Work and Object

Work and Object is a study of fundamental questions in the metaphysics of art, notably how works relate to the materials that constitute them. Issues about the creation of works, what is essential and inessential to their identity, their distinct kinds of properties, including aesthetic properties, their amenability to interpretation, their style, the conditions under which they can go out of existence, and their relation to perceptually indistinguishable doubles (e.g. forgeries and parodies), are raised and debated. A core theme is that works like paintings, music, literature, sculpture, architecture, films, photographs, multi-media installations, and many more besides, have fundamental features in common, as cultural artefacts, in spite of enormous surface differences. It is their nature as distinct kinds of things, grounded in distinct ontological categories, that is the subject of this enquiry. Although much of the discussion is abstract, based in analytical metaphysics, there are numerous specific applications, including a study of Jean-Paul Sartre's novel La Nausee and recent conceptual art. Some surprising conclusions are derived, about the identity conditions of works and about the difference, often, between what a work seems to be and what it really is. All of the writings are scholarly and articulate, and the book they together compose would make a fine addition to any thinkers library. Jeffrey Strayer, Philosophy in Review Peter Lamarque's wittily titled book ... is to be welcomed for the way in which it demonstrates the significance of its subject matter and its centrality within the analytical canon. Employing his stylist philosophical prose, Lamaerque raises, and offers answers to, the central questions in the metaphysics of art. Furthermore, and I think this may be the work's prime source of value, the book elegantly combines and elaborates a set of answers to these questions in such a way as to complete the reader with a complete metaphysics of art that has claim to represent hegemonic opinion within the discipline. ... I really enjoyed this book. I recommend it heartily as an antidote to anyone tempted to think of the metaphysics of art as a philosophical backwater. Julian Dodd, MindPreface ; 1. Introduction ; 2. On Bringing a Work into Existence ; 3. Work and Object ; 4. Distinctness and Indiscernibility in the Allographic Arts ; 5. Aesthetic Essentialism ; 6. Aesthetic Empiricism ; 7. Imitating Style ; 8. Objects of Interpretation ; 9. How to Create a Fictional Character ; 10. Art, Ontology and the End of Nausea ; 11. On Perceiving Conceptual Art