Return to Article Details Rushing into Chaos: Recapitulating Arthur Danto’s Philosophical Narrative on the Path to Post-historical Art

Short Introduction to Danto’s (Philosophical) Art Narrativism

Following a systematic commitment to analytic philosophy in the first stage of his intellectual itinerary, the American philosopher, art historian and art critic Arthur Coleman Danto (1924-2013) had unremittingly dedicated ample works to the manifold field of the arts after 1981 until his death in 2013. Two notable works of the 1980s, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art,1 established Danto’s basic philosophical concepts which he put to test in more than ten books dedicated to reflections on art’s history, aesthetics, and art criticism. The strategy of philosophical narrativism – that resulted out of and remained deeply ingrained in Danto’s early analytical jargon in philosophy – was the most effective methodological tool of Danto’s ruminations on the arts. For brevity reasons, the present reassessment makes only contextual references to Danto’s art philosophy and aesthetics, and attempts to illustrate how philosophical narrativism was put to use in order to explain the evolution of the arts towards their present-day conceptual status. It does not engage with whatever critical stances that have addressed Danto’s overall philosophy of art and/ or the method of philosophical narrativism. In other words, this essay purports to recapitulate on Danto’s reflections regarding the conceptual evolution of art’s history through the technique of philosophical narrativism.

The late Columbia philosophy professor and art critic Arthur C. Danto could hardly be included on the list of outstanding art historians. Danto is not an art historian in the traditional understanding of a label applied to an endeavour that chronologically and progressively records remarkable achievements in the artworld. This being the case, the illustrative fragments that could belong to a certain history of art lack any proper historical reference if history is understood as a scientific endeavour that calls on documents and data in order to recount meaningful series of representative currents and directions in the history of art or, as the case may be, visible breaks and discontinuities from which any history derives its form and content. In line with these considerations, Danto is not an art historian in the professional sense of the term: his variety of art history is derived from the possibility of putting together some isolated fragments of historical data that point to a certain mode of interpreting art history. It is no less true that Danto proves to have a thorough knowledge of art history, but it is philosophical narrativism in Danto that turns into the methodo-logical tool of a philosophy of art history from which one can derive a historical narrative proper (Danto 1985, 342-363). Danto’s philosophical reflection lays the foundation for a certain manner of understanding the evolution of art history which derives from the philosophical exercise that makes it possible. The following question naturally arises following these preliminary considerations: is there any possibility of formulating necessary and sufficient justifications for the claim that the philosophical narrative of art history is more meaningful than a mere documental history of art? In Danto’s view, genuine historical accounts should be philosophically carried out, while positive investigations based on factual data about the history of art should be assessed as chronicles (Danto 1985, 116-117).

Danto’s historical reflection on art is interspersed with theoretical and explanatory additions which, far from being mere trivia, are at the very core of approaching art from a vivid historical perspective. Therefore, Danto’s philosophical narrativism is consistently marked by Hegelian historicism. No information resembles a mere archival document, and no theoretical consideration takes the form of pure speculation. The necessary connection between history and philosophy lies at the centre of art’s reality: art is neither purely sensorial experience in the sense of classical aesthetics, nor pure intentionality or expression of the artist’s creative genius, nor cultural convention in the sense of the structuralist, postmodernist, or multiculturalist theories. Danto clearly states that art is the expression of the philosophical articulation of its real historical contexts, that its content is embedded in historical reality, while the meanings of its content are based on the philosophical reflection on art.

The philosophical meanings of modern art in Danto necessarily elucidate on the arts’ specificities of self-consciousness. The paradigmatic moments of philosophical narrativism about the arts are the beginning, the middle part, and the end. The end of the philosophical narrative opens the plural horizons of the post-historical period characterised by art’s freedom and anarchy. The present reassessment attempts to answer two questions: how it was possible to reach the stage of post-historicity, and what artistic practices had paved the path to post-historical art. Answering both questions is tantamount to following Danto’s philosophical narrative on the post-1300 meaningful transformations of the artworld and dividing Danto’s master narrative in three paradigmatic moments of the philosophical evolution of art’s history. The crucial stages in the narrative of the arts were the artistic Renaissance and its more than five centuries legacy (indebted to the representational canon of Raphael’s painting), the avant-gardes at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (suggestively exemplified by the art of Marcel Duchamp), and the arts of the second half of the 20th century (with Danto’s special focus on the American pop art and Andy Warhol). Reading Danto’s philosophical narrative, the three temporal stages stand for the beginning, the middle part, and the end, respectively.

