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THE END OF ART: A PHILOSOPHICAL DEFENSE.

ARTHURC. DANTO'

ABSTRACT

Thisessayconstructs hilosophicalefenses gainst riticismsf mytheory f theendofart.Thesehave o do with hedefinition f art; he concept f artistic uality;he roleofaesthetics;he relationshipetweenphilosophy ndart;howto answer hequestion Butis it art?";he difference etween he end of artand "thedeathof painting"; istoricalimaginationnd he future;he method f using ndiscernibleounterparts,ikeWarhol'sBrillo Box and heBrillocartonstresembles;he logicof imitation-and hedifferencesbetweenHegel'sviewson theendof artandmine.Thesedefenses mplify nd ortify hethesisof the endof artas set forth nmyAfter the End of Art: ContemporaryArt and the

Pale of History (1997).

For the mostpart,historicalnarrativesdo not belong to the eventsthey transcribe,

even if their writers n fact were part of them. To be sure,one writesa narrative

only when somethingis felt to have come to an end-otherwise one is writinga

kind of diaryof events,nevercertainof what will belong to the finalnarrative nd

whatwill not.Still, the narrative tself is external o whatit transcribes: therwise

a furthernarrativemust be written which includes the writing of the first narra-

tive among the events narrated-and this can run to infinity. By contrast,I have

themost vivid sense thatAfter the End of Art belongs to the same historythatit

analyzes, as if it, itself, is that history's end-a perhaps prematureascent to

philosophicalconsciousness of the art movements that are its subject. I know,

from his great commentator,AlexandreKojeve,2 hatHegel saw himself situated

in the same historyof 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, endedin therecognitionthat all were free-and how couldtherebe historyafter that?Thingswouldhappen,of course,andfreedomhad to

be foughtfor andpreserved.But there would be no furthernarrativeof the sort

the historyof freedomexemplified,but simply a vast postscriptof free individ-

ual lives, as when,the warover,those who participatedn it arescattered o pur-

sue theirpersonalends. That was, with qualification, he 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 theyall appear n this issue of Histoty and

Theory.

2. AlexandreKojeve, Introduction o theReading of Hegel, transl.James H. Nichols (Ithaca,N. Y.,

1980), 34-35.

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128 ARTHURC. DANTO

definitivelyresolved, leaving the survivors o practicehuntingor fishing or liter-

ary criticismas they wished, in a world of fay ce que voudras.But in an immea-

surablymore modest but similarway, the claim that art historyis at an end could

have been the end of arthistory-a declarationof artistic reedom,and hence the

impossibility of any further large narrative.If everyone goes off in different

directions, here is no longer a directiontowardwhich a narrative an point. It is

a wholesale case of living happily ever after.And that,I haveclaimed, is the state

of the art world after the end of art.

I know that without certain transformationsn artistic practice, a philosophy

such as mine wouldhave been unthinkable, o thatmy philosophyof art history

is necessarily differentfrom what I might have achieved had I written philo-sophically aboutartwhen abstractexpressionismwas at the flood, or cubism or

futurism,or impressionismor neoclassicism. I hold myself fortunateto have

lived through he sequenceof artisticstyleswhichculminatedn pop artand min-

imalism, and to have learnedmorefrom whatI saw in New Yorkgalleriesin the

1960s than I possibly could have learnedfrom studyingaesthetics, based, as the

latter inevitably must be, on earlier artistic styles. And yet I do not feel thatthe

philosophy of artI developed both in The Transfiguration f the Commonplace

andAfterthe Endof Artwas only relevant o the artthatoccasioned it. I did not,for example, as if writinga manifesto,declare thatpop art was whatthe history

of arthadbeen stumblingtoward, ts telos and fulfillment.No: pop art andmin-

imalism madeplainthe immediatepromiseof a radicalpluralism,of which they

of course could be partif someone caredto pursuethem-but with no greater

right than realism, surrealism,performance, nstallation,cave art, or folk artor

whatever.My aim has been essentialist-to find a definition of arteverywhere

and always true.Essentialismand historicismarewidely regardedas antithetical,

whereasI see them not only as compatiblebutcoimplicatedwith one another,at

least in the case of art. It is the very fact, I believe, that there is anessence of art

that makesartisticpluralisma possibility.But thatmeans that art'sessence can-

not be identified with any of its instances, each of which must embody that

essence, however little they resemble one another.Whatgave essentialisma bad

name was precisely such an identification,as in the case of Ad Reinhardtor

ClementGreenberg.Whatmadeessentialism seem impossiblewas the condition

of ultimatepluralism,since worksof art hadoutwardlyso little in common.Mycontributionwas to make plain thatonly when these extreme differenceswere

availablecould one see the possibilityof a single, universalconcept.

Such were among the extravagant heses I found myself defending at the

remarkably ntense discussions which took place in the author'scolloquium

organizedfor the Zentrumur InterdisciplinareForschung n Bielefeld by Prof.

Dr. KarlheinzLUdeking,of the Hochschule der Bildenden Kunstin Nuremberg,

and Dr. OliverScholz, of theFrei UniversitdtBerlin.LUidekingnd Scholz made

a radicaldeparturerom academicprotocol-a paper,a commentary,a response

to the commentary,andquestionsfrom the floor in the remainingfew minutes.

