Elisa Caldarola

What is an art of space? Does it even make sense to speak of spatial arts? There is no unified and up-to-date account of the arts of space and it is unclear whether we should include within the spatial arts such artistic practices as situated art, installation art, VR art (Virtual Reality art, where the public is inside 3D digital environments), motion pictures, the performing arts, design, fashion, and culinary art. This article looks deeper into these artistic practices and proposes fourteen definitory criteria for the arts of space, in the spirit of the criteria Jerrold Levinson and Philip Alperson (1991) formulated for the arts of time.

Over the past decade, the debate on atmospheres has grown among philosophers (see, e.g., Schmitz 2016; Böhme 2017; Griffero 2017; Jagnow 2024; Fernandez Velasco and Niikawa 2025). Examples of atmospheres are the joyful atmosphere exuding from a lively party; the shady atmosphere of a run-down back alley; the poignant atmosphere of Venice, Italy. Many scholars characterize atmospheres as having an intrinsically affective dimension. I argue that this claim is tempting and natural, albeit ultimately not convincing. I put forward the hypothesis that the reason why atmospheres may seem intrinsically affective has to do with the fact that atmospheres are properties of environments. Environments are typically experienced from within and a look at some contemporary media practices reveals that there is a quite widespread assumption that environments experienced from within typically produce affective reactions in experiencers. I suggest that (a) the correlation between the experience of affective responses to environments and the experience of atmospheres of environments is confused with the obtaining of the relation whereby an atmosphere causes one to have an affective response; (b) the view that atmospheres produce affective responses in experiencers is overgeneralized and thus transformed into the claim that atmospheres invariably produce affective responses in experiencers.

Il pensiero filosofico femminista si concentra sull’analisi delle influenze culturali e sociali che plasmano teorie e pratiche umane, mettendo in luce come le strutture concettuali che adoperiamo per interpretare la realtà non solo riflettano ma al tempo stesso riproducano e reiterino la costruzione sociale di genere, sessualità e identità personale, intrecciandosi con fattori quali etnia e contesto storico-sociale. L’estetica è un terreno particolarmente fertile per lo sviluppo di una prospettiva femminista: la sua natura intrinsecamente interdisciplinare, capace di dialogare con le diverse pratiche artistiche e le discipline critiche, le conferisce strumenti teorici e metodologici efficaci per analizzare non solo le opere d’arte, ma anche, tramite queste, i contesti sociali e culturali da cui originano. Storicamente, le prime prospettive femministe in ambito estetico si sono sviluppate nell’alveo della critica d’arte, letteraria e cinematografica, in concomitanza con lo sviluppo dei movimenti femministi e la nascita dei Gender Studies tra gli anni Settanta e Ottanta. Negli ultimi decenni, tuttavia, l’interesse per le questioni di genere si è ampliato fino a coinvolgere un numero crescente di studiose e studiosi di estetica analitica; un’evoluzione che riflette il più ampio movimento di apertura del mondo analitico verso temi politici e sociali. L’estetica femminista analitica attribuisce centralità, nel solco appunto della tradizione analitica, alle nozioni di oggettività e verità, e adotta un approccio argomentativo rigoroso e attento alla coerenza logica. Non è un’estetica che si distingue da altre forme di pensiero femminista per i temi che affronta, ma piuttosto per lo stile filosofico con cui li affronta. Di solito, nell’ambito dell’estetica si distingue tra questioni legate all’esperienza e all’apprezzamento estetico e questioni di filosofia dell’arte, che possono o meno intersecarsi con quelle propriamente estetiche (per es., analisi delle forme di rappresentazione impiegate nelle varie arti, questioni di ontologia delle opere d’arte e questioni che vertono sull’interpretazione delle opere). In linea con questa pratica, abbiamo suddiviso il capitolo in due parti: la prima è dedicata all’estetica, la seconda alla filosofia dell’arte.

