Chapter 8
Essence, Expression, and History
Arthur Danto's Philosophy of Art
Arthur Danto's philosophy of art is one of the most imaginative and richest creations of Anglo-American aesthetics. Whereas analytic philosophies of art are often derided as sterile and unduly abstract when it comes to the purposes of artmaking and criticism, Danto's theories are in close touch with the practice of art, savoring its history in ways that are provocative, suggestive, and inspiring to artists and critics alike. Yet, at the same time, Danto's philosophizing remains rigorously metaphysical. Whatever our final assessment of the adequacy of Danto's philosophy of art, its influence on the course of analytic aesthetics is already awesome. His refinement of the “method of indiscernibles” has augmented the repertory of philosophical techniques of analysis, and his discovery, so to speak, of the “artworld” has awakened aestheticians to the unavoidable relevance of art history and context to art theory.
Danto's theory of art is quite complex. It involves not only a philosophy of art proper – that is, an analysis of the essential nature of art – but a philosophy of art history as well: a bold Hegelian conjecture that art history is over. Moreover, these components of his theory are related in several quite unexpected ways. And, in addition, Danto's philosophy of art itself is somewhat elaborate; indeed, it is far more intricate than the debate in the recent philosophical literature indicates. Thus, the often unacknowledged complexity of Danto's view demands that before we attempt to evaluate it critically, some care be taken in attempting to appreciate the subtlety of Danto's theoretical apparatus in its entirety.
To this end, the next part of this essay is devoted to an exposition of Danto's philosophy of art. Here, I hope to show that Danto's philosophy of art is fundamentally a variant of expressionism. Since this is a feature of Danto's philosophy which has not been noted in current philosophical discussions, I hope the novelty of this finding will relieve the summary character of my explication.
After a discussion of Danto's philosophy of art, I will try to elucidate Danto's philosophy of art history as well as its relation to Danto's characterization of the essential nature of art. Then, once we have the full theory before us, we can begin to engage the system critically.
1 Essence and Expression: Danto's Philosophy of Art
In his The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,1 Danto sets forth a fully articulated philosophy of art. Some of the components of that theory appeared in earlier articles.2 However, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (henceforth simply called Transfiguration) is not merely an assemblage of previous insights. It expands upon the earlier work – especially in terms of the contributions introduced in the often overlooked or misunderstood seventh chapter of Transfiguration – while also weaving Danto's hypotheses, new and old, into a systematic fabric.
Stated formulaically, the theory of art that Danto propounds in Transfiguration maintains that something x is a work of art if and only if (1) x has a subject (i.e., x is about something) (2) about which x projects some attitude or (this may also be described as a matter of x having a style) (3) by means of rhetorical ellipsis (generally metaphorical ellipsis), (4) which ellipsis, in turn, engages audience participation in filling in what is missing (an operation which can also be called interpretation) (5) where the works in question and the interpretations thereof require an art-historical context (which context is generally specified as a background of historically situated theory).
This theory of art is an attempt to capture the essential nature of art. Because he believes that the distinguishing characteristics of art are not something that can be detected perceptually, Danto is unworried by the well-known claims, motivated by Wittgenstein's discussion of games, to the effect that the essence of art is not definable.3 For such skepticism about defining art is based on the supposition that art cannot be essentially characterized in virtue of manifest or perceptual properties. However, since Danto's theory of art focuses on non-manifest properties of artworks – distinguishing features that the eye alone cannot descry – his view is inured to neo-Wittgensteinian anxieties.
Danto establishes each of the necessary conditions for art status in his theory by means of transcendental arguments of a recurring structure. In each case, he imagines at least a pair of indiscernible items – for example, an artwork and a mere real thing; or two indiscernible artworks; or a mere representation and an indiscernible representation that is an artwork – where we are prone to agree that, despite the perceptual indiscernibility of the pairs in question, there nevertheless remains an ontological distinction to be drawn between them. How is this possible? What would have to be the case in order for this to be possible? The task of theory then becomes that of illuminating the distinction in question by means of producing or hypothesizing the best explanation of why, for example, one of a pair of indiscernible objects is an artwork, while the other is only a mere real thing. That is, art theory must explain how the relevant distinction is possible.
For Danto, this method of indiscernibles is not simply a technique of philosophical aesthetics. It is Danto's metaphilosophical conviction that philosophy in general is generated by problems of perceptual indiscernibility. That is why, Danto maintains, philosophical problems are not tractable by empirical observation.
For example, the problem of reality emerges when we are able to imagine two phenomenally indistinguishable states: a perfectly coherent dream and the so-called external world (Descartes). The problem of the nature of causality arises when we conceive of two perceptually indiscernible courses of events: one composed of constantly conjoined states of affairs versus one where antecedent states necessitate subsequent ones (Hume). A central problem in moral theory concerns demarcating acts of prudence from acts of morality where the observable actions in question – say, making the correct change – look exactly alike (Kant). And, perhaps needless to say, for Danto, the philosophy of art begins when we can imagine two objects – say Duchamp's Fountain and a urinal – which, though to all appearances identical, are nevertheless such that one is an artwork and the other is not.
If for Danto philosophy only arrives on the scene when some problem of indiscernibility of the preceding variety erupts, once on the scene, the task of philosophy is, first and foremost, to produce theories which will sort the perceptual indiscernibles – that we nevertheless maintain to be distinct – into their appropriate categories. That is, epistemological theory will mark the principled difference between coherent dreams and reality; metaphysical theory will find the differentia between constant conjunctions, and causes and effects; ethical theory draws the boundary between prudence and morality; and philosophical aesthetics, among other things, discovers the ontological dividing line between artworks and mere real things.
Moreover, since such philosophical exercises begin by confronting phenomena which, though they be categorically distinct, are nonetheless perceptually indiscernible, said exercises are immune to neo-Wittgensteinian admonitions that philosophers can never isolate the putative conceptual boundaries on the basis of manifest or perceptual properties. For manifest properties have virtually no conclusive theoretical work to do in philosophy as it is conceived by Danto.
