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Art History? Author(s): Donald Brook Reviewed work(s): Source: History and Theory, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Feb., 2004), pp. 1-17 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3590740 . Accessed: 11/01/2012 15:34
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43 and 2004), 1-17 History Theory (February

C Wesleyan 2004ISSN:0018-2656 University

ART HISTORY?

DONALD BROOK

ABSTRACT This article is presentedin two parts.In part I, I call into question the viability of a currently received opinion about the foundationsof the subject called "ArtHistory,"primarily by challenging assumptionsthat are implicit in conventional uses of the terms "art" and "workof art."It is widely supposedthatworks of artare items of a kind, thatthis kind is the bearerof the name "art,"and thatit has a history.In partII, I propose to correctthis errorby using the word "art"in a presentlyunconventional--although not unprecedented-way. The proposalrelies upon a concept of culturalevolution runningintellectually parallelto a Darwinianaccount of genetic evolution. The thesis has strongmetaphysically realist implications,relating culturalevolution to what can be said and done and can properlybe seen to have a history only in a universe to which real regularitiesare attributed. The recommendeduse of the term "art"is secured upon an estimate of the role of memetic innovation as radically pervasive, embracing all thought and action. "Art," understoodin the suggested way, becomes the name of a category, which has no history as kinds have histories. I. ONTHEINFIRMITY ARTHISTORY1 OF

Introduction
To the extent that, wittingly or unwittingly, art historians make one or more of three related mistakes their practice must be unsound. The first of these is that "art" is the name of a kind, of which works of art are the items. The second is that this putative kind has a history. The third is that the history of this kind is shaped quite differently from the way in which the generality of cultural kinds, including such kinds as the clock and the washing machine, are shaped. To the extent that "art historians" take themselves to be cultural historians with a topic preference for such kinds as Etruscan terracottas and medieval stained glass windows, they may be blameless. It will be argued that among all the sorts of things, kinds are distinctive, differing profoundly from other sorts.2 From the account given of kinds, two impor1. Some of the points developed in this paperwere first made in my "Art and History,"Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002), 331-340. Others had already received a tentative airing in "The Undoing of Art History,"Artlink(Australia)21 (2001), 66-69 and 22 (2002), 70-73. Thus heaps and 2. I use "sorts"as the most general of terms for collectives and non-particulars. herds and residues are sorts, and so are classes and types and universals;so that while kinds are formally countable among the sorts it will be convenient to speak of kinds in contrastwith all (other) would be intolsorts. Stringsof disjunctsaretedious, andto summarizeall (other)sortsas "not-kinds" erable.

DONALD BROOK

tant consequences flow. One is that kinds are the only sorts that can properlybe considered to have histories; and the other is that because "art"(as the word is conventionallyused) does not name a kind it does not name a kind with a history. "Arthistory"is an oxymoron. In reachingthese conclusions an intellectualparallelis drawnwith the way in which evolutionarybiology has been theorized.However, the use that I make of the Darwinianmodel is strictly analogical:my thesis is not sociobiological, nor is it-to take a linguistic liberty-culturo-biological; although I suppose that a few exceptionally durableculturalkinds such as the eyebrow-flash of recognition may well feed in to the genetic hard-wiringof a species. The claim that the word "art"does not name a kind and that the phrase "art history"is thereforeincoherent is too drastically counterintuitiveto assert-no matter how justifiably--and leave hanging, taking no account of its consequences. The second part of the essay conscientiously strives to save the word "art"(and, in a differentway, the phrase "work of art")from ignominy by proupon definitionsthat do not straytoo posing alternativeuses that are supportable far outside the scope of ordinarylanguage. Whatkinds are, and why they have histories Unquestionably,and in spite of the fact that "art"is not the name of one of them, there are kinds, and they have histories. But to uncover the solid foundationsof this opinion some spadeworkmust be done. In ordinaryconversationas well as in most academic discourse it seems to be imperfectly recognized, or not to be recognized at all, that histories cannot be and attributed particulars to sorts merely because they persist and change. It is to trivially true that such a particularas an apple and such a sort as a bundle emerges, endures for longer or shorterperiods, changes in appearanceand constitution,and finally disappears.Countless stories can be told about the temporal vicissitudes of things, some of them with a claim to objectivity and even truth, despite the abhorrencewith which this word is met by radical relativists. Most historians--including reckless relativists- still rely heavily for their credibility upon common sense appeals to factuality.Few consider how much more than temporalpersistence is requiredof an entity about which it is their ambitionnot merely to tell a story-whether true or merely persuasive-but to uncover the history. I suggest that the first move on the way to a history entails a restrictionof the range of subjects of inquiryto entities that are not merely persistentbut are also in neitherparticulars sorts of particulars, an unrestricted sense of "sorts."The nor only propersubjects of historical inquiryare kinds. It is the remarkablepeculiarity of kinds that they alone can intelligibly be said to have histories. The duty of the historianis to explain how and why it was thateach kindemerged as a distinct kind; how and why it changed as a kind; and finally (in appropriate cases) how and why it disappeared. It should be noticed that kinds differ from the items of which they are constituted in that their items do not have histories. The bicycle is a culturalkind of

ART HISTORY?

