Authorship and Creation

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79 (2):175-185 (2021)
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Abstract

Artworks have authors. According to Christy Mag Uidhir, this simple assumption has significant consequences for the ontology of artworks. One such consequence is that artworks cannot be identified with abstract entities: if there are works of art, they are concrete entities. Therefore, one cannot create an abstract work of art. Mag Uidhir presents a novel challenge against abstract creationism, the view that certain kinds of art objects are abstract artifacts. This article has two aims. First, it provides a defense of abstract creationism against Mag Uidhir’s arguments. Second, it argues that creation, even in the case of concrete artifacts, is never purely causal: to create an artifact is to bring about the conditions on which the created object ontologically depends. I conclude that a properly developed account of creation provides a better understanding of the question of how one comes to create an artifact, be it abstract or concrete.

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Author's Profile

Nurbay Irmak
Bogazici University

Citations of this work

Artifactualization without Physical Modification.Tim Juvshik - 2021 - Res Philosophica 98 (4):545-572.
Creating abstract objects.David Friedell - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (10):e12783.

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References found in this work

Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary.Daniel Z. Korman - 2015 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by Dana Zemack.
Ordinary Objects.Amie L. Thomasson (ed.) - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Material Beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Philosophy 67 (259):126-127.
Material Beings.Peter van Inwagen - 1993 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (3):701-708.

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