Instead, they asked for two fifteen-minutepresentations o begin each section,

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THE END OFART:A PHILOSOPHICALDEFENSE 129

leaving two and a half hoursfor the give and take carriedforwardby the more

extended papers printed here. In candor, the first session was so intense that I

wondered what there could be left to say. But in fact the intensity was-well-

intensifiedthroughthe remaining sessions, as membersof the wider Bielefeldphilosophicalcommunity oined the discourse. It is as a monument o these mar-

velous interchanges hat David Carrier nvited the participantso move the dis-

cussion on to a differentplane-and, thankingeveryone involved,I would like,

within my powers, to respondto the challenging essays thathave resulted. The

colloquium was not so much an honor as an education.

I. THEDEFINITIONOFART

By essence I mean a realdefinition,of the old-fashionedkind, laying out the nec-

essary andsufficientconditions for something to fall undera concept.The main

effort of TheTransfigurationf the Commonplace'was to providea fragmentof

a real definition for art.This was in no sense a mere philosophicalexercise. It

was, rather,a responseto anurgencyin the art world of the mid-1960s. The pre-

vailingwisdom regarding he definitionof art,based on a thesis of Wittgenstein,

was that there can be no definitionof art,since no single propertyor set of prop-erties was exhibitedby 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,leavingthe non-artworks ehind.Andclearlywe

cannot account for our abilityto do this by appealto a definition,since there is

and can be none. Whatwe have at best is a family-resemblance lass of things,

amongwhich there arepartialbutonly partialresemblances.

In the mid-1960s, however,it was no longer clear that we could pick the art-

works out from the non-artworks ll thateasily, since art was being made which

resemblednon-artworks s closely as maybe required.My favoriteexamplewas

Andy Warhol'sBrillo Box, which looked sufficientlylike actual Brillo cartons

that one could not tell, from a photograph,which of them was which nor which

was art and which was not.4A set of metalsquares,arrayedon the floor,could be

a sculptureor a floorcovering.5A performanceby an artistteachingfunk danc-

ing to a groupof personsappeared imilarto a dance teacher nstructinga group

in funk dancing.6A 600-pound block of chocolate could be an artworkwhileanother such block would be merely 600 pounds of chocolate.7And so on, all

acrossthe face of the art world.Clearly, here were no manifestoverarching im-

ilarities in this partialclass of artworks.But equally clearly,neither could we

pick out which was the artwork n an indiscerniblepair,and which was not. But

this was in principleperfectlygeneral:for anynon-artwork, n artwork ould be

3. ArthurC. Danto, The Transfigurationf the Commonplace Cambridge,Mass., 1981).

4. ArthurC. Danto, "TheArtWorld," ournalof Philosophy 61 (1964), 571-584.

5. This refersto certain worksof Carl Andre.

6. The workreferred o is AdrianPiper's video, Funk Lessons.

7. This workis Gnaw, by JanineAntoni.

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130 ARTHURC. DANTO

imagined which resembled it as closely as might be required.And for any art-

work, a non-artworkcould be imagined like it to whatever degree. So what

couldn't be an artwork, or all one knew?The answer was that one could not tell

by looking. You could not after all pick the artworksout like cashews from a pot

of peanuts.

This was the situationto which the Transfiguration ndeavored o respond.It

began by treating artworksas representations,n the sense that they possessed

aboutness. Since not all representations re artworks, his did not carry us very

far,but it at least helped force a distinction between an artworkand its non-art

counterparts, eal or imagined.An artist was affirmingsome thesis by means of

the block of chocolate, or at least it was appropriate o ask what it was about,whereas it would have been inappropriateo ask what a mere large lump of

chocolatewas about. But one could always, on the hypothesis that one was deal-

ing with an artwork, ground an interpretivehypothesis-an ascriptionand a

meaning-on certainof its properties,which wouldhaveno particularalience if

the.objectwere merely an object.An artwork,n this sense, embodiesits mean-

ing when it is seen interpretively.Anything, of course, can be seen interpretively

as long as one supposes it to embody a meaning. Upon discoveringthat it does

not, the interpretationwithersaway.A flightof birdsgets read as a sign from the

gods until one stops believing in the gods, after which a flightof birds is a flight

of birds.

Aboutness and embodiment was as far as I got in the Transfiguration f the

Commonplace.I had no sense that it was more than a start. In attemptingto

defineknowledgein Theatetus,Socratesgot as far as sayingthatknowledgewas

trueopinion-but he was awarethatsomethingmore was required,and though a

third condition was added later-knowledge is justified true opinion-everyepistemologistknows that a fourth condition is required,and no one is entirely

certainwhat this would be. Still, my two conditionssolved the problemI set out

to solve, andI had a pleasantshock of recognitionwhen, later,I found in Hegel's

famous statementabout the end of artprecisely the same two conditions cited

when he attemptedo explainartistic udgment:"(i)the contentof art,and(ii) the

work of art'smeans of presentation."' arenthetically, think thatHegel believed

no such intellectualeffort was requiredwhen art, by its own means alone, was

able to presenteven thehighestrealities in sensuous form.9Partof what he meant

by talking of the end of art was that art was no longer capable of this. It had

become an object ratherthan a medium throughwhich a higher reality made

itself present.But in any case, it seemed to me that the two componentsof the

definition were in effect imperatives or the practiceof artcriticism, namely, (i)

determinewhatthe content is and(ii) explainhow the content is presented.

8. G. W. F.Hegel, Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectureson Fine Art, transl.T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1975), 11.

