Dove e quando

Art Categories as Subject Matters

Conference by Elisa Caldarola (University of Turin / The Graduate Center - CUNY) and Matteo Plebani (University of Turin)

Philosophers of language have recently become increasingly interested in the project of elucidating the twin notions of aboutness and subject matter. In this paper, we submit that this work is relevant to a classical theme in the philosophy of art. We argue that adopting a certain characterization of subject matter that emerges from the work of David Lewis and Stephen Yablo, according to which a subject matter is a set of alternatives, makes it very plausible to argue that any artwork has a subject matter, and that subject matter is the art category it falls in. Kendall Walton (1970) famously argues that knowing what art category an artwork falls in is key to the proper appreciation of the artwork. We show that Walton’s conception of an art category is structurally similar to the view of subject matter that emerges from Lewis’ and Yablo’s work.