In this chapter, I argue that genuinely abstract images do not depict but have aboutness, nevertheless. All images have aboutness in virtue of the visual configurations on their surfaces: it is through those configurations that they can convey something – they can mean something, represent something, express something, and so on. On the one hand, in depictive images, the visual configurations on the images’ surfaces depict visible objects while abstracting completely from some of their visual proper- ties. In Giovanni Bellini’s Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan (1501), for instance, the visual configurations on the pictorial surface depict Doge Loredan’s head and torso, as seen frontally. The image, however, com- pletely abstracts from, e.g., Doge Loredan’s legs, nape, and back. On the other hand, as I shall argue, when the visual configurations on a two- dimensional surface do not depict anything at all but have aboutness in ways other than the depictive, that two-dimensional surface is a genu- inely abstract image. As I shall show, all genuinely abstract images entirely abstain from depicting but can nevertheless abstract in different measures from the visual properties of objects. The first step for an account of genuinely abstract images is to distin- guish accurately between depictive images and genuinely abstract ones. For this, one needs an account of depiction – this is provided in the first section of this chapter. In the second section, different kinds of depictive images are singled out: this facilitates focusing on images that qualify as genuinely abstract. In the third section, four ways in which genuinely abstract images have aboutness are discussed: conventionality, indexicality, exemplifica- tion, and expressivity. The fourth section concludes with some general observations on the peculiarities of genuinely abstract images.

Ci sono molti tipi di cataloghi d’arte. Alcuni presentano collezioni museali o raccolte private, altri le opere d’arte espo- ste in mostre temporanee, altri l’opera (completa o parziale) di qualche artista. Alcuni cataloghi listano soltanto le opere d’arte, altri mostrano alcuni aspetti dei contesti espositivi in cui le opere sono presentate al pubblico – installazioni permanenti di musei, o allestimenti temporanei in gallerie d’arte, per esempio. Tutti i cataloghi d’arte sono strumenti per comunicare al pubblico informazioni: i cataloghi possono essere costituiti da semplici liste di autori e titoli di opere, materiali utilizzati per comporle e anni in cui sono state create, ma anche da volumi con saggi che contestualizzano le opere catalogate, o da volumi che, tramite gli accostamenti visivi di alcune opere alle altre e una grafica studiata, ne fanno risaltare certi aspetti, presentandoci le opere sotto particolari punti di vista. Di solito, i cataloghi d’arte presentano immagini delle opere di cui trattano. Generalmente, i contenuti di un catalogo d’arte sono descritti grazie all’uso di categorie che individuano, per esempio, i media che accomunano certe opere (dipinti, sculture, fotografie, installazioni, e così via), i periodi storici in cui le opere sono state prodotte, e gli stili artistici che le caratterizzano (classico, ellenistico, barocco, rococò, e così via). Categorie artistiche come quelle di frequente riportate nei cataloghi sono oggetto di un saggio del filosofo Kendall Walton, Categories of Art [1970], che avanza una spiegazione acuta ed efficace del ruolo che le nostre conoscenze rivestono nell’apprezzamento delle opere d’arte. In questo capitolo ricostruirò alcuni argomenti di Walton. Il mio obiettivo è mostrare come una migliore comprensione di che cosa siano le categorie artistiche e di come riconosciamo che un’opera appartiene a una certa categoria artistica possa aiutarci a gettare luce sul potenziale comunicativo dei cataloghi d’arte.

In this paper, we look at installation art through the lens provided by the notion of “affective artifact” (Piredda 2019). We argue that affective character is central to some works of installation art and that some of those works can expand our knowledge of our affective lives, while others can contribute to the construction of our identities. Sections (2), (3), and (4) set the stage for our discussion of affective installation artworks by, respectively, situating it within the debate on affective artifacts, looking at some general issues concerning the affective character of artworks, and sketching out a view of the ontology of installation art. In section (5), we discuss the affective character of six works of installation art. In section (6), we show how those artworks can reveal aspects of who we are. Section (7) concludes.

In this paper, I put forward a philosophical analysis of some works by Martin Creed. I suggest that all the works under consideration are works of conceptual art as well as of installation art, and that they display significant expressive properties. The paper is structured as follows: in the first section, I claim that the works are ontologically similar and that they all appear problematic, because it is not very clear how they should be appreciated as artworks; in the second section, I argue that the works belong to the genre conceptual art, that they are presented for intellectual appreciation, and that this is compatible with the fact that they also have expressive properties; in the third section, I submit that the works also belong to the category installation art and I explain what expressive properties they display. In the conclusion, I remark briefly on the interaction between the intellectual and aesthetic appreciation of Creed’s works.