9. Ibid., 7.

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THE END OF ART:A PHILOSOPHICALDEFENSE 131

II. QUALITY

Kudielka eels, perhapsrightly, hat I have resisted the additionof the concept of

quality as among the "essential actorsof art."When Hegel speaks of content andpresentation,he makes explicit that artistic udgment should address"the appro-

priateness or inappropriateness f one to the other." t bears remarking hat the

second critical imperativedoes not seem to apply to what Hegel calls symbolic

art,whose meaninglies outside itself. It stands to its meaning the way a name

stands to its bearer,andthough, in naming our children,we seek names thatwill

embodythepersonwe hope theywill become, namesand bearersareexternal o

one another.Since symbolic art fails the second imperative, his may count as a

criticism of symbolic art,which Hegel in any case regardedas primitive.On theotherhand, Hegel appearsneverto have conceived of abstractart. Who did in

1828? The critic Thomas Hess wisely observed that "Abstractart has always

existed, but until this century, t never knew it existed."10f, from the perspective

of abstraction,we think of the pyramid, o use Hegel's paradigmof symbolic art,

an interpretation f its meaningas embodied does not seem out of the question.

Classical and romanticart, in Hegel's scheme, explicitly embodytheir contents.

Kudielkasays, en passant, that classical art was, for Hegel, the highest art-but

Hegel speaks indifferentlyof "The beautiful days of Greek art, like the golden

ageof the laterMiddleAges."'IIClassical statuaryand Gothic rose windows serve

as examples of art "in its highest vocation."But so does symbolic art, if we think

of it as abstract.

The notion of qualityhas recently become, in the American art world espe-

cially, a vexed matter.12It has, for example, seemed to be inconsistentwith the

multiculturalismwhich has raised thepossibilityof incommensurability etween

and among the artworksof differentcultures.It may be true thatwe oughtnot tojudge the work of one cultureby the criteria of excellence which belongs to

another.Still, that does not abolish the conceptof quality,since within the work

of a given culture,not everything s of the samequality,and there is some sense

of how works are to be ranked, nsofar as they differ at all. I am, on the other

hand, unprepared o add qualityas a third condition,for the same reasonthat I

would be reluctant o place conditions on the concept of content.It has some-

times been arguedby American critics that the categoryof art rules out certain

contents-that the gamy photographsof Robert Mapplethorpecannot be art

becauseof theirgaminess.It maybe a criticism of Mapplethorpehathis content

is offensive,but that s a moralrather han an art-critical ssessment.On theother

hand,thereis a differencebetween not embodyingcontent-as in everyinstance

of symbolic art as Hegel understood t-or embodying it badly. It is an artistic

criticism of a work that it embodies its content poorly. Once content is estab-

10. Thomas Hess, AbstractPainting: Backgroundand the AmericanPhase (New York, 1951), 4.

11 Hegel, Aesthetics, 10.

12. See Michael Brenson, "IsQuality an Ideawhose Time has Gone?"New YorkTimes (July 22,

1990), section II, 1.

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132 ARTHURC. DANTO

wished, whole menu of hypothetical mperativescomes up on the screen, and

one discusses how the work might have been better-or might have been

worse-from the perspective of embodiment. PerhapsI made these considera-

tions insufficiently explicit, but since quality, on this account, is a modality ofembodiment,I see no groundsfor adding it to my list.

What desperatelyrequires analysis, of course, is the notion of embodiment.

The simplest case of embodiment s exemplification, o which Nelson Goodman

drew attention:3a sample shows what it means because it itself is what it means,

the way a swatch of gabardineexemplifies the kind of fabric it is. But things

quickly get more complex. Christ was God's embodiment-the word made

flesh-and representations f Christendeavorto show how his divine nature s

made manifest:by beauty, uminosity,or whatever(his fleshliness is mademan-

ifest throughblood and the expressionof pain.) But these quicklybecome con-

ventions.What does the fact that a pitcher in a Cubist paintingis embodied in

nested facets imply? I concede to Kudielka hat I have not developedthese mat-

ters at all rigorously.

III.AESTHETICS

MartinSeel finds unacceptablewhat he perceives,I believe rightly,as a certain

"irritating ias"in my writing againstaesthetic appearance.His arguments that

"thecreation of unique appearancesn the world" s the point of all artisticpro-

duction. Hence I show a certainErscheinungsvergessen.Even Hegel, afterall,

spoke of art in its prime as presenting"the highest realitiesin sensuous form."'

And it mustbe conceded thatsomethingmustembodythe content-the way the

face embodies feelings-and that it is, as Seel contends,difficultto imagine a

completelydematerializedwork of visual art(though HenryJames comes close

in his story "TheMadonnaof the Future"by calling the unrealizedpaintinga

"masterpiece").Of course,this is using "aesthetic"n the way Kantused it in the

"Transcendental esthetic" section of the Critiqueof Pure Reason, as having to

do with the senses as sourcesof knowledge.This is not how the term is custom-

arilyused today,where it refers, rather, o appreciative esponsesto beauty-to

the aestheticas contrastedwiththe phenomenalpropertiesof things.I don't think

thatI have been neglectfulof the materialpresenceof meaningsin art,since somuch of my writing s an effort to showhow meanings are,so to speak,inscribed

in the objectswhichpresentthem. But I will admittheremay be a problemwith

aesthetics understoodas "thesense of beauty," o use Santayana'sexpression.It

is not thatI am indifferentto aesthetic considerationsas a personor even as a

philosopher,nor thatI would denythat a good manyworks aremade specifical-

ly to produce aesthetic pleasure in viewers. It is just that I am disinclined to

include this as a thirdcondition in the definitionof art.

