Thinker · TH-0067
Arthur Danto
Arthur Danto was an American philosopher at Columbia University and for many years art critic for The Nation. Struck by Andy Warhol's Brillo Box,…
Arthur Danto was an American philosopher at Columbia University and for many years art critic for The Nation. Struck by Andy Warhol's Brillo Box, which looked like ordinary supermarket cartons, he asked what makes something art when it is perceptually indiscernible from a non-art counterpart. His answer appealed to the artworld: an atmosphere of theory and art history that lets an object be about something and embody its meaning. He later argued for the 'end of art' as a historical narrative.
Key ideas
- Artworks and their indiscernible counterparts differ in ways that perception cannot detect.
- Something is art only within an artworld of theory and history.
- Artworks are about something and embody their meanings.
- After the 1960s art no longer has a single historical direction, which Danto called the end of art.
Major works
- "The Artworld" (Journal of Philosophy, 1964)
- The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981)
- After the End of Art (1997)
In the conversation
- Debate The institutional theory of art is circular, and it’s the vicious kind
- Question Can someone explain Danto’s Brillo boxes to a capoeira teacher?
- Reading group Reading group: Weitz, Danto and Dickie on whether art can be defined
In the Journal
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Arthur Danto takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 5.2.1 Definition and Boundaries Can anything be art if someone says it is?