As Peter Lamarque explains in "Work and Object", the claim that artworks are not identical with their vehicles lies at the core of a variety of art-ontological accounts, including Jean-Paul Sartre’s one. In chapter 10, Lamarque gives us an insightful read-ing of Sartre’s art-ontological proposal: works of art in themselves do not exist, while what exists is their ‘material analogue’ which, when perceived, arouses in us certain imaginings. What we call ‘artwork’ is the object of such imaginings – an object that doesn’t exist. Although Lamarque does not embrace Sartre’s view, others might find Sartre’s proposal at least prima facie promising. In particular, to those inclined to be skeptical about the genuine theoretical weight of debates about the existence of some kinds of objects, artworks qua ontologically distinct from their vehicles might look like a case where there is no fact of the matter to be right or wrong about and continuing to engage in ontological disputes is futile. Those scholars might then be sympathetic towards a proposal, inspired by Sartre as well as by Stephen Yablo’s analysis of folk number statements, according to which when we talk about artworks we are merely pretending that certain objects of our imagination exist. In the first part of this paper, I rapidly explore this meta-ontological view. In the concluding section, I argue against the proposal previously outlined.

This chapter illustrates through the analysis of some examples how philosophical research can illuminate the improvisational aspects of installation art. There is little philosophical research on improvisation in the visual arts. Similarly, there is little philosophical research on installation art – in section 2, I mention some key claims that have been put forward. Not surprisingly, then, philosophers have not yet focussed – at least to my knowledge – on improvisation in installation art. The issue, though, is timely. Not only some installation artists have explored improvisation in their practice, both solo and collaboratively (see section 3) but, as I shall argue, it can be claimed that some works of installation art represent or express improvisation (section 4), that some invite the public to engage in improvisation (section 5), and that curatorial teams responsible for the displays of certain installation artworks have the opportunity to introduce improvisational elements in their practice, if they so wish (section 6).

Several contemporary architects have designed architectural objects that are closely linked to their particular sites. An in-depth study of the relevant relationship holding between those objects and their sites is, however, missing. This paper addresses the issue, arguing that those architectural objects are akin to works of site-specific art. In section (1), I introduce the topic of the paper. In section (2), I critically analyse the debate on the categorisation of artworks as site-specific. In section (3), I apply to architecture the lesson learned from the analysis of the art debate.

In this paper, with reference to Vito Acconci’s Following Piece (1969) and Sophie Calle’s Take care of yourself (2007), I show that some works of conceptual art rely on exemplification to convey ideas, and I defend the following claims about those works. In the first place, I argue that the kinds of events and of objects they present us with are relevant for appreciating the views the works convey. In the second place, siding with Elisabeth Schellekens (2007) and Peter Goldie (2007), I argue, contra James Young (2001), that those artworks can yield experiential knowledge. In the third place, I argue that those artworks also possess probatory value. Finally, I maintain that those artworks can be valuable instruments for the education of the emotions.

The starting point of this paper are two views: on the one hand, two general claims about street art – a broad art category encompassing works of spray painting as well as of yarn bombing, paste ups as well as sculptural interventions, tags as well as stickers, and so on – and, on the other hand, a much more specific view about certain contemporary tags produced, roughly, over the past twenty years. The two general claims are, first, that all works of street art are subversive (see, e.g., Bacharach 2015; 2018; Chackal 2016; Baldini 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; Willard 2016), second, that works of street art are the result of acts of self-expression (Riggle 2016). The specific view about certain contemporary tags is that they are artworks, although they are not presented, mainly, for appreciation of aesthetic properties grounded in their perceptual properties, because they are works of conceptual street art (see Lewisohn 2010; JAK 2012). The key question of the paper concerns, however, not contemporary tags, but “very early tags” (VETs) – a term that I shall use to designate the extremely simple, unadorned tags that first appeared in the late 1960s and that some scholars consider as the historical predecessors of the various practices that today we group under the category “street art” (see, e.g., Young 2014; Gastman et al. 2015): should we regard VETs as artworks? On the one hand, VETs writers tend to answer this question in the negative, since they stress that they didn’t cast themselves as artists and often identify the first tags that are artworks with the graphically elaborated tags that begun to be seen around New York City and Philadelphia just a few years after the appearance of the first tags. On the other hand, already in the early 1970s, artists and intellectuals such as Norman Mailer and Gordon Matta-Clark seemed to hold the view that it was appropriate to regard both VETs and later tags as art, although they didn’t defend this thesis with argument. The view that some contemporary tags that are not presented, mainly, for appreciation of their aesthetic properties might be candidates for appreciation as works of conceptual art suggests a strategy for assessing the issue whether VETs are candidates for art appreciation: can we defend the claim that the extremely simple, unadorned VETs were presented for appreciation as works of conceptual street art? I argue that we have good reasons to hold this view.

