Essay: Concept Art / Henry Flynt

“Concept art” is first of all an art of which the material is “concepts,” as the material of for ex. music is sound. Since “concepts” are closely bound up with language, concept art is a kind of art of which the material is language. That is, unlike for ex. a work of music, in which the music proper as opposed to notation, analysis, a.s.f. is just sound, concept art proper will involve language. From the philosophy of language, we learn that a “concept” may as well be thought of as the intension of a name; this is the relation between concepts and language. The notion of a concept is a vestige of the notion of a Platonic form the thing which for ex. all tables have in common: tableness, which notion is replaced by the notion of a name objectively, metaphysically related to its intension so that all tables now have in common their objective relation to `table’. Now the claim that there can be an objective relation between a name and its intension is wrong, and the word `concept’, as commonly used now, can be discredited see my book Philosophy Proper. If, however, it is enough for one that there be a subjective relation between a name and its intension, namely the unhesitant decision as to the way one wants to use the name, the unhesitant decisions to affirm the names of some things but not others, then `concept’ is valid language, and concept art has a philosophically valid basis.

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