In his more recent work Danto has explored a "Hegelian" view that art is primarily about art, but this view too does not allow for art to be evaluated or "criticized" on the basis of whether or how well it tackles the more profound questions of meaning. Arthur Danto The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. And second, he places Sargent in a matrix of opposition between two models of genius, the happy successful Rubens and the tortured genius Van Gogh, and comments that Sargent was more like Rubens—a model of the artist which, while not so prevalent any more, should not be ignored or considered inferior. It’s true that many artists both at that time andlater did try to imitate nature in their art. But now, somewhat surprisingly, Danto speaks of a third model of art writing as "poetic and subjective" and admits that he is himself drawn to such an approach. We have seen that in his art criticism Danto, true to his credo, does offer interpretations of how meaning is embodied. Philosophy of art cannot be art criticism in the sense of distinguishing good from bad art, because it involves instead differentiating art from non-art. How do all of these theses apply to Danto himself? Finally, I will discuss the need for an alternative account of art criticism as evaluation. Danto has said that he included many actual examples of discussions of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace because of the feeling that, previously, philosophers had theorized about art in a vacuum. Before explaining those ideas, he does some botanizing and sorts art criticism (and critics) into seven camps. It was not clear in the mid-1960s to easily pick artworks from a grouping of non-artworks because art was developed with close resemblance to non-artworks (Danto 129). I am always curious researching on a wide range of issues that affect today’s society. Danto's philosophy of art commits him to an account of the practice of art criticism as interpretation. Danto sought to lay out the basic principles of his philosophy of art. Elkins does conclude his book very briefly with some recommendations for reform, and he lists three qualities that ought to be delivered in good art criticism: (1) ambitious judgment; (2) reflection about judgment itself; and (3) criticism important enough to count as history, and vice versa. Arthur C. Danto has 112 books on Goodreads with 17534 ratings. This form of writing would never manage to get art history off the ground, since it "begs the question of what criticism is by making it appear that there is no question. To the extent that he mentioned criticism in Transfiguration, Danto's remarks were easy to miss. 1"% view, art does not progressalong a linearpath, but rather is simplya discontinuous manifestationof each artist's independentattempt at self-expression. Their emphasis is on "voice, tone, and style". "[16] Similarly, in discussing Sargent, Danto makes two moves that involve historical comparison and analysis. This means that in selecting that work as his paradigm Danto can give his own theory a unique universality or openness. But does this make his resulting work, whether Fountain or Brillo Box, truly "transformative" in the sense of the term introduced in The Abuse of Beauty? [26] Arthur C. Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (Chicago and LaSalle: Open Court, 2003), p. 139. The cultural critic puts art into a social context and sometimes relates it to current popular phenomena like TV shows or social movements. Hence, the critic's role as the interpreter of art's embodied meanings encompasses discussion of the approach artworks take to such large human issues as the nature of marriage, the purpose of life, the meaning of death, and so on. [7] He adds, "In my view, a philosophy of art worthy of the name must be worked out at a level of abstractness so general that you cannot deduce from it the form of any specific style of art. Here it is instructive to recall one of Danto's reviews, his piece about Cartier-Bresson. What happens, then, to Danto's own idea that art invariably involves a theory of art? After explaining the influence of Surrealism upon the photographer, Danto comments that in his work, Cartier-Bresson managed to reveal the surrealism that exists all around us in nature. [1] Arthur C. Danto, The State of the Art (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1987), p. 5. This can happen if, when the artist makes us think about art, he or she also inspires us with a new attitude or approach to our lives. In this role, art is seen as transformative on a personal level. Artworks and photographs can be decided on depending on their nature from non-artworks. I should also have paid attention to Danto's point about embodiment. This leaves open the question of which meanings count as valuable or important. There is a kind of reflexivity built into this definition. . Danto's conception of criticism as reflection on embodied meaning puts so much focus on interpretation that there does not seem to be room left for evaluation. The catalog essay is generally descriptive in its focus and favorable in its tone, because it is commissioned by