Danto's philosophy of art is put in place step by step through a series of arguments. Different arguments motivate the postulation of each of the various necessary conditions for art status enumerated above. In all cases, the form of argumentation is transcendental, and each mobilizes the indiscernibility method. That is, each argument produces an explanation to show how it is possible that the indiscernible counterparts in question are nevertheless different.
However, the arguments on behalf of each of the conditions in the theory often rely upon working with different sets of indiscernibles. The first condition in the theory – that artworks are about something – derives from contrasts between artworks and indiscernible real things. The second and third conditions in the theory – that artworks project points-of-view and that they are elliptical – are motivated by contemplating items that are merely representations (and, therefore, about something) from indiscernible representations that are also artworks. Like the first condition, the fourth condition – that artworks have or require interpretations – appears to derive from the contrast between mere real things (which, lacking a semantical component, neither have nor require interpretation) and indiscernible artworks (that have or mandate interpretation). And, finally, the fifth condition in the theory – that artworks and their interpretations depend upon a background or context of art history – is proposed in order to explain the difference between distinct artworks – the Don Quixote of Cervantes and the Don Quixote of Menard – which appear identical in all manifest or observable respects.
Given this general map of the argument in Transfiguration, it is instructive to note, in some detail, the way in which each of the derivations flagged above is implemented. As a first approximation of the nature of art, Danto conjectures that artworks have a subject: artworks are about something. Sometimes this has been expressed by saying that artworks have the property of aboutness or that they have a semantical component. Danto supports this piece of his theory by meditating upon the nature of the difference between certain artworks and what to all intents and purposes we might regard to be ordinary objects that happen to look exactly like the artworks in question.
Historically, this contrast is precedented in the relationship between readymades, such as Duchamp's In Advance of a Broken Arm, and the everyday objects that are their counterparts. Or – to cite the example that seems to have provoked Danto from his dogmatic slumbers – Warhol's Brillo Boxes are in Danto's description4 indiscernible from the boxes of soap pads piled in the storerooms of the neighborhood grocery. Furthermore, if such actual examples do not suffice, one can readily imagine a painter of the 1960s – from those days when objecthood was everything – who covers a canvas with red paint and declares the result Untitled, thereby intending to exemplify the regnant theory that artworks just are real things (like radiators, as a Jasper Johns would have put it). And yet, there does seem to be a difference between a work such as this by an artist and an indiscernible red canvas – an exact counterpart of the artist's production – that got that way simply because some children accidentally toppled some cans of red paint on it.
What is the difference between readymades and their indiscernible counterparts, between Warhol's Brillo Boxes and Proctor and Gamble's, and between red canvases made under the aegis of artworld theories and red canvases produced by carelessness? Danto hypothesizes that with these pairs of indiscernibles, the difference is that the artwork in each of these contrasts is about something, whereas the real object counterpart is what it is and nothing else. It is not about anything at all.
A red canvas by the artist envisioned above is about art. It says something – namely, that artworks really are real objects. In a sense, such an object is actually a refutation of the very theory that it is meant to exemplify. For though it serves as a vehicle for publicizing the theory that artworks are nothing but mere real things, it is not a mere real thing. It has a semantic component. It sends a message: that artworks really are real things. But the messenger is not a mere real thing in so far as it is an instrument of intentional communication. The red canvas made red by the reckless children, on the other hand, is a mere real thing; it says nothing.
In order to defend the hypothesis that the boundary between artworks and real things rests on the fact that artworks have subjects whereas mere real things do not, Danto engages in a thought-experiment – which, at the same time, is a playfully wicked, philosophical satire of certain artistic tendencies of the sixties – about the impossibility of attempts to create artworks that really just are mere real things.
Imagine an artist, a great demotic leveler, who, appalled by the elitism of a hierarchical artworld that would valorize or privilege certain items like Titian's The Annunciation over toaster ovens, decides to put all art on the same level, the level of the ordinary, just as John Cage sought to erase the boundary between music and ambient sound in his 4′33″. This populist stocks his gallery with every kind of appliance, auto-part, building material, and cut-rate piece of clothing that he can find on Canal Street in order to compose his Exhibition of Real Things.
And yet his collection does not comprise a collection of mere real things; for his collection is charged with meaning. It is a polemic. Given its context in a continuing debate, it signifies like a gesture. It carries and communicates the artist's disdain for the artworld as he conceives it. It is impossible for the artist in question to implement his rejection of artworld elitism without transfiguring the real objects he enlists into something other than mere real things – without, that is, transfiguring them into signifiers. For, if for no other reason, the context in which the artist proffers his found objects is already historically so symbolically freighted that any intervention the artist makes within it is bound to have implications.
The ontological futility, then, of the artist bent upon producing and presenting a mere real thing in his capacity as an artist marks an ineliminable feature of art. In so far as the artist, while playing that role within the presentational conventions of the artworld, cannot produce a mere real thing (because he cannot eradicate the aboutness of his creations), aboutness must be granted to be a core feature or necessary feature of art.
Danto's argument that an artist, such as we've imagined, cannot produce a mere real thing – as opposed to something that has the semantical component of aboutness – scotches fashionable artworld harangues of the sixties that sounded the utopian call to dissolve the gap between art and reality. In revealing the impossibility of that quest, Danto isolates aboutness as a necessary condition for arthood.
However, in locating aboutness as a necessary condition for arthood by means of the indiscernibility method, Danto also rejects two very influential strands of philosophical aesthetics, specifically: aesthetic theories of art as championed by Clive Bell and his formalist followers, and the family-resemblance approach to identifying art as endorsed by neo-Wittgensteinians. For both the formalists and the neo-Wittgensteinians, in different ways, emphasize the discernible or manifest properties of putative artworks, whereas, by definition, the indiscernibility method utterly discounts or factors out the relevance of manifest properties for the project of identifying art; and, predictably enough, the method zeroes-in on a feature of art like aboutness – a feature that the naked eye cannot descry – which neither formalism nor the family-resemblance approach can accommodate.