which there is unquestionablya history. An item of the bicycle kind may be stolen (as De Sica famously observed) and all of its encounters,however trivial, may inspire a storyteller;but these events are generally of no professional concern to the historian. It is the kind, "the bicycle," that is of interest. (Although this is not to deny that a remarkablebicycle may throw light upon the history of its kind.) Despite the fact that it is implicitly acknowledgedby all those historians who speak naturallyof the biography of Napoleon in contrastwith the history of the French revolution, the essentially historical natureof kinds, in complementaritywith their items, has not been emphasized in theories of history.It is more explicitly acknowledgedby biological historians,who speak of the history of the humankind, but only of the historical role of such individuals as the mitochondrialEve. The word "kind"is very carelessly used in ordinaryconversation.Items of all sorts are casually referredto as being of a kind if they show almost any similarity or range of similarities, one to another.Ordinarytalk sheds little light upon the deep issue of kindedness.This is to be regretted,for while a suitable technical expression might have been devised to encapsulate the precise distinctions alternativeto the carelessly that are needed, the fact is that the most appropriate similar word, used as it should be used used word "kind"is the orthographically if only we were more deliberate speakers. A careful user should take more the accountof the hints thatare scatteredthroughout cognate semanticregions of "kith,""kin," "kindred,"and "kinship."A biological example may clarify the point. "Sparrow"is the common name given to the avian kind of which each sparrowis an item. We identify an item as a sparrowby attendingto those formal and functional characteristicsthat are shared by sparrows and are, taken together, conveniently regarded as distinctive: details of anatomical structure, size, coloring, mating and territorialbehaviors,migratorypatterns,and so forth. Many of these characteristicsare considered to be merely indicative; although combinationof them is often treated-for instance,in some loosely appropriated bird-watchers' guidebooks-as if it were definitive. Should the identification of a thing as an item of the sparrowkind be challenged, and should an appeal to the ornithologicalauthoritiesfor a more refined specification still be inconclusive, a deeper issue must be canvassed. This issue is occasionally overlooked even in biology, and it is totally neglected in the We domainof kindednessthat vitally concerns the culturalhistorian.3 requireof the items of a kind--as we do not requireof the items of other sorts--that they shall owe their sharedkindednessnot to accident (as things of the green sort are accidentallygreen); not to stipulation(as fruits of the forbiddensort are tainted by virtue of some taboo); and indeed not to any cause or reason other than the pervasiveinfluence of what might be called a generativeprinciple ofkindedness. To be more specific: for items of all of the biological kinds, among which the sparrowis presently exemplary,the relevant generative principle of kindedness is primarilythe replicationof parentalDNA, abettedby an adaptiveprocess that
is 3. "Kindedness" admittedlyan awkwardcoinage. Unfortunately,despite the etymological link, has the more attractiveterm "kindness"does not clearly signify "being of a kind"and "kinship" been by appropriated anthropologistsfor a differentpurpose.

DONALD BROOK

is responsive over time to the constraintsof the environment.To count decisively as an item of the sparrowkind a candidatemust not only sharesignificant formal and functionalcharacteristicswith other sparrows;its display of these characteristicsmust be also be attributable the operationof a generativeprinciple to that might be succinctly expressed by saying about it that it was born of sparrows. We do not yet know whetherit is possible to generatean organismhaving all the distinguishingcharacteristicsof an item of the sparrowkind by combining chemicals taken from bottles on a shelf, but we can be sure that if such an enterprisewere to succeed the resultantgolem would have to count as a "sparrow" of a differentkind from the evolved and evolving creaturesthat we ordinarilynotice in the garden.In a similarway artificialpearls, even if they are cultured, are counted items of a differentkind from naturalpearls.4The fact--if it ever is a fact--about two items that one "can'ttell them apart" any formal or by functionaltest will ordinarilybe highly suggestive abouttheirkindedness,but it will never be decisive. The recognition of a consistently influential generative principleof kindednessoperatingin an evolutionaryway supplies the principled means by which we might, with care, avoid conflating the allocation of an item to its kind with the quite differentprocedureof allocating a memberto its class, or a token to its type, or an item to a bundle. The practical assignmentof items to aggregationssuch as crowds and heaps makes no appealat all to any ongoing generativeprinciple. It is just because kinds are shaped in an evolutionary way by a generative principleof kindedness that we are able to conceive of them as having histories and not merely as subjectto those more or less randomvicissitudes dealt by fate that are so attractiveto storytellers.Moreover,the culturalhistorian,like the biological historian,should be conscious of a responsibilitythat is not borne by the casual chronicleror storyteller.It is a responsibilityto explain persuasively,and in the ideal case to explain correctly,how it was that a given kind emerged into the world, underwent modification, and fell eventually into extinction. Biological kinds such as the sparrowand culturalkinds such as the bicycle owe their histories not merely to the passage of time and the buffeting of circumstance but to the ongoing influence of a generative principle of kindedness. Properlyunderstoodthe culturalhistorian'stheoreticaltask, prior to any practical inquiry, is to establish what generative principle of kindedness it is that exerts itself in reality upon the subject of investigation and is-once graspedcomparablein its explanatorypower to the Darwinian generative principle of biological kindedness. Manifestly, the biological and the cultural generative principlescannotboth drawupon the replicationof DNA. This much is obvious, and the point will be elaboratedshortly;but it may first be worth remarking-althoughincidentally,because the case that I make against a history of art does not turnupon it-that there are perhapsas few as three fundamentallydifferent sorts of kinds. There are natural,non-biological and non-culturalkinds such as
4. It is for just this reasonthatDolly the cloned sheep was not consideredto be an item of the same kind as the ordinaryfarm animal,but of a kind that raises quite new and differentlyserious practical and economic as well as ethical and moral questions.

