Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
!"#$%&'$()$*+,-$*$."/0(1(2"/340$5#)#&1#
*6,"(+718-$*+,"6+$9:$54&,(
;(6+3#-$</1,(+=$4&'$!"#(+=>$?(0:$@A>$B(:$C>$!"#D#$E116#$@A-$54&,($4&'$</1$9+/,/31-$*+,
</1,(+=>$</1,(+/(F+42"=$4&'$*),#+$,"#$%&'$()$*+,$75#3:>$GHHI8>$22:$GJAKGC@
.6L0/1"#'$L=-$M043NO#00$.6L0/1"/&F$)(+$P#10#=4&$Q&/R#+1/,=
;,4L0#$QST-$http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505400
*33#11#'-$GAUVIUJVVH$GC-WX
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Wesleyan University and Blackwell Publishing are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to History and Theory.
http://www.jstor.org
THE END OF ART: A PHILOSOPHICAL DEFENSE.
ARTHURC. DANTO'
ABSTRACT
Thisessayconstructs philosophical
defensesagainstcriticismsof my theoryof theendof
art.Thesehaveto do withthedefinitionof art;theconceptof artisticquality;the roleof
aesthetics;therelationship betweenphilosophyandart;howto answerthequestion"But
is it art?";the differencebetweenthe end of artand"thedeathof painting"; historical
imagination andthefuture;the methodof usingindiscernible counterparts,
likeWarhol's
Brillo Box andtheBrillocartonsit resembles; thelogicof imitation-andthedifferences
betweenHegel'sviewson theendof artandmine.Thesedefensesamplifyandfortifythe
thesisof theendof artas set forthin myAfter the End of Art: ContemporaryArt and the
Pale of History (1997).
For the most part,historicalnarrativesdo not belong to the events they transcribe,
even if their writersin fact were partof them. To be sure, one writes a narrative
only when something is felt to have come to an end-otherwise one is writing a
kind of diaryof events, nevercertainof what will belong to the final narrativeand
whatwill not. Still, the narrativeitself is externalto what it transcribes:otherwise
a furthernarrativemust be writtenwhich includes the writing of the first narra-
tive among the events narrated-and this can run to infinity.By contrast,I have
the most vivid sense thatAfter the End of Art belongs to the same history that it
analyzes, as if it, itself, is that history's end-a perhaps prematureascent to
philosophical consciousness of the art movements that are its subject. I know,
from his great commentator,AlexandreKojeve,2that Hegel saw himself situated
in the same history of which he wrote the philosophy, as if the ascent to philo-
sophical consciousness in his narrativewas the end of that (of all) history.
History,as he saw it, ended in the recognitionthat all were free-and how could
therebe history after that?Things would happen,of course, and freedom had to
be fought for and preserved.But there would be no furthernarrativeof the sort
the history of freedom exemplified, but simply a vast postscriptof free individ-
ual lives, as when, the war over, those who participatedin it are scatteredto pur-
sue their personal ends. That was, with qualification,the same narrativevision
Marx and Engels proposed-an end of history when class conflicts had been
1. I do not in these endnotescite the papersI discuss, as they all appearin this issue of Histoty and
Theory.
2. AlexandreKojeve,Introductionto the Reading of Hegel, transl.James H. Nichols (Ithaca,N. Y.,
1980), 34-35.
128 ARTHURC. DANTO
leaving two and a half hours for the give and take carriedforwardby the more
extended papers printedhere. In candor, the first session was so intense that I
wonderedwhat there could be left to say. But in fact the intensity was-well-
intensified throughthe remaining sessions, as members of the wider Bielefeld
philosophicalcommunityjoined the discourse.It is as a monumentto these mar-
velous interchangesthat David Carrierinvited the participantsto move the dis-
cussion on to a differentplane-and, thankingeveryone involved, I would like,
within my powers, to respond to the challenging essays that have resulted.The
colloquium was not so much an honor as an education.
By essence I mean a real definition,of the old-fashionedkind, laying out the nec-
essary and sufficientconditions for something to fall undera concept. The main
effort of The Transfigurationof the Commonplace'was to provide a fragmentof
a real definition for art. This was in no sense a mere philosophical exercise. It
was, rather,a response to an urgencyin the artworld of the mid-1960s. The pre-
vailing wisdom regardingthe definitionof art,based on a thesis of Wittgenstein,
was thatthere can be no definitionof art, since no single propertyor set of prop-
erties was exhibited by the class of artworks,as can be verified when we try to
find it. But neither is a definitionreally needed-for we all are able to pick the
artworksout of a set of objects, leaving the non-artworksbehind.And clearly we
cannot account for our ability to do this by appeal to a definition,since there is
and can be none. What we have at best is a family-resemblanceclass of things,
among which there are partialbut only partialresemblances.
