ABSTRACT
A good deal of discussion in the philosophy of art, visual art particularly, at the present time, has to do with the problem of defining the idea of an 'artwork'. Danto's dilemma is, essentially, that his interpretive theory of art is constructed within the implicit historical frame of western art, as was its Hegelian prototype. The work of Damien Hirst, the most media-exposed of younger British artists in recent times, seems to be a case in point. In fact, it was Hirst's notorious Turner Prize exhibit at the Tate Gallery in 1992 that first induced me to start thinking about traps as art objects. A half-way house between the 'institutional' and 'interpretive' theories therefore seems to me the best option. The institutional theory of art is amenable to the idea that artworks can be 'arfefacts' securing a range of human purposes, so long as they are simultaneously deemed interesting as art to an art public.