the gallery or museum. Order our Danto, Arthur (1924-) Encyclopedia Article ... Arthur Danto's contributions to the philosophy of art have been shaped by his experiences as art maker, art critic, and art lover. But on this point Danto's own art criticism seems to have taken on a direction of its own, maybe a bit apart from his theory of art and its philosophy. Of course, this need not amount to the model of "restaurant review" criticism that Danto departed from in his own work. Commenting on the positioning of figures in a seris of portraits by Hockney, Danto notes that "the tension between the differently posed figures must then be a translation into the language of composition of something intense in the language of feeling. This odd and surprising fact reminds us of numerous mirrors as used in prominent predecessors' paintings (like Las Meninas or the Arnolfini Marriage). [23] Elkins, p. 33, emphasis in original. The Need for Evaluation or, What Happened to Art Criticism? Rather than showing us how various artists manifested their theories of art in their works, the critic has the more intriguing task of helping us grasp artists' comments on "large issues" of life. "[2] Transfiguration made it much harder for philosophers of art to think and work in a void apart from the real art world. [24] These seem to me perfectly good criteria for the kind of art criticism I also would like to see, evaluative and rational art criticism. "Art, Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Art " by Arthur C. Danto Humanities, Vol. But the invention of photographyput an end to this as the goal of art, and showed that the mimesis or imitationview is false. After considering and dismissing a number of definitions, Danto comes down on one that he thinks captures the “artness of art”: artworks are embodied meanings. In discussing the claim that art is an object with a theory, or a meaning embodied somehow, I have focused mainly on the issue of the relevant theory or meaning. Concepts are used apart from standard scholarly references or sources and applied in an idiosyncratic fashion to the work under consideration. Can the Danto-esque interpretive essay serve as a model for art criticism? Good morning everyone. Now there is another crucial move or conclusion implied by this argument, one that Danto does not make explicitly but that I think he feels we are entitled to make, namely. 230-31). 19, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting. It is not altogether clear that Elkins thinks this current state of affairs can be changed. The book includes 16 pages of color art reproductions. In discussing Koons' work, Danto notes that we have more immunity from its awfulness in the museum than in the gallery setting "where there's nothing else but Koons it's more threatening since it looks like he's taken over the world." What philosophers count as art is the kind of art they prefer or consider the best. The first is what Kant calls “spirit,” which differs from Hegel’s idea of Spirit (discussed below). In other words, art offers explorations that have great depth and profundity, and that often deal with what Danto calls "the large human issues." For instance, he wrote, "It is my view that whatever appreciation may come to, it must in some sense be a function of interpretation. For he has always talked about embodiment. Arthur c. danto's phiosophy of art 1. He earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Wayne State University in 1948. He is willing to bite the relativist bullet and allow that for him, too, the definition of art reflects his own sense of what counts or should count as art. He has included sculpture as well as painting and photography in his ambit, and has written on "art and culture" topics such as the Tilted Arc controversy, the meaning of the Vietnam Memorial, and the role of the museum in contemporary society. In most cases, this perspective also enters into his reviews by way of his analysis of how artists enact a theory of art in relation to their contemporaries, the art world, and/or their predecessors. (It's only the rare and academic restaurant reviewer who launches into reflections about the meanings of cuisines under examination.) 280-81. How can there be any kind of gradation concerning how well a given item fulfills a theory of art that it employs in order to "get off the ground" as art in the first place (in distinction to an everyday object)? Next, I will survey some examples from Danto's own critical writings. Where can Art go from here? Is an encounter with either work likely to be personally enlightening? He writes: The argument suggested by this passage goes as follows: Philosophy of art is a theory of what counts as art. Are we … Art ended before I was born,… We are, as Danto puts it in “Narratives of the End of Art,” in the posthistorical phase of art. Surely the critic must also assess whether the artist's aim is itself worthwhile or interesting. (Oct. 15, 1964), pp. For something to fall under one of the concepts, both necessary and sufficient conditions need to be laid out. Danto explains, "When I undertook to frame the beginning of a philosophy of art, I felt