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The Artistic Metaphor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2020

Daisy Dixon
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Abstract

Philosophical analysis of metaphor in the non-linguistic arts has been biased towards what I call the ‘aesthetic metaphor’: metaphors in non-linguistic art are normally understood as being completely formed by the work's internal content, that is, by its perceptual and aesthetic properties such as its images. I aim to unearth and analyse a neglected type of metaphor also used by the non-linguistic arts: the ‘artistic metaphor’, as I call it. An artistic metaphor is composed by an artwork's internal content, but also by its external content, which is provided by the work's artistic properties such as its history. The artistic metaphor has been gestured at but not afforded a considered analysis; I aim to do this. Identifying the artistic metaphor has at least two benefits. It shows how curation plays a role in generating metaphors in artworks, which has been overlooked, and it illuminates a potentially powerful tool to interpret and understand ‘conceptual’ art.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 96 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 1 - 25
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Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2020

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