Department of Philosophy

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Browsing Department of Philosophy by Subject "Aesthetics"

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    On the human canvas: a novel ontology of tattoos
    (2021-08-10) Minarik, Julia; Murray, Adam (Philosophy); Mahrenholz, Simone (Philosophy); Matheson, Carl (Philosophy)
    Some tattoos are artworks. This paper claims that art-tattoos have an interesting ontological feature: their artistic properties are partially determined by the people they are tattooed on. In other words, tattoos are artistically contextualized by their recipients. I further suggest that this contextualization is ongoing: that the artistic properties of a tattoo aesthetically change over time as the tattoo recipient changes. I present an ontology of tattoos that focuses on this feature of tattoos. The argument in this paper notably rests on an inference from aesthetic intuitions and art-historical facts about tattoos to claims about their ontological features.