ABSTRACT
What are the crucial differences separating art objects from their everyday counterparts? One that is repeatedly made mention of, both negatively and positively, is the modernist idea or ideal of art as divorced from the necessities of life: art as purposeful without practical or utilitarian purpose. This “purposiveness without a purpose,” as Immanuel Kant described it, is substantiated through the larger discourse of aesthetics the judgments of which are grounded in “the feeling (of inner sense) of the concerted play of the mental powers as something only capable of being felt.” 1 If virtually all objects in the modern world are judged based on the value of their purpose or functionality within lived experience, art objects are judged based upon an ability to exceed their material existence and qualities – a judgment significantly situated within a history of similar aesthetic judgments, what we call art history.