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There are biological kinds such as the oak tree and the sparrow. gold and water.5 And finally, there are culturalkinds such as the continental breakfast,the democratic process, and the cast-ironbalcony. Historianswho devote their attentionto the study of biological kinds respond to their challenge by showing how successive items of each kind, each of which is like (but not exactly like) its parentsby virtue of the slightly imperfectreplication of DNA, have been subjectedto environmentalpressures,and how these pressureshave led to variationin the species and, eventually, to distinct speciation. What were originally clear and continuous genealogical lines shift into divergentpaths. New kinds have emerged, no longer breeding from items of the kind to which their ancestralparentsbelonged. The history of the sparrowis an intelligible explanatoryaccount of the way in which the biological generative principle of kindedness-that is to say, genetic replication and environmental adaptation-has projectedmore and less faithfulreplicas of items of an unspectacularbrown finch kind into more and less favorable contexts with more and less momentousconsequences. Such accounts are neither descriptivechronicles nor stories, nor even true stories. They are histories, of which-unless there has been a parallel evolution-there will generally be just one to be discovered for for each kind. A rise in the ocean temperature, example, does not earn its historical significance as an incident in the history of coral because of historians'taste or distaste for warm water, or their commitmentto an attitudeon questions of natureconservation.Such an event is critical in the history of the coral kind tout court. Extinctionmay be on the way. Culturalkindednessand the engine of imitation We shouldthereforeask ourselves what is the generativeprincipleof kindedness to which culturalhistorians must appeal if their enterpriseis to have the relevance, the probity,and the explanatorypower of evolutionarybiology. Historical scholarshipoutside the life sciences is massively dedicated to uncoveringthose factors that have determinedthe shaping of culturalkinds such as nation-states, religious ceremonies, naturallanguages, and other artifactualkinds such as the junk bond and the bicycle. But on what basis? The explanatoryengine of perpetuationand change for the culturalkinds is certainly not the slightly imperfect chemically coded replication of molecular skeins of DNA. It is, I suggest, the slightly imperfect imitation,by culturalparticipants, of observably efficacious performancesby other participantswithin a culture.I have in mind such performancesas this: we notice thatwithin a certain society experiencedparticipantsare able regularlyand quite reliably to generate of a summonsto which a waiterwill respondby the behavior-in-context clapping hands. Such a summonsis an item ofa culturalkind.If we imitatethis behavior, culturalmilieu we are in the right immediate context and within an appropriate ourselves likely to generate anotheritem of the same kind. With determination
5. Theoreticalphysicists no doubtconceive of the generativeprincipleof kindednessgoverningthe non-biological naturalkinds-the elementarycomponentsand forces of the universe and their combinations-as the topic currentlyreceiving attention under the rubric "final theory" or "theory of everything."

DONALD BROOK

we may even succeed in re-locating the kind, and the means of generatingits items, into a different cultural context; although, just as animals do not fare equally well in all environmentsthere will be contexts in which failure is more likely than success and we shall find ourselves dispraised for our boorishness ratherthan rewardedfor initiative. Clapping our hands in a roadside diner in America does not reliably generate a summons to which a waiter will respond, and we cannot expect to be purposefullyimitated. A cultural participant is a performer- normally an item of a biological kind6-who is capable of acquiringdispositions to generate and to use items of predictableculturalkinds by imitatingthe evidently successful behaviors-in-context of other individuals.Childrenlearn, by watching and by imitating,how and when a culturalitem of a kind such as an assent or a denial can be reliably genof eratedby the behavior-in-context saying words equivalentto "yes"or "no,"or by nodding or shakingthe head. Moreover-as it is in the domain of biological reproduction-an imitation of a behavior-in-contextthat standardlyyields an item of an expected culturalkind will occasionally be in some way variant.From time to time even a small variationon what is done will produce,with gratifying regularity,an item of a new and unexpected kind. Such novel items and their kinds are occasionally highly adaptive (as a classical Darwinianmight put it7); but randomvariationsin behaviorwill very often prove to be instrumentally void, failing in practiceto generateitems of an advantageouslyvariantkind, or failing to be regularlyreproducibleor-for numerousreasons--to inspire imitation. Imitable activities are usually characterized scientifically cultivatedspeakby to ers as behaviors;but it will be important distinguishvery clearly betweenmere sense of this term, behaviors,in the laboratory style, broadlycontext-independent, behaviors-in-contextthat are essential if and those more elaborately structured items of culturalkinds are to be generated.A way to help ourselves always to think contextuallyabout the relevantbehaviorswould be to give them a general name thatwill keep them clearlydistinguishedfrombehaviorsconceived in a narrow way, as mere bodily movements or as movements that are only parsimoniously contextualized.Following the influentialsuggestionof RichardDawkins, thereis good reasonto speak of them as memes.8It is a term thatrhymeshappily of with genes, and is most felicitously suggestive of a parallelapparatus theory. Memes that are now free-floatingmight usefully be anchoredto Some of the abstractions a plain case or two. In early childhoodwe learnmost, and most quickly,by imiare 6. In ourcommon experienceculturalparticipants invariablyof a biological kind, althoughthey manifestly are not all and only human. But implicationsmight be drawnabout the culturalevolution or of communitiesof so-called "artificial," non-biological, kindredintelligences. 7. No commitmentto a brutalsociobiology is here assertedor implied. Partof the context of receptivity for an imitated but variantbehavior and its consequently modified culturalitem might be the to climate of moral abhorrenceinto which it is projectedand the reluctanceof participants engage in imitation.Moral constraintscan thus be seen as determining,ratherthan as being determinedby, the flow of materialevents. 8. Dawkins and other meme-theoristsdo not always distinguishclearly, or at all, between memes and those items of culturalkinds that are memetically generated.Authors of the most recent contributionsto the topic still respondto the challenge to exemplify a meme by naming culturalkinds, such as the traffic light and the popular song.

