Abstract

In this essay, I critically examine Sherri Irvin’s anti-disjunctive ontological theory of artworks. Irvin’s theory aims to account for hard-to-categorize contemporary artworks. I argue that her theory encounters some problems due to the central role assigned to artists in determining an artwork’s ontology or ontological dependence. First, I consider her theory as presented in her article “Ontological Diversity of Visual Artworks” (2008) and argue that this version of her theory faces both a temporal and modal problem regarding the power attributed to the artist in determining what kind of thing their artwork is. Second, I examine the difference between Irvin’s view as presented in her article and her revised view as presented in her book Immaterial: rules in contemporary art (2022), reaching the conclusion that the revised view is able to escape the modal and temporal problem of power by introducing ‘historical individuals’ as a unifying ontological category. Third, I point to some potential problems still persisting in the revised theory concerning artist’s power over ontological dependence in relation to epistemic access and other quasi-abstract entities. I conclude that caution must be exercised when attributing power to the artist as a part of anti-disjunctive ontological theories of art so as to evade granting them excessive power resulting in unwanted or counterintuitive consequences.