Abstract

Historical Framing is a myth in the modern philosophical tradition of Anglo-Saxon "state of nature" myths, freshly addressing the controversial questions of whether and how art history should play a role in the contemporary classification of visual art. In the making of the myth, imagination is supported rigorously, with unusual attention to historical development in the visual arts. The myth upholds the variety of objects classified this century as artworks while suggesting a set of classificatory norms more informative about art's specialness in general than the handwaving ceremony of artworlders, familiar to us from institutional theories