it urgent to work with the most vivid examples I could find. . Arthur Coleman Danto (January 1, 1924 – October 25, 2013) was an American art critic, philosopher, and professor at Columbia University.He is best known for having been a long-time art critic for The Nation and for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he contributed significantly to a number of fields, including the philosophy of action. Often art historians now treat art this way, enabling us to see vanitas paintings in Dutch art, for example, as windows into Dutch views on morality and death. Arthur C. Danto, a philosopher who became one of the most widely read art critics of the Postmodern era, championing avant-garde artists like Andy Warhol and proclaiming the end of art … And this entails that the role of evaluation has been greatly expanded. Key Words I once heard an art professor state proudly that her goal was to get her students to express themselves, "even if it is only about chocolate chip cookies." But such an approach cannot help identify quality or even pinpoint which artists and works are worth writing about in the first place. Danto considers such reminders relevant because of Hockney's well-known interest in perspective in the history of art. . 1 (February 1983), pp. For me there are no tremors of profundity in encountering these works. Is the Brillo Box or the Campbell Soup Can better at doing this than the Bottle Rack?[9]. There might, of course, be a link between art that is about art and art that offers us insight into life. In doing this, Danto says, Cartier-Bresson showed us our own "visual pedestrianism.". Twelve thought-provoking Arthur C. Danto essays collected here, five essays addressing history and the philosophy of art, including The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, Symbolic Expression and the Self, and Art After the End of Art. Presumably it is fair to assess these artists for the profundity of the issues they tackle, and not only for their success at embodying a meaning. Danto comments about the artist's many portraits of women: Or again, here he is writing about the outrageously vulgar work of Jeff Koons: In reviewing Hockney, Danto first notes, uncontroversially, that his works are about love, specifically homoerotic love. Like its predecessors, the Danto MSE creates a context for the spine document through links to various The second way is to regard art as a window into a culture. The endorsement of a preferred kind of art is art criticism. This is a one minute speech worth 50 points. "[19] As a last example, I cite a characteristically witty passage, this time about the painter David Salle: To consider the alternatives to a position on criticism like Danto's, which takes the task mainly to involve the interpretation of embodied meaning, I want to mention the recent charmingly small but provocative book by James Elkins, What happened to art criticism? AbstractIn this article I examine the relationship between Arthur Danto's philosophy of art and his practice of art criticism. Criticism in Danto's work does may in fact involve something beyond interpretation as the search for embodied meanings. Note here that, since everything which is art has to conform to the theory if it is any good at all, no art better exemplifies it than any other. Hilton Kramer is the paradigm conservative haranguer, someone who focuses on moral qualities of an artist's work and is always in search of "quality" (often with a capital "Q"). 'Discovery' of a whole new class of artworks is akin to the discovery of a whole new class of facts. Danto is listed here, not surprisingly, along with Thomas Crow. Nevertheless, Elkins does suggest his own ideas about what is needed from art critics. Yet surely, given any particular historical philosophical definition or theory of art, there is room for criticism. Arthur Danto, the influential art critic and a professor emeritus of aesthetics and history at Columbia University, once famously declared the End of Art. Does it force you to become a new person; Can it make you better? As an illustration, he cites a Rilke poem on a powerful ancient Greek sculpture of a male torso. This involved disregarding things that should have counted as elements of the work and taking them only as supports or backdrops: "[Kramer] left out the regularity of the drilled panels and the base, which link Hesse not to Abstract Expressionism but to Minimalism and hence back to Constructivism."