Arthur Danto's work has always affirmed a deep relationship between philosophy and art. These essays explore this relationship through a number of concrete cases in which either artists are driven by philosophical agendas or their art is seen as solving philosophical problems in visual terms. The essays cover a varied terrain, with subjects including Giotto's use of olfactory data in _The Raising of Lazarus; _chairs in art and chairs as art; Mel Bochner's Wittgenstein drawings; the work (...) of Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, and Robert Irwin; Louis Kahn as "Archai-Tekt"; and visual truth in film. Also featured are a meditation on the battle of Gettysburg; and a celebration of the Japanese artist Shiko Munakata, an essay that is partly autobiographical. Arthur C. Danto is one of the most original and multitalented philosophers writing today, a thinker whose interests traverse the boundaries of traditional understandings of philosophy. Best known for his contributions to the philosophy of art and aesthetics, Danto is also esteemed for his work in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophical psychology, and action theory. These two volumes, each with an introduction by the author, contain essays spanning more than twenty-five years that have been selected to highlight the inseparability of philosophy and art in Danto's work. Together they present the thinking of Arthur C. Danto at his very best. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s recent book, Andy Warhol, leads the reader through the story of the iconic American’s artistic life highlighted by a philosophical commentary, a commentary that merges Danto’s aesthetic theory with the artist himself. Inspired by Warhol’s Brillo Box installation, art that in Danto’s eyes was indiscernible from the everyday boxes it represented, Danto developed a theory that is able to differentiate art from non-art by employing the body of conceptual art theory manifest in what he termed the ‘artworld’. (...) The strength of Danto’s theory is found in its ability to explain the art of the post-modern era. His body of work weaves philosophy, art history and art criticism together, merging his aesthetic philosophy with his extensive knowledge of the world of art. Danto’s essentialist theory of embodied meaning provides him with a critical tool that succeeds in explaining the currents of contemporary art, a task that many great thinkers of art history were unable to do. If Warhol inspired Danto to create a philosophy of art, it is appropriate that Danto write a tribute to Warhol that traces how Warhol brought philosophy into art. Danto’s account of ‘Warhol as philosopher’ positions him as a pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century art, effecting a sea change in how art was made and viewed. Warhol achieved this by conceiving of works that embodied the answers to a series of philosophical puzzles surrounding the nature of art. Warhol, as Danto describes him, manifests himself in his art because he had transformed himself, in a way, into an icon of the times. This pragmatist notion that art should undermine the dichotomies that exist between art and life would, by some accounts, position Warhol to be the philosopher that Danto claims him to be, for he dissolved the philosophical questions posted by late modern aesthetic thinkers by creating art that imploded the accepted notions of art at the time. One of Danto’s greatest contributions to aesthetics is his theory’s ability to distinguish art from non-art, recognizing that it is the artist’s intention that levels the sublimity of art into the commonplace, thereby transfiguring the everyday. However, acknowledging this achievement, I argue that Warhol’s philosophical contribution actually manifests itself in a manner different from that proposed by Danto. Danto maintains that the internal drive of art leads to the unfolding of art theoretical concepts that ineluctably shift the terrain of world of art. I would agree with Danto that Warhol, almost as Hegel viewed Napoleon as Geist on a horse, pushed forward the boundaries of art through the actualization of art’s internal drive. But I would disagree that the conceptual nature of art is one that unfolds merely as a relation of concepts that artists trace through a connection to the meaning of history they forge using their unmediated grasp of style. Rather, I would argue that the artist’s style is not bound so narrowly to the meanings they express. Through their aesthetic articulations, artists initiate a process of social interaction. This process employs the philosophical logic which Danto attributes to Warhol indirectly, and through it, it is able to transfigure the vocabulary of art—the concepts of the artworld—by superseding the language of modernism. Warhol’s philosophical contribution is seen in his mastery of both the medium of art and the underlying logic of the medium’s expression and reception. (shrink)

Over a decade ago, Arthur Danto announced that art ended in the sixties. Ever since this declaration, he has been at the forefront of a radical critique of the nature of art in our time. After the End of Art presents Danto's first full-scale reformulation of his original insight, showing how, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art has deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vasari helped define for it in the Renaissance. Moreover, he leads the way (...) to a new type of criticism that can help us understand art in a posthistorical age where, for example, an artist can produce a work in the style of Rembrandt to create a visual pun, and where traditional theories cannot explain the difference between Andy Warhol's Brillo Box and the product found in the grocery store. Here we are engaged in a series of insightful and entertaining conversations on the most relevant aesthetic and philosophical issues of art, conducted by an especially acute observer of the art scene today.Originally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts, these writings cover art history, pop art, "people's art," the future role of museums, and the critical contributions of Clement Greenberg--who helped make sense of modernism for viewers over two generations ago through an aesthetics-based criticism. Tracing art history from a mimetic tradition through the modern era of manifestos, Danto shows that it wasn't until the invention of Pop art that the historical understanding of the means and ends of art was nullified. Even modernist art, which tried to break with the past by questioning the ways of producing art, hinged on a narrative.Traditional notions of aesthetics can no longer apply to contemporary art, argues Danto. Instead he focuses on a philosophy of art criticism that can deal with perhaps the most perplexing feature of contemporary art: that everything is possible. (shrink)

