It's not clear to me that it is correct that Western art--even in media such as sculpture and painting--is indeed historically such an individual creation. In the Renaissance, there were workshops, with masters and apprentices; some contemporary artists, such as Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, have had certain of their works fabricated by others; the sculptor Richard Serra has his large steel pieces cast by industrial foundries. This is not to deny that the idea of the artist as individual creator doesn't persist, and that it doesn't capture the practice of many artists: I do, however, think that this very idea has a history that might well merit investigation that could illuminate its origin and power.

The question of the relation between the judgments of professional critics and those of 'people on the street', as it were, especially with respect to works of mass culture such as movies and--albeit, I think, to a much lesser extent--pop songs, television, and also literature (which I think, even in its 'literary' as opposed to 'pulp' or 'genre' incarnations, is now properly considered part of mass culture)--is a very interesting question, which raises general issues about the reception of art (including 'high' art such as photography, painting, sculpture, theater, etc.), as well as about the relation between art and commerce. It is true that many 'well-received' films have not performed 'well' at the box office--if by 'well' here one means something like making the list of top-ten grossing films now widely referred to by media outlets (a relatively new phenomenon, I might add)--despite receiving considerable critical acclaim. Olivier Assayas's five-hour film, Carlos , which, if I remember...

The question of whether an artist has any moral responsibility whatsoever with regard to the content or the impact of her work is fascinating, and there are many historical examples relevant to it. (One case that leaps immediately to my mind is that of Leni Riefenstahl, treated at length by Susan Sontag in an amazing essay, "Fascinating Fascism," which I highly recommend.) Proponents of the autonomy of art--'art for art's sake'--might deny that the artist has any obligation whatsoever to anyone or anything besides her work. (The case of Gauguin, treated by the philosopher Bernard Williams in a his essay, "Moral Luck," is an instance of an artist who abjured any responsibility to anything besides his work.) On such a view, the artist should seek only to create the best art that she can, and damn the consequences of creating art with a particular content. Such a position might be buttressed by an extreme 'formalist' conception of art, according to which art consists only in the exploitation of the...

You raise an interesting nest of issues here, regarding the use of technology to assist in the production of art. The starting point for the question is the judgment that (recordings of) songs that employ technology to correct the pitch in a singer's voice are of lesser quality than those that do not, and the similar judgment about visual artists who use technology to create images. Although I'm not aware of having encountered instances of visual art produced by graphics programs, and am far more familiar with music that has been modified by technology, if not by the use of Auto-Tune in particular, since it seems to me that most recorded music--unless it is the recording of a live performance--has been technologically enhanced in some way, I believe nevertheless that one can address the general issue without delving into the particulars of the technology. Perhaps one reason that it may be claimed that works created or enhanced through technology are not as good as those that have not been enhanced or...

Your question seems to raise two distinct kinds of issues: first, and most generally, what, if anything, is wrong about altering a work of art; second, in what respect can different kinds of works of art--such as novels or lithographs, of which there are multiple instances or exemplars--or pieces of music or plays, that are meant to be interpreted in particular ways, be altered. You remark that what's wrong about altering a work--say, drawing a moustache on the original Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre (as opposed to drawing a moustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, as Duchamp did), or defacing Picasso's Guernica, as I believe happened when it was hanging in the Museum of Modern Art--is that "doing so wrongs the artist or is otherwise offensive." It's not clear to me that this is indeed the case. Suppose Duchamp had indeed drawn a moustache on the original Mona Lisa. Would Duchamp thereby have wronged Leonardo da Vinici? Perhaps, but only if it's possible to wrong someone who is dead. ...

It's not clear to me that when Ebert said that there are no video games that compare with great works of art in other media, he meant to imply that works in different media are comparable, as if there were some metric by which one could directly compare instances of different types of art. Ebert's point seems to be that although in media such as literature, music, film, etc., there are certain works that are recognized by all suitably placed judges as great--although of course the relative greatness of the works in any given art is a matter of considerable dispute--there are no video games that could be seen as great in the same way as works of music, film, literature, etc., are great. This may reflect a judgment on Ebert's part that video games are not a medium that can support work that could even conceivably qualify as great in the way that works of music, film, literature, etc., can; it may also reflect Ebert's judgment that no video game that has been created to date counts as a great piece...

Philosophers interested in judgments about works of art certainly do tend to focus on beauty, but other aesthetic categories have received philosophical attention. Ted Cohen has written a book on jokes and other work has been done on the philosophy of humor. The concept of ugliness has recently received some attention from philosophers interested in Kant's aesthetics. The concept of sentimentality has received intermittent sustained attention from philosophers. There has been some consideration of categories like 'camp' and 'kitsch'--if you haven't read Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp," I highly recommend it; Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being contains provocative remarks about kitsch. To my knowledge, however, the concepts of the cute and the cool haven't received attention--and they should. Indeed, to my mind, at least, aesthetics is one area of philosophy that has especially suffered from what Wittgenstein would call "a one-sided diet," with too much attention...

There is no connection between enjoying food and its being healthy, or good for one's body. Why should there be a connection between enjoying an artwork and judging it to be good?