13. Nelson Goodman,Languages of Art (Indianapolis,1976).

14. Hegel, Aesthetics, 7.

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In this, I think,I follow MarcelDuchamp, 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 metalgrooming comb which might, with the snow shovel, serve as a paradigmof this

portionof his oeuvre. It may be that in other culturesthese very objects would

be anythingbutdull-Francis Naumanonce told me that a womanin Francehad

never seen a snow shovel, and we can imagine cultures in which a grooming

comb would be beyondtheir metallurgicmeans. But in ourculture, heyare com-

monplaceand dull. And since they are art, it is difficultto say that Duchampwas

interested n "uniqueappearances."They are unique as art-but not as objects.

Such aestheticresponseas theremay be is accordinglynot 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 endeavoring o exclude

aestheticsfrom theconceptof 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

triplesor whatever)of indiscerniblecounterparts,ike the eight or so indiscrim-inable redsquareswithwhichthe Transfiguration egins.'5They share all sensu-

ous properties,whichis what makes themsensuouslyindiscernible.But theyare

uniqueas works of art,each having,and indeed eachembodying,a differentcon-

tent. We respondto them as art-but thatis not responding o them as mere red

squares.It is not seeing but interpretive eeing that is at issue, which in effect

meansframing nterpretivehypothesesas to meaning.Onemayrespondto them

aestheticallyas well-or one may not.

I hada furtherreasonfor distancingaesthetics fromart.Aesthetics has been a

fairly marginalphilosophical subject, especially in analyticalphilosophy.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

Edmanand,far morephilosophically,with SuzanneK. 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 interested n art shouldhave to know

about aesthetics.It was only when I encounteredWarhol'sBrillo Box that I saw,in a moment of revelation,how one could makephilosophyoutof art.But Brillo

Box has only the sensuouspropertiespossessed by Brillo boxes, when the latter

are conceived of merelyas decoratedcontainers.A lot of Warhol'sworksareaes-

theticallyas neutralas the personalityhe endeavored o project.

By way of concession, I think that aestheticianshave had far too restricteda

range of aestheticqualitiesto deal with-the beautifuland theugly andtheplain.

And have assigned to taste far too centrala role in the experienceof art.I feel

thatexpandingthis rangewill itself be an exciting philosophicalproject.But it

15. TheTransfigurationf the Commonplace,1-3.

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134 ARTHUR C. DANTO

falls outside the range of defining art. Justthinkof how exciting coming into a

new piece of knowledge can be-and how irrelevantcognitive excitement is to

the humdrum ask of defining knowledge. Two and a half millennia, and we still

have not found a fourthcondition!

IV. ARTAND PHILOSOPHY

However important o the concept of art, neitherquality nor aesthetic considera-

tions appearas if they immediatelybear on the end of art as a historical thesis.

They do bear on it, however, n virtueof challenging the definitionof art through

philosophical argument.My thesis was that once art raised the question of why

one of a pairof look-alikes was artandthe othernot, it lackedthe power to rise

to an answer.For that,I thought, philosophy was needed.Even were I to grant

Seel's view that reference to the sensuouspropertiesof artworks s essential, it

wouldbe interesting o ask whether t would be possible to represent he idea of

art's"highest reality"entirelyin sensuous terms. The "highest reality"of artis

its own essence, broughtto self-awareness,and this requiresthe sort of philo-

sophical argumentation f which Kudielka and Seel are masters. The pyramid,

classical sculpture, the rose window give sensuous embodiment to what theEgyptians,the Greeks, and the Christiancommunityof the MiddleAges took to

be thehighestrealities.Butthere areinternal imitson whatartcanachieve-and

philosophicalself-understandings beyond those limits. What marks the end of

artis not that art turns into philosophy,but thatfrom this point on, art andphi-

losophy go in differentdirections.Artis liberated,on this view, fromthe need to

understand tself philosophically,and when thatmomenthas been reached,the

agendaof modernism-under which artsoughtto achieveits own philosophy-

was over. The task of definitionbelonged to philosophy-and artwas thereby

freeto pursuewhateverends,andby whatevermeans, seemed important o artists

or theirpatrons.Fromthatpoint on therewas no internalhistoricaldirectionfor

art,and this is preciselywhatthe conditionof pluralismamountsto.

MichaelKelly contends thatturningthe definitionof artover to philosophers

amountsto a disenfranchisement f art.I introduced he conceptof a philosoph-

ical disenfanchisementof art in an eponymous essay' which arguedthat the

canonicalphilosophiesof artsoughta metaphysicaldemotion of artby assigningit to thedomainof dreamandillusion(as in Plato),orby showingit to be an infe-

rior way of doing what philosophy itself does better.My explanationfor these

strategies,whichweaveart nto the structure f the universeas philosophershave

variouslyconceived of it, is that,for complex reasons, philosophershave feared

art(rathern the way in which, fearingfemale sexualpower, society has evolved

ways of keepingwomen in their"place").Therehavebeen,of course, non-philo-

sophical disenfranchisementshroughouthistory-censorship, repression, con-

oclasm. I have nothing to say about these here. But is my theory any more

16. ArthurC. Danto,"ThePhilosophicalDisenfranchisement f Art," n The Philosophical Disen.-

franchisementof Art (New York, 1986).

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enlightened than the philosophies thatdependedon some form of artisticdisen-

franchisement?