The aboutness condition of Danto's philosophy of art – that artworks have a subject, that they are about something, that they have a semantical component – is generated by considering the contrast between an artwork and its indiscernible, merely real counterpart, and by asking for the principled grounds that make that contrast possible. Similarly, the fourth condition of the theory – that artworks have interpretations – is also motivated by the contrast between items we are convinced are artworks and their mere real-thing counterparts.
For example, take a work about which there is no plausible disagreement that it is an artwork; take a masterpiece; take Poussin's The Ashes of Phocion. Then imagine that an art supply store somewhere in Soho explodes for want of a furnace repairperson. Paint is hurled in every direction, but a great deal of it converges on a canvas awning across the street, and, as it splashes down, it configures itself in the shape of what could pass as a point-for-point facsimile of Poussin's The Ashes of Phocion. The event is a statistical fluke, rather like those snowdrifts on Chinese mountains in which some have seen the face of Christ. Though Poussin's The Ashes of Phocion and the results of our Soho explosion are indiscernible to the naked eye, intuitively the two items seem radically different. Wherein lies the difference? How is it possible? One very powerful answer to this question is that the painting by Poussin invites and supports an interpretation, perhaps a very deep interpretation, whereas the fallout from the blasted paint store deserves no more of an interpretation than the debris scattered in the wake of Hurricane Andrew – which is to say, none at all.
Perhaps the fact that the first and fourth conditions of Danto's philosophy of art are generated by the same sorts of contrasting indiscernibles – artworks versus mere real things – makes their somewhat complementary relationship unsurprising. For the fourth condition of the theory complements the first condition in the sense that in so far as artworks have subjects, are about something or signify something, then it seems natural to suppose that a proper appreciation of them will involve apprehending the subject of the artwork, grasping what it is about, comprehending what it signifies, unpacking its semantical component – or, in short, interpreting it.
Indeed, one might even attempt to argue from the necessity of the first condition to the fourth condition. For if we do not restrict the notion of interpretation to the illumination of what is not obvious, and allow, as Danto seems to allow, that an interpretation is simply a statement of what something is about, then if something x is about y, this implies that x has an interpretation, viz., a statement of whatever x is about. The aboutness of the item stands to the interpretability of the self-same item as recto does to verso.
Danto's emphasis on an irreducible dimension of interpretation in artworks has important ramifications for his philosophy of art. For given the essential interpretive address of artworks to spectators, Danto construes the aesthetic appreciation of art to be – in large measure – cognitive, that is, a matter of responding appropriately to art by making interpretations (a cognitive process, if there ever was one). This, of course, is at odds with many of the most abiding and deeply entrenched conceptions of aesthetic appreciation in the dominant tradition, which tradition most frequently characterizes aesthetic appreciation in non-cognitive terms, such as disinterested pleasure or feelings of release.
In this respect, Danto's theory of art again diverges significantly from aesthetic theories of art which conceive of artworks as objects designed with the function of eliciting certain non-cognitive states in spectators. Like Nelson Goodman and unlike Monroe Beardsley, Danto identifies aesthetic appreciation as cognitive, though, whereas Goodman sees the artwork engaging the spectator cognitively in the manner of a theory that directs us to the world, the cognitions that Danto identifies as constitutive of aesthetic appreciation need only dwell on the purport of the art object.
That artworks have subjects and engage interpretations, though necessary features of artworks on Danto's view, hardly serve to differentiate them from many other things. For instance, all representations have subjects and, therefore, interpretations in the broad sense Danto permits, but not all representations are artworks. The stick-figures that differentiate the men's restrooms from the women's restrooms in airports have subjects and minimal interpretations, but they are not artworks. So, more than the first and the fourth conditions above are required to track art proper with precision. In order to elaborate his theory in such a way that artworks proper can be distinguished from the mere representations with which artworks share certain necessary conditions (aboutness and interpretability), Danto introduces another set of indiscernibles for consideration: artworks that are representations versus mere representations that are indiscernible from the artworks in question.5
For example, think about one of Erie Loran's diagrammatic analyses of a painting by Cézanne and Roy Lichtenstein's appropriation of it: Portrait of Madame Cézanne. The Loran diagram is a mere representation, an attempt to instruct us in the principles of Cézanne's art. Lichtenstein's painting is something else again, an elliptical statement about Cézanne's project, one that maintains that for Cézanne, painting is essentially diagrammatic. The subjects of Loran's diagram and Lichtenstein's painting differ; Loran's painting is about a certain work by Cézanne, whereas Lichtenstein's painting is about Cézanne's vision. The method of address of the Loran diagram is straightforward; the address of Lichtenstein's Portrait of Madame Cézanne is rhetorical, which, for Danto, means that it has to be filled in by the spectator in the manner of a rhetorical question.6 Or, in other words, it requires an interpretation by the spectator.
Moreover, the rhetorical structure that Danto believes is generally in operation with artworks is metaphor.7 A metaphor is a rhetorical trope that invites audiences to interpret it by exploring a target term in light of a source term (“the moon” in light of “ghostly galleon”); the number of correspondences that an audience may find between the target term and the source term is indefinite; the audience proceeds by, often playfully, testing correlations between the source domain and the target domain of the trope.
Similarly, artworks invite interpretations, their embedded metaphors engaging spectator's cognitive play. The metaphor projected by Warhol's Brillo Boxes is that artworks are real things, while, with regard to much great literature, according to Danto, the reader – himself or herself – is the target domain while the characters provide source domains.8 That is, for example, when reading Antigone, I may embrace the metaphorical structure that Noël Carroll is Creon, and explore it in a way that leads to self-discovery.
To understand an artwork is to grasp the metaphor that is always there. The semantical component of an artwork is an underlying metaphor or set of metaphors. The metaphorical dimension of artworks is its transfigurative dimension – the target term of the metaphor is seen in the light of the source term, and the target term is thereby transfigured. In the greatest works of narrative art, the audience is transfigured when we see ourselves in light of characters like Ahab or Oedipus or Nora.
