DECONSTRUCTING ART

Modern aesthetics is in as much a quagmire as modern art is.Since the nineteenth century, there has been no serious attempt atdefining beauty, while the great many of theorists focus their at-tention on a concocted concept that is foreign and unnatural tosay the least: the aesthetic. Art theory, on the other hand, failedutterly in its fundamental task when it handed the artist and theso-called artworld a carte blanche -in the form of the institu-tional theory of art- to decide by themselves what art is and isnot.This study attempts to fill both niches thus left gaping. Thestudy is the practical application of a method that we have firstgleaned in On Names, Ideas, and Super Ideas. The method re-quires that we treat the idea or concept of art as a mental mish-mash that has resulted from an atypical, messy process of abstrac-tion, and recognize the fact that the meaning of the word art can-not be encompassed by a single definition. The only way to de-fine art is to break down this mental mishmash into compo-nent ideas that would have resulted from the process of abstrac-tion, had it been typical; and provide a definition for each of suchcomponent ideas.The work is divided into five parts.Parts I and II provide an objective definition of art.Part III provides an objective definition of beauty.Part IV provides guidelines for judging or appreciating anywork of art.And Part V provides a rather personal interpretation of whatwent on in the arts during the twentieth century.