ART HISTORY?

tating the behaviors-in-context- the memes-of our parents and teachers. For example, we learn how and in what context it is possible to raise a hand so that an item of the culturalkind that is recognized as a greeting is fairly predictably generated.9We are genetically endowed with an imitative disposition and an appreciationof contexts of indefinite wide extension. We are also as it happens extremely resourcefulat putting a relatively small range of bodily movements, constrained as they are by accidents of anatomy, to an indefinitely extensive rangeof differentuses in differentcontexts. For example, we acquirea meme that differs altogetherfrom the greeting-by-hand-raising meme when we learnhow to raise a hand--albeit in a superficiallysimilarway--in a context that is regularly generativeof a vote. The suggestion that a vote-generatingmeme by hand-raising employs the same bodily movement as the greeting-generatingmeme by hand-raisingshould be resisted to the extent that we are contemplatingextended exertions of very differentmemes. The voter's continuouslyself-monitoredcontext of actionis significantlydifferentfrom the greeter's,andthe totalityof events within the voter's body--much of it invisibly-as going forward"behaviorally" a covert componentof the hand-raisingwill also be significantlydifferent. We have at our disposal a greatmany hand-raising memes of a superficialbodAs pupils in the early classroom we imitatively learned how to ily similarity. raise a hand in such a way as to generatean item of the culturalkind recognized as a request to leave the room. Laterwe acquiredthe teachers' meme of raising a hand to generatea call for silence. The contexts of memetic action, and hence the memes themselves, are indefinitelyplastic. Moreover,memes will drawtheir efficacy not only from what is immediately perceptiblebut also from a context of recollection of what has previously occurred,of what is plausibly predictable and, in general,upon immense and expandingresourcesof memory and of supplementaryinternalphysical and linguistic modeling. The potency of genetic DNA and its potentialcoding for proteinsis attributable to the fact that it may be millions or billions of chemical bases in length; and there is no reason to suppose that memes are less protean. Indeed, one might make the case that memes are in principle both more numerous and more intricate than genes, for they may be both elaboratelycompoundedand significantly sequential.This is most conspicuously so in extended utterancesof speech and writing, where the innovative possibilities (yet to be discussed) are most clearly manifest and the generativepotentialis endless. Whoever has at theirdisposal an adequatearrayof memes will be capable of generatingand exploiting new items and variantkinds far beyond the capacity of any of the presently known nonhuman animals. The generation of items of such complex kinds as the sonnet or the magical-realistpainting easily become partof a stuShakespearean There is no assignablelimit eitherto the numberor to the comdent's repertoire. plexity of the culturalkinds that can be memetically generated;and each kind
9. Culturalparticipantsmay find that the meme for generatinga greeting by hand-raisingis not communicableto Martians;as it is certainlyuseless-for more than one reason-in the company of fish. Meme-usersmust shareappropriate anatomicaland physiological similarities,as well as a habitual physical and social context, if they are to engage in continuouslyself-monitoredbehaviors-in-context in productivelysimilarkind-perpetuating ways.

DONALD BROOK

will have its history.It will emerge and be shaped by the generativeprincipleof It memetic imitationand environmentaladaptation. is the task of the culturalhistorian to account for the appearanceof significant memetic variations within each culturalkind and the role played by these variations taken together with environmental factors in the branching of established kinds. The occasional emergence of new kinds must be explained, as well as the extinction of old ones.10If all this is to be done with a precision aroundwhich consensus can be that built, some taxonomic apparatus is appropriately analogousto the biological system of variety,species, genus, family, and orderwill need to be established. It has already been remarkedthat, in contrast with kinds, items do not have histories. Properlyspeaking,no matterhow interestingthe vicissitudes of a particular item of a kind may be, no account of these accidents will qualify as the history of an item. The artworkcalled Blue Poles has alreadybeen implicatedin innumerableengagements and relationshipsextending over half a century,but the painting does not have a history in the sense in which the culturalkind of which it is an item-called American-typeabstract-expressionist painting-has a history.The authorof Blue Poles himself, Jackson Pollock, was an item of a biological kind sustaining as many biographies as his chroniclers, past and future,have the ingenuityto construct,but he has no historyin the sense in which the human biological kind has a history, or in the sense in which the romantic artist-heroculturalkind has a history.One inexplicit markerof this difference is buriedalmost invisibly in linguistic practice:althoughkinds are much more like than they are like non-particulars, particulars they invariablybear general names such as painting and human.They do not bear propernames such as Blue Poles or Jackson Pollock. "Art"is not the name of one kind I have claimed that many conventionallyso-called arthistoriansare attracted by three fallacies, among which the supposition that "art"is the name of a single cultural kind is dominant.The second is that so-called "works of art" are the items of this putativekind; and the thirdis thatthis is a kind the history of which is shapedby a significantlydifferentgenerativeprinciplefrom that which shapes the historiesof culturalkinds in general,such as the automobileand the wedding ceremony. But to concede as we surely must that (for example) the still-life painting is a culturalkind with a history and the kinetic sculptureis a cultural kind with a history,is not to concede that "art"is one kind; nor is it to concede that the kind thus putativelynamed has a distinctivehistory. There are two points here. One of them concernsinappropriate concatenations of disparateculturalkinds, and the otherconcernsthe distinctivenessof histories. On the first point: we suppose that the biological kind called the alligatorhas a history,and that the biological kind called the cabbage has a history.But we see
10. I take it that a new Shakespearean sonnet or magical-realistpaintingwill not ordinarilyqualify as a new kind of sonnet or as a new kind of painting--although it might do so. As in biology (although in a metaphoricalratherthan a literal sense of the words used) the question will turn on whetheran "offspring"that is a candidatefor recognitionas a new kind could or could not continue sources. to "breed"directly by imitationof its unmodified"parental"

ART HISTORY?