Kelly makes centralto his deconstructiona model I have frequentlyemployed

formaking vivid the idea of a historywhich comes to an end when the subjectofthe story attainsself-knowledge-the ideaof a Bildungsroman,which, according

to JosiahRoyce,17 Hegel's Phenomenologywas said to exemplify. Hegel's hero,

Geist, goes throughan ingenious sequence of states, through which he (she?)

arrivesat last at an idea of his or her own nature.It is an idea that does not have

to be true, since Geist is revealedas Geisteven (or especially) when it gets things

wrong. Goethe's WilhelmMeister'sApprenticeship s such a novel, as are femi-

nist novels, in which the heroine firstunderstandsher differences from males,

andthen, througha sequenceof episodes,attainsconsciousness of what it means

(hence whatit is) to be a woman. I have certainlypresentedthe history of art as

a kind of Bildungsroman n which artstrugglestoward a kind of philosophical

self-understanding.And now, Kelly notes, the task of such understandinghas

been handed over to philosophy,because it lies beyond the limits of art to carry

it anyfurther.

This is an acute criticism and it is, I think,true. The questionfor me, howev-

er, is whetherthis is a philosophicaldisenfranchisement f art.It is certainlynota re-enfranchisement.But the liberationof art from thephilosophicaltask it has

set itself is the liberationof art to pursue ts-or society's-individual ends.The

thesis of "ThePhilosophicalDisenfranchisement f Art"was thatartandphilos-

ophy were fromthe beginning oined atthehip-that thegreat metaphysicalsys-

tems designed the universe as a kind of prison for art.After the End of Art is

intended o separateartfromphilosophicaloppression,and leave the task of find-

ing definitionsto apracticedesignedto providethem.Thatis as muchas philos-

ophy can do for art-to get it to realize its freedom. Thejoint narrativeof phi-

losophy and art is then a Freiheitsroman-the story of freedom gained or

regained-as in The Tempest,when Ariel is set free at last.

V. "BUTIS IT ART?"

In Hegel's somewhatdisenfranchisinganalysis,underwhich artis a thingof the

past,he says suchthingsas "ithas lost for us genuinetruthandlife,"or "wesub-ject to our intellectual consideration . ." or "Art nvites us to intellectual con-

sideration . ."18-and the question s to whomthis "we"refers. It is perhapsnat-

ural for philosophers-and who else for the most partreadsHegel? to suppose

thatit is philosopherswho areaddressed.But in fact "we" could be anyonewho

thinkscriticallyaboutart who ponderswhat art is about and how its aboutness

is registered n the matterof art. Hegel is talkingabout art criticismhere,and art

has attaineda sufficientdegreeof self-awarenessthat it is made with art-critical

questions in mind. Art criticism mediates between art and philosophy, to the

17. Josiah Royce, Lectureson ModernIdealism, ed. JacobLoewenberg Cambridge,Mass., 1920).

18. Hegel, Aesthetics, 11.

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136 ARTHURC. DANTO

pointwheretoday artistsare their own best critics, explainingwhatthey are after

and why, as if conceding that arthas "beentransferredo our ideas."' This means

thatarthas become an objectfor its practitioners s well as forphilosophers,and

this may somewhat temper Kelly's chargeof disenfranchisement n my part. Itmeans that the practice of art is "two-tiered," o use Brigitte Hilmer's useful

phrase.There is a division of labor, n thatthe analysis, as against the ascription

of content, is more a philosophical than an art-criticalmatter,as is the analysis,

in contrastwith the identification,of modesof presentation.

Penetratedas artisticpractice is today by art-critical onsiderations,especial-

ly when works of art do not wear their meaningson their faces, there is not quite

so sharpan interfacebetween art andphilosophyas my argumentshaveperhaps

implied.Hilmer is entirely correctin saying that Hegel, thinking of philosophy

as the domain of thoughtand art the domainof sensation, was obliged to think

thatart had come to anend whenit becomes suffusedwith criticalthoughtabout

itself.20The sharpdivision between thoughtand sensation is pure Romanticism.

The idea that the workof art can or once did convey its truths mmediately

through hesenses, withoutthe mediationof thought,was thinkablewhen artwas

mimetic. But it is less and less thattoday,hence less andless capableof being

addressedby sense alone.When, moreover,artbecomes its own subject,as it evi-dently has undermodernism,then the practiceof arthas gone even further nto

the philosophicaldomain through he various manifestoesin which art is said to

be this andthat:"art"has in its own rightbecome partof art'sown reflectionon

itself. It is not necessary,on the other hand,for artists hemselves 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" o

quote Hilmer,is alreadyto havediscovereda greatdeal.

I am struck by the expression "mere craftsmanship"n this formulation,and

wonderwhether or not it stipulatesa disenfranchisingboundary.However arro-

gant philosophy may be, its disenfranchisements rerarelyas vehementas those

which arise within artisticdiscourseitself, whereartists andcriticsaredisposed

to say of somethingthatit is not art when there is very little other than artthatit

can be. When Judy Chicagofirst showedher DinnerPartyin New York,"Butis

it art?"was the question of the day. Such controversieshave unquestionably

extended and deepened the concept of art, and except with reference to suchwork as Chicago's, it is difficultto imaginehow thevaguely graspedconceptcan

have been made more explicit. We can even ask whetherthere was, in Hans

Belting's phrase,"artbefore the era of art,"2'o that we can identifycave paint-

ings and altarpieces as arteven if those who made them hadno conceptof artto

speakof. Hilmerasks, from a feministperspective,Why not "beautifulworksof

knittingor weaving or patchwork?"f "art"and "merecraftsmanship"xclude

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 art that have become customaryeverywhere,so that he is

misled [my emphasis] into introducingmore thoughts nto his work." bid., 11.