Katharina Grosse’s It Wasn’t Us was on show at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, between 14 June, 2020 and 10 January 2021. In the main hall of this nineteenth century train station, now a museum, stood massive, abstractly sculpted, kaleidoscopically painted Styrofoam blocks; parts of the main hall floor, of the outdoor space behind the building, and of the façade of the museum’s extension were also painted kaleidoscopically. Here I shall examine three aspects of this work: its relationship with pictorial, sculptural and architectural works; its links with the Hamburger Bahnhof building; and its interactive character.

I put forward an analysis of Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" (2021), a set of digital images that attracted much attention when an NFT attached to it was sold for over $69 at a Christie's auction in March 2021. I submit that, developing on the tradition of conceptual art, Beeple presented for intellectual appreciation the performance of selling for a very high price an NFT attached to a set of digital images with peculiar ontological status, rather than the images themselves. In so doing, Beeple produced an artwork that can be appreciated without direct acquaintance with it, exploring, among other things, a brilliant solution for bringing art to the public during pandemic time.

There is growing debate about what is the correct methodology for research in the ontology of artworks. In the first part of this essay, I introduce my view: I argue that semantic descriptivism is a semantic approach that has an impact on meta-ontological views and can be linked with a hermeneutic fictionalist proposal on the meta-ontology of artworks such as works of music. In the second part, I offer a synthetic presentation of the four main positive meta-ontological views that have been defended in philosophical literature about artworks and of some criticisms that can be lodged against them: Amie Thomasson’s global descriptivism, Andrew Kania’s local descriptivism, Julian Dodd’s folk-theoretic modesty, and David Davies’ rational accountability view. In the conclusion, I show the advantages of my view.

Este capítulo presenta dos versiones de la teoría según la cual deberíamos centrarnos en ciertas acciones realizadas por los artistas para comprender qué tipo de objetos son las obras de arte: la propuesta de Gregory Currie (An Ontology of Art, 1989) y la de David Davies (Art as Performance, 2004). Si bien estas teorías no están exentas de problemas, es cierto que estas proporcionan una guía completa de algunos de los temas en los que uno debería meditar al evaluar y desarrollar teorías sobre qué son las obras de arte. Además, Currie y Davies presentan algunos de los argumentos más refinados contra los puntos de vista contextualistas y estructuralistas sobre la metafísica de las obras de arte, así como contra el empirismo estético.

L’arte contemporanea è caleidoscopica: può catapultarci in ambienti complessi o minimali richiedendo la nostra attiva partecipazione, ancorarsi a luoghi particolari, porci di fronte a opere apparentemente indistinguibili da oggetti ed eventi della vita quotidiana, appropriarsi illegalmente degli spazi pubblici, e così via. Questo volume muove dalla premessa che uno dei compiti della filosofia dell’arte sia prestare attenzione a specifiche pratiche artistiche e a teorie sull’arte avanzate in altri ambiti di ricerca, per poi organizzare in maniera perspicua la molteplicità dei dati raccolti. I filosofi possono così costruire teorie quanto più generali possibile per cercare di spiegare ciò che emerge da tali dati. Le ricerche qui presentate si concentrano su alcuni fenomeni, accuratamente scelti nell’ampio panorama dell’arte contemporanea: l’installation art e i suoi rapporti con l’installazione espositiva, l’arte sito-specifica e la sua appartenenza alla più ampia tradizione dell’arte situata, il ruolo delle idee nell’arte concettuale e il carattere sovversivo della street art. Sfruttando l’efficacia esplicativa del concetto di medium artistico, nonché della individuazione di forme e generi d’arte, le analisi qui presentate indagano le ragioni per cui in queste pratiche artistiche sono centrali l’esperienza dello spazio, l’interazione fra opere e pubblico, i luoghi d’installazione delle opere e gli oggetti come portatori di significati.

