Fair enough; very little of what you said merits my disagreement, but I would like to add a few points to consider.

First, it is quite easy to locate a universal definition for “art” if by this we intend the traditional notion of art before the Modern period reduced ‘art’ to ‘fine art’. I think Dante’s definition is best: Art is the child of nature and the grandchild of God. Traditionally, ‘art’ named any human intervention into the momentum of being that was called ‘nature’. Distinctions eventually arose between, for example, servile art (artes serviles) and free art (artes liberales). But ultimately, art was the unique mode of human production that enabled a greater illumination of nature. We might say art is the activity of illuminating the dark excess of being, the work of ‘lighting up’ the constitutive darkness of that which is other to the human.

Second, when I make my claim about the importance of univocity, I am not applying this universally to ‘art’ as such. Rather, I am saying that the various ways in which art is univocally defined by those who DO advocate a univocity to art overall are not to be jettisoned so hastily. You correctly reject this univocal totalization, but this rejection cannot be the final say. Rejecting a univocal totalization does not preclude integrating univocity in other ways. Moreover, a totalizing rejection of univocity is itself to invoke that same univocity in another form.

If you seek a metaxological approach to art, then you too must concede the integration of the univocal; metaxology is not an exclusive category superimposed to overcome our hostility to other modes of mindfulness (univocal, equivocal or dialectical); rather it is the integration of all these. Only with a metaxological approach are we able to pursue the overdetermined, or plurivocal, excess of all beings, not least of which is art. But being metaxological requires that we integrate - not exclude - univocal approaches: reject their totalization, integrate their relative value.

Finally - yeah! Picasso was a great, great liar … at least if we concede his own definition of art. Or was he a great truth teller? Either way, his definition is quite a fitting verbal expression of his own equivocal output.

BSam

Maybe what I could get behind is a kind of pragmatic or soft definition of art, which is what I think Wolterstorff is alluding to in his statement about the variety of actions of works of art being their unifying factor. So, works can foster contemplation, they can create unique spaces, they can …. They do all these things. But at the end of the day, is this really going to make the philosopher of art happy? Someone who wants to draw some sort of unifying thread between Fountain, Easter Island Statues, Maplethorpe photos, and Greek tragedy? I don’t think so. And I don’t think I can grant what would make them happy.

The utter brilliance of this post is overshadowed only by its tacit projection of the number of cups of coffee you must have consumed before writing it…
It reminds of that scene in Dazed and Confused when Adam Goldberg’s character, several beers into the night, musters up the courage to “bravely” and angrily confront the bully who had hours earlier humiliated him…:))))))))))))))

Abandoning definitions of the nature of the art work? … hold on…grab hold…your starting to tilt slightly off that beautiful metaxological middle, leaning ever so gently out of the luminous between into the shadows where nominalism likes to flicker like a lightening bug on a warm summer evening….

Now don’t get me wrong - as we both know, I share a fervent sympathy for your pursuit of the plurivocity of artistic activity, as well as your zeal to rage against the overly analytic museum slave-masters who shackle the sons and daughters of art with the chains of culture elitism. But it seems that your vehemence, if unchecked by the limits inherent within a definition, could create another kind of counter-elitism; elitist in that it promotes the triumph of counter-musuem-culturalism. It is a counter culture that will deflate every attempt to define the artwork until finally, no one may say what is and is not art, not even that counter culture itself. Stay metaxological. Stay between. One difficult thing about the plurivocal as a concept is that it dies when absolutized.

Perhaps what you are railing against is a univocalizing of the definition of art (i.e., ‘fine art’) that absolutizes one particular definition as if it were the ‘only voice’ of art, which also kills the plurivocity inherent with every product of artistic activity. I am there on the front lines with you in this battle. But I cannot abandon the project of pursuing the meaning of the artwork. The plurivocity of which you speak demands that we refuse to negate any voices (even the Museum culture), and instead only negate anything that destroys the plurivocity. In seeking to negate the voice of the museum culture, you simultaneously reduce the plurivocity by at least one voice, no? As your post proves, the museum culture still has much to teach us about art, even if dialectically - at the very least, Stolnitz’s position has the value of being the catalyst for the thought process that went into your own valuable reflection (very Hegelian of me, I know).

Excavating the meaning of art is indeed a project worth pursuing, and as I see it definitions are both treasures and tools with which to excavate. Understanding whether something is or is not intended to be produced as this or that kind of art, or not as art at all, does make a difference. Consider DuChamp’s “The Fountain.” Where would it be if the urinal he used was NOT thought to be a common product of utility? True - his granting it the status of the artwork draws out its inherently artistic elements; elements that we so easily take for granted, immersed as we are in a market-obsessed-culture that seduces us away from seeing the products of human making as “concretions to be loved”, and instead see only “products to be used”. yadda, yadda, yadda….
… here’s the point: it is indisputable that the very artistic foundation on which “The Fountain” stands is constituted by the distinction between what is and is not considered an artwork. The unity of ‘art’ - i.e., its overdetermined meaning - arrives through the discovery of distinctions; it cannot be imported a priori whether in a positive fashion, or even, as the case seems to be in your post, in a negative fashion.

….of course, perhaps I should have read your post with a tad more irony…..

BS