Art is rhetorical; metaphor is a rhetorical trope. In fact, metaphor is the key rhetorical trope with respect to art since art involves our seeing one content in a certain light, seeing art itself as a real thing à la Warhol, for example. The hypothesis that art is a matter of rhetorical ellipsis, notably metaphorical ellipsis, moreover, reinforces the notion that art involves interpretation by further specifying the nature of the relevant interpretation – to wit: filling in rhetorical ellipses by identifying and exploring the metaphors in the work.
The contrast between Loran's diagrams – mere representations – and Lichtenstein's Portrait of Madame Cézanne – an artwork which involves representation – is supposed to establish the third condition in Danto's theory: that artworks are elliptical, indeed, that they are a form of rhetorical ellipsis, standardly enlisting the rhetorical trope of metaphor. But the contrast between mere representations and artworks that involve representation is also intended to motivate the postulation of the second condition in Danto's theory: that artworks have points-of-view.9
Artworks are not only about something; they project a certain about whatever they are about. Whereas mere representations aspire to transparency, artworks express ideas and attitudes toward whatever they represent. They are referentially opaque, cocooned, so to speak, in the propositional attitudes of artists.
Loran's diagram attempts to illustrate the actual abstract structure of Cézanne's paintings. Lichtenstein's painting promotes a conception of Cézanne's project – that he, Cézanne, saw even his wife as a matrix of geometrical forms. In the case of Lichtenstein's Portrait of Madame Cézanne, the object of Lichtenstein's concern is Cézanne about whose work Lichenstein expresses a. Lichtenstein, the rhetor, strives to lead the audience to see Cézanne in the same way that he does. The artist/rhetor transforms the audience into one which sees in a certain light, viz., the light of the rhetor/artist.
Art transforms or transfigures audiences into seers of a certain kind. Reviewing the works of Robert Mapplethorpe, Danto generalizes from Mark Stevens (Mr 10½) and says “We see him [Mark Stevens] from within a homosexual perception, and it is that perception, that vision, that is the true subject of these [Mapplethorpe's] works.”10
Art is a matter of rhetorical ellipsis. Artworks deploy elliptical metaphors rhetorically which function to enable the audience to see one thing in the light of something else. This metaphorical vision, in turn, can be said to embody a point-of-view or a way of seeing. For Danto, the metaphors with which an artist chooses to address a given subject matter are deeply connected to the way in which the artist sees the world. In this respect, art properly so-called always possesses a style in the sense that underwrites Buffon's proverb that style is the man (or woman) himself (herself).11 Style is the embodiment of a point-of-view, or, alternatively, the person, himself or herself, is a representation (a representational system) from a point-of-view, that is, a representation in a certain style, according to a certain way of seeing or of organizing the world.
Whereas mere representations strive toward an ideal of transparency, artworks are opaque. Whatever they are about is embedded within the context of an artistic vision – a style (in a somewhat existential sense). Generally, the vehicle or structure of this is, broadly construed, metaphorical; metaphor can serve as the vehicle for points-of-view because of the way in which it focuses attention only on certain aspects of its target. Metaphorical ellipsis, then, encourages the audience to explore the content of the artwork from a certain standpoint – indeed, it encourages the audience to take on that standpoint, which, of course, is the standpoint of the artist/rhetor to whatever the artwork is about. Art, at least momentarily, transforms the spectator into one who sees the subject of the artwork from the of the artist or under the auspices of the same metaphor that the artist does.
The metaphors that embody the points-of-view expressed by the artwork articulate the artist's style of being in the world. This is perhaps not so completely obscure as it might seem to be, since for Danto, ways of being in the world are to be thought of as matters of representation. The artist herself is unaware in any explicit sense of her way of being in the world just because it is her way of being in the world. Through artworks – through the choice ultimately of metaphorical structures – the artist makes her way of seeing the world or some subject therein available not only to herself but to audiences. Audiences in embracing the artist's metaphorical structures – the embodiment of her – entertain and explore alternative ways of seeing the world.
The second condition of Danto's theory – that artworks have points-of-view or styles (in the special sense Danto uses that term) – along with the structural specification, in the third condition of the theory, of the rhetorical and metaphorical devices that project the said points-of-view are the nub of Danto's theory of art. These differentia are introduced through contrasts between mere representations (which aspire to transparency) versus artworks that involve representation (and which are opaque), but one supposes that Danto's conclusions are not only meant to apply to artworks that involve representations, but to abstract art as well.
What is, of course, remarkable about the second condition in Danto's theory is that it shows that his theory of art is at root an expression theory. The most salient differentia between art and non-art is not simply that art is about something and, therefore, interpretable – for art shares these features with non-artistic representations – but that art expresses points-of-view about its subjects. Moreover, these points-of-view are something that flow from the very being of the artist. And, finally, the audience's reception of the artwork involves taking on the artist's in interpretive acts in which one explores the subject of the artwork in virtue of the artist's fundamental (existential, so to speak) metaphors. In a rough way, this recalls the expressionism of someone like Tolstoy, however startling that may sound. For the artwork derives from the very being of the artist, incarnating her and attitude in metaphorical structures whose engagement by spectators enables them to share her and attitude.
Danto's hypothesis that artworks necessarily have style, that is, embodiments of points-of-view, suggests what Danto may believe to be one of the key ways in which art is important. Points-of-view, or ways of seeing the world, are usually transparent to us because we inhabit them. By embodying them in artworks, what is transparent and unnoticed becomes opaque and salient. Art, then, serves the purpose of making consciousness aware of itself.12 Thus, in a way that parallels many expression theorists, Danto locates the point of art in the externalization of subjectivity in such a way that the artist and the rest of us are able to examine it.13
The notions that artworks are metaphors and that they embody ways of seeing the world fit neatly with the claims that artworks possess aboutness, and have or elicit interpretations. Responding to artworks involves interpreting their underlying metaphor or metaphors. In so far as artworks are ways of seeing, they are about a certain way of taking whatever they are about. Such points-of-view, then, invite interpretation while compounding the way in which artworks are about things – for the way they are about whatever they are about is part and parcel of what they are about.
