I had the opportunity to return to the Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture after not attending for several years to present a joint paper on art with my friend and colleague, Mark Allen. Our presentation was on Wednesday, October 26, 2022. We worked really hard on our abstract and paper as we hope that it will form the foundation for a future book to write together.

Here is our abstract:

The divide between traditional and modern conceptions of art has created a rift between the artworld and the general public. The artworld wonders if the public cares about art because so few seem interested in expanding their tastes beyond traditional modes, but the public sees little coming out of the modern artworld that resonates with common aesthetic sensibilities. This project takes the position that great works of art and deep experiences of art are not out of reach for the ordinary person and that both the artworld and the public can be brought into fruitful dialogue with each other.

Early in the twentieth century, the artworld began shifting its focus toward qualities like meaning, progress, and originality. Ultimately, this led to radical forms of conceptualism that minimized values like craftsmanship and beauty, diminishing the connection between art and everyday living. And so, whether actively disregarded or passively overlooked, ordinary people tend to dismiss modern art as an abstract, high-brow enterprise, deflating the motivation to participate in art in general. What’s the point in trying to engage works that are culturally, conceptually, and aesthetically inaccessible? Maybe seeking understanding in art is a waste of time?

Of course, good art can be and often is difficult—to make and to make sense of—but far too often work that is promoted as “complex” is merely opaque—front-loaded with philosophical assumptions and foreign grammar administered by artworld elites.

The authors of this project, however, believe that everyone is adequately qualified to freely engage works of art simply by virtue of being human. In fact, it is in our ordinary humanity that we find the purest, most primordial experience one can have with a work of art. To be clear, we are not calling for a renaissance of art that is easy or crude, but for a reawakening of common sensibilities from common folk who are empowered in their ordinariness to both create and engage works of art. Drawing on philosophers like Sartre and Danto, and artists like Cézanne and Duchamp, we establish a clearer picture of what art is so that we can establish why art is so important for human flourishing.

First, we argue that a philosophy of art centered around the qualities of meaning, craftsmanship, and beauty aids a proper understanding of art through a flexible but discerning “two-out-of-three” conditional. If works characterized mostly by meaning can be reclassified as a new form of philosophy, while works characterized by beauty, craftsmanship, and meaning remain under the conventional category of art, then we can more fully appreciate both traditional and modern works, making sense of them on their own terms.

Second, we insist that works of art must spill out of the frame, the museum, and the music hall, in ways that are lived-out in human flourishing. Through creation or participation, art has the unique ability to expose human suffering and cultivate freedom. More than this, we shape our lives as works of art through self-creation and, in this way, are drawn beyond the material world toward transcendence.

In summary, this project attempts to bridge the divide between the artworld and ordinary people by narrowing the definition of art on the one hand, but expanding it on the other. This approach is informed by the diverse backgrounds of the authors, both of whom have doctorates in philosophy, but one is a professional artist who teaches advertising and design while the other is a trained musician who teaches philosophy and aesthetics.