Suzanne Lacy introduced the term ‘New Genre Public Art’ (NGPA) to refer to art practices that depart from those traditional of public art (such as installing works in parks and plazas) and focus instead on the direct engagement of artists with audiences to deal with pressing socio-political issues. In this paper, I argue that some works of NGPA should be valued for the intellectual value grounded in their artistic features, not dissimilarly to works of conceptual art. In developing my argument, I take distance from Vid Simoniti’s recent account of ‘Socially Engaged Art’, offer a thorough analysis of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument (2002) and Kathrin Bohm’s and Stefan Saffer’s Mobile Porch (1999), and submit that both such works qualify as good works of NGPA.

La categoría ‘arte conceptual’ se aplica a una gran cantidad de obras de arte contemporáneo. El artista Sol LeWitt introdujo el término en la jerga del arte al describir obras de arte donde “la idea o el concepto es el aspecto más importante de la obra” (LeWitt 1967: 79, traducción mía). Inicialmente, el término se utilizó para referirse a obras producidas entre finales de los años sesenta y principios de los setenta por artistas como Sol LeWitt, Robert Barry, Lawrence Weiner, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, John Baldessari, el grupo Art & Language y otros (véase Lippard 1973). En España fueron relevantes el Grup de Treball, Zaj o Esther Ferrer entre otros. Más tarde se hizo evidente no solo que obras como Fuente (1917) de Marcel Duchamp – un urinario de porcelana, que fue firmado “R. Mutt” y presentado para una exposición de la Sociedad de Artistas Independientes – tenían mucho en común con aquellas producidas a finales de la década de 1960 y principios de la de 1970, sino también que obras de arte conceptual continuaron siendo producidas a lo largo de la década de 1970 y las décadas siguientes, hasta el punto de que podría argumentarse que gran parte del arte contemporáneo es, en cierta medida, conceptual. Es característico de los primeros autores conceptuales el uso del lenguaje natural en obras que son en principio visuales o plásticas, como las frases de Weiner, las definiciones de Kosuth o los ensayos de Art&Language. Se trata de un interés por el significado y el lenguaje heredado de la semiótica y la filosofía analítica de la época. También señala el énfasis (a menudo exclusivo) de todas las obras de arte conceptual en el elemento conceptual, como ocurre en los dibujos y pinturas murales de LeWitt, donde el artista produjo las instrucciones para su ejecución, luego las realizó en colaboración con otros, o transfirió completamente a otros esta tarea. Otra característica de las primeras obras de arte conceptual es que los artistas no manipularon ningún material para producir un objeto (como en Fuente de Duchamp) o usaron materiales excéntricos como el lenguaje natural, su propio cuerpo -como en I am the locus (# 1) (1975) de Adrian Piper, una performance en la que la artista se pegó un bigote en la cara, se puso una peluca Afro y anteojos redondos con montura de alambre y caminó en las calles actuando como un hombre-, o el chocolate con el que Anya Gallaccio revistió las paredes de un viejo edificio agrícola en Stroke (2004), dejando que el público las tocara y que el chocolate se pudriese. Debido a sus características inusuales, el arte conceptual plantea muchas preguntas filosóficas: sobre la definición de arte, sobre la ontología y los medios de las obras de arte y sobre nuestra experiencia apreciativa de ellas. En lo que sigue, presentaré brevemente cada uno de estos temas.

Wittgenstein’s remarks on “seeing-as” have influenced several scholars working on depiction. They have especially inspired those who think that in order to understand depiction we should understand the specific kind of visual experience depictions arouse in the viewer (e.g. Gombrich [1960], Wollheim [1968; 1987]). In this paper I would like to go a different way. My hypothesis is that certain of Wittgenstein’s claims both in the Tractatus and in his later writings resonate well within the context of an objective resemblance account of depiction (Hyman, 2006)