Now in its third edition, _Narration and Knowledge_ is a classic work exploring the nature of historical knowledge and its reliance on narrative. Analytical philosopher Arthur C. Danto introduces the concept of "narrative sentences," in which an event is described with reference to later events and discusses why such sentences cannot be understood until the later event happens. Danto compares narrative and scientific explanation and explores the legitimacy of historical laws. He also argues that history is an autonomous (...) and humanist discipline incapable of being reduced to scientific descriptions. Lydia Goehr's new introduction illustrates Danto's main arguments by questioning her very role, first, as an introducer of a book that has not yet been read by readers and, second, as an interpreter of a book written forty years ago. Frank Ankersmit's conclusion revisits the initial impact of the publication of _Narration and Knowledge_ and considers its enduring legacy. (shrink)

In this acclaimed work, first published in 1986, world-renowned scholar Arthur C. Danto explored the inextricably linked but often misunderstood relationship between art and philosophy. In light of the book's impact -- especially the essay "The End of Art," which dramatically announced that art ended in the 1960s -- this enhanced edition includes a foreword by Jonathan Gilmore that discusses how scholarship has changed in response to it. Complete with a new bibliography of work on and influenced (...) by Danto's ideas, _The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art_ continues to be of interest to anyone who thinks seriously about art, as well as to philosophers, aestheticians, and art historians. (shrink)

In Danto's view, Andy Warhol's Brillo Box was not only a radical attack on traditional definitions of the art work; it brought the history of Western art to a close. In this collection of interconnected essays, he grapples with this and many more of the most challenging issues in art today, from the problems of contemporary pluralism to the dilemmas of censorship and state support for artists.

The overall subject of the essays in _The Body/Body Problem_ is the traditional one of what our ultimate makeup is, as creatures with minds and bodies. The central thesis is that we are beings who represent—and misrepresent—actual and possible worlds. Addressing philosophical questions of mental representation, Danto presents his distinctive approach to some of the most enduring topics in philosophy. He is concerned with the nature of description, the status of the external world, action theory, the philosophy of history, and (...) the philosophical status of psychoanalytic explanation. Representation is a central concept in philosophy, says Danto, with differences among philosophers arising in the ways they account for how representations connect to the world or to the individuals possessing them, and how they connect with one another to form systems of beliefs, feelings, and attitudes. In these essays Danto's own voice, with his arguments and speculations, provides rich philosophical pleasures that will endure, to borrow from Santayana, "under whatever sky." Arthur C. Danto is one of the most original and multitalented philosophers writing today, a thinker whose interests traverse the boundaries of traditional understandings of philosophy. Best known for his contributions to the philosophy of art and aesthetics, Danto is also esteemed for his work in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophical psychology, and action theory. These two volumes, each with an introduction by the author, contain essays spanning more than twenty-five years that have been selected to highlight the inseparability of philosophy and art in Danto's work. Together they present the thinking of Arthur C. Danto at his very best. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto's lucid introduction to the central topics of Western philosophical thought remains an unparalleled guide to problems in metaphysics and epistemology that have engaged philosophers for several millennia. Examining the work of Plato, Berkeley, Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein, Danto explores debates about empiricism, the mind/body problem, the nature of matter, and the status of language, consciousness, and scientific explanation. In a new preface to this edition he considers the current relationship between philosophy and the humanities.

Now in its third edition, _Narration and Knowledge_ is a classic work exploring the nature of historical knowledge and its reliance on narrative. Analytical philosopher Arthur C. Danto introduces the concept of "narrative sentences," in which an event is described with reference to later events and discusses why such sentences cannot be understood until the later event happens. Danto compares narrative and scientific explanation and explores the legitimacy of historical laws. He also argues that history is an autonomous (...) and humanist discipline incapable of being reduced to scientific descriptions. Lydia Goehr's new introduction illustrates Danto's main arguments by questioning her very role, first, as an introducer of a book that has not yet been read by readers and, second, as an interpreter of a book written forty years ago. Frank Ankersmit's conclusion revisits the initial impact of the publication of _Narration and Knowledge_ and considers its enduring legacy. (shrink)

