What work does the artwork do? A question for art

Abstract

This article acts as an introduction to the other articles in this special edition of the journal devoted to the question: What work does the artwork do? It explores the advantages of this question over the definitional ‘What is art?’ question as a vehicle for debating the roles and purposes of artworks — the work artworks do — for arts practitioners in particular. Given the care needed in the forming of questions (since the work questions do is conditioned by such as implicit/explicit epistemological considerations), it raises as an issue to be considered and attended to, the matter of the work questions do and, the questions the could usefully be posed and debated in relation to art practices.

Keywords:

• Questions
• definition
• naturalized epistemology
• artwork
• art practice