Death by Hamburger

            Wednesday September 21^st was another warm day.

Before going to Aesthetics class I went to my professor’s office to show him a hard copy of the first paragraph I’d written for the weekly writing assignment because I wanted to make sure I was on the right track. He read it and then surprised me by saying it was exactly what he was looking for.

            Additionally, I told him that I was confused by the idea, as presented on Monday, that there is a difference between Picasso’s Guernica as a painting and the idea of Guernica as a category of art. I argued that the image is still the image whether it was painted a certain way or not. I said that a humanoid alien from a society exactly like ours other than that they do not have painting would perceive and react to Guernica in the same way that we do. He told me that my view makes me an Empiricist. He said that we wouldn’t be covering Empiricism in the course but there is no particular reason why not. It’s just the way it turned out. He suggested that when I write my essay, I could argue against Walton from the Empiricist perspective, if I do a little research first.

            He stressed that the views presented in the course are not necessarily his own, but he will be arguing on behalf of each view.

            Even though it was warm outside, it was quite chilly in the classroom.

            The subject of our lecture was the ontology of art.

            An artistic medium is an action by which an artist communicates, such as through strokes of a paintbrush. A medium is not any kind of vehicle for artistic communication.

            What kind of thing is an artwork? How do we explain singular, unrepeatable artworks such as the Mona Lisa that is behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre and repeatable artworks like projections of the Mona Lisa on a screen?

            However, a reproduction of David LaChapelle’s “Death by Hamburger” is not a copy. Even though the copies are not identical, all of the particulars are together as artwork. Every time you hear Drake’s “One Dance” you are listening to the original work of art. I asked, “What about the master copy?” But maybe repeatable works are parts of wholes. But if we identify a work with a greater whole, the whole gains or loses parts with each copy.

            Particularism states that a work of art, like the Mona Lisa, is a particular thing.

            Deflationalism states that a work of art may be no thing at all. We speak of fictional things, like John Snow or Santa Clause, as if they were real. Works of art may be fictional in the same way.

            Davies claims that an artwork is not the thing we see or hear before us but the process that led to it. He would say that Drake’s song as we hear it is not the artwork.

            The type theory states that a work of art is a type of thing but not a particular thing, while instances of each type are tokens. A dog is a type of animal. Every dog is an instance of the dog type of animal. The projection of Death By Hamburger on the screen is a token of the original Death By Hamburger. In the case of the Mona Lisa, type and token are one and the same. Drakes’s song “One Dance” is a type of song and one listens to a token of it. But if we identify a token with a type, all tokens may deviate from their type.

            When I left the Sidney Smith building the sky was bright but overcast with high clouds. I would have been able to take a bike ride to the east end without getting sunburn. Maybe I was lazy or maybe I was tired from class, but I headed home. I turned right from St George onto College. There was a red light at Huron, and I would normally wait for it to change, but this time I got off my bike and crossed the street and then went down Huron, even though it doesn’t go all the way to a major intersection. I wasn’t thinking. Near Baldwin I saw some interesting graffiti on the side of a building in an alley, so I took my camera out. My camera didn’t work though. Opened up the battery casing and found that it’s gotten a little rusted from my riding in the rain. I switched the batteries though and it worked. I turned right on Baldwin and then walked my bike to find the next open space across the streetcar tracks. Passing the liquor store I ran into Tom Fisher, who haven’t seen in at least a year. He asked what I was doing and I said I was coming from a U of T class. He said almost proudly that he’s too lazy to go to university and that he just reads on his own, and then declared that it’s a better way to learn. He reminded me that today was Leonard Cohen’s birthday and that he has a new album coming out. Then he went into the liquor store.

            I stopped to get a few things at Freshco on the way home and noticed that suddenly there is space to park a bike there again. The worker must have passed my message onto a manager who listened and got something done about all the stranded bikes.