21. Hans Belting, Likenessand Presence: The Image beforethe Era of Art (Chicago, 1994).

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THEEND OF ART:A PHILOSOPHICALDEFENSE 137

one another, hen there s no hopeforcraft to become artunless ... And it is here

thatthephilosophy of arthas a task.

I do not think thatadding beauty to craftsmanships the formula for transfig-

uringit into art.That is like, to borrowa thoughtfrom RobertVenturi,2decorat-ing a shed to turn t into architecture.But it is a problemfor craftspersons oday

to get for their productions he kind of respectthey suppose recognizingthem as

art creates an impossibilityif craft automaticallyexcludes what they do from

the domain to 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 ceramicsof Betty Woodman,23he fiber art of Ann Hamilton,24he

furnitureof JohnCederquist.25 he "discourse"has a "He said-she said" form,

when it alreadyseems to me that however impoverishedmy definition,it can

help. Craftwork s artwhen it is about what it embodies. Woodman'svases are

about the vase, even though they also exemplify the vase to the pointwhere her

workcan be filled withflowers,as theyare at the admissionsdeskof theMuseum

of ModernArt in New Yorkwhere they arebrilliantlypresent.Retrospectively,

The Dinner Partyis aboutsisterhood,presented n terms of the ritualof a spiri-

tualcommunity,namely,sittingdownto a meal together. t is possibleto criticize

it even so butone is alreadytreating t as art when one does so.

VI. THE "DEATHOF PAINTING"

Noel Carrollasks whether the end of art historyhas not been confused by me

with the end of painting. Since my theorywas firstpublished n 1984, at a time

when the so-called "deathof painting"was widely canvassedby artworldtheo-

reticians,it was perhapsunavoidable hat the two kinds of theoriesshould have

been confused. This is a good place to considerthemtogether, n orderespecial-

ly to makeplainhow different n fact they are from one another.The "deathof

painting,"describedhere perfectly by David Carrier,s a theoryof exhaustion.

The "end of art" nsteadis a theoryof consciousness of how a developmental

sequenceof eventsterminates n the consciousnessof thatsequenceas a whole.

It is for thatreasonthatit is not implausiblethatthe historyof art has something

like the form of a Bildungsroman,despite the difficulties which Michael Kelly

has shownwith that model.The "deathof painting" heoryfits anentirelydiffer-ent kind of model. It fits, indeed, a model which hauntednineteenth-century

thought n a numberof domains.

Accordingto John Keats' biographer, he poet felt at a certainmoment that

"therewas now nothing originalto be writtenin poetry;thatall its riches were

22. Robert Venturi, Learningfrosi Las Vegas: The ForgottenSymbols of ArchitecturalForm

(Cambridge,Mass., 1976).

23. See my text, Betty WoodmanAmsterdam,1996).

24. Ann Hamilton has just been selected to represent he 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).

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138 ARTHURC. DANTO

alreadyexhausted,& all its beauties forestalled."26 comparableview regarding

music was advancedby John StuartMill: he deducedthat all possible combina-

tions of sounds would sooner ratherthan later have been made, and with that

thought the possibilities of indefinite musical creativity were closed.27Nietzsche's notorious theory of EternalRecurrencewas based upon the similar

notion that sooner or later all possible combinationsof states of affairswould be

exhausted, and with this there was no choice other thanto begin all over again,

with nothing to look forward to save an eternal repetition of the same. Unlike

Mill and Keats,Nietzsche foundin this thoughta form of courage:we must live

in the knowledgethat whateverwe do, it will be done over and over for all eter-

nity. But he also felt his theory was fatal to any possibility of an enduring

progress, and thatwe must learn to live within the limits of our condition.

Now it would have come as a surprise o the paintersof the Renaissancethat

paintingwould sooner or later run out of possibilities,simplybecause the possi-

ble subjectsof paintingwere to begin with restricted to biblical and classical

motifs. The demand was for annunciations,adorations,crucifixions, images of

the saints,as well as portraitsof notablepersonages.An artistwho triedfor nov-

elty in motifwould have been eccentric. Of course, patronsmayhave wantednot

only a Madonnaand Child, but a Botticelli Madonna and Child. Was there aclosed number of ways of presentingthat motif? Probably but the closure

wouldnot have been interesting.It would be like worrying hathumancharacter

is finite, that all thecharactersand personalstyles wouldall be used up. Since no

two individualshave the same character,his is a needless fear.

I knew a Chinese artist, Chiang Yee, who was proudto have opened up the

canon of Chinesepaintingby adding picturesof pandas to the bamboo,the iris,

the chrysanthemum, he plum blossom, and the like. This achievementis evi-

dence that he had internalizeda western idea of novelty as the concomitantof

originality for the traditionalChinese artisthad no interest n originalityat all.

The ambitionwas rather o appropriate he paradigmsof the masters.It was part

of the structureof Chinese art that the same motifs could be paintedandrepaint-

ed foreverwithoutthe motifsbeing addedto. In the 1980s, however,andperhaps

in consequenceof the fact that artundermodernismhad come increasinglyto be

about itself, painting began to show limitations. Artists were expected to find

some unoccupiedniche in therangeof possibilitiesin orderto demonstrateorig-inality.But theseniches were getting harder o findin the 1980s, and less and less

rewarding o occupy.

But whatever the internal limitations of painting if there are any it was

paintingas a whole which was held to be deadin the 1980s (despitethe wave of

neo-expressionist igural paintings that began to be shownin the galleries);this

was basedmainlyon certainpoliticalconclusions radicalcritics of "latecapital-

ism"had reached:painting was finished because the social and economic struc-

26. AndrewMotion, Keats(New York,1998).

27. John StuartMill, Autobiography, n Autobiogtraphynd Litetway, ssays, ed. J. Robsonand J.

Stillman(Toronto,1981), 148.