Along with studied contrasts between indiscernible artworks and mere real things, and between indiscernible mere representations and counterpart representations that are artworks, Danto also investigates the contrast between sets of indiscernible artworks. His most famous example of this sort is the contrast between Cervantes' Don Quixote and its counterpart by Pierre Menard, as imagined in Borges' Pierre Menard, Symbolist Poet.14 The two novels are word-for-word identical but, as Danto, following Borges, notes, they have very different properties. For example, Menard's diction, in that it is archaic, is somewhat affected, whereas Cervantes' is natural. And so on.
A major motive behind Danto's presentation of this contrast is to introduce a discussion of how artworks are individuated. Specifically, it is his point that individuating artworks must take into account the place of the work in art history. Artworks cannot be individuated exclusively in terms of what some might call their intrinsic structural properties (such as significant form). The historical context of the artwork is indispensable in establishing its identity, a view theoretically at odds with aesthetic theories of art like Bell's.
However, the consideration of indiscernible but different artworks also yields a further necessary condition for art status. An artwork requires a background of art history in order to be the artwork that it is. This background is most readily conceptualized as one of art theory, that is, of historically situated art theories. These art theories need not be true in the way that Danto's philosophy of art aspires to truth. These theories need only be available and pertinent to the artists in question.
For example, in order to be works of art, as well as in order to be the works of art they were, conceptual artworks depended upon the existence of artworld theories – however philosophically controversial – that encouraged the idea that artworks themselves were basically theoretical statements about art. Conceptual art could not have existed under the Ming Dynasty nor in the court of Louis XIV because those venues lacked the appropriate kind of theories. Conceptual art depended upon the fact that supporting artworld theories had emerged by the late 1960s, which theories made conceptual art possible. At earlier historical junctures, conceptual art would have been neither intelligible nor possible (for it would not even have been intelligible to its producers who themselves would have lacked the requisite conceptual framework for producing it).
That artworks require a historical context – specifically a background of historically situated theory – meshes in significant ways with the rest of Danto's philosophy of art. Inasmuch as artworks possess aboutness, they “say” something; but what they say depends in crucial respects on context. If artworks have a semantic component, they also have a pragmatic component. That is, what they say depends on the historical circumstances in which they are articulated. What the artist can be saying depends, to an important degree, on the background of art theories and art history available to her and her audience.
The necessary, historical situatedness of the artworks also sets certain constraints on interpreting artworks. For Danto, artworks call forth or propose interpretations as an integral part of what it is to be an artwork. However, these interpretations, given the historical situatedness of the artwork, must be limited to what the artist knows or could have believed.
It is not clear that Danto would go so far as to say that interpretations of artworks are constrained to track what the artist actually intended. However, he does preclude interpretations that rest on supposing conceptual frameworks and facts about which the artist was ignorant.15 For instance, it would be a mistake to attribute postmodern pastiche to prehistoric cave painting. Moreover, the way to locate the plausible compass of an artist's beliefs about what she is doing is to look to the reigning theories of art and conceptions of art history about and abroad in the historical artworld that she inhabits.16
If the historico-theoretical context of an artwork necessarily shapes what it is about, then it shapes the metaphors the artwork projects as well as the expressed by those metaphors. Furthermore, our interpretations of the metaphors and the associated ways of seeing the world that are incarnated in artworks must be constrained by our most plausible hypotheses about the works in question in view of what we know about the historically extant art theories and conceptions of art history available in the artworld in which the artist flourished.
Thus, it is possible to summarize Danto's analytical philosophy of art as a tidy package of interrelated commitments: artworks are about subjects about which they express a through metaphors which they not only have but about which, given rhetorical ellipsis, they invite interpretations, which interpretations, in turn, must be constrained historically.
That Danto's theory places such emphasis on the historicity of art is a well-known feature of his theory. That his theory is essentialist is also acknowledged, but less frequently emphasized, while the fact that the form which that essentialism takes is expressionism appears not to have been discussed previously. What is perplexing about the overall structure of Danto's theory is that it seems to be unstable in its mixture of elements. Its historicism, for example, sits uneasily with its essentialism, especially since the form of essentialism it espouses – expressionism – is arguably a variety that has been historically superseded.
The perplexity here derives from the way in which historicism and essentialism are generally understood. For these approaches are thought to be incompatible; historicism is thought to preclude essentialism. In fact, sensitivity to the history of art is thought to show the error of essentialism in general. Furthermore, philosophers of art at the time of Danto's first interventions in the field17 maintained that essentialist theories of art were a dead letter. So, a question arises about how Danto thinks that an essentialist theory of art – indeed, one so narrow as an expression theory – is plausible, especially if art history and the lessons therein are to be acknowledged. But in order to comprehend Danto's defense of his essentialist project with respect to these questions, we need to turn to his philosophy of art history.
2 The End of Art: Danto's Philosophy of Art History
Danto's philosophy of art is essentialist. He advances a real definition of art in terms of necessary conditions that are jointly sufficient. When Danto initially began to advance his theory in the early 1960s, there was an influential consensus that essentialist theories of art were impossible. On the one hand, it was believed that the history of art is too diversified and various to permit generalization. But, on the other hand, it was also thought that the track record of past art theorizing suggested that real definitions were unlikely. For the history of past art theory – Plato, Aristotle, Tolstoy, Bell, Collingwood, Langer, and so on – was said to be littered with putative essential definitions of art that were subsequently refuted by the appearance of types of art not imagined or countenanced by the theories in question.
Imitation theories of art were problematized by post-impressionist painting, while philosophies of art that claimed that art was the expression of emotions were followed and effectively refuted by an art movement like modernism that was committed to the notion that art stated cognitive theories – theories about the nature of art – with no trace of emotion. The history of art teaches us, then, that philosophies of art of the essentialist variety are always vulnerable to counterexample from innovative developments in the history of art subsequent to the postulation of the essentialist theory in question.