In the mid-1960s, however,it was no longer clear that we could pick the art-
works out from the non-artworksall that easily, since art was being made which
resemblednon-artworksas closely as may be required.My favoriteexample was
Andy Warhol'sBrillo Box, which looked sufficiently like actual Brillo cartons
that one could not tell, from a photograph,which of them was which nor which
was artand which was not.4A set of metal squares,arrayedon the floor,could be
a sculptureor a floor covering.5A performanceby an artistteaching funk danc-
ing to a group of persons appearedsimilarto a dance teacherinstructinga group
in funk dancing.6A 600-pound block of chocolate could be an artworkwhile
anothersuch block would be merely 600 pounds of chocolate.7And so on, all
across the face of the artworld. Clearly,therewere no manifestoverarchingsim-
ilarities in this partial class of artworks.But equally clearly, neither could we
pick out which was the artworkin an indiscerniblepair,and which was not. But
this was in principleperfectly general:for any non-artwork,an artworkcould be
8. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Aesthetics:Lectureson Fine Art, transl.T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1975), 11.
9. Ibid., 7.
THE END OF ART:A PHILOSOPHICALDEFENSE 131
II. QUALITY
10. Thomas Hess, AbstractPainting: Backgroundand the AmericanPhase (New York, 1951), 4.
11 Hegel, Aesthetics, 10.
12. See Michael Brenson, "Is Quality an Idea whose Time has Gone?"New YorkTimes(July 22,
1990), section II, 1.
132 ARTHURC. DANTO
III. AESTHETICS
In this, I think, I follow Marcel Duchamp, who set out specifically to sunder
aesthetics from art through the Readymades,which he selected in part on the
basis of their dull and uninflected appearances.They were, he hoped, beyond
good and bad taste. No one, he once remarked,even sought to steal the metal
grooming comb which might, with the snow shovel, serve as a paradigmof this
portion of his oeuvre. It may be that in other cultures these very objects would
be anythingbut dull-Francis Naumanonce told me that a woman in Francehad
never seen a snow shovel, and we can imagine cultures in which a grooming
comb would be beyond theirmetallurgicmeans. But in our culture,they are com-
monplaceand dull. And since they are art,it is difficultto say thatDuchampwas
interestedin "uniqueappearances."They are unique as art-but not as objects.
Such aesthetic response as there may be is accordingly not to the comb or the
shovel as such, but to whateverremainsof the artworkwhen one subtracts,as it
were, the sensuous properties.As I see it, Duchampwas endeavoringto exclude
aestheticsfrom the concept of art,and, as I thinkhe was successful in this, I have
followed his lead.
Indeed, the idea of uniquenessencountersa serious problemwith the kinds of
examples to which I typically have recourse in these discussions-pairs (or
triples or whatever)of indiscerniblecounterparts,like the eight or so indiscrim-
inable red squareswith which the Transfigurationbegins.'5They shareall sensu-
ous properties,which is what makes them sensuously indiscernible.But they are
uniqueas works of art,each having, and indeed each embodying,a differentcon-
tent. We respondto them as art-but that is not respondingto them as mere red
squares. It is not seeing but interpretiveseeing that is at issue, which in effect
means framinginterpretivehypotheses as to meaning. One may respondto them
aestheticallyas well-or one may not.
I had a furtherreason for distancingaestheticsfrom art.Aesthetics has been a
fairly marginalphilosophical subject, especially in analytical philosophy. But I
felt that art has a philosophicalexcitement to which philosophers,however ana-
lytical in bent, should be responsive. I glumly studied aesthetics with Irwin
Edman and, far more philosophically,with Suzanne K. Langer.But I was never
able to connect what they taught me with the art that was being made in the
1950s-and I could not see why anyone interestedin art should have to know
about aesthetics. It was only when I encounteredWarhol'sBrillo Box that I saw,
in a momentof revelation,how one could make philosophyout of art.But Brillo
Box has only the sensuous propertiespossessed by Brillo boxes, when the latter
are conceived of merely as decoratedcontainers.A lot of Warhol'sworks are aes-
thetically as neutralas the personalityhe endeavoredto project.
By way of concession, I think that aestheticianshave had far too restricteda
rangeof aestheticqualitiesto deal with-the beautifuland the ugly and the plain.
And have assigned to taste far too central a role in the experience of art. I feel
that expanding this range will itself be an exciting philosophical project. But it
falls outside the range of defining art. Just think of how exciting coming into a
new piece of knowledge can be-and how irrelevantcognitive excitement is to
the humdrumtask of definingknowledge. Two and a half millennia, and we still
have not found a fourthcondition!