at once that-despite the significant affinity between all biological kinds-arbitraryconjunctionsof biological kinds such as the alligator and the cabbage does not constitutea thirdbiological kind, and it does not have a history.The still-life paintingand the kinetic sculptureare similarlyrelatedone to the other in respect of theircommon debt to the generativeprincipleof culturalkindedness,andthey have distinct histories. An arbitrary conjunction of the two, however, does not anotherkind with anotherhistory. specify The second point concerning the alleged distinctiveness of the history of a putative "art"kind brings to the surface a fundamentalquestion. In the final analysis, is the one cultural kind to which conventionally so-called artworks allegedly belong to be regardedas owing its shape to the same memetic generative principle of kindedness as that which shapes cultural kinds in generalshoes, ships, and sealing wax-or does it owe its shape to an entirely different generativeprinciple of kindedness?There is after all a precedentin the biological field for what might be conceived as a parallel claim to exclusiveness. It has been arguedthat humansare not properlycomprehendedas items of a biological kind like other animals, but are of a kind that was uniquely created in a divine image. Humanhistory (so it has been said) is not shapedin the evolutionaryway but is uniquely driven by spiritualpowers toward some ineffable goal. The histo tory of the humankind is attributable a unique generativeprincipleof kindedness. So it is with the art kind. Only the most intrepidof historiansare nowadays disposed to venturein this direction,and I shall not pursue them. It is precisely their readiness to admit that conventionally so-called works of art are items taken as it were semantic prisoner from the conviviality of their own-often very different--culturalkinds by more or less arbitrary stipulationll that distinguishesthe modest art historian--who is essentially a culturalhistorian with a taste for pictures12-from the heroic arthistorian.This hero marchesto the antiquedrum of those otherwise admirableEuropeanscholars, the founders of an autonomousacademic"discipline,"who persuadedtheir institutions,along with generationsof their students,that"art" the name of a distinctivekind with is a history uniquely driven by its own generativeprincipleof kindedness. The most influentialamong the Titanswere, of course, those who directedthe attentiveeye to the so-called "periodstyles" as the visible manifestationof art's allegedly distinctive generativeprincipleof kindedness.This is a dogma that has been variously elaborated:for example, studentshave been instructedthat "art" is the name of a kind the history of which is peculiarly shaped by an oscillating generative principle of kindedness, so that successive period styles are conand "linear"modes. Additionally-or strainedto alternatebetween "painterly" alternatively-one finds more empiricallygroundedreveries, such as for exam11. I take it that a found naturalor biological object such as a flower or driftwoodbecomes an item of a culturalkind when the memes are establishedfor generatingitems of a culturalkind such as an interior decoration or an art gallery exhibit by selecting and placing such arbitrarily"imported" items. 12. The phrase"a taste for pictures"is elliptic. One might amplify it as "a taste for things of the sorts that are commonly displayed in art museums."It is unnecessary -assuming it to be possibleto spell out all of the ways in which the phrase"workof art"is in practiceso appliedto items of various sorts that a historian'sattentionmight be seduced and variablyconstrainedby the usages.

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ple that the fluctuationsin period styles that are allegedly the visible manifestation of art'shistory are shapedby the force of emergentnationalvirtues.13 It should not be necessary to catalogue these aberrationsof thought exhaustively or to constructrefutationsof them severally.In respondingto all of them it should be sufficient to say thatthey are genericallyflawed. There is no kind to which the name "art"can intelligibly be applied that is sui generis, uniquely driven by its own generative principle of kindedness. Whatever purposes the recognition of period styles may serve from time to time--and I do not suggest for one momentthat such a recognitionmust always be without point-this purpose cannot be to distinguish "arthistory" from cultural history in general on generativegrounds.Most culturalkinds are more or less disposed to exhibit period styles, to a sufficiently discerningeye.
II. A REVISED USE OF THE TERM "ART"

Memes and the universal regularities We recognize, evaluate and imitatively perpetuate,sometimes with enthusiasm and sometimes without, new culturalkinds that are generatedby variantmemes. Indeed, if this were not the case there would be no culturalhistory:culturalkinds New and would not have emerged,or they would persistunchangedin perpetuity. variantmemes, generative of new and variantculturalkinds, may not be recognized-much less appraisedand imitated-at first sight, but once identifiedthey are available for imitation. So seamlessly are our behaviors-in-contextlinked to their consequencesthat it seems to an observer,when a participant's new meme is, de facto, generativeof an item of a new andunanticipated kind, thatthis meme must have been deliberatelyemployed. But this cannot possibly be so. To attribute deliberationis to suppose that the user has generatedan item of a kind that was bothpredictableand, in some plausible sense, anticipated.The idea of an end that was unpredictable principleand thereforeunanticipated practice might in in neverthelesshave been deliberatelyachieved is simply incoherent. For example: we are now comfortablyin possession of the memes by which we can produce, with fair reliability,an item of the cultural kind that we call a crop, by scattering appropriateseeds at an appropriatetime and in a suitable place. It is incredible that the first time such a felicitous seed-scatteringcropgenerating behavior occurred it was exercised as a crop-generatingmeme. It must have taken many generationsfor this powerfully exploitable behavior-incontext to become purposefullyand imitably connected with crop generationin the minds of culturalparticipants. Some of the earliest seed scatteringsmay well have been performednot accidentally or at randombut memetically, as behaviors-in-context known to be regularly generative of an amusement, or of a notional fertility god-propitiating ceremony;but these are differentmemes. The outcome would emerge cannothave drivexpectationthat a reliable agricultural en the first crop sowings. We do not need evidence of this because we have the
13. HeinrichWi1fflin wrote: "Yetwe cannot get over the fact that every people has epochs in the history of its art which seem, more than others, the peculiar revelation of its national virtues." Principles of Art History [ 1915] (New York:Dover Publications,1950), 236.