Morris Weitz worked this intuition into an argument.18 He insisted that in so far as the practice of art shows that art is an arena which supports the permanent possibility of innovation, novelty, radical originality, and even revolution, art is an open concept. We apply the concept of art always alert to the possibility that art may at any moment take off in new directions; this is part of what we value about art. Because art is innovative in this way, we can never define art; it is always possible that art will develop in unpredictable trajectories. Art may always acquire vital, new features. To treat art as a closed concept – susceptible to analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions – is incompatible with its innovative dimension. Any essential definition of art which attempts to fix its central features is at conceptual odds with the possibility that art of the future may possess unheralded features and modes of valuation. Any essentialist theory of art at t1 is liable to counterexamples at t2 or thereafter.
Past attempts at essential definitions, in Weitz's accounting, did not succeed in producing general theories of art; they were at best works of covert art criticism that revealed or theorized the value of certain art movements or tendencies (viz., those favored by the theorist in question). Indeed, a Weitzian confronted by Danto's characterization of art would undoubtedly reinterpret Danto's philosophy of art as a failed essentialist definition that really amounts to a specimen of art criticism – art criticism that points to a crucial feature of much art in the aftermath of the Second World War. That feature is, of course, the connection of art to art theory.
Danto, in other words, might be read as a critic who has pinpointed, not the eternal nature of art, but the salient feature of art in what might be called its Age of Theory. Danto, a connoisseur of pop art, mistakes a vital feature of that art for the essence of art. And, in this sense, Danto's philosophy would appear to be locked in history rather than transcending history.
Of course, Danto's philosophy of art ingeniously accommodates our opening comments about the variability of art history. For the diversity of art history is, in a manner of speaking, built into his essential definition of art in so far as he maintains that every work of art requires a specific art-historical context and its subtending theories. Art has essential features, but among them is historical variability. Thus, historical variability presents no prima facie impediment to essentialist theorizing. After the manner of Hegel, Danto has taken this ostensibly daunting insight about art history into his own philosophy of art (aufgehoben). Moreover, in response to Weitz's contention that the role of all art theory is really covert art criticism, Danto maintains that the role of the theories that Weitz had in mind was actually to enfranchise art – to make art possible – in so far as art requires a background of such theories in order to exist.
But what of the worry that any essential theory of art, propounded at time t, provides no guarantee that future counterexamples will not confute it? Or, to approach the problem differently: Why is Danto assured that by acknowledging the necessary historicity of art, the prospect has been eliminated that some development in the future might not emerge which is incompatible with all or some of the rest of his characterization of art?
Here Danto mobilizes his philosophy of art history.19 Again recalling Hegel's theory, Danto's philosophy of art history claims that art history has come to an end. This is a difficult idea that has many ramifications. But one logical consequence of it – if it is true – is that the possibility of future counterexamples, of the sort that Weitz warned of, to Danto's own philosophy of art is foreclosed. Put simply: if art history is over, then there will be no more counterexamples issuing from the future. All the evidence is now in; essentialist theorizing can proceed with no anxieties about future counterexamples. If art history has ended, then we are in a position to determine that no art-historical development contradicts the rest of the theory of art. We know everything of the sort we need to know in order to produce conclusive generalizations. Or, as Danto says of the end of art:
Having reached this point . . . art . . . has brought us to a stage outside history, where at last we can contemplate the possibility of a universal definition of art and vindicate therewith the philosophical aspiration of the ages, a definition which will not be threatened by historical overthrow.20
Thus, Danto's philosophy of art history provides him with an argument for entertaining the possibility of an essentialist philosophy of art, such as the one he advances. For the conclusion of that philosophy of art history – that art history is over – should unhorse any arguments about future counterexamples. Danto's philosophy of art history insulates it from “historical overthrow.” For, in effect, if Danto's philosophy of art history is correct and art has reached the end of the line, then the time for the production of counterexamples has run out. The kinds of developments in art history that might concoct such counterexamples are past. In short, Danto's philosophy of art history is designed to undermine any challenge to the possibility of essentialist theorizing that rests on the supposition that the future of art is, in a certain sense, open.
But what could Danto have in mind by the end of art history? If art history indeed ended with Warhol in 1964, how does that square with the production of all sorts of art since then? Here some clarification of what Danto has in mind by art history and the philosophy thereof is necessary.
The central purpose of Danto's philosophy of art history is to reveal its “internal structure” by means of an overarching narrative of the Hegelian sort. The history of art, as it figures in such an account, will be linear or developmental. When Danto asks whether art has a history, he is thinking in terms of a progressive history. Does art have a telos or a target toward which it gravitates or at which it is aimed? When artists in the West were committed to the production of perfect imitations of reality, art had a history in the developmental sense as successive generations of artists strove toward capturing the appearances of things with progressive success. Of course, such a developmental history of art will reach an end when artists succeed in hitting their target – in the case of imitation, by replacing “inference to perceptual reality wherever possible with something equivalent to what perceptual reality itself would present.”21 Moreover, Danto believes that this episode in the developmental history of art did end – with the advent of cinema, if not some time earlier.
The end of art history, given Danto's construal of the relevant sense of history as developmental history,22 does not entail the end of artmaking, no more than Hegel's pronouncement of the end of history implied the end of political activity. Rather, what marks the end of a developmental history is that a problem – like that of capturing appearances – is essentially solved, or, at least, brought as near to a solution as is possible. Once artists solved the problem of verisimilitude, the developmental history of art stopped, even though artists continued – in what might be called the eye of the historical storm – to make pictures. The internal history of art reached a resting point. But the end of art history does not imply an end to artistic activity. The solution of the problem of pictorial representation, though it brought the development of one epoch of artmaking to a close, did not stop artists from painting.
Given that the project of verisimilitude was solved, the question arises as to whether art still has a history – which Danto understands as the question of whether there remains any project or problem for artists to pursue that possesses the sort of telos or target that would yield a developmental history of art? The developmental history of verisimilitude is over. Has any other project emerged to function, so to say, as the engine of a progressive history of art?
