ABSTRACT
Let us now pass on to a discussion of the notion of appreciation. Notice that the definition speaks of the conferring of the status of candidate for appreciation. Nothing is said about actual appreciation, and this leaves open the possibility for works of art which, for whatever reason, are not appreciated. It is important not to build into the definition of the classificatory sense of “work of art” value properties such as actual appreciation: to do so would make it impossible to speak of unappreciated works of art and of bad works of art, and this is clearly undesirable. Any theory of art must preserve certain central features of the way in which we talk about art, and we do find it necessary sometimes to speak of bad art. It should also be noted that not every aspect of a work of art is included in the candidacy for appreciation. For example, the color of the back of a painting is not ordinarily an object of appreciation.