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assuranceof reason, reinforcedby a batteryof questions that archeologistscan, and do, now begin to answer.When, where, how, and why did the recognitionof a particular crop as an item of a culturalkind that can be memetically generated with good reliability actually emerge? New memes and their potential may be recognized with a pleasing suddenness. The more dramaticof them have tended, in modem Westernsociety, to be attributedto the workings of an individual genius who is credited- especially when the meme is beneficial- with the first, necessarily inadvertent,"use" to attractpublic recognition.This genius tends also to be conceived, inconsistently, of as a performer essentially unrepeatable acts; a person gifted with skills of such elevation that they are for all practicalpurposes inimitableby ordinarymortals. But this must be a serious mistake, for with all memes-whether they are old or new -imitability is of the essence. The idea of the meme as predictablyand reliably efficacious, and thereforeas imitable in principle, encloses the thoughtthat if the complex and massively unknown regularities of the universe can be exploited by any personthey can in principlebe similarlyexploited by every person. The potency of memes for culturalparticipantsis attributable precisely to the consistency and reliability with which they draw upon universalregularities to generateitems of predictablekinds. Fortunatelyit is not necessary--indeed, it is manifestly impossible-to know all of the regularitiesthat are invoked when any meme is used. With such omniscience we should be infallible, and have nothing to learn. The radicallyunintendedorigins of every new meme must be fully appreciatis ed. The point is not that a culturalparticipant unable to anticipatenew memes as for example one might anticipatea way to convert lead into in a loose sense, gold, or a way to arresta cancer. Even when searches thus expressed are ultimately rewardedfor the first time, their anticipationwill have been incomplete. Few meme-seekers will be without some optimistic strategy,perhaps no better than an inarticulate hunch, aboutpromisingways to move and attractiveareasof exploration.But the logic is simple: a seeker who is alreadyin possession of the very meme that is sought does not need to seek it. In spite of this it is still partof a waning conventionalwisdom among cultivatedWesternersthat the emergence to of new memes is in no way attributable anyone's good fortunebut that it follows most abundantlyin the trail-blazingwake of the "creative artist,"whose forte is the theft of fire from heaven. This appreciationof the abnormalinventiveness of painters, sculptors, playwrights, and perhaps even, although more mysteriously,musicians was perhapsnever entirely misdirected.It was however to always inappropriate the extent that new memes have been mistakenly conceived as inimitablyoriginal. But there are no inimitable memes. New memes depend for their viability upon the universalregularities;and once identified as memes they become a public culturalresource. The public accessibility of those regularitiesupon which memes depend is an issue transcendingin its significance the often alleged singularityof conventionally so-called works of art.Moreover,in relationto an interplayplay between the familiar and the new among those memes that were implicatedin the course of

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their generation,works of art do not differ in principle from culturalartifactsof every kind. So we may well ask: If art history is not the name of a subject differing in its deep theoreticalsubstratebut only in superficialtopic from cultural history,why is it that several generationsof scholars have so vehemently asserted the contrary,and have built an academic fortress around their conviction? How shall the defenses be breached? The most popularaccounts of the unique kindedness of art do not rest nowadays upon one of the older essentialisms, such as that art is identifiable, in essence, with imitation, revelation, expression, therapy, or beauty. They rely rather upon an unspecific association of art with creativity. We are told that works of art are items of a kind the history of which is shaped by a generative principle of kindedness the peculiarity of which is that it delivers up created items for our contemplation.This notionallycontrastswith the generalityof cultural items, that are only made.14No satisfactoryaccount is given of how items of the allegedly created"kind"are to be distinguishedfrom items of those other generically impoverishedkinds that have only been made. One of the considerationsupon which this doctrine relies is the widely held belief that,whatevercreativityfinally amountsto, it must somehow be relatedto originality,and originality is more appropriately--if not uniquely--required of artiststhan of workersin other domains. Childrenare routinelyinstructed,from class to the Ph.D. in CreativeArts, thatworks of art incarnate the finger-painting something other than, and incomparablymore valuable than, those skills of cultural productionthat can be imitatively acquired by any diligent person. But judgments of originalityin "art"relate to the recognition of new memes in precisely the same way as judgments of originality in any of the adjacentcultural domains: in technology, science, politics, business, law, and sport. There are commentatorswho will as passionately, and with no less good reason, applaud the originalityof toilers in fields such as those cultivatedby Mr. Edison, Mme. Joliot-Curie,and Ms. Keller. Creativity,nominated as the criteriondifferentiating items of a putative "art"kind from items of all otherkinds, offers a key that spins in its socket, turningnothing. The metaphysicaldrive How, then, shall the term "art"be given a use, and how shall "arthistorians"be given a viable function, bearingin mind that there is no art kind, differing from I all other kinds in respect of its generative principle of kindedness?15 suggest conceived and securedby viable definitions,innovation that if it is appropriately
14. The Renault company currentlyexploits in its television advertising the claim "We create cars."Buyers are evidently invited to associate these consumerproductswith works of art,ratherthan with the generalityof artifacts. 15. E. H. Gombrichmomentarilyseemed to grasp the point when he famously wrote, as the first sentence of his influentialbook The Story of Art (first published 1950): "Therereally is no such thing as art."That he did not fully grasp the point is made clear by his consistent (but inexplicit) reliance upon a use of the term "art"as if it did, after all, name a kind with a distinctivehistory. The "kind" he had in mind might be characterizedvery roughly as: mainly (but not exclusively)pictorial representations to which symbolic significance is attributed.But this is no more a kind than groceries is a kind. If, as he insightfully remarks,there really is no such thing as art, then there really is no such thing as arthistory.

