An Artist’s Voice: Expressive Achievement, Experiential Content, and Authority

Abstract Considerations of an artist’s identity, such as class, genre, or race, often influence assessments of their capacity or authority to represent experiences beyond their own. To what extent does an artist’s identity (as an outsider) limit their ability to convey aspects of another group’s experience? Criticisms of Dana Schutz’s Open Casket at the 2017 Whitney Biennial highlight concerns about her authority to engage with a subject matter that is significant to the Black community. Some argue that due to her social positioning, she lacks the capability to engage adequately with this subject. These commentators draw on what we might call "capability" reasons. Others argue that her involvement is at least inappropriate and invoke norms that would explain such inappropriateness. I will focus specifically on those criticisms that are based on capability reasons, showing that they are often dilucidated from a pragmatic perspective or a speech-act account of artistic activity. I challenge these arguments by emphasizing some of the limitations of primarily invoking Schutz’s authority and her possible illocutionary intentions to address her work, and suggest a shift from a speech-act framework to one that emphasizes art’s capacity to generate distinctive forms of experience. This approach invites an alternative view of art’s potential contribution, suggesting that while Schutz’s work has failed, its failure lies in her inability to produce an insightful artistic experience, rather than in her possible lack of illocutionary authority.