The Subject on Perceiving (Conceptual) Art

This paper concerns the role of the subject in the relationship with artworks, in particular with conceptual art. The aim is to make a comparison between two approaches coming from different traditions: an aspect of Peter Lamarque’s Work and Object theory and Mikel Dufrenne’s phenomenology of the aesthetic object. The central question is to understand whether the intentional properties possessed by artworks are sufficient by themselves to elicit a proper aesthetic response or experience, and so to distinguish common objects from works of art. To answer this question, according to phenomenological aesthetics, one has to look also at the subject involved. In the end, the core of the aesthetic experience, but also the definition of what an artwork properly is, has to be sought in the encounter between work and spectator. In the light of this, one can read anew Dufrenne’s idea of the spectator not just as a simple accessory of an artwork, but even as a “performer” and a “witness”.