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tures which supported t were held no longer to be viable. As Carrierobserves,

this did not mean to the death-of-painting heoriststhat art, as such, hadcome to

an end. Douglas Crimp,28or example, thoughtthat painting had now given way

to photography an example of the work of artin the age of mechanicalrepro-duction, raising questionson the futureof museums, collections, and the like.

One limitation on Crimp'sidea thatphotographywas to be the central art

form of the coming age is that photographywas but one disjunct n a vast dis-

junctionof expressivepossibilities into which art-makingexploded,with paint-

ing as anothersuch disjunct.This I have referred o as "artafter the end of art."

It was no partof my thesis that the history of painting stopped deadin its tracks

afterthe ascent to consciousness tookplace in the 1960s. It is on the other hand

true thatpaintingafter the end of arthad stopped being the mediumof art-his-

toricaldevelopment hat t had been before.Therewas in consequencea break n

history,and the adventof a new period of art the one in which we findand shall

find ourselves. Painting was the medium of development in traditionalart

because there could be progress in the pictorial representationof the world,

throughperspective,chiaroscuro, oreshortening,and the like. It was the medi-

um of progressunder modernismbecause its task was to determinethe essence

of painting,if Greenberg s right.There is an importanthistoricalquestionofwhy traditional rtgave way to modernism,but I do not know its answer.Perhaps

the challengecame fromphotography nd moving pictures.Perhaps t came from

a complex loss of culturalfaith in Westernvalues, as we find it in the views of

the Orientheld by GauguinandVanGogh.Inmy view, however, heend of mod-

ernism was the end of art n the sense thatfrom within art'shistorythereemerged

at last the clearest statementof the philosophicalnatureof art. Like abstractart,

as Hess recognized,the problemhadalways been there,but nobody could have

knownof its existence. Philosophical magination s limited. What wouldit have

meant in the eighteenth century to speak of two things, one of which was

Gainsborough'sSaint James Mall and the othersomethingthatlookedjust like it

but was not a workof art at all? Not until art reacheda stage where it could put

the question by exhibitingit did the properphilosophicalproblemof art become

visible. Afterdeliveringover this immensegift to thephilosophyof art,artcould

go no further.But once it had done this, thepost-historicalartworldbecame rad-

ically open and no longer subjectto the kind of narrative he historyof art haduntil then showed.

We live at a moment when it is clear thatartcan be made of anything,and

where there is no markthroughwhich works of art can be perceptuallydifferent

from the most ordinaryof objects. This is what the example of Brillo Box is

meant to show. The class of artworksis simply unlimited, as media can be

adjoinedto media, andart unconstrainedby anythingsave the laws of nature n

one direction,and moral laws on the other.WhenI say thatthis condition is the

end of art,I meanessentiallythatit is the end of the possibilityof anyparticularinternaldirection for art to take. It is the end of the possibility of progressive

28. Douglas Crimp, On theMuseum'sRuins (Cambridge,Mass., 1993).

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140 ARTHURC. DANTO

development.That muchthe theory has in commonwith the end-states earedby

Keats and by Mill. In my case, however, it meansthe end of the tyrannyof his-

tory thatin orderto achievesuccess as an artistone must drive art history or-

wvard,olonizing the futurenovelty by novelty.How can I know this, Carrollasks. How can I know that there will not, out of

the whole rangeof artisticchoices, be one performance, ay which gives rise

to an entirelynew arthistory?The answeris thatI cannotknow this. Nor can I

imagine this, any morethan a medieval artistcould have imagined the spectacu-

lar illusions the history of painting was to provide. One has, of course, to be

open the end of arttheory means to be an empiricaltheory.But the futureis

what we cannotimagineuntil it is present.

VII. POST HISTORYAND THE LIMITS OF IMAGINATION

Carrierbrings forwardthe concept of the narrative entence, which I firstpre-

sentedin the pages of thisjournal nearly forty yearsago.29He wonders whether

the use of such sentencesis compatiblewith the end of arthavingbeen reached.

For narrative entencesmake an appealto the future, f only to the future of the

events we describe, if not our own future.When the Museum of ModernArtmounteda retrospectiveexhibitionin 1950 of the paintings of Chaim Soutine

(who died in 1943), Monroe Wheeler asked if Soutine was an abstractexpres-

sionist?30f we say he was, then it is certainlynot something Soutinecould have

said,since theconceptof abstract xpressionismwas not to become currentuntil

afterhis death.And this is generallythe case with narrative entences.Theyrefer

to two time-separatedevents, describingthe earlier with reference to the later,

which we can do withoutcognitive dissonance,thoughthose who were contem-

porarywith the earliestof the two events cannothave done. Soutine could not

have said that he was or was not an abstractexpressionist, the idea not being

withinhis temporalrange.

It is no partof my claim that therewill be no storiesto tell afterthe end of art,

only that there will not be a single metanarrativeor the futurehistory of art.

There will not in partbecausethe previousmetanarratives xcluded so muchin

order o get themselves told.As Carrier bserves,Greenberg xcluded surrealism

from modernismsince he could not defendhis versionof modernism f he admit-ted it. But and this returnsme to the discussion with Noel Carroll we can

excludenothing today.This makes narrationmpossible.Within artisticpractice,

artistswill influence artiststhey never heardof, since unborn.Art historianswill

always have stories to tell.