Few philosophers are as widely read or as widely misunderstood as Friedrich Nietzsche. When Danto's classic study was first published in 1965, many regarded Nietzsche as a brilliant but somewhat erratic thinker. Danto, however, presented a radically different picture, arguing that Nietzsche offered a systematic and coherent philosophy that anticipated many of the questions that define contemporary philosophy. Danto's clear and insightful commentaries helped canonize Nietzsche as a philosopher and continue to illuminate subtleties in Nietzsche's work as (...) well as his immense contributions to the philosophies of science, language, and logic. This new edition, which includes five additional essays, not only further enhances our understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy; it responds to the misunderstandings that continue to muddy his intellectual reputation. Even today, Nietzsche is seen as everything from a precursor of feminism and deconstruction to a prophetic writer and spokesperson for disgruntled teenage boys. As Danto points out in his preface, Nietzsche's writings have purportedly inspired recent acts of violence and school shootings. Danto counters these misreadings by elaborating an anti-Nietzschian philosophy from within Nietzsche's own philosophy "in the hope of disarming the rabid Nietzsche and neutralizing the vivid frightening images that have inspired sociopaths for over a century." The essays also consider specific works by Nietzsche, including _Human, All Too Human_ and _The Genealogy of Morals_, as well as the philosopher's artistic metaphysics and semantical nihilism. (shrink)

_A lively meditation on the nature of art by one of America's most celebrated art critics_ What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is (...) always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto's essays not only critique bodies of work but reflect upon art's conceptual evolution as well, drawing for the reader a kind of "philosophical map" indicating how art and the criteria for judging it has changed over the twentieth century. In _Unnatural Wonders_ the renowned critic finds himself at a point when contemporary art has become wholly pluralistic, even chaotic-with one medium as good as another-and when the moment for the "next thing" has already passed. (...) So the theorist goes in search of contemporary art's most exhilarating achievements, work that bridges the gap between art and life, which, he argues, is now the definitive art of our time. Danto considers the work of such young artists as John Currin and Renee Cox and older living masters including Gerhard Richter and Sol LeWitt. He discusses artists of the New York School, like Philip Guston and Joan Mitchell, and international talents, such as the South African William Kentridge. Danto conducts a frank analysis of Matthew Barney's _The Cremaster Cycle_, Damien Hirst's skeletons and anatomical models, and Barbara Kruger's tchotchke-ready slogans; finds the ghost of Henry James in the work of Barnett Newman; and muses on recent Whitney Biennials and art influenced by 9/11. He argues that aesthetic considerations no longer play a central role in the experience and critique of art. Instead art addresses us in our humanity, as men and women who seek meaning in the "unnatural wonders" of art, a meaning that philosophy and religion are unable to provide. (shrink)

[ES] Este famoso ensayo de Arthur Danto, que se presenta aquí traducido al español, fue el primer desarrollo de su concepto de «mundo del arte» como un marco contextual que da sentido, por medio de sus usos teóricos-lingüísticos, a toda forma de arte reconocible en el mundo. Este concepto tendría una influencia enorme en todo el mundo, y fue la base de todo el pensamiento posterior de Danto acerca del arte, y su principal herramienta filosófica para vender en todas (...) partes la idea de que las obras de Andy Warhol no sólo eran legítimas obras de arte, sino incluso, obras importantes de arte. [EN] This famous essay by Arthur Danto, presented here entirely translated into Spanish, was the first development of his concept of “art world” as a contextual framework that gives meaning, through its theoretical-linguistic uses, to all forms of recognizable art in the world. This concept would have a huge influence around the world, and was the basis of all subsequent Danto’s thought about art, and his main philosophical tool to sell everywhere the idea that the works of Andy Warhol were not only legitimate works of art, but even important works of art. (shrink)

From the 1990s until just before his death, the legendary art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto carried out extended conversations about contemporary art with the prominent Italian critic Demetrio Paparoni. Their discussions ranged widely over a vast range of topics, from American pop art and minimalism to abstraction and appropriationism. Yet they continually returned to the concepts at the core of Danto’s thinking—posthistory and the end of aesthetics—provocative notions that to this day shape questions about the meaning and (...) future of contemporary art. Art and Posthistory presents these rich dialogues and correspondence, testifying to the ongoing importance of Danto’s ideas. It offers readers the opportunity to experience the intellectual excitement of Danto in person, speculating in a freewheeling yet erudite style. Danto and Paparoni discuss figures such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Franz Kline, Sean Scully, Clement Greenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Wang Guangyi, offering both insightful comments on individual works and sweeping observations about wider issues. On occasion, the artist Mimmo Paladino and the philosopher Mario Perniola join the conversation, enlivening the discussion and adding their own perspectives. The book also features an introductory essay by Paparoni that provides lucid analysis of Danto’s thinking, emphasizing where the two disagree as well as what they learned from each other. (shrink)