Before proceeding to the examination of Danto’s philosophical construction of the historicity of the art on the path to its post-historical developments, a few more clarifications are necessary. Firstly, Danto’s philosophical narrativism points to fine arts (particularly painting and sculpture) in his reflections on the historicity of (western) art. The present reassessment leaves Danto’s explanations regarding the plurality of expressions specific to post-historical arts unelucidated. Secondly, for reasons of brevity, the present study does not touch upon Danto’s reflections regarding the philosophical ontology of the arts, his thoughts about aesthetics, and points to his art criticism only to illustrate how and to what extent certain artistic occurrences have impacted upon philosophical narrativism applied to the historicity of art. Thirdly, the present investigation considers the philosophical narrativism of late modernity only, starting with the incipient impressionist and post-impressionist ideological agendas in art. Accordingly, the last two stages best exemplify Danto’s philosophical narrativism in keeping with the American philosopher’s creed that – while the artistic program of the Renaissance and its artistic legacy in the first stage was internally committed to legitimizing the concept of accurate artistic representation – the agenda of the (above-mentioned) last two stages in the historical development of art was mostly ideological and external to the art itself. By and large, it was Danto’s most intimate belief that the historical evolution of the art in the last two stages unveils solid philosophical underpinnings (Danto 1986).

The Avant-Gardes, Marcel Duchamp, and the Middle Term of the Philosophical Narrative

In one of his most instructive works dedicated to his philosophical narrativism about the arts, Arthur Danto suggestively unfolds his master narrative, as follows:

"Mannerist follows Renaissance painting and is followed by the baroque, which is followed by rococo, which is followed by neoclassicism, which is followed by the romantic. These were deep changes in the way painting represents the world, changes, one might say, in coloration and mood, and they develop out of and to some degree in reaction against their predecessors, as well as in response to all sorts of extra-artistic forces in history and in life. My sense is that modernism does not follow romanticism in this way, or not merely: it is marked by an ascent to a new level of consciousness, which is reflected in painting as a kind of discontinuity, almost as if to emphasize that mimetic representation had become less important than some kind of reflection on the means and methods of representation." (Danto 1997, 8)

According to Danto, a certain caesura had interrupted the mainstream course of art’s history in the process of transition from romanticism to what Danto holistically identifies as modernism. Specifically, the long tradition of the Renaissance canon from the early 1300s to nineteenth century romanticism had been characterized by progressive refinements in the techniques of representational art. Consequently, the prevalent type of narrative was historical and pointed to specific developments of representation techniques within a (historical) sequence of artistic movements internally succeeding one another in the evolution of art itself. The sophistications of representation techniques along the way lacked a proper philosophical dimension and/ or had little connections with theoretical concerns external to the arts. Therefore, Danto insists that the art of modernism/ post-romantic has undeniably turned into philosophical/ ideological narratives about the arts, and that artistic means of expression were substantially informed and influenced by philosophical narratives about art. In line with Danto’ postulate, the present study aims to disclose the features of philosophical narrativism about the art in the last two (modernist) stages of its historical evolution towards the post-historical age.

