Arthur Danto Research Articles

Theorizing the Chair: History, Culture, and Design

In Arthur Danto’s The Seat of the Soul: Three Chairs, the chair is a source of power and authority. This paper explores the aesthetic importance of chairs and their designers and determines why people from various cultures create different designs that all perform the same function: seating. Here, the chair is examined as an artwork and design phenomenon from historical, cultural, stylistic, and aesthetic perspectives. Data were gathered through a comprehensive literature review, reports, archival materials, and museum visits. Descriptive, historical, and analytical methods were used to explore the religious, symbolic, spiritual, artistic, competitive, and academic legacies of the chair. Despite the similarity in function, the chair is more important than a sofa, bed, or bench. It displays one’s status, education, knowledge, and artistic taste. However, practicality, low-cost materials, and money have trumped aesthetics in recent years. The findings may help young chair designers highlight their competitiveness and inventiveness.

Too Close to Nature: On the Representational Problems of Death Masks and Life Casts

Abstract While historians of art have found death masks and life casts conceptually problematic, it is also noteworthy that these objects have received scant attention from philosophers of art. In this paper, I begin to redress this omission by offering examples of how the philosophy of art can help us understand these images. Two problems stand out: the problem of representation, for example, what type of representation a death mask is; and the problem of style and historicity, for example, whether images imprinted from nature can indicate styles, and whether these images can evolve and transform along art-historical lines. After considering these problems, I conclude that these images are constrained in what they can and cannot represent. While there is a long tradition of imprinting from nature, this practice shows little discernible change over time. An unchanging tradition cannot claim to exhibit a history, a least in a narrative sense familiar to art history. The following investigation opens a dialog between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and practitioners of theoretical art history, including Ernst Gombrich and Georges Didi-Huberman, both of whom offer differing views on how these images can be treated.

BENEATH MEANING, ORIENTATIONAL NARRATIVES, AND DANTO'S ESSENTIALIST THEORY OF ART: ON NOËL CARROLL'S ELUCIDATIONS AND CONTESTATIONS

ABSTRACTIn this review of Noël Carroll's Arthur Danto's Philosophy of Art: Essays, I focus on the issue of Danto's philosophy of art history and Carroll's position that, unlike Danto, we ought to understand Danto's “end of art (history)” thesis as an orientational narrative (that is, a pragmatic‐instrumental narrative with cognitive purchase) rather than as a historical‐scientific narrative. In making this case, I show how Carroll's argument demonstrates that Danto's “end of art (history)” thesis is in tension with Danto's philosophy of history. Furthermore, I engage and respond to the most substantive critiques that Carroll proffers in this text, especially as they concern Danto's philosophy of art history and the related issue of Danto's (art) historically anchored search for a definition of art. In giving special attention to the socio‐historical background conditions (namely, “the artworld” conditions) for an object to be conferred art status, I also show how Carroll's incisive reading offers a critical rejoinder to claims made by recent critics such as Robert B. Pippin and Ivan Gaskell, who have dehistoricized Danto's definition of art, claiming that it allows for any artist to enfranchise any object as an artwork, proper.

The Relationship between Art and Life from the Perspective of Arthur Danto’s “The End of Art”

The Relationship between Art and Life from the Perspective of Arthur Danto’s “The End of Art”

Melting the Archive: The Irreconcilable Cover Song and Rock’s Recorded History

Abstract In this article, I consider a set of curious cases from the world of rock music: putative “cover versions” that differ from their corresponding canonical tracks to such an extent that it seems doubtful whether they even count as performances of the same songs. Though I address the ontological question of how or whether these tracks could be classified as actual cover songs, in this paper I am more concerned with the evaluative question of how we should attempt to appreciate them as such (as we are invited to do, I argue, according to the recordings’ metatextual cues). I will argue that these irreconcilable covers, as I call them, are best appreciated as conceptual artworks that function in a manner somewhat analogous to how Arthur Danto argues that Andy Warhol’s famed Brillo Box sculptures function; prompting us to reflect on the nature of art (and non-art). Through adopting a strategy that is, in some respects, the inverse of Warhol’s, these covers make a similar invitation to listeners to consider the nature of rock covers and covering practices, and to reflect on the stances that we—listeners and artists alike—might take in relation to rock’s past and its ever-available recorded archive.

Arthur Danto’s Philosophy of Art: Essays

Arthur Danto’s Philosophy of Art: Essays

Review Emerging Art Forms from Danto's Artistic Theories--Use John Cage' 4'33" as an Example

After the 20th century, many different art forms emerged, such as performance and installation art. Some of these new art forms are so baffling and incomprehensible that even art critics consider them not art but sensationalism by their creators. The essay seeks to justify the authenticity of emerging art forms and proceeds onto the necessary conditions to become art in Arthur Danto's art theory. The essay then examines John Cage's 4'33" with Dantos theory. The essay concludes that John Cage's 4'33" is an art form that provides an analytical model for judging contemporary emerging artistic creations.