cannot grasp what is at stake in it without taking both its claims and its tone seriously. Read philosophically, Danto wants to reconceive art’s aesthetic dimension as those features that ‘inflect’ our attitude towards a work’s meaning, and to distinguish, in so doing, between beauty that is and beauty that is not internal to that meaning. Although welcome, I argue that his attempt to carry this through is compromised by his countervailing tendency to conceive the aesthetic in non-cognitive terms. (...) Read as a work of philosophical confession, on the other hand, I suggest that Danto’s late turn to aesthetics may be illuminated through a comparison with Philip Guston’s late turn to figuration. To do so, I draw parallels between Guston’s development as a painter and Danto’s philosophical trajectory. Danto concludes that, though necessary to life, beauty is not necessary to art; I conclude that, on this account, only an aesthetic art makes a warranted claim on our attention. (shrink)

The article retraces Mimmo Paladino’s entire artistic path and tries to identify a characterising trait, although in the innumerable variations of a work that is pluristylistic by its very nature. This trait seems to be “a spirit of South”, the echo of the culture of the Italian South which can be found both in sculptures and paintings that Paladino creates starting from the Eighties.

RESUMO A definição de arte desenvolvida por Arthur Danto pressupõe que algo é uma obra de arte por ser o correlato de uma interpretação, inscrita em uma rede de significações históricas, teóricas e sociais, que lhe atribui o estatuto de obra de arte. Trata-se de uma definição essencialista que, no entanto, não se funda em algo que é percebido no objeto, mas no objeto percebido como arte. Levando em consideração que o conceito de “interpretação” é um dos pontos cardinais (...) da definição de arte de Danto, aprofundo neste artigo uma investigação específica sobre o assunto. Argumento que o modo como o autor o desenvolve comporta uma ambiguidade, isto é, que há uma confusão entre dois sentidos de interpretação nos textos dantianos, e que seu papel fundamental na definição de arte é inseparável da contextualização histórico-social possibilitada pelo mundo da arte. ABSTRACT Arthur Danto’s definition of art claims that something is a work of art because it is the subject of an interpretation that is inscribed in a network of historical, theoretical and social meanings, which is responsible for assigning the status of artwork. It is an essentialist definition which however, is not based on something that is perceived in the object, but on the object being perceived as art. In this paper, I develop a specific investigation about the concept of “interpretation”, taking into account that it is one of the cardinal points in Danto’s definition of art. I argue that the author develops this subject in an ambiguous way, in other words, that there is confusion between two different meanings of interpretation in his texts, and that its fundamental role in the definition of art is inseparable from the historical and social contextualization guaranteed by the artworld. (shrink)

The striking title The End of Art managed to draw attention to the philosophical work of Arthur Danto. However, the lack of a systematic development which could support this thesis made him face harsh criticism. However, strong foundations for his statements can be deduced from his writings. In this paper, I analyse how to understand the thesis of the ‘end of art’. It should be approached not as a monolitical notion but as a complex concept that combines three (...) different senses: 1) the ‘end of art’ in the Hegelian sense: the conversion of art into philosophy, 2) the ‘end of art’ in the historiographical sense: as the end to the narratives of the history of art, and 3) the ‘end of art’ as the beginning of a new period in history, where Danto’s philosophy of art would be fully valid. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s analytic theory of art relies on a form of artistic interpretation that requires access to the art theoretical concepts of the artworld, ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’. Art, in what Danto refers to as post-history, has become theoretical, yet it is here contended that his explanation of the artist’s creative style lacks a theoretical dimension. This article examines Danto’s account of style in light of the role the artistic (...) metaphor plays in the interpretation of the artwork, arguing that it is unable to account for the metaphorical power he claims is embedded within the work of art. An artist’s style issues from a unique perspective, the way an artist inhabits a specific spot in history. Though each person has such a perspective, when applied aesthetically, it is the key to the articulation of a unique historical meaning in the work of art. At the same time, artists’ knowledge of their contribution remains cut off from this perspective, for they are unaware of their self-manifestation of the historical concept of style. This article makes the case that Danto’s notion of style, based on Sartre’s notion of being-for-itself, cannot fulfil the role he allots it in his theory because, at some level, artists must apprehend their style to create a work of art capable of functioning critically as a countertext. It is only through the apprehension of their style, and dialogical activity that takes place between the artist and the beholders, that the unseen body of artworld theory is formed. Without this, when oriented to the aesthetic, style provides no concept or theory for the mind to behold. This article presents an alternative approach to style that recognizes the role of theory in the creation of metaphor, which would circumvent this problem. (shrink)