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may afterall providethe key. It is possible to find an associationbetween memetic innovation and art properly so-called. We might even-if we are determined to rehabilitatethe word-discover, or rediscover, a way of speaking credibly about art as creativity. At some risk of condoningunnatural supernatural or teleological powers in an intellectual climate of causal explanations,we speak easily of the behaviors of biological organisms as if they were purposefully driven. Most conspicuously, perhaps,we call to mind the drives to feed and to reproduce;but the figure can be extended. We owe our own sophistication,such as it is, to the evolution of a capability to observe the behaviors of others, to recognize the regular consequences of these behaviors and to imitate the efficacious memes on which cultural participationrests.16A culturalparticipantof any species is an individual with an ongoing capability to extend its ability to exploit the individual-transcending regularitiesby imitatingthe manifestly successful behaviors of others. Moreover,we humans alone (so far as we know) have developed as one of our productivebehaviors an ability to speak about the world. Such conversationspecifically in relation to the question of what there is in the world, has been as characterized the metaphysicalenterprise.It is not entirely fanciful to characterize organismswith an ability to recognize the regularlyefficacious memes of others and to imitate them-quick learners-as metaphysicallydriven. Whether it is manually or intellectually expressed, our competences are extendedby the onwardtransmissionof familiarmemes and, more significantly, by the acquisition of new ones. The anatomical and functional similaritiesthat are sharedbetween de facto culturalparticipantsbelonging to different species makes memetic transmissionpossible, and the restrictionsimposed in this way upon an understandingof the world can be transcended.It was a giant step to active within the notionbecome capableof modeling the powers of participants still unrealized-cultures of imaginarycreatureswho do not altoal-perhaps gether share our own perceptual and motor capacities. We cannot, like bees, negotiate our way naturallyin relationto the distinctions available in ultraviolet light; but we have learned the memes we need to do so prosthetically. The growth of our competence as meme users, practicallyhedged but boundless in principle, relies upon continuous memetic innovation without which all culturalkinds would freeze into immobility.No doubtmost of the small epiphanies that we gratefullyencounteras new memes, and imitatively appropriate, are new. Most of them will alreadybe familiarelsewhere to other only subjectively culturalparticipantsor to participantsin other cultures,but some of them must be absolutelynew, not only locally but-whether we know it or not-universally. A Platonic mindset might find it a congenial fancy to suppose that absolutely new memes standready with those universalregularitieson which their efficacy depends, "outside"history, awaiting discovery. Every meme subsisting in the notionaluniverseof all possibilities is available in principleto the communityof users that chances to stumble upon its viability.
16. Recent researchsuggests thatorangutans were well advancedon this road as much as fourteen million years ago. See, for example, Carel van Schaik et al., "Orangutan Culturesand the Evolution of MaterialCulture,"Science 299 (January3, 2003), 102-105.

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The quasi-fictionof the undiscoveredmeme, tradingupon the metaphorof the undiscoveredland, must be almost as old as reflective thought and speculative conversation.More specifically: the idea of a nexus between the properuse of some word equivalentto "art"and the recognitionof ways of regularlygenerating culturalitems of new and variantkinds with an emphasis not upon arbitrary invention but upon reality-constrained discovery, is surely ancient. There is no traditionstanding implacably against the recognition of a use for the linguistic word "art"as equivalentto memetic innovation,understoodin contrastwith the merely skillful perpetuationof established memes. On the understandingthat "creativity"implies memetic innovation, the recognition of creativity as a necessary condition for art properlyso-called, but not as a necessary condition for art as it is conventionally so-called, would be benign. Entertainments the prime sites of memeticinnovation as It is a seductive thought that memetic innovation is most likely to be detected when the normalconsequencesof using alreadyfamiliarmemes arereviewed by or spectatorswho are free to "misread" to "mistake"what has been deliberately made or done. Such "misreadings" most likely to be repudiatedby the makare ers and doers themselves, but they may neverthelessbe viable readings of what could have been deliberatelymade or done, and might thereforebe done again. An efficacious and readily imitable meme, the availability of which was unsuswho is the purposefuluser of some other meme, pected by a culturalparticipant can be fortuitouslydisclosed to a misreader.It will be of no concern whetherthe aspect of the new meme that was inadvertentlyharnessedby the performerwas some detail of bodily movement in the narrowsense, or some previously neglected element in the extended context of the action. The prominentpublic deploymentof familiarmemes by culturalparticipants, and the consequentialgenerationof items of familiarculturalkinds aroundwhich bystandersare assembled and from which they are separatedby a convention of detachmentor disengagement,has a general name. It is called entertainment. Classic entertainments make provision for a non-participatory audience,formaldistancedfrom the action in a stadium,a theater,a concerthall, a gallery,a cinly services the distancingof a disema, or a circus tent. Even the personalarmchair or televisualperformances. Entertainments persed audienceof bysittersto literary can thus be seen as prime sites for the facilitationof both relative and absolute memetic discoveries to be made by onlookers,precisely because their occasionally productivetakes and theirfelicitous mis-takesabout what has been done and abouthow it might be done again is, to a significantdegree, detachedfrom binding collusion with the narrowpurposefulnessof the entertainer.17 The significance of an audience's detachmentfrom the performancesof entertainers has been obscured in practice by a countervailingtendency for the professional forms of entertainmentto be dominated by displays of essentially familiar, although exceptionally polished, skills. An audience's metaphysical
17. Lone performerscan of course standby and observe their own performancesat any intervalof detachment,down to the split second. They may even-like automaticSurrealists--scarcely be able to say what it was they take themselves to have been purposefullydoing.