The epistemologicaldimensionof narrative entences is, as noted, thatthey

can be knownby historiansof events but not, generally,by those contemporary

with the events. They cannot because the concepts requiredto know them are

29. Arthur C. Danto, "NarrativeSentences,"in Historn and Theory2 (1962), 146-179. Sub-

stantiallyreprintedn my Analytical Philosophy of Histoty (Cambridge,Eng., 1965).

30. Monroe Wheeler, Soutine (New York, 1950), 50.

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142 ARTHURC. DANTO

In fact, the design of the Brillo cartonsis exceedingly ingenious, as I have

explainedelsewhere.32t celebrates heproduct t containsthrougha certainvisu-

al rhetoric, enlisting color, shape, and lettering. (It may even make the worse

soap-pads ook better than their competitors!)Warhol'sBrillo Box does not cel-ebrateBrillo. It celebrates a fragmentof daily life in the AmericanLebenswelt,

definedby whatWarholcalls "all thegreatmodemthings,"33 hich would doubt-

less include the Brillo cartons and their contents. It might even say something

aboutart,which is excluded from thatreality, thoughit looks just like it. Or,if

we may credit Warhol with a grasp of the history of aesthetics, it could have

shown thatfree and dependentart,to use Kant'sdistinction,cannotbe told apart,

havingin principle all the same phenomenalproperties.34

It is, however,as free artthat art shares a metaphysicalspacewithphilosophy:

the questionsWarholraises arephilosophical questions,whereas the Brillo box

as a piece of commercial artmerely strivesby rhetoricalmeans to make Brillo

preferable o other soap pads. Different as the indiscerniblesmay be phenome-

nally, they have differentmeanings which they embody correspondingly, nd the

plaincardboard ox qualifiesas art njust the wayBrillo Boxdoes. Onemay take

this as a challengeto pressfor the thirdconditionin the definition.Or one might

seek a bettercandidateas anexampleof reality,and thengo on to imaginea workof art ndiscernible rom it. This, however, s less easy than t mayseem. Forany-

thing I choose to exemplify reality will differ from reality throughhaving the

propertyof exemplification it becomes a minimally representationalobject.

Bishop Berkeley argued that the hypothesis that there are mind-independent

things is incoherent,because the moment one tries to presentan example, it is

ipso factoin the mind and notoutsideit.35And something ike thisargumentmust

have served as a fulcrum or Hegel to lift matter nto the realm of spirit, since we

cannot thinkawaythe way we thinkabout it. (Q.E.D.)

Valuableas the exercise has been, my example failed to articulate he differ-

ence between art and reality,since both the objects, howeverindiscernible,are

works of artalready granted hattheydifferin ways other thanthose in which

commercialshippingcartonsdifferfrom one another(or Warhol'sdiffers from

the various other boxes artists were using at the time for [free] artisticpurpos-

es DonaldJudd,RichardArtschwager,Eva Hesse, andmany others).

IX. IMITATION

FrankAnkersmithas discovered anothervexation for the example. He offers an

interpretation f Brillo Box that makes it a "material llustration"of the theory

that art is imitation. "The fun wouldbe,"Ankersmitwrites,"thatwith the Brillo

32. See my "ArtandMeaning,"n Modern Theoriesof Art, ed. Noel Carroll, orthcoming rom the

Universityof Wisconsin Press.

33. G. R. Swenson. "What s Pop Art?:Answers from 8 Painters,PartI, ArtNews 64 (November,

1963), 26.

34. See ImmanuelKant, Critiqueof Judgment,?16; andHegel, Aesthetics, 11.

35. GeorgeBerkeley,Principles of HumanKnowledge, ?23.

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box the historyof artparadoxicallycomes to an end precisely where it began

threethousandyears ago." So much,if Ankersmit s right, for the theory that the

history of art is progressiveanddevelopmental!The only philosophy of history

to which I would be entitled is that of a Vichian corso e ricorso-a 3000-yearcycle come full circle in 1964!

Ankersmit s correct n saying thatsince we cannot know what Warholhad in

mind, we cannot rule out this interpretation,which plainly fits the facts: Brillo

Box reallyis an imitationof the Brillo boxes. It would need to have been an imi-

tationif Warhol'sulteriorpurpose had been to achieve "aplayful parodyof the

Imitationtheory." t would be a self-conscious exemplar of an imitation in the

service of philosophical parody.But it then has a kind of meaning imitations n

theirown right lack it would be about a theoryof its relationship o a thing,ratherabout the thing it imitates. So it would not be merely, or entirely, an imi-

tation.It would exemplify partof its meaning thathere is an exampleof animi-

tation without imitating that part of its meaning. So Ankersmit's marvelous

counterexampleakes its place as amongthe foundationson which the philoso-

phy of artrests.Imitationdoes not explainwhy Brillo Box is art. It only explains

the kind of art Brillo Box is, in whichimitation s a means.

X. CONCLUSION

The papersI have respondedto here are wonderfully rich, each packed with

interesting deas I would love to havegone into further,which, though they bear

on the ostensible topic of the colloquium, namely the philosophy of Arthur

Danto,do not especially bear on whateveryone was anxious to talk about the

philosophy of art history andtheend of art.I am certainthatmy resourcefulcrit-

ics will findways of responding o theresponses.If so, thatwould mean that thissymposiumin Historyand Theoryprotracts he spiritof the Bielefeld colloqui-

um by continuingrather hanclosing off discussion!

New YorkCity

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