In his latest book about art Arthur Danto claims that aesthetic appearance-visuality in the visual arts-has become more and more irrelevant for most of contemporary art. This essay first immanently critiques the distinction between the aesthetic and artistic properties underlying this claim. Danto's claim about the irrelevance of the aesthetic is not compatible with the spirit of his own writings: what Danto denies in After the End of Art has been a cornerstone of his theoretical work since (...) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, namely, that the aesthetic is indeed both an elementary and a defining property of art. Examples ranging from Duchamp's Fountain to a recent installation by the Art & Language group are discussed to support this critique. Second, the essay defends Danto's contention that developing a "definition of art" is a sensible enterprise. But it turns out that Danto's "essentialism" concerning art has no essentialist implications in any specific sense. (shrink)

The paper considers the philosophical relationship between the form and the shape through the meaning of conceptualist art, which Arthur Coleman Danto emphasizes in his aesthetic theory. Even though modern art from the beginning of the 20th century signalled the break between the form and the shape, it has fully come to life in the postmodern sense. It will be shown that conceptual artists have understood how it is possible to keep the shape of a thing without changing its (...) form, with the idea displacing it from a predetermined function. For conceptual, postmodern art, it will be decisive to keep the shape while changing the form in which such a work of art is created, changing the character of things that were not a work of art until then. According to Hartmann’s aesthetic theory, this creates a unique aesthetic object that does not rest on the work of art itself but its perception. Danto exemplified such a path with Duchamp’s Fountain and Warhol’s Brillo Box, which witnessed a change of the form while retaining the shape, establishing postmodern aesthetics as essentially conceptual. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto has long defended essentialism in the philosophy of art, yet he has been interpreted by many as a historicist. This essentialism/historicism conflict in the interpretation of his work reflects the same conflict both within his thought and, more importantly, within modern art itself. Danto's strategy for resolving this conflict involves, among other things, a Bildungsroman of modern art failing to discover its essence, an essentialist definition of art provided by philosophy which is indemnified against (...) history, and a thesis about the end of art once it has been defined. Is this strategy successful, or does it result, as I argue, in a philosophical disenfranchisement of art of precisely the type that Danto himself has criticized? (shrink)

Throughout his lengthy career Arthur Danto made significant and original contributions to action theory, historical narrative, and epistemology. He became best known however for his work as an art critic in the Nation, Artnews and elsewhere, and for his philosophical publications on art theory, beginning with his early (1964) article “The Artworld.” In fact, Danto’s views on art are emblematic of his overall philosophy: he managed to reconcile conflicting philosophical sensibilities without short-schrifting them. He appreciates both Hegel and (...) postmodernism, but his own philosophy is a good deal less radical than most postmodernisms in that he denies that philosophy is a radically historicist enterprise. (shrink)

Though Arthur Danto has long been engaged with issues of embodiment in art and beyond, neither he nor most of his interlocutors have devoted significant attention to the art form in which art and embodiment most vividly intersect, namely dance. This article, first, considers Danto’s brief references to dance in his early magnum opus, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Second, it tracks the changes in Danto’s philosophy of art as evidenced in his later After the End of Art and (...) The Abuse of Beauty. And finally, it utilizes Danto’s most recent work on the philosophy of action to suggest a new Danto-inspired definition of art, namely "apposite bodies.". (shrink)

In this chapter, the author wants to situate Arthur Danto's work in relation to a particular elaboration of it that has emerged at Columbia University, where Arthur presided for so long as a senior philosophical figure. Danto's non‐Cartesian dualism poses a problem of other bodies, which he claims is a much more important philosophical problem than the problem of other minds that is alleged to follow up on the nature of consciousness. Danto would surely be (...) right to insist that the first‐person point of view from which mental agency is exercised, by undertaking irreducibly normative commitments, must also be a first‐person point of view from which embodied agency is exercised so as to effect changes in the world. The quickest route to seeing the normative point of the normative analysis of agent identity lies in the case of group agency. (shrink)

Arthur Danto once stood next to Andy Warhol at a gallery opening while Warhol autographed his wife's brochure. For Danto, Warhol embodied the age and its aspirations: a philosophical artist in gel. Danto was also writing autobiographically in describing Warhol's before and after. The before and after made them alike: each became a modernist figure of unparalleled boldness, audacity, and brilliance. A number of critics understood that Warhol was pushing against the limits of art in a way that forced (...) abstract reflection on what art was, is, and could be. Danto reasoned that a cultural background puts in place a set of concepts allowing one thing to be schematized differently from a visually indiscernible counterpart. Warhol's work was to him more like declarative language than anything else: it spoke in virtue of a shared background of concepts, which he called a theory. (shrink)