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drive is in some dangerof frustration because it has become the conventionjust al wisdom that the appropriateresponse to any skilled performance is the response of an expert appreciatorwhose own abilities notionally match those of the performer.On this view the ideal respondentto an entertainment already is thoroughlyfamiliar with the established memes of a well-rehearseddomain of action. He or she is expected to recognize and to rewardwith praise-as if they were uncommonly adroit but not otherwise problematic-the skills of the performer. Contrastingly,a radically inexpert openness to what might have been done or to what could have been done is the bystander'sinvaluablecontribution to the identificationof new memes. This openness of mind must strugglealways against those intentionalisticmodes of appreciationthat currentlydominate, in the artgallery no less than on the tennis court.The increasingpopularityof competitive prize-giving in the conventionally so-called "arts,"as if they were gladiatorialcontests favoring more accomplishedwinners againstless accomplished losers, is a clear indicationof this. Theremay be room for a distinctionto be drawnbetween those entertainments which, by their nature,deal mainly in displays of high competence, as contrasted with those that constrainthe audience's appreciativemindset less tightly.The gymnast more obviously solicits attentionto her skill than does the comedian, who may prefer to conceal it. But such a distinction as this would not clearly marka differencebetween the way in which "the arts,"as they are currentlyand conventionally so-called, are separatedfrom their adjacentforms of entertainment in the weekend press, such as sports, holidays, and lifestyle. The demand that entertainers all sorts should impress an expert audience seems to be irreof sistible everywhere. But if the deeply significant purpose of entertainmentsis not, after all, that they shall gratify our expectationsbut that they shall feed the metaphysicaldrive by valorizing memetic innovation, then the productivemismatchbetween what has been purposefullydone and what can plausibly be seen to have been done will be crucial. "Michelangelohere shows us how to .. ." is a comment anticipatinga likely extension of an audience's subjective memetic but repertoire; "Inthis accidentallyemergentcontrastof scale Michelangelo discovered a way to .. ."recognizes an innovationthatmay well have been absolute. It is as the surprised of retrospectiveinterpreter what she has herself done andnot as the accomplisheddoer of somethingelse, that the entertainerfunctions most as characteristically a locus of memetic innovation, or as I now suggest-using the word resolutely againstthe currentof convention-as an artist. What "art" is I take the case against a misuse of the word "art"as if it were the name of a kind with a history driven by a unique generativeprinciple of kindedness to be conclusive. But in deference to a persistentlinguistic traditionand to those considerations that have already been adduced, I take it to be a word that cannot be summarilydiscarded.How, then, might we use it? The most appropriate of the word '"'art" not as the name of a kind but as use is the name of the category of memetic innovation. "Category"is a notoriously contested philosophicalterm, but I drawfrom it the main implicationthat,what-

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ever else they may be, categories are sorts that do not have histories in the way in which kinds have histories. Memetic innovation is today what it has always been, and what it always will be. It is neither itself driven by a generativeprinciple, nor is it temporallyshaped.Art, considered as memetic innovation,is the ahistoricaldelivererof historical shape in every domain of purposefulaction in which items of relatively persistent cultural kinds are generated.The ordinary practiceof praisingthose surgeons,footballers,crooks, and vendors of real estate whose names are associated with striking memetic innovation by speaking of them as artists was always insightful. Conceptual disorderis the price paid for conflating a muddled concept of art conventionally so-called-as if it were a kind with a distinctivehistory-with a lucid concept of artproperlyso-called, as an ahistoricalcategory of memetic innovation. of Some furtherconfusion stems from a relatedmisunderstanding a linguistic nexus between the conventionalmisuse of the word "art" the name of a kind) (as use and an appropriate of the phrase"workof art."Those speakerswho arereluctant to adjusttheir minds will rhetorically--and perhapsinsatiably--demand an answerto the question:"What,then, is a work of art,if it is not an item of the art kind?"We must respond in the following way. Worksof art cannot be items of the art kind for the overwhelmingly good reason that there is no such kind, and there are thereforeno such items. But "work of art"can, with perfect propriety, be appliedto the items (or members,as philosophersmay preferto say) of a certain class. The class in question might be broadlyspecified in the following way: Worksof art are those things to which attention is paid, and for the durationof that attention, in the hope that they may yield up to a radically detached audience the discovery of some memeticinnovation.18 This is a prescriptionthat does not disqualify works of art as they are current- conventionallyand mistakenly- so-called from occasional enrollmentin the ly class of works of artproperlyso-called.As conventionallyso-called works of art are currentlypresentedto their viewers in artgalleries and museums, it is already expected that they will attracta special form of attentionthat is usually mischaracterized--either circularlyor emptily-as "aesthetic."The proposeddefinition in no way discouragesculturalhistoriansfrom theirpurpose;which is to uncover the origins, the vicissitudes, and the ultimateextinctionof the culturalkinds to which individual works belong, as items of early Hellenistic sculpture,of late modernistpainting, and so on. There will be a bonus. Such historians will no longer be expected to drag along with them the decomposing carcass of dogma with a history of its own, thatmust simultaneously thatthereis a kind called "art" be uncovered. Some conclusions This paper proposes three radical innovations in our thinking about history in First, I offer an evolutionary way of distingeneral and about art in particular. -including true storytelling-in the face guishing historyfrom mere storytelling
18. A smaller and more contestable class might be specified by insisting upon actual innovative success within some culturalcontext, ratherthan by staking an optimistic claim upon the possibility of success. But in that case we shall have to discardmost of the contents of the art museums.

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of a postmodernconsensus that all history is storytelling. Second, I distinguish memes clearly from the items that they generate and from the culturalkinds of which they are the items. Although meme theoristsdo tend to speak of memes as the of imitablebehaviors,19 literature memetics consistently identifies memes not with behaviors but with culturalkinds, nominating such kinds as warning cries and popular songs as if they-the kinds-were the exemplary memes that are transmissibleby imitation. Because culturalkinds range from warning cries to that there is an ongoing lament in the literature TV dinnersit is understandable about the deeply mysterious ontology of the meme. Third, I offer a definitive way of ending the futile dispute between "arthistory"and culturalhistory. Finally, by valorizing unprecedentedreadings of the world as radically open to the emergence of new kinds by the exertion of new memes I may seem to be in tune with one of the dominantthemes of postmodernthought.However, I condone no irresponsibleexercise of license. On the contrary:a new meme does not dependfor its viability upon the sheer,reckless verbosityof the persuasivelygarrulous culturalimagineer.Its viability finally depends upon the objective regularities of the real world. Flinders Universityof SouthAustralia EmeritusProfessor of VisualArts

19. See, for example, Susan Blackmore,"Imitationand the Definition of a Meme," Journal of Memetics- EvolutionaryModels of InformationTransmission2 (1998). (accessed October 27, 2003). http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/blackmore_s.html