What Art Is

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14394

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.

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date March 2014 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300174878

EISBN 9780300232547

Illustrations 0

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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Table of Contents

Author

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14395

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It is widely accepted that Plato defined art as imitation, though whether this was a theory or merely an observation is difficult to say, since there was nothing else by way of art in Athens in his time. All that seems clear is that imitation in Plato meant pretty much what it means in English: looks like the real thing but isn’t the real thing. But Plato was mainly negatively interested in art, since he was attempting to design an ideal society—a Republic!—and was eager to get rid of the …

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.ix-xii

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14396

Early in the twentieth century, beginning in France, the visual arts were revolutionized. Up until that point, they—which, unless otherwise indicated, I shall simply designate art—had been dedicated to copying visual appearances in various media. As it turned out, that project had a progressive history, which began in Italy, in the time of Giotto and Cimabue, and culminated in the Victorian era, when visual artists were able to achieve an ideal mode of representation, which the …

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-52

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14397

Chapter subject tags:Art criticismArt--PhilosophyAestheticsDuchamp, Marcel, 1887-1968Warhol, Andy, 1928-1987

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2. Restoration and Meaning

These judgments—that the Sistine ceiling was basically a drawing and that it was essentially monochrome, like the sepia panels painted by Daumier—are reports from the past that tell us how the ceiling looked in the 1930s, when the two men spent time in Rome with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. They tell us what the ceiling looked like before the most recent cleaning, which was approved in 1994. I visited Rome in 1996 as a guest of the American master Cy Twombly, who was enthusiastic about the …

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.53-75

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14398

Chapter subject tags:Art criticismArt--PhilosophyConservation and restorationMichelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564Cappella Sistina (Vatican Palace, Vatican City)

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3. The Body in Philosophy and Art

It has twice happened to me that a piece of philosophy which I was developing about the body seemed to have a significance very different from that which had engaged my interest in the first place. The result in both instances was somewhat comical. In the 1960s, for example, I got involved with the philosophy of action. I was interested in working out the differences between two kinds of action—actions we perform by doing something else, which causes the first action to happen, and actions we …

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.76-98

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14399

Chapter subject tags:Art criticismArt--PhilosophyDescartes, René, 1596-1650Wollheim, Richard, 1923-2003

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4. The End of the Contest: The Paragone between Painting and Photography

The paragone—Italian for “comparison”—was used in the Renaissance to claim the superiority of one of the arts over the others. Leonardo, for example, drew up a paragone between painting and the other arts, like poetry, music, sculpture, and architecture. The upshot was that painting emerges as superior to all the rest. The whole point of the exercise was to enhance the circumstances, social and material, of actual painters like Leonardo himself. In a way, painting was in fact the dominant art …

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.99-115

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14400

Chapter subject tags:Art criticismArt--PhilosophyAestheticsArt and photographyParagone (Aesthetics)

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5. Kant and the Work of Art

Although Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment is incontestably the great Enlightenment text on the aesthetic values of that era, dealing as it does with taste and the judgment of beauty, it must for that reason seem to have little to say about art today, where good taste is optional, bad taste is artistically acceptable, and “kalliphobia”—an aversion to if not a loathing for beauty—is at least respected. Clement Greenberg claimed that Kant’s book is “the most satisfactory basis for aesthetics …

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.116-134

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14401

Chapter subject tags:Art criticismArt--PhilosophyKant, Immanuel, 1724-1804AestheticsIdealism, German

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6. The Future of Aesthetics

A few years ago, the American Society for Aesthetics published two “call for papers” announcements on its web page, each for a conference on aesthetics as a neglected topic in the treatment of art. They were issued by two disciplines that do not ordinarily share a perspective—art history and philosophy. The organizers of each of the conferences appeared to agree that aesthetics is more central to art than either discipline had recently recognized. Art historians, according to the first call, …

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.135-156

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.008

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14402

Chapter subject tags:Art criticismArt--PhilosophyAestheticsWarhol, Andy, 1928-1987Idealism, German

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Bibliography

Author

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00174.009

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14403

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.