Arthur Danto's The Abuse of Beauty was a significant contribution to the acclaimed return of beauty that had been taking place since Dave Hickey's 1993 manifesto announced that beauty would be the defining problem of the next decade. One of the most original and important aspects of Danto's look at beauty is that he thought about it as a contribution to art criticism. External aesthetic qualities would be as meaningless as natural beauty intended to play role in (...) conveying a work 's meaning, constitute the aesthetic dimension of the work. For Danto, elegiac beauty can provide political role for the aesthetic quality, but the impossibility of what could be termed an “angry beauty,” capable of outraging people, seriously limits the option of beauty in “angrily political” contemporary art. Danto thought that activist art will try to inflect works with an angry mood in order to turn people against what they are about. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I consider Adorno's claim that art is at, or is coming to, an ‘end’. I consider Adorno's account in relation to the work of Arthur Danto and G. W. F. Hegel. I employ Danto's account, together with two distinct interpretive glosses of Hegel's account, as heuristic devices in order to clarify both Adorno's own arguments, and the context within which they are being advanced. I argue that while Danto and Hegel see art as coming (...) to an end autonomously, owing to art's successful realization of its governing principle, Adorno by contrast sees art as coming to an end heteronomously. Art's narrative is forcibly broken off, rather than completed. Adorno's account, indebted to Hegel, of art's commitment both to autonomy and the realization of ‘spiritual needs’ is explored in order to clarify how, on Adorno's view, this has happened to art; and why, precisely, he believes art is coming to an end. (shrink)

Mr. Danto argues that recent developments in the artworld, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot involve. In the course of constructing such a theory, he seeks to demonstrate the relationship between philosophy and art, as well as the connections that hold between art and social institutions and art history. The book (...) distinguishes what belongs to artistic theory from what has traditionally been confused with it, namely aesthetic theory and offers as well a systematic account of metaphor, expression, and style, together with an original account 0f artistic representation. A wealth of examples, drawn especially from recent and contemporary art, illuminate the argument. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor wrote the following assessment of Danto’s importance in 1993: “Danto has done something I’ve been very much wanting to do: namely, reconsider some hard problems in aesthetics in the light of the past 20 years or so of philosophical work on intentionality and representation” (Fodor 1993, p. 41). Fodor is absolutely right: some of Danto’s work could be thought of as the application of some influential ideas about perception that Fodor also shared. The problem is that (...) these ideas have turned out to be false. Both Danto and Fodor are modularist: they both think that perception is an encapsulated process that is in no way influenced by any kind of non-perceptual processing (see, e.g., Fodor 1983, Pylyshyn 1984). Many of Danto’s famous and influential arguments rely very directly on this modularist assumption. There is now, however, a wealth of evidence against modularism of the strong kind held to by Danto and Fodor. We now know that perceptual experience is not determined entirely by the retinal input: our visual processing is influenced at various point in a top-down manner. What we know and what kinds of visual stimuli we have encountered previously deeply influence how the retinal input is processed. The empirical literature on this is vast and conclusive (for an overview, see Teufel and Nanay 2017 but see also the references in the last section of this paper). What does this mean for Danto’s views on art and perception? While one of Danto’s premises may turn out to be false, the history and examples he gave are valuable and bear repeating. Even more importantly, Danto’s aesthetics can in part be separated out from his modularism, leading us to draw slightly different but arguably even more interesting conclusions from famous thought experiments such as the Gallery of Indiscernibles. (shrink)

In the field of research of theory of history, Danto is mostly known as the author of Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), that is as the author of one of the key texts of the so-called Narrative Turn. But this work loses many of its own shades of meaning, if isolated from the rest of Danto’s production. The philosophy of history articulated in the work of 1965 is only the first piece of an atypical philosophical system, within which (...) each of the parts communicates with the others. Based on this awareness, the present work aims to reconstruct, in essential lines, Danto’s theory of history, paying particular attention to the links it maintains with the rest of the system. In addition, while complying with this goal, it will also be useful to highlight the main influences of the continental tradition that resonate in his metahistorical synthesis. In this way, hopefully, we will show the importance of two of the least exercised interpretative gestures on this portion of the American philosopher work, that we think are fundamental, if you want to understand its authentic meaning. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto is unique among philosophers for the breadth of his philosophical mind, his eloquent writing style, and the generous spirit embodied in all his work. Any collection of essays on his philosophy has to engage him on all these levels, because this is how he has always engaged the world, as a philosopher and person. In this volume, renowned philosophers and art historians revisit Danto's theories of art, action, and history, and the depth of his (...) innovation as a philosopher of culture. Essays explore the importance of Danto's philosophy and criticism for the contemporary art world, along with his theories of perception, action, historical knowledge, and, most importantly for Danto himself, the conceptual connections among these topics. Danto himself continues the conversation by adding his own commentary to each essay, extending the debate with characteristic insight, graciousness, and wit. Contributors include Frank Ankersmit, Hans Belting, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, Lydia Goehr, Gregg Horowitz, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Immerwahr, Daniel Herwitz, and Michael Kelly, testifying to the far-reaching effects of Danto's thought. Danto brought to philosophy the artist's unfettered imagination, and his ideas about postmodern culture are virtual road maps of the present art world. This volume pays tribute to both Danto's brilliant capacity to move between philosophy and contemporary culture and his pathbreaking achievements in philosophy, art history, and art criticism. (shrink)

Those rights are human rights which, in Professor Gewirth's phrase, “all persons equally have simply insofar as they are human.” His task is to demonstrate that there are human rights, and to demonstrate that such demonstration is necessary to the very existence of these rights. “That human rights exist…is a proposition whose truth depends upon the possibility, in principle, of constructing a body of moral justificatory argument from which that proposition follows as a logical consequence.” As philosophers we should no (...) doubt like to be able to prove the existence of human rights – prove that there are such rights in the event that the fool shall have said in his heart that there are none, even using his folly against him by showing his denial to entail its denial – but it is a bold claim that rights are things whose esse est demonstrari. (shrink)

Updated and revised, the Second Edition of _Danto and His Critics_ presents a series of essays by leading Danto scholars who offer their critical assessment of the influential works and ideas of Arthur C. Danto, the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University and long-time art critic for _The Nation_. Reflects Danto's revisions in his theory of art, reworking his views in ways that have not been systematically addressed elsewhere Features essays that critically assess (...) the changes in Danto's thoughts and locate Danto's revised theory in the larger context of his work and of aesthetics generally Speaks in original ways to the relation of Danto's philosophy of art to his theory of mind Connects and integrates Danto's ideas on the nature of knowledge, action, aesthetics, history, and mind, as well as his provocative thoughts on the philosophy of art for the reader. (shrink)

This volume brings together seventeen previously published articles by Noel Carroll, exploring all aspects of Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art. They cover Danto.

In response to Michael Wreen, 'Once is Not Enough?' (British Journal of Aesthetics 1990), this article argues that the short story by Jorge Luis Borges, 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' supports Arthur Danto's account of the individuation of art works, according to which two verbally identical compositions can be two distinct works. Wreen argues that the Menard story is a case of copying. But the story is one of intentional coincidence of texts, not copying. Hence Wreen lacks (...) a convincing case for denying that the the text of Borges' Menard constitutes a work distinct from Cervantes' Don Quixote. (shrink)

A study of the philosophical problems associated with the concept of action. Professor Danto is concerned to isolate logically the notion of a 'basic action' and to examine the way in which context and intention, for example, can convert physiological movements into significant actions. He finds many suggestive parallels between the concepts - the logical architecture - of action and cognition and in developing this theme he becomes involved in and proposes new approaches to various long-standing problems connected with causality, (...) determinism and materialism. As in his earlier books, Analytical Philosophy of History and Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge, Professor Danto places the discussion in a broad historical and philosophical perspective and brings to it a wide reading and an unusual range of interests. He is always prepared to venture novel ideas to stimulate further debate and research and the book as a whole is presented as an original contribution to a subject which is attracting increasing attention from philosophers and from psychologists with an interest in the conceptual assumptions behind their work. (shrink)

From the nineteen-eighties on, Arthur Danto was the most significant art critic and philosopher of art in world. This book provides a comprehensive, systematic view of his philosophy and criticism including his views in relation to not only painting and sculpture but to cinema and dance.

Arthur C. Danto did not live to witness the proliferation of AI in artistic creation. However, his philosophy of art offers key ideas about art that can provide an interesting perspective on artwork generated by artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, I analyze how his ideas about contemporary art, intention, interpretation, and authorship could be applied to the ongoing debate about AI and artistic creation. At the same time, it is also interesting to consider whether the incorporation of AI (...) into artistic creation marks a new chapter in the narrative, which seems to have reached its end, or if it represents a significant rupture with past artistic traditions. (shrink)

"Popular summaries of existentialism and Sartre's ideas have ensured a wide currency for such words as 'absurdity', 'nothingness', 'engagement', 'shame', and 'anguish'. But for Sartre, each of these words embodies a precise philosophical concept which he applies and explores further in his fiction and plays. Synthesized in 'Being and Nothingness' and 'Critique of Dialectical Reason', these concepts comprise a fully articulated philosophical system which, as Arthur C. Danto argues, in its vision and scope, logical responsibility and human relevance, takes (...) its place among the greatest of philosophical achievements. This book offers a synoptic and sympathetic reconstruction of the Sartrean system and in particular Sartre's analysis of the nature of language, consciousness, knowledge, self, and values." --Descripción del editor. (shrink)

This essay offers a discussion of how Arthur Danto educated me philosophically both through his personal example and through his work. Along the way, I detail what I take to be his most important lesson: to engage deeply and seriously with the subject of one’s philosophy, in his case predominantly art, and thus always to retain contact with the world outside of philosophy. Danto modeled a truly engaged philosopher of art, attending to history, actual practices and contemporary currents, (...) without sacrificing philosophical clarity and depth. (shrink)

