Arthur C. Danto

One of America's most celebrated art critics offers a lively meditation on the nature of art.

What Art Is

This essays explore how conceptions of art -and resulting historical narrativesdiffer according to culture.

The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective

Beyond the Brillo Box

Leading art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto here explains how the anti-beauty revolution was hatched, and how the modernist avant-garde dislodged beauty from its throne. Danto argues not only that the modernists were right to deny that beauty is vital to art, but also that beauty is essential to human life and need not always be excluded from art.

Aesthetics and the Concept of Art

The Abuse of Beauty

“Astutely traces the ripple effects of Warhol’s blurring of the lines between commercial and fine art, and art and real life…masterful.”—Booklist (starred review) Art critic, philosopher, and winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award Arthur Danto delivers a compact, masterful tour of Andy Warhol’s personal, artistic, and philosophical transformations. Danto traces the evolution of the pop artist, including his early reception, relationships with artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the Factory phenomenon. He offers close readings of individual Warhol works, including their social context and philosophical dimensions, key differences with predecessors such as Marcel Duchamp, and parallels with successors like Jeff Koons. By drawing on subject matter understandable to the ordinary American, Warhol revolutionized the way we look at art. In this book, Danto brings to bear encyclopedic knowledge of Warhol’s time and shows us Warhol as an endlessly multidimensional figure—artist, political activist, filmmaker, writer, philosopher—who retains permanent residence in our national imagination.

Andy Warhol

Lydia Goehr

Contemporary Art and the Pale of History - Updated Edition

After the End of Art

Che cos'è l'arte?

Demetrio Paparoni

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.

Conversations on the End of Aesthetics

Art and Posthistory

George W. S. Bailey

What is art? The contributors to Theories of Art Today address the assertion that the term “art” no longer holds meaning. They explore a variety of issues including: aesthetic and institutional theories of art, feminist perspectives on the philosophy of art, the question of whether art is a cluster concept, and the relevance of tribal art to philosophical aesthetics. Contributors to this book include such distinguished philosophers and historians as Arthur Danto, Joseph Margolis, and George Dickie.

Theories of Art Today

Sanat nedir

Diarmuid Costello

Dominique Chateau

Gerard Vilar

Félix de Azúa

Salvador Rubio Marco

Katerina Reed-Tsocha

M.a José Alcaraz

Michael Lafferty

Vicente Jarque

Francisca Pérez Carreño

Jèssica Jaques

Danto propone una definición de la obra de arte como "símbolo encarnado" que pretende dar cuenta del carácter unitario de la historia del arte desde sus comienzos hasta nuestros días, evitando considerar el argumento vanguardista clásico, de carácter estético y formal, como el único capaz de dar sentido a la producción artística. Según Danto, nos encontramos en una época posthistórica, resultado de la evolución del arte hasta su autoconocimiento como actividad conceptual, más allá del modo formal o estético de representación, donde habría estado encastillado por las teorías filosóficas hasta el momento. Esta compilación de artículos aborda la crítica de Danto a lo estético como definitorio de lo artístico, central en su concepción global del arte, de su producción, interpretación y crítica, y de su carácter histórico y su relevancia para la vida humana. Diversos autores, Danto entre ellos, se aprestan a buscar un nuevo lugar para lo estético en nuestra comprensión de lo artístico, una formulación diferente de conceptos que siguen siendo valiosos, como estilo, procedimiento, crítica o experiencia, y una aproximación diferente a la relación entre arte y naturaleza o arte e historia.

Ensayos sobre Arthur Danto

Estética después del fin del arte

This catalogue presents 160 objects of art and ethnography selected from the distinguished African collections of the Buffalo museum of science, the Hampton university museum (Virginia) and the American museum of natural history (New York City). The essays examine the shifting definitions of art and artifact, and deal with the question of how we look at objects from cultures whose classification systems differ from our own.

African Art in Anthropology Collections

Art/artifact

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.

Analytical Philosophy of Action

An eclectic collection of essays centering on the intersection of art and philosophy, especially in the late 20th century.

Selected Essays

Philosophizing Art

Τι εννοούμε όταν λέμε «αυτό είναι έργο τέχνης»; Ο γνωστός φιλόσοφος της τέχνης και κριτικός Arthur C. Danto καταπιάνεται με αυτό το θεμελιώδες ερώτημα. Εν μέρει φιλοσοφικό δοκίμιο και εν μέρει ευκαιρία για αναστοχασμό, το Τι είναι αυτό που το λένε τέχνη αμφισβητεί την ευρέως διαδεδομένη άποψη ότι η τέχνη είναι έννοια απροσδιόριστη. Κατά τον Danto, τα κριτήρια προκειμένου να μπορεί να γίνει λόγος για έργο τέχνης είναι το νόημα και η «ενσάρκωσή» του, με την προσθήκη και ενός ακόμα κριτηρίου που αφορά τον θεατή: της ερμηνείας. Ο Danto χτίζει την επιχειρηματολογία του με αναφορές τόσο στη φιλοσοφία όσο και στην τέχνη, παλαιότερη και πιο σύγχρονη. Με αφετηρία τον ορισμό της τέχνης στην Πολιτεία του Πλάτωνα και με αναφορές σε σταθμούς όπως η επινόηση της προοπτικής ή του σκιοφωτισμού, ο Danto καταλήγει σε μια γοητευτική συζήτηση για τα έργα του Γουόρχολ, σε συσχετισμό με τα καθημερινά αντικείμενα που αυτά αναπαριστούν. Φιλόσοφοι όπως ο Ντεκάρτ, ο Χέγκελ και ο Καντ, αλλά και καλλιτέχνες από τον Μιχαήλ Άγγελο και τον Πουσέν έως τον Ντυσάν και τον Γουόρχολ, είναι ανάμεσα σε αυτούς που οι απόψεις τους και τα έργα τους, αντίστοιχα, απασχολούν εδώ κατεξοχήν τον Danto.

Τι είναι αυτό που το λένε τέχνη

Professor Arthur Danto

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.

Nietzsche as Philosopher

Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art

Karen LaMonte

"Karen LaMonte is a leading figure among a generation of American artists using glass in large-scale sculptural work that exemplifies technical achievement coupled with artistic quality ... whose work reflects a sophisticated American probing into social and gender issues ... LaMonte began using the dress as a sculptural form and metaphorical symbol ... life-sized dresses ... which ... project ideals of appearance and wealth promoted by haute couture, while questioning the psychological and social implications of the way we dress ... While glass is LaMonte's primary medium, she frequently incorporates both photography and printmaking processes in her work, innovatively exploring different media to elaborate her conceptual ideas"--Http://www.museumofglass.org/s01_exhibition28.jsp.

Absence Adorned

Marion Boulton Stroud

Jeffrey Kastner

Sarah Sze

Jonathan Gilmore

Sarah Sze at the Fabric Workshop and Museum

The lead essay by Arthur Danto "addresses the possibility that art as it has been enshrined in the museums, galleries, and other canonizing institutions of modern culture has reached an end, that it has nothing more to do or say." The other essays in the book are reactions to the lead essay.

The Death of Art

Jewish Museum (New York, N.Y.)

Harriet F. Senie

Michael Stanislawski

Louise Nevelson

Gabriel de Guzman

Presents a catalog of an exhibition showcasing the works of the American sculptor and artist.

Constructing a Legend

The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson

Provides a collection of essays on modern art covering such artists as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, and Robert Mapplethorpe

Arthur C. Danto

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