Profound transformations in the post-Renaissance art currents regarding the theory of representation had eventually led to the dissolution of the traditional canon of artistic representation. In the aftermath of the linear progress of painting, directly proportional with the improvement of the representation techniques (e.g., the linear perspective, the chiaroscuro, the sfumato, the illusion of objects fading in the distance, the physiognomy and the profoundly religious subtext of the representational content), the first modern artists had abandoned concerns about the fidelity of artistic representation (i.e., mimetic art) and moved to consider significant artistic expressions as narratives about their artistic self-consciousness. According to Danto, this transformation coincides with the first revolts of the artists during the late 19th century against the theory of representation from Renaissance onwards. The advent of the ideological age in modern art took place around 1880, in the sense that the artists of the period had sacrificed accuracy of representation in order to embrace sensibility and expression. The strict meaning of ideology is related to the fact that artistic practices have become self-reflexive for the first time in their history: in order to achieve that, the postimpressionists – since they were the true promoters of the avant-gardes – strived to find the internal essence of the art, not through perfecting the modes of representing an external object, but precisely through self-interrogations of its profound meanings. A new impetus towards foundationalism in art was essentially ideological because modern artists have searched for art’s essence through exercises situated outside art itself. Danto identified this foundationalist endeavour with philosophical self-reflection: a series of ideological characteristics of modern art have derived from the formal approach of the artwork, from the need to liberate art from any traditional canon, and from the explicit denouncement of the artistic canon of mimetic representation. Even if the first impressionists were the last to claim roots in the Renaissance tradition – due to their commitment to prolong the theory of perspectivism in painting -, for the first time in the narrative history of art, impressionism had searched for a synthetic concept of representational fidelity as a result of the compositional unity between a theory of colour and the self-examination of optic physiology (Danto 1992, 123-129; Danto 1990, 112).

The post-impressionists and the avant-gardes pushed forward the anti-canonical revolt according to specific ideological agendas. In the United States, properly, the movement of the New Path – alternatively called the pre-Raphaelitism – rejected the nineteenth century academism inspired by Raphael’s canon of pictorial representation. The contemporary French movement of L’Ecole de Barbizon took the same attitude in the attempt to discover the true meanings of artistic creation, outside representational art. Even if both aesthetic programs fell short, the ethos of dissent had become dominant among the later movements of the avant-gardes on both sides of the Atlantic (Danto 1987, 85-89; Danto 2000a). In line with his philosophical narrativism, Danto distinguished between the pictorial descriptivism of post-Renaissance representationalists (e.g., the advocates of mimetic art at the beginning of the art’s master narrative) and the language of art meanings ideologically defended by the artistic programs of the avant-gardes. The pluralism of their ideological options has turned into polemical disputes between different avant-garde movements: the cubists opposed the artistic expressions of fauvists, the futurists rejected the over-formalism and geometrism of the cubists, Malevich’s 1913 artistic manifesto envisioned that the new artistic creed should merge cubism and futurism, Kandinsky defended the idea that abstract art only could overcome the illusion of representation, etc. (Danto 1997; Danto 2005b, 221; Danto 1990, 301-302). Whatever the way, Danto strongly maintained that the avant-garde movements at the turn of the twentieth century and beyond were ideological investigations in search of formal languages about the real truth and meanings of artistic endeavours. Moreover, according to Danto, the cardinal tenet of such investigations is the philosophical quest of artistic authenticity. In this respect, Danto was at odds with two main directions of avant-garde criticism. The first one postulates the contradiction between the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of formal artistic expression, and the fixation for originality only as the content of the avant-garde art. It is precisely this inconsistency that has ruined identity and truthfulness of expression in the art of the avant-gardes (Cunningham 2006). The second critical approach simply maintains that the so-called ideological and theoretical programs of the avant-gardes are merely political: the true identity of avant-garde artworks was consistent with the use of formal approaches to artistic objects with a view to endorse radical and nihilistic messages about the political and social values of modernity (Kuspit 2008). Nonetheless, both critical references have defied the philosophical concerns of avant-garde artists.

Danto tried to defend the philosophical hypothesis of historical narrativism regarding the middle part of art historicity (i.e., the artistic avant-gardes) through his emphasis on the philosophical implications of Marcel Duchamp’s aesthetic programme. Duchamp somehow mysteriously suggested that, in the absence of a philosophical endeavour, one cannot distinguish between two perfectly identical objects, one being an aesthetic object and the other not. Commenting upon Duchamp’s caprice, Danto postulated that philosophical reflection is related to the need to differentiate between apparently indiscernible pairs of objects, and underscored Duchamp’s merits in this respect. The French artist observed that, in order to refranchise itself, art had to be free of the philosophical deadweight precisely by becoming oversaturated with philosophical contents. Following Duchamp, one could add that the artists of the avant-gardes specifically adopted philosophical (ideological) strategies to liberate art from the domination of philosophy. Utterly anti-representationalist and anti-aestheticist (i.e., denying the role of both aesthetic categories and perceptual velleities in explaining works of art), Marcel Duchamp’s ideological program radically rebuked the traditional (and canonical) artworks in both their forms and contents, and undermined the ontological identification and meanings of the artist and the spectator. For Duchamp, artworks should break away with the assessing criterion of aesthetic beauty, artists should not be judged regarding their mastery, and spectators should not be classified considering their aesthetic finesse. Due to his uncompromising credo that the categories of aesthetic judgement had become irrelevant in evaluating and even understanding art, artists, and spectators, Duchamp was probably the avant-gardist par excellence (Danto 1986, 13). He probably introduced his famous ready-mades not only to illustrate his theoretical views, but also to mock the aesthetic contemplation and pleasure. Instead of aesthetic satisfaction, avant-garde artists such as Duchamp, Brâncuşi and Leger – among many others – called for the conceptual understanding and appreciation of artworks meanings (Danto 2003, 95-96; Danto 1999, 186; Danto 2000b, 184). The ideological positionings of both the artist and the spectator in appreciating the true identity and meanings of the artwork are augmenting reasons in supporting Danto’s philosophical narrativism about the art of the avant-gardes. Other theorists din not fully resonate with Danto’s speculative historicism. From an epistemic standpoint, understanding the avant-garde artworks and theories would imply a more comprehensive socio-historical contextualization of their ideological goals (Panofsky 2003, 61-62). From a purist philosophical perspective, a general ontology should illuminate on the plural identities of artworks in the contexts of their mechanical and industrial reproduction, emergence of photography, etc., with a view to discern them from mere non-artistic objects (Judovitz and Duchamp 1998, 121). Either way, in Danto’s views, Duchamp’s theoretical options had reached their full recognition in the artistic ideologies of 1970s and 1980s minimalists and conceptualists, pushing forward certain developments of the artworld towards the impossibility of philosophical explanation to elucidate on their artistic meanings. The middle term of Danto’s philosophical narrativism in the art of the avant-gardes had abolished the beginnings of the narrative in the canonical pattern of post-Renaissance representationalism and paved the way for more and more dissenting attitudes anticipating the end of the narrative and the advent of post-historical arts.

Pop art, Andy Warhol, and the End of the Philosophical Narrative

The last structural phase in Danto’s philosophical narrative is the end of western art history. By and large, the post-historical and – consequently – the post-narrative age of art is considered by Danto in terms of the impossibility to prolong the meaningful reflection on the history of western art. After Duchamp and the avant-gardes, the ineluctable path towards the end of the philosophical narrative on art has been hurried by a principled controversy regarding the ontological identity of artworks. In Danto, the distinction between what an artwork apparently signifies, and the deep meaning of the work derives from the way in which the meaning is embodied to the work, corresponding to the difference between the surface meaning as constitutive to an artwork and the deep meaning discernible after a theoretical effort to understand art along ideological assumptions (Danto 1994). Two driving forces in the artworld of the 1960s had further complicated the identification of an object as an artwork properly. Firstly, certain forces within the field of art have undermined, replaced, and expanded the traditional limits of art, combining the artistic art proper with brand new original meanings: the happenings, performance art, installation art, the gesturalism of Fluxus, video and multimedia art, etc. Secondly, there were forces outside art, in the sense that the identity of an artwork had derived from the political commitment of the artist; consequently, the new status that the artist has undertaken both in the artworld and in society has brought about the disqualification of aesthetic criteria of appreciation; in this sense, art aims at changing the world, not to accurately represent it. The moral allusions of the artistic object were no longer derived from the standpoint of validated criteria of good or beauty as transcendental values (i.e., in a Kantian sense), but were explicitly embedded in the overall configuration of the artistic object identity. Art criticism and art history have reached a broad consensus regarding the artworld meaningful contents and the dynamics of the arts: the artistic object is the result of the amalgamation between contents specific to the artworld and contents outside it, leading to the emergence of an artworld. In the prolongation of the avant-gardes, Danto considered that pop art took a significant step forward in promoting an essential ambiguity that made the artwork impossible to tell apart from its objectual counterpart in the real world (Danto 1981). Further on, conceptualism pushed this kind of equivocality to its final consequences, since it considered that one did not even need the physical presence of the artistic object in order to be able to certainly assert the existence of the artistic fact. These artistic realities of the 1960s pointed to the idea that any object, gesture, or event could be considered art within the artworld environment of mutually shared meanings (Dickie 1997). Once more, Danto’s postulation of philosophical narrativism seemed a feasible methodological tool to deal with the contemporary artworld, in the sense that only philosophical approaches of art could circumvent its ontological indetermination.

The artistic anarchy of the seventh and eighth decades of the twentieth century was anticipated by an artistic movement developed in Great Britain during the 1950s. Pop art – which eventually made furor in the United States – ruled that art would not only need expansion beyond its traditional limitations, but also clarifications of its ontological possibilities at the crossroads between art, craft, and mere objects. Confronting the ontological dilemma raised by pop artists, Danto noticed that never in the history of art was there a more stringent need for a philosophical consideration of art’s essence. The pun of indiscernibles has urged Danto to explain and justify why some objects are works of art, while other apparently similar objects – in Danto’s terms, apparently indiscernible – could be categorically denied this status (Danto 1981, 34-39). The answer to this dilemma is coincident with the end of the narrative history of art: for the first time, the ontological identity of artistic objects – while their non-artistic counterparts were denied this status according to the same criterion – could no longer be elucidated inside art itself or its narrative history. The answer – Danto had insistently maintained after the 1964 confrontation with Warhol’s soup cans – should be sought in philosophy (Danto 1987, 208). Some critics rejected the pretentiousness of Danto’s philosophical pun, in the sense that the artistic messages of pop artists seemed alien to any philosophical exercise (Mattick 1993; Margolis 1998). But Danto insisted that the caesura between the historical narrative of art and the post-historical arts could be explained by carrying out a meaningful philosophical investigation of pop art. The necessity of rethinking pop art through reducing all its cultural, social, and political meanings to a philosophical type of inquiry ultimately informed Danto’s narrativism.

Specifically, through the eradication of distinctions between art and life, highbrow and lowbrow art, the sublime and the trivial, pop artists decidedly lived on the edge of art history. Pop art favored the ideological slogan to the detriment of representation, and the modality of artistic presentation (i.e., content) to the detriment of abstract illusion (i.e., form). Artistic meaningfulness was no longer the result of the correspondence between reality and the artwork through accuracy of representation but the accurate interpretation of the contextual embodied meanings. In order to properly understand the place of pop art at the end of the master historical narrative of art, Danto advanced a threefold approach of the current. ‘Pop art in art’ was a mere technique of appropriating ordinary objects as artworks, in the sense that the appropriated objects had no utility whatsoever. ‘Pop art as art’ served to differentiate its artistic concerns from other (past and present) art movements. Finally, with ‘pop art per se’, one could seize the necessity of a philosophical inquiry regarding the elucidation of artworks’ ontological identity as artworks, distinctly from their apparently objectual appearances (Danto 1997, 128). If pop art is to be placed within the evolution of the grand narrative of art, the movement turns into the (ideo)logical corollary of the avant-gardes in reverse: if the Dadaists and Duchamp had aimed to transform an ordinary object into an artwork with a view to instill ideological gestures of revolt against the aesthetic perceptions and the categories of judgement, pop artists and Warhol – among others – aimed to abolish the distinction between mere ordinary objects and artworks with a view to suggest that both could be utilized (e.g., Jasper Johns’ Flags). As the very expression of its time (i.e., mass culture, technologism, and consumerism), pop art was a social and a political philosophy at once. In opposition with the Frankfurt School’s pessimistic approach on pop art as the ultimate expression of modern decadence and petty commercialism, Danto optimistically engaged with the movement’s ability to generate a profound interrogation about the identity and meanings of art (Danto 2000b, 16-17; Danto 1987, 12). By inserting the commonplace and the objectual into art, the opposition/ correspondence between art and reality is eliminated, the representation of the world in art is exhausted, and the grand narrative of the history of art reaches its end. In a nutshell, this is Danto’s philosophical conjecture.

In Danto’s view, nobody had illustrated the above-mentioned predicament better than Andy Warhol. Nobody – Danto maintained – had ever pushed the limits of art without crossing the border to embrace philosophy (Danto 1990, 287). No artistic production of Warhol could be elucidated through recourse to perception and aesthetic sensibility or explained through whatever theory of representation. Outside the applicability of these traditional criteria of evaluation, the historicity of the art is obstructed, Warhol’s art is freed from aesthetic constraints, and the means of pushing forward the art narrative are void. Because Warhol utterly compromised the uniqueness of the artwork through the use of technological reproduction, the distinction between the artistic mastery and craftsmanship faded away, so that something outside art itself should have been used to explain why Warhol’s pieces were works of art (Danto 1992, 134). Since Warhol epitomized industrial and commercial art, no criterion of evaluation specific to traditional art could elucidate on the laconic and mislaid meanings of his artistic productions (Danto 2000b, 322). Ultimately, with reference to Warhol’s 1964 eight-hours movie entitled Empire, the American pop artist closed the gap between film and photography, filmic time and real time, and filmic epic and non-epic image, respectively (Danto 2000b, 77-81; Danto 2001, 67). Considering all the traits of Warhol’s art, Danto did not conclude on the philosophical genius of Warhol but rather on the unparalleled philosophical implications of his art. As the American philosopher had repeatedly urged on Warhol’s art as a source of revelation for his philosophical narrativism, the American pop artist stood for the quintessential “example through which a philosopher generates an entire philosophy of art – Heidegger’s use of Van Gogh’s shoes, Merleau-Ponty’s of a Cezanne landscape, Adorno’s of a composition of Schoenberg, I of Warhol’s Brillo Box.” (Danto 2005a, 198-199). Concomitantly, Warhol’s art had prompted Danto’s entire philosophical narrativism and – as such (i.e., as a type of reflection underwriting the beginning, the middle term, and the end, respectively, in keeping with the formal structure of any narration) – had precipitated the transit of the art to post-historicity.

The Post-Historical Arts, Pluralism, and the Emptiness of the Philosophical Narrative

According to most of his critics, Danto’s end of art thesis contains profoundly metaphysical insights. Moreover, his analogy between the destiny of philosophy and the destiny of art has been suspected of holist historicism and overbearing speculation. Danto’s intuitions about the historical evolution of the practices in the two fields had generated a species of philosophical narrativism characterized by crude generalizations and abstract cogitation. For Danto, philosophy had ceased to manifest itself as a traditional and autonomous field of enquiry about the world, and was substituted (i.e., was ‘disenfranchised’, in Danto’s jargon) by other theoretical approaches which appropriated the terminology and procedural mannerism specific to traditional philosophy. By contrast, ‘the destiny’ of art is less tragic than the destiny of philosophy: art had plenary developed all its internal potential, exhausting its spiritual resources characteristic to its historical evolution; this is why art ended, not in the sense that it had ceased to exist, but rather in the sense that its historical spirituality is gone, and the great narrative that informed the historical evolution of art is no longer possible. Danto’s predicament about the end of art essentially recapitulates the famous Hegelian thesis about the spiritual exhaustion of art by the first decades of the nineteenth century.

Obviously, the acknowledgment of the end of art thesis leaves room for the following interrogation: if the narrative of art is over, does it mean that its dissemination into a plurality of occurrences is necessarily incomprehensible from a historical standpoint? Following Danto, the end of art thesis is a theoretical conjecture according to which artistic practices would not disappear, but rather the narrative that revealed the essence and meanings of the art in its historical development. The manifestation of the arts (i.e., in the plural) in post-history falls outside the substantial content and theoretical coherence of the philosophical narrative. At best, the artistic practices of the post-historical age could be called to argue for affinities or (mostly) discontinuities – as the case may be – with the artistic objects included in the mainstream historical narrative of art. The emptiness of philosophical narrativism in its applicability on contemporary arts raises an additional question: what could be consistently said about the artistic practices that have lost the potential of being included in the master narrative of art? Danto claimed that nothing can be excluded from being potentially considered art, according to the post-historical principle of anything goes.

By postulating the principle of anything goes Danto was forced to admit – against his will and in marked contrast with his basic analytical foundationalism and cognitivism of his philosophy – that philosophical relativism of the post-historical age has displaced philosophical narrativism. Naturally, the next question is inevitable: did Danto betray his analytical essentialism by formulating this position? The assumption of the present reassessment is that precisely the postulation of the principle of anything goes saved both essentialism and narrativism in Arthur Danto’s philosophy. If the historical narrative of art is over, then no historical or theoretical constraint could impede upon the presentation of an artwork. However, this does not mean that everything can be considered art (everything goes), but rather that no ordinary object can be denied access to the artworld, provided that it fulfils the double requirement stipulated in the definition of art (Danto 1981; Danto 2005a, 194). Thus, having a content (i.e., aboutness) and deciding on what meaning could be embodied to its content (i.e., embodiment) are the elements of the definition that could ensure the inclusion of an artwork in the artworld. Once tested, Arthur Danto’s ingredients of the definition of art are applied to discerning between mere ordinary objects and objects of the artworld. In this way, both challenges to Danto’s thought could be removed. Firstly, Danto’s essentialism in philosophy could be converted into a species of philosophical cognitivism (i.e., the problem of acknowledging if an object apparently indiscernible from its objectual counterpart could achieve the ontological status of an artwork within the artworld). Secondly, Danto’s philosophical narrativism about the end of art could be confirmed by the fact that the two criteria of the essentialist definition are applied to the interpretation of post-historical realities of the plural arts, outside the tropes of the master narrative regarding the historical evolution of art. Accordingly, what is utterly relativistic is outside Danto’s philosophy as such: the contextual cognition about the ontological status of objects either as artworks or mere objects, and the contextual interpretation of artworks in the post-historical artworld.

The undeniable mark of post-historical arts consists in the pluralist options of artistic presentations and ideological meanings of artworks. In Danto’s view, the neo-expressionism of the 1980s had attempted the rehabilitation of painting, developing considerable energies in this respect, and putting forward pictorial representations on considerable large canvasses. This effort stood for the last genuine attempt to revive the spirit of historical art and find a way out from the chaos of pluralism. Less than a decade later, neo-expressionism was absorbed by the myriad of forces within the essentially unstable artworld, restoring the pluralist (dis)order and relativism. The short life of neo-expressionism confirmed Danto’s post-historical predicament: the plurality of arts is repressive towards any attempt to rehabilitate the grand achievements of past art. By and large, pluralism in the arts stands in radical contrast with the methodology of philosophical narrativism. On the one hand, it is markedly anti-philosophical because it is dismissive of any essentialist and necessary reflection about art. On the other, it is anti-narrative because it stands for the entropy of all criteria of artistic and aesthetic judgement that have substantiated the historical evolution of art. The radical discontinuity of plural arts with the past, fragmentation, obscurantism, diversity, and open criteria of evaluation are characteristics that render pluralism as incomprehensible from the standpoint of philosophical narrativism. Defying artistic mastery, elitism and the values of truth and beauty in the field of art, pluralism is simultaneously opposed to both philosophical and aesthetic monism (Horowitz and Huhn 1998, 25). Eventually, post-historical pluralism of the arts turns into a distorted version of universalism (Benjamin 1991, 128).

 

Works Cited

 

Notes

1The complete list of Arthur Danto’s philosophical works is outside the scope of the present investigation. However, his contributions to analytic philosophy include a philosophical trilogy on action, history and knowledge, and additional works in ontology, moral philosophy, and philosophy of narrativism. After 1981, the year Danto published his most popular work, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, the American philosopher committed himself to extensive writing on arts (philosophy, aesthetics, art criticism), with the impressive result of a series of comprehensive books and collections of essays. The present essay recapitulates to a certain extent and re-examines – almost a decade after the death of the philosopher – the subject matter of two books the author published ten years ago: Cognitivism and Representationalism: The Analytic Philosophy of Arthur C. Danto and Essentialism and/or Pluralism? An Investigation of Arthur C. Danto’s Aesthetics. ↩


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