Contemporary Art and the Problem of Indiscernibles: An Adverbialist Approach

This paper addresses Arthur Danto’s claim that contemporary artworks, such as Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box, do not differ perceptually from ordinary objects, and that in order to see contemporary artworks as art the viewer has to move from mere experience to a meaning expressed by the work. I propose to supplement Danto’s thesis. I argue that, while some contemporary artworks may indeed be perceptually indistinguishable from ordinary objects, these works are distinguishable not only by means of meaning but also by means of a non-perceptual aesthetic experience. I then discuss two theories that might provide a model of such an aesthetic experience. First, I focus on James Shelley’s theory of non-perceptual aesthetic experience conceived as a representation of non-perceptual aesthetic properties. Second, I discuss Jérôme Dokic’s adverbialist theory, which sees aesthetic experience as a combination of non-aesthetic attitudes. I argue that the adverbialist model is the most promising candidate for solving our problem. The model must be extended, however, if it is to account for pragmatic attitudes in response to artworks.

Beauty, Anger, and Artistic Activism

Abstract The rejection of beauty from a political standpoint is a significant part of the legacy of avant-gardism in contemporary art. In particular, Arthur Danto signaled that artistic activism should avoid beauty simply because beauty induces the wrong perspective on whatever it is desired to have an impact upon. While artistic beauty’s tendency would be to heal, he claimed, political protest needs anger as its trigger. This article challenges such an argument that opposes beauty’s emotional effects on political action by examining the complex nature of both beauty and anger. I contest a mere contemplative view of beauty and, using Carolyn Korsmeyer’s account of “terrible beauties,” bound up with discomforting emotions, I defend that beauty can be compatible with anger albeit, in order to be politically truly effective, anger must move from the wish to punish toward more productive forward-looking thoughts. Though often being necessary as a source of motivation to fight for justice, I believe, with Martha Nussbaum and Myisha Cherry, that anger is truly politically effective and keeps its noble side when detached from revenge and directed by hope, a value related to beauty.

:The Aesthetic Commonplace: Wordsworth, Eliot, Wittgenstein and the Language of Every Day

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Down with This Sort of Thing: Seth Heringer and the End of the Historical-Critical Method

Down with This Sort of Thing: Seth Heringer and the End of the Historical-Critical Method

‘예술의 종말’ 그리고 ‘종말의 예술’: 아서 단토의 《9/11의 예술》전시에 대한 소고

Based on The Art of 9/11 an exhibition curated by critic Arthur Danto in 2005, this paper inquires how Danto’s well-known theory about ‘the end of art’ can be reinterpreted in the current socio-political milieu and therein explores art’s new status quo and formal validity in this age of global disaster. For this inquiry, Danto’s theoretical spectrum will be broken into two parts: first, the earlier ‘end-of-art’ period, roughly between 1980 and 2000 in which Danto discussed art’s ontological crisis and its historical end through his half analytic and half Hegelian methods, and second, the later ‘art-of-the end’ period, after 2000 in which he emphasized art’s subjective yet universal aspect and its formal inertia in pursue of Kantian sublimity. This paper then delves into their theoretical polarity in order to see how Danto’s earlier ending story with post-narrative art, transfiguration of commonplace, indiscernibility, embodiment of meaning, etc. reveals its true face in culture’s another dead-end caused by 9/11. Through this, the paper aims to crystalize the formal peculiarity and reflective, remedial value of ‘the art-of-the end’ that has not been fully discussed in Danto study.

Filosofía, belleza funcional y sentir cotidiano en el arte conmemorativo

There is a complaint that philosophy of art does not pay sufficient attention either to the functionality that defines many artworks, even to certain genres such as commemorative art, nor to the emotions that they raise: ordinary feelings seen as inappropriate responses to art. It is argued that the philosophical (autonomous) concept of art prevents this. The recent discussion on «functional beauty» supports this claim. However, Arthur Danto’s analysis of commemorative art allows a philosophical concept to be conciliated with the possible functionality of art and with the affections that it generates in ordinary people.

A Puzzle for Readers of Arthur Danto’s Aesthetic Theory

A Puzzle for Readers of Arthur Danto’s Aesthetic Theory

Beyond truth: an epistemic normativity for historiography

ABSTRACT How can we compare two historical narratives about the same occurrence when each of the narratives satisfies the criteria of truth but nevertheless, portray incongruent views about the past? To answer such a question, we can identify a conservative view in history that commits to a correspondence theory of the past that argues that the scrutiny of the primary and secondary sources alongside a precise division of what counts as ‘objective facts’ and ‘subjective information’ can discern which narrative is the correct one. In other words, they value ‘truth as correspondence’ as the ultimate way to settle epistemological disagreements. In this paper, I challenge such a view and argue that it does not answer our primary question. I will propose a new standard for historiographic normativity, one that takes Catherine Elgin’s notion of understanding and Alva Noë’s idea of reorganization at its center. I will further argue that Elgin and Noë’s work allows us to bring Arthur Danto’s idea of redescription and Louis Mink’s notion of understanding from the descriptive to the normative realm.

