Speaker: Adam Bainbridge

Title: How to Appreciate Art (according to the critics)

Respondent: Gianluca Lorenzini

What is it to appreciate a work of art? For example, is it coherent to say “That’s a good sculpture, but I don’t like it”?

Analytic philosophers of art who think about art criticism typically agree that successful criticism must be evaluative. They claim that critics must judge the value of artworks, as art. But philosophical consensus quickly unravels into disagreements about how judgements are to be justified, and into disagreements about what makes artistic value valuable.

These philosophical divergences emerge in different beliefs about what a “proper” encounter with a work of art amounts to. In this talk, I want to suggest that the philosophers are not paying adequate attention to the actual practice of art criticism. I will introduce three possible ways of understanding appreciation in this context and I’ll ask: is there a relationship between our beliefs about an artwork’s value and our susceptibility to experience affective and emotional responses? I will argue that to appreciate an artwork is not merely to recognise its value, it is to incorporate the work into our lives.