of the artworld. Works of art need to be embedded in the artworld context and the members of this institution need to confer the status of candidate for appreciation upon an object with artifactuality or derived artefactuality.

Fokt:”A status conferral is successful when it is performed in a conventional way by a person assuming an authoritative role.”.

When an artefact is exhibited in a museum or in a gallery that is a clear sign that the piece would have already gone through the scrutiny of individuals in the artworld as they decide the piece is worthy a public attention.

Without the conferring within the institution a piece is not art. When the artworld decides that an object is a candidate of appreciation, it gains potential value, although this value may never be attained. Dickie gives us the example of driftwood. It may become art, when it gains artifactuality, when a person either displays it on a wall or exhibition. Additionally he provides the necessary condition of originality as an analytical requirement.

We, like Wollheim, see the circularity of this whole concept. A work of art needs the artworld in order to to be defined and the artworld needs the works of art for its existence.

Our aim is to delegitimise the artworld as termed by Danto in order for it to vanish. The current artworld needs to vanish as it is corrupted. We recognised the fact that art is already dead and only kept on life-support by the artworld through its commercial enterprises and the old shared corrupted belief-system. Burning it down will make way for future fertile soil where new ideas can blossom. Only then can a new artworld emerge. We do not define nor want to define this new artworld as we will go down with the ship that is the old artworld.
The institutional theory of art is a circular argument. The artworld (the institution) is needed to define what art is, while art is the basis for the institution artworld. We intent to break this circle, using the inherent logic of Dickie.

We form an institution, or in other words, we form a shared belief-system. By achieving consensus in our social group we achieve a shared belief-system. As members acting on behalf of this institution we have the authority to confer the status of candidate for appreciation on artefacts which defines them as art. All objects can attain artefactuality through the primary or secondary sense as shown by George Dickie. We as agents of this new institution can individually confer the status of candidate for appreciation onto these artefacts but only by consensus, indicated through the accumulation of badges, in our belief-system, arthood is achieved.

There will be no reason for why we confer this status onto certain artefacts. Wollheim argued in his attack on the Institutional Art Theory that there are two main problems with Dickie’s approach. If there are reasons for why the conferral then these reasons would constitute a better definition for arthood and thus make the theory invalid or if there are no reasons for the conferral then it would delegitimise the artworld as a whole. As it would cast doubt on the authority by the agents picking certain artefacts for arthood, as explained by Simon Fokt in SOLVING WOLLHEIM’S DILEMMA: A FIX FOR THE INSTITUTIONAL DEFINITION OF ART. By us picking artefacts at random and conferring the status of candidate for appreciation onto them we delegitimise the institution. Thus we break the circle through Wollheim’s dilemma.

We pick random artefacts, label them with a badge, and choose the artefacts we achieved consensus for to be presented to the public. By not giving any reasons we destroy ourselves and take the artworld down with us. Simon Fokt:”It is still unclear why one should trust them in choosing, say, their novels rather than their shopping lists for presentation.”. Art is dead and we show it to the public by presenting our shopping list. Out of these ashes a new artworld can arise.

Ariana, Daniel, Lilli, Elisa – The Agents

Gallery