Here Danto focuses on the development of modernism, which, after the interlude of expressionist art, reorients the internal, developmental history of art. Though Danto does not say this outright, I take it that he presumes that modernism is the source of all the troublesome counterexamples that have wrecked so many attempts at essentialist art theorizing. Thus, if he can show that modernism has reached a point beyond which no further internal development is possible, then the essentialist theory of art is home free. That is, if modernism has run its course, then the internal, developmental history of art is over, and an essentialist philosophy of art is possible.
Modern art, or modernism, is distinctive, on Danto's account (along with the accounts of many others), in terms of its project of self-definition. Modernism is committed to the discovery of the nature of art in the way that Renaissance painting was committed to capturing visual appearances. In both cases, these projects were aimed at the discovery of something accessible in terms of some epistemic criteria; they both aimed at a target such that we could know whether they hit the target. Both projects resemble science in the sense that they allow for progressively closer approximations of that after which they seek. Thus, in principle, they presuppose that it is possible to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Danto thinks that the Renaissance project eventually achieved its goal. Then art had to find something else to do. Gradually, that something else became the reflexive interrogation of the nature of art which interrogation we call modernism.
Modernism supports the possibility of a developmental history of art because artists can come closer and closer to identifying the nature or the essential conditions of art. The nature of art is something that, ex hypothesi, we could discover. Cubism introduces the insight that paintings are flat; abstract expressionism refines this by analyzing painting into its basic constituents: line and color. Moreover, on Danto's account, modernism comes to an end, though not exactly in the way that the Renaissance project came to an end.
For modernism does not fully realize its quest. It gets to the gates of the Holy City, but cannot pass through them, or, to change religions, like Moses it cannot enter the Promised Land. The modernists do not discover the nature of art. Rather, what they achieve is getting the question – “What is the nature of art?” – into its proper philosophical form. Modernism accomplishes this much by raising the problem of indiscernibility by means of readymades and Warhol's Brillo Boxes from within the precincts of the artworld itself.
This is a momentous achievement. However, once art has raised the problem of the nature of art in its proper philosophical form, art cannot bring the problem any closer to its solution. The problem has to be turned over to philosophers. That is, once modernism discovers the problem of indiscernibility, it has taken the problem as far as it can go. It remains to philosophy to finish the job. Nevertheless, in so far as the problem has been pushed as far as art can push it, the internal, developmental history of art terminates when modernism reaches the limits of its capacity to disclose the nature of art.
Artists, of course, will continue to make art after modernism, but it will be post- historical art. Such art may be dedicated to expressing emotions, emblematizing the spirit of the times, criticizing society, and fulfilling human needs. But it will not be guided and unified by a developmental historical project. Those days of grand history end when modernism takes the problem of the nature of art as far as it can.
But why can artists only raise the problem of the nature of art? Why can't they solve it, once they discover that the crux of the problem revolves around indiscernibility? Though Danto does not state his reasons explicitly, I suspect that the answer is that art – perhaps most especially avant-garde art – does not have the logical apparatus required to generalize or to mount coherent arguments. Art, especially avant-garde art, would seem to be too elliptical and disjunctive to serve the purpose of constructing and defending a coherent theory of art. Thus, it can at best only frame the issue of the nature of art in its most appropriate form. Once art discovers the issue of indiscernibles, the developmental history of art is at an end.
Moreover, if modernism has carried its project of self-definition as far as it can go, then the well of wild counterexamples has run dry. For, it is the project of reflexivity or self-definition – the testing of the limits of what art is from the inside – that led to the proliferation of artworks to the point where it seemed that any object, or any object indiscernible from any ordinary object, could be art. Once art has got the project of self-definition out of its system – which it does when it reaches the issue of indiscernibility – it will produce no more nettlesome counterexamples.
Why believe this? There appears to be a narrative of the history of the philosophy of art that underpins Danto's developmental narrative of art history. As mentioned, Danto's own theorizing about art occurred against the backdrop of the neo-Wittgensteinian denial that art could be defined. A large part of the motive for this view was the conviction, undoubtedly reinforced for the revolutionary character of modernism, that it is part of the logic of the concept of art that the criterial purposes of art encompass innovation, originality, and novelty. Thus, since the substance of the innovations of the future are not available to essentialist theorists in the present, their theories are bound to fail, especially if the very practices of art encourage artists to break with the canons of the past.
In this context, the question that arose naturally was: If there is not an essential definition of art, then how are we to tell the art from the non-art? The neo-Wittgensteinians answered: by means of family resemblances. That is, we say of some newly encountered object that it is art if it resembles past works of art – preferably past paradigmatic works of art. But, since it is logical truth that everything resembles everything else in some respect, then sooner or later – indeed, sooner rather than later if we choose sufficiently broad dimensions of resemblance – everything can be counted as a work of art. That is, the neo-Wittgensteinians had no way to establish that certain dimensions of resemblance are significant and that others are not. So, the family-resemblance method was impracticable.
Furthermore, the neo-Wittgensteinian opposition to the possibility of essential definitions of art conceived of those definitions as specifying manifest, non-relational properties of art – like significant form – just as the family-resemblance method itself pertained to the manifest, intrinsic properties of artworks. But if one restricts one's attention to manifest properties, one quickly confronts the problem of differentiating ordinary urinals from Fountain. Thus, it gradually became a commonplace in aesthetic theorizing that one should not look to manifest discernible properties as the basis upon which to tell the art from the non-art.
George Dickie's emphasis on institutions and Danto's own emphasis on art history appear roughly at the point in the dialectic of the philosophy of art where the neo-Wittgensteinian reliance on manifest properties of art provokes the problem of indiscernibility within art theory and where the recommended counter-measure is to lay emphasis in identifying art on the importance of non-manifest, relational properties that pertain to the genesis of the artworks in question.
Now if I am correct in my speculation, Danto thinks that a story very much like this narrative of the recent history of the philosophy of art underwrites the evolution of modernism. Indeed, the story of modernism is almost the same story as that of philosophical aesthetics, perhaps because philosophical art theories have been reflecting, if not generating, each stage of the history of modernism.
Warhol's discovery of indiscernibles comes around the time that philosophers are abandoning the idea that the manifest properties of art are serviceable for discriminating art from non-art. Rejecting the family-resemblance approach results from being forced into admitting that anything can look like something else that is art. Thus, Warhol's artmaking succeeded in providing exactly the kind of problematic case that when exploited logically demonstrated the infeasibility of the family-resemblance approach. The Warhol examples along with the logic of resemblance, showed that all of the evidence was in vis-à-vis manifest properties since everything is like everything else. Anything, that is, could look like something that was art. What remained for theorists to ascertain was whether there was some non-manifest property or properties to supply the differentia between art and non-art. Artists could not pursue this investigation any farther. For they work in the medium of manifest properties wherein, once it is admitted that anything can look like art, we can expect to learn nothing further of any theoretical import.23
The reflexive modernist project of self-definition reaches its limits of development for much the same reason that the neo-Wittgensteinian notion of family resemblance founders. In the latter case, this opens the possibility for renewed essentialist theorizing in terms of non-manifest properties, while in the former case, there are no objects left in terms of manifest properties that the theorist does not already have before him (since art can look like anything). The artist can return to producing objects for the purpose of satisfying human aesthetic and emotional needs, leveling social criticism, and so on. But the project of self-definition is over; art history in the developmental sense is over; and with it, the threat of innovative counterexamples disappears.
Developmental art history, like the subtending dialectical conversation in the philosophy of art, has exhausted the full gamut of manifest properties that might have imperiled an essentialist theory of art like Danto's. Thus, if Danto's philosophy of art history is correct and art history is over in the way he claims, then an essentialist theory of art is possible.24
However, even if this reconstruction of Danto's argument is persuasive, it is not clear that it will inure essentialist theorizing in the way he hopes. For there may be a loophole in the argument. Modernist artists, let us suppose, cannot produce objects that in virtue of their manifest properties provide new evidence for or against essential definitions of art. But might they not create objects whose non-manifest properties provide counterexamples?
Perhaps artists produce artworks that have the non-manifest property of being generated by theories that are opposed to essential definitions of art. That is, artists produce artworks whose best interpretation or whose only plausible interpretation implies a commitment to the conviction that the conception of characterizing art by means of essential definitions is misguided.
Moreover, this is not merely an abstract possibility. It reflects the stance of a great deal of the neo-Marxist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, deconstructivist, and/or multicultural art that has been produced. Furthermore, this art is part of the internal history of modernism and the fact that this debate between essentialists and anti-essentialists persists might be thought to indicate that that history is not yet at an end, since its dialectic has not yet been played out fully.
I say this not in order to endorse any of these anti-essentialist theories of art and their associated practices, but only to make the observation that the modernist conversation has apparently proceeded beyond the point of the issue of indiscernibles, and it has done this often in concert with a rejection of the advisability of essentialist theorizing. This phenomenon, even if it does not defeat Danto's view, requires some explicit comment on his part – specifically comment on the question of why artworks in the continuing modernist debate about the nature of art cannot in principle produce counterexamples to essentialist theories of art in virtue of non-manifest properties and anti-essentialist commitments.
Undoubtedly Danto may think that he is ready for this sort of question. For in his Transfiguration, he argues that it is a necessary condition that any work of art be generated by a theory. His own theory, that is, can, logically speaking, swallow up any artworld theory and the objects associated with it, so that future, art-theoretical counterexamples are in the same neutralized boat as any imagined counterexample in terms of manifest properties. That is, there may be future artworld theories that generate all sorts of objects but their appearance will only confirm Danto's philosophy, which mandates that artworks must be connected to such theories, whether they be essentialist or anti-essentialist in nature. Danto does not make this consideration explicit, though it might appear to supply him with further reason to believe that at least the sort of theory advanced in Transfiguration is indemnified against art-theoretical counterexamples.
But if this is Danto's view, it surely has the air of paradox about it, especially with respect to the kind of politicized modernism (or postmodernism) one finds everywhere nowadays. For this brand of artmaking, in effect, is categorized as art according to Danto exactly in virtue of its rejection of the view that any object is essentially art. This may not be a deep paradox, but shallow or deep, it calls for resolution.
Perhaps Danto will argue that the appearance of logical tension here can be softened since his philosophy of art can in some way be said to incorporate the anti-aesthetic artworld theories that are connected to such things as Sherry Levine's appropriations. I must admit that I've never got the hang of this sort of Hegelian argumentation; I've never understood why if one theory can accommodate another that should redound to the favor of the putatively broader theory. But, in any case, anti-essentialists, who believe that art theories should acknowledge the place of art in broader social, economic, and semiotic contexts, can also diagnose essentialist theories like Danto's to their own advantage.
Danto's philosophy of art history supposedly guarantees that there will be no counterexamples to his philosophy of art issuing from future art practice. In point of fact, I think that his philosophy of art history at best would show that there can be no counterexamples in terms of the manifest properties of artworks. However, this does not preclude the possibility of counterexamples with respect to non-manifest properties. Danto, for example, maintains that artworks necessarily project points-of-view. Artists of the future could, it seems to me, resolve to produce artworks of which we might be loathe to say that they project points-of-view. We are already familiar with a range of aleatoric methods that have been employed in twentieth-century art in order to distance the artwork from authorial intention. Admittedly, these examples – from Tzara through Cage and Cunningham – are essayed in the name of an anti-Romantic theory of art. But imagine that the aleatoric method becomes the norm of artmaking in an artworld where it no longer has polemical implications. Might we not then have plausible candidates for art status which in virtue of their non-manifest relation to certain aleatoric, generative procedures serve as counterexamples to Danto's philosophy of art? I cannot see how Danto's philosophy of art history can preclude such possibilities in principle.
Danto's philosophy of art history is supposed to serve as a defense for his philosophy of art proper. Specifically, it is meant to defend the possibility of an essentialist philosophy of art against future theoretical developments in the artworld. Putatively, Danto's philosophy of art history affords us with independent grounds for believing that a theory like the one propounded in Transfiguration is immune to historical overthrow. However, it is not evