Keeping Score: Some Lessons for Artists from the Later Wittgenstein

Authors

Nickolas Calabrese, New York University, NYFollow

Abstract

This text rounds up a few lessons fashioned after the idea of keeping score as it relates to the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. These lessons are emphatically related to the production of art, so this text might be at its best in the hands of an artist. They all loosely demonstrate the normative dimension of aesthetic production, which amounts to the claim that one is committed, by the act of production, to a communal endorsement for why an artwork ought to exist at all. The final part of this text will expand on this principle of normativity, but it should be kept in mind as one goes through the lessons that precede it. This particular aspect of Wittgenstein’s legacy might help better acquaint artists with why we make things: the epistemological groundwork for why an artist feels compelled in the first place.