This essay constructs philosophical defenses against criticisms of my theory of the end of art. These have to do with the definition of art; the concept of artistic quality; the role of aesthetics; the relationship between philosophy and art; how to answer the question "But is it art?"; the difference between the end of art and "the death of painting"; historical imagination and the future; the method of using indiscernible counterparts, like Warhol's Brillo Box and the Brillo cartons it resembles; (...) the logic of imitation-and the differences between Hegel's views on the end of art and mine. These defenses amplify and fortify the thesis of the end of art as set forth in my After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (1997). (shrink)

The present essay represents for the author an occasion to retrace his philosophy of art, referring in particular to the themes related to contemporary art. Starting from the historical importance which the photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge had for painting (and not only), Arthur Danto once again comes to wonder about the famous Brillo Box of Andy Warhol, demonstrating how, in the face of different avant-guard artistic movements of the early Sixties (specially in the usa), it is indeed philosophy (...) that questions itself, reconsidering its own concept of the eternity of art and the way in which works of art must be interpreted. (shrink)

Since 1984, when he became art critic for _The Nation_, Arthur C. Danto, one of America's most inventive and influential philosophers, has also emerged as one of our most important critics of art. As an essayist, Danto's style is at once rigorous, incisive, and playful. _Encounters and Reflections_ brings together many of his recent critical writings—on artists such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, and Robert Mapplethorpe; and on the significance of issues like the masterpiece and the museum. The (...) result is a spirited brief from the front lines of current aesthetic and philosophical debate. (shrink)

Since the mid-1980s, Arthur C. Danto has been increasingly concerned with the implications of the demise of modernism. Out of the wake of modernist art, Danto discerns the emergence of a radically pluralistic art world. His essays illuminate this novel art world as well as the fate of criticism within it. As a result, Danto has crafted the most compelling philosophy of art criticism since Clement Greenberg. Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn analyze the constellation of philosophical and critical elements (...) in Danto's new- Hegelian art theory. In a provocative encounter, they employ themes from Kantian aesthetics to elucidate the continuing persistence of taste in shaping even this most sophisticated philosophy of art. (shrink)

Resumen: En este trabajo se desarrollan los argumentos que Arthur Danto elaboró en torno al significado metafórico y el estilo con el objetivo de mostrar si es posible que su modelo permita comprender nuevas formas de Arte de Apropiación. Éstas engloban las prácticas recientes en las que los artistas hacen réplicas más o menos exactas de otras obras que han sido importantes en la historia del arte. -/- Abstract: In this paper Arthur Danto’s arguments about metaphorical meaning and (...) style are analyzed in order to show whether it is possible that his model works for understanding new ways of Appropriation Art. These are recent artistic practices in which artists make more or less accurate copies of other artworks that have been important in Art History. (shrink)

The place that Arthur Danto gives to history, as constitutive to as and our world, as well as a discipline able to produce knowledge of the past, reach its cenit with his philosophy of art. In “the End of Art”, Danto announces an end of the history of the search of the philosophical definition of art and the beginning of the era of pluralism. It is in this account where essencialism and historicism are combined in a way that estimules (...) a heat debate that continues today. In this paper, I give a reconstruction of Danto’s Philosophy of historical language in order to show why this combination is possible and which compromises that should be assumed by an authentic historicism. (shrink)

This essay is written as an introductory essay to celebrate the third edition of Arthur Danto’s Analytical Philosophy of History, first printed in 1965. It raises questions about what it means to write an introduction given Danto’s own philosophical theses on history. What does it mean to write before a book but after the fact? The essay also pays special attention to the connections between Danto’s philosophy of history, philosophy of art, and the other areas of his philosophy that (...) he regards to be all of a piece. It considers the nature of analytical philosophy and its heyday in America in the postwar period, when, to some degree, it was used as an antidote to a ideology of history that had proved itself to be no more than an extreme perversion of some of the most influential claims in a philosophy of history developed in Germany around 1800. (shrink)

This chapter considers Arthur Danto's use of a particular thought experiment to support his theory of art and Richard Wollheim's discussion of it. It also considers a comparable thought experiment about conceptual issues in ethics. The chapter presents how some thought experiments in moral philosophy do and do not resemble Danto's gallery of indiscernibles. A. Surprisingly, in his own discussion of the permissibility of certain acts of killing and harming, Danto seems to have adopted a view similar (...) to the one Wollheim adopted about Danto's indiscernibles. Use of thought experiments in ethics is often unlike the use of thought experiments in Danto's work. The chapter explores how ethics employs thought experiments to determine permissibility of acts and whether thought experiments could comparably be used to determine the merit of artworks. (shrink)