[17]. [5] Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 113. Indeed, Danto remarks, the artist's near-obsessive studies of this topic suggest "that he comes close to blaming a great many social ills on perspective. Danto says something similar in the Prologue to The State of the Art: "In fairness to [Harold] Rosenberg, it must be stressed that philosophies of art down the ages have often been little more than critical responses wildly generalized." [12] Encounters and Reflections, pp. "[14] It is also a striking fact that after doing this portrait of his parents with "commanding perspectival structure . Arthur Coleman Danto, född 1924 i Ann Arbor, död 25 oktober 2013 [7], var en amerikansk konstkritiker och professor i filosofi vid Columbia University.. Arthur Danto var känd för sin text Konstvärlden, först publicerad 1964 som The Artworld, där han myntade begreppet konstvärlden.Det är i Konstvärlden som den första institutionella konstteorin formuleras. The meaning is in the embodiment just as the soul is in the body, just as Danto has adduced on numerous occasions. As for artists and galleries or museums, they treat the critics who write extended catalog essays as hired workers whose products are only acceptable if they serve the purpose of promotion. As a freshman in my first year studying communications and media, it is a great honor to stand to talk to you today. Thus on the Platonic view, greater illusionism or a more perfect mimesis will be a plus, just as on the significant form view, more significant form will be a plus. Elkins comments these take up a lot of the space of art criticism, but are probably the least read of critical essays; since they function to fill out the coffee table book. One that strikes me most is the pressure parents exert on students... To What Extent Should a College Athlete be Paid for their Endeavors. In 1964, Danto wrote “The Artworld”, an essay that changed the debate on aesthetics and art forever. Having surveyed these basic types of criticism, Elkins clearly is seeking a discourse of reasons that involves some process of evaluation. As an art critic Danto's practice in looking for meanings in works of art has not been confined to their statements or theories about art itself. [21] Elkins presents a wide array of evidence suggesting that art criticism has little use in the world today and that almost no one really reads it. Elkins' final category is what he calls 'poetic' art criticism, the sort that involves an essayist using art as a platform for personally expressive writing. "Danto is an elegant and erudite writer, and his sentences go down smoothly. “Arthur C. Danto’s ‘The Artworld’” is a multimedia study environment for Arthur C. Danto’s 1964 essay, “The Artworld”. "[5] Just how Transfiguration paved the way for Danto's critical career is explained further in Beyond the Brillo Box: Danto has even claimed that philosophy of art has really only ever been art criticism. It is not read much by ordinary folks, nor is it catalogued and used in research by art historians. Certain artworks from the past presented the fundamental message that art was imitation, or beauty, or form and significant design, etc. 3. The fifth of Elkins' seven categories is the philosophical essay, art criticism that essentially treats artworks as bits of philosophy. For Kant, this spirit is similar to beauty, insomuch that both art and natural objects can both be beautiful. On the relation of history to art history see my "Art History," Contemporary Critical Terms in Art History, ed. The definitional appeal is outlawed by an approach of the family of objects' family-resemblance with partial resemblances. Even if the theory itself is a kind of evaluation in the sense that it picks out art that the philosopher "likes" as distinct from non-art which the philosopher "doesn't like" or "doesn't count" as art, there is room for criticism as to how well any given artwork fulfills it. . 4. This means critics are regarded as waiters asked to bring in a different dish if what comes out of the kitchen does not satisfy them. 61, No. It is a kind of art that, on Danto's view, has as its main message or meaning the point that "this too can be art." That is, the artist discovered visual juxtapositions that reveal the fundamental surrealism of life. C. Grayling, Financial Times". Although Elkins applauds good writing, he thinks that this alone cannot supply us with an adequate definition of art criticism. For instance, Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box resembled adequately as the actual Brillo cartons, which from a photograph it was difficult creating a distinction. The academic treatise typically cites many scholarly, impressive names and abstract, equally impressive terms, but in a somewhat random order that Elkins calls collaged or kaleidoscopic. Danto's philosophy of art commits him to an account of the practice of art criticism as interpretation. [10] Arthur C. Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux 1990), p. 53. Sometimes Danto's historical analysis goes beyond this to examine more of the art world surrounding a particular figure. "Meaning" transpires on a plane far above that of the good or bad dinners that restaurant reviewers tell us about. Elkins considers Danto inconsistent in writing historically about art, despite having pronounced that we have reached the end of art or of art's history. “In our narrative, at first only mimesis [imitation] was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became apparent that there were no stylistic or philosophical constraints. The issue for a critic, as I see it, may not be simply thumbs up or down (what Danto dismisses as "restaurant review" criticism)— but neither should it be confined to assessing how well a work achieves its intended aim. 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