The Cave of Images: Understanding Visual Politics in and Through Plato's Republic

Plato's Republic links seeing to philosophizing and civic order. Socrates denounces images, but the dialogue's inquiries depend on them while revealing and even enacting the mutual constitution of the visual and political fields. Introducing the text through work by the conceptual artist, Thomas Demand, and representative criticisms of Plato by Ernst Gombrich, Hannah Arendt, and Arthur Danto, I explore the key dependencies and performative moments. My reading undercuts prevailing approaches to Plato while presenting the politics of vision and the visuality of politics in ways relevant to the current image environment yet overlooked in much contemporary political science and theory.

The The Bride Machine: Duchamp’s Theory of Art Revisited

It is a commonplace in certain areas of art theory and contemporary art practices to consider Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades as ordinary objects, which have an artistic value that depends more on a theoretical or institutional framework than on an aesthetic experience. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the historical emergence of these artifacts on the light of the impact of the industrial production in avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. Discussing Walter Benjamin’ s and Jean Brun’s, it argues that Duchamp’s practice has an explanatory principle, both in the mechanical reproduction of the work of art and in the aestheticization of the machine. On the other hand, it brings forward some observations regarding Duchamp’s insight on the “total lack of good or bad taste” and the perceptual dimension of a sculptural object as the Large Glass, coming back to Arthur Danto’s interpretation of ready-mades and to the notion of “implementation” introduced by Nelson Goodman to define “the process of bringing about the aesthetic functioning that provides the basis for the notion of a work of art”.

Philosophy in relation to other disciplines exploring human nature

AbstractThis paper explores philosophy in its relation to other disciplines and practices that also seek to understand the distinctive nature of human persons. It begins with a consideration of the nature of philosophy, arguing for a pluralistic conception reflecting different ends, and relating these to art, politics, religion, and science. It illustrates this via connections between the thought and work of Andy Warhol and Arthur Danto, Wagner and Nietzsche, and Roger Scruton and James MacMillan. It then shifts to a fifth methodological conception of philosophy as the discipline of disciplines, specifically in clarifying concepts and presuppositions, and relates this to marking the boundaries of personhood. Finally, it explores a particular example of philosophy in relation to another practice, art, this time giving priority to art itself.

Le style c'est l'homme même?

In our article, we argue, following Nelson Goodman and Arthur Danto, that in contrast to the essentialist conception of authenticity, it is more fertile to consider authentic patterns not as the inner core of the person, but as a case of metaphorical exemplification. According to our approach, if we accept that authentic style is a metaphorical exemplification, then, based on Richard Rorty’s concepts of language and metaphor, style can be seen as an exaptation or reuse of symbols previously adapted through cultural selection to other specific functions. To support this approach, we proceed as follows. First, using Goodman’s and Danto’s model, we argue that authentic style can best be grasped through metaphorical exemplification. We then show that the metaphorical use of linguistic, pictorial, and other symbols is the result of exaptation. According to our results, the authentic style is the exaptation of symbols previously adapted to culturally selected functions. We then separate authenticity from creativity through the concepts of style and manner—borrowed from Danto—and we point out that whether a particular symbol is authentic or not is not affected by whether creative or mechanical mental processes are responsible for its creation. Finally, we examine the relationship between authenticity and autonomy, and we show that in an environment that promotes autonomous decisions and authentic style, agents that originally generated inauthentic symbols may be able to produce authentic ones.

Kant’s Theory of Modern Art?

Abstract Can Kant’s theory of fine art serve as a theory of modern art? It all depends on what ‘modern’ means. The word can mean current or contemporary, indexed to the time of use, and in that sense the answer is yes: Kant’s theory of genius implies that successful art is always to some extent novel, so there should always be something that counts as contemporary art on his theory. But ‘modern’ can also be used adjectively, perhaps more properly as ‘modernist’, to refer to art of a particular moment, in some cases superseded by postmodern art. Kant’s theory is not a theory of modernist art in at least one prominent form, the formalism of Clement Greenberg. But other theories, such as those of George Dickie and Arthur Danto, although triggered by particular works of modernist art and meant to accommodate them, were meant to be theories of what art was always doing, and Kant’s is too. In that sense it can be considered a modern theory of art but not a theory of modern art.