V. "BUT IS IT ART?"
point wheretoday artistsare theirown best critics, explainingwhat they are after
andwhy, as if conceding thatarthas "beentransferredto our ideas."'9 This means
thatarthas become an object for its practitionersas well as for philosophers,and
this may somewhat temper Kelly's charge of disenfranchisementon my part. It
means that the practice of art is "two-tiered,"to use Brigitte Hilmer's useful
phrase.There is a division of labor,in that the analysis, as againstthe ascription
of content, is more a philosophical than an art-criticalmatter,as is the analysis,
in contrastwith the identification,of modes of presentation.
Penetratedas artisticpracticeis today by art-criticalconsiderations,especial-
ly when works of artdo not wear their meaningson theirfaces, thereis not quite
so sharpan interfacebetween art and philosophy as my argumentshave perhaps
implied. Hilmer is entirely correct in saying that Hegel, thinking of philosophy
as the domain of thought and art the domain of sensation, was obliged to think
thatarthad come to an end when it becomes suffused with criticalthoughtabout
itself.20The sharpdivision between thoughtand sensation is pure Romanticism.
The idea that the work of art can or once did convey its truthsimmediately
throughthe senses, withoutthe mediationof thought,was thinkablewhen artwas
mimetic. But it is less and less that today, hence less and less capable of being
addressedby sense alone. When, moreover,artbecomes its own subject,as it evi-
dently has undermodernism,then the practice of art has gone even furtherinto
the philosophicaldomain throughthe variousmanifestoes in which art is said to
be this and that:"art"has in its own right become partof art's own reflectionon
itself. It is not necessary,on the other hand,for artiststhemselves to have a clear
idea of what is meant by art. "The discovery of art as an independenthuman
activity demanding higher intellectual capacity than mere craftsmanship"to
quote Hilmer,is alreadyto have discovered a great deal.
I am struckby the expression "merecraftsmanship"in this formulation,and
wonder whetheror not it stipulatesa disenfranchisingboundary.However arro-
gant philosophy may be, its disenfranchisementsare rarelyas vehement as those
which arise within artisticdiscourse itself, where artistsand critics are disposed
to say of somethingthat it is not art when there is very little other than art that it
can be. When Judy Chicago first showed her Dinner Party in New York,"But is
it art?" was the question of the day. Such controversies have unquestionably
extended and deepened the concept of art, and except with reference to such
work as Chicago's, it is difficultto imagine how the vaguely graspedconcept can
have been made more explicit. We can even ask whether there was, in Hans
Belting's phrase,"artbefore the era of art,"2'so that we can identify cave paint-
ings and altarpieces as arteven if those who made them had no concept of artto
speak of. Hilmer asks, from a feminist perspective,Why not "beautifulworks of
knitting or weaving or patchwork?"If "art"and "merecraftsmanship"exclude
19. Ibid.
20. But Hegel also says "The artist himself is infected by the loud voice of reflection all around
him and by the opinions andjudgementson artthat have become customaryeverywhere,so that he is
misled [my emphasis] into introducingmore thoughtsinto his work."Ibid., 11.
21. Hans Belting, Likenessand Presence: The Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, 1994).
THE END OF ART:A PHILOSOPHICALDEFENSE 137
one another,then thereis no hope for craftto become artunless ... And it is here
that the philosophy of art has a task.
I do not think that adding beauty to craftsmanshipis the formulafor transfig-
uringit into art.That is like, to borrowa thoughtfrom RobertVenturi,2decorat-
ing a shed to turnit into architecture.But it is a problemfor craftspersonstoday
to get for their productionsthe kind of respect they suppose recognizing them as
art creates an impossibility if craft automaticallyexcludes what they do from
the domainto which they aspire.At the same time, in America at least, works of
craft really are beginning to be recognized as art-the glasswork of Dale
Chihuly,the ceramics of Betty Woodman,23the fiber art of Ann Hamilton,24the
furnitureof John Cederquist.25The "discourse"has a "He said-she said" form,
when it already seems to me that however impoverishedmy definition, it can
help. Craftworkis art when it is about what it embodies. Woodman'svases are
about the vase, even though they also exemplify the vase to the point where her
workcan be filled with flowers, as they are at the admissionsdesk of the Museum
of ModernArt in New York where they are brilliantlypresent. Retrospectively,
The Dinner Party is about sisterhood,presentedin terms of the ritualof a spiri-
tual community,namely,sitting down to a meal together.It is possible to criticize
it even so but one is alreadytreatingit as art when one does so.
Noel Carrollasks whether the end of art history has not been confused by me
with the end of painting. Since my theory was first publishedin 1984, at a time
when the so-called "deathof painting"was widely canvassedby art world theo-
reticians, it was perhapsunavoidablethat the two kinds of theories should have
been confused. This is a good place to consider them together,in orderespecial-
ly to make plain how differentin fact they are from one another.The "deathof
painting,"described here perfectly by David Carrier,is a theory of exhaustion.
The "end of art"instead is a theory of consciousness of how a developmental
sequence of events terminatesin the consciousness of that sequence as a whole.
It is for thatreason thatit is not implausiblethatthe history of art has something
like the form of a Bildungsroman,despite the difficulties which Michael Kelly
has shown with thatmodel. The "deathof painting"theoryfits an entirely differ-
ent kind of model. It fits, indeed, a model which haunted nineteenth-century
thoughtin a numberof domains.
According to John Keats' biographer,the poet felt at a certain moment that
"therewas now nothing original to be writtenin poetry; that all its riches were
22. Robert Venturi, Learning frosi Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbols of Architectural Form
(Cambridge,Mass., 1976).
23. See my text, Betty Woodman(Amsterdam,1996).
24. Ann Hamilton has just been selected to representthe United States at the Venice Biennale,
1999.
25. See my text, "Illusion and Comedy: The Art of John Cederquist" in The Art of John Cedertquist:
Reality of Illusion (Oakland,Calif., 1997).
138 ARTHURC. DANTO
29. Arthur C. Danto, "NarrativeSentences," in Historn and Theory 2 (1962), 146-179. Sub-
stantiallyreprintedin my Analytical Philosophy of Histoty (Cambridge,Eng., 1965).
30. MonroeWheeler,Soutine (New York, 1950), 50.
THE END OF ART:A PHILOSOPHICALDEFENSE 141
often not available. Soutine could not have understoodthe question whetherhe
was an abstractexpressionist.We understandit enough to be able to give a qual-
ified answer.This is the kind of thing I had in mind in saying that the future is
(often) "unimaginable."Quite possibly, there was in Soutine's artistic environ-
ment enough materialto teach him the meaning of abstractexpressionism-if
only there could have been, like Dickens's Ghost of ChristmasFuture,a visitor
from our presentto his to explain the meaning. JakobSteinbrennerhas reserva-
tions about the limits of historicalimagination,thinkingthat we can account for
everythingalong those lines by appealingto the concept of the genius, as in the
philosophy of Kant. One cannot anticipatewhat the genius will do next. But in
my view it would be extremely awkward to suppose that everything we are
unable to imagine from a certainlocation in history will be somehow the prod-
uct of genius. Maybe the abstractexpressionistswere geniuses, maybe not. But
there was a lot Soutine could not have imagined, dying as he did in 1943, only
including the art of the future.Could he have imagined bubble-wrap?Modems?
Cloning?
In truth,I would like to be able to take advantageof Hilmer'sidea of re-intro-
ducing the concept of Spirit, as used by Hegel but ratheroutlawedby analytical
philosophy.3'I think perhaps Spirit might possess some of the attributesKant
restrictsto the genius, which would account for the constantgenerationof nov-
elty. What Spirit would be unable to do is to predict its own futureproduction.
But I am loath, approachingthe end of my responses, to embarkon the project
of analytical rehabilitationthe concept of Spirit requiresif we are to enjoy its
philosophicalbenefits.
VIII. INDISCERNIBLES
31. But see "The Realm of Spirit,"in my Connectionsto the World(Berkeley, 1997), section 40.
142 ARTHURC. DANTO
IX. IMITATION
32. See my "Artand Meaning,"in ModernTheoriesof Art, ed. Noel Carroll,forthcomingfrom the
Universityof Wisconsin Press.
33. G. R. Swenson. "Whatis Pop Art?:Answers from 8 Painters,PartI, Art News 64 (November,
1963), 26.
34. See ImmanuelKant, Critiqueof Judgment,?16; and Hegel, Aesthetics, 11.
35. George Berkeley,Principles of HumanKnowledge,?23.
THE END OF ART:A PHILOSOPHICALDEFENSE 143
X. CONCLUSION
The papers I have responded to here are wonderfully rich, each packed with
interestingideas I would love to have gone into further,which, though they bear
on the ostensible topic of the colloquium, namely the philosophy of Arthur
Danto, do not especially bear on what everyone was anxious to talk about the
philosophyof arthistoryand the end of art.I am certainthatmy resourcefulcrit-
ics will find ways of respondingto the responses.If so, that would mean that this
symposium in History and Theoryprotractsthe spirit of the Bielefeld colloqui-
um by continuingratherthan closing off discussion!
New YorkCity