Arthur Coleman Danto: Background and Education, Thought, Art Criticism, Works, Further Reading, and a List of Books by Author Arthur Coleman Danto

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Arthur Coleman Danto (born 1924) is an American art critic, and professor of philosophy. He is best known as the influential, long-time art critic for the Nation and for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he has contributed significantly to a number of fields. His interests span thought, feeling, philosophy of art, theories of representation, philosophical psychology, Hegel's aesthetics, and the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Arthur Schopenhauer.

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"Artworld" and the Definition of Art

Danto laid the groundwork for an institutional definition of art that sought to answer the questions raised by the emerging phenomenon of twentieth century art. The definition of the term “art” is a subject of constant contention and many books and journal articles have been published arguing over the answer to the question, What is Art? Definitions can be categorized into conventional and non-conventional definitions. Non-conventional definitions take a concept like the aesthetic as an intrinsic characteristic in order to account for the phenomena of art. Conventional definitions reject this connection to aesthetic, formal, or expressive properties as essential to defining art but rather, in either an institutional or historical sense, say that “art” is basically a sociological category. In terms of classificatory disputes about art, Danto takes a conventional approach. His "institutional definition of art" considers whatever art schools, museums, and artists get away, regardless of formal definitions. Danto has written on this subject in several of his recent works and a detailed treatment is to be found in Transfiguration of the Commonplace.

The essay "The Artworld" in which Danto coined the term “artworld”, by which he meant cultural context or “an atmosphere of art theory,”Adajian, Thomas. "The Definition of Art", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London, Oct 23, 2007. first appeared in the Journal of Philosophy (1964) and has since been widely reprinted. It has had considerable influence on aesthetic philosophy and, according to professor of philosophy Stephen David Ross, "especially upon George Dickie's institutional theory of art. Dickie defines work as an artifact 'which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting in behalf of a certain social institution (the artworld)' (p. 43.)"

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Danto's definition has been glossed as follows: something is a work of art if and only if (i) it has a subject (ii) about which it projects some attitude or point of view (has a style) (iii) by means of rhetorical ellipsis (usually metaphorical) which ellipsis engages audience participation in filling in what is missing, and (iv) where the work in question and the interpretations thereof require an art historical context. (Danto, Carroll) Clause (iv) is what makes the definition institutionalist. The view has been criticized for entailing that art criticism written in a highly rhetorical style is art, lacking but requiring an independent account of what makes a context art historical, and for not applying to music."

The End of Art

The basic meaning of the term "art" has changed several times over the centuries, and has continued to evolve during the 20th century as well. Danto describes the history of Art in his own contemporary version of Hegel's dialectical history of art. "Danto is not claiming that no-one is making art anymore; nor is he claiming that no good art is being made any more. But he thinks that a certain history of western art has come to an end, in about the way that Hegel suggested it would." The "end of art" refers to the beginning of our modern era of art in which art no longer adheres to the constraints of imitation theory but serves a new purpose. Art began with an "era of imitation, followed by an era of ideology, followed by our post-historical era in which, with qualification, anything goes... In our narrative, at first only mimesis [imitation] was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became apparent that there were no stylistic or philosophical constraints. There is no special way works of art have to be. And that is the present and, I should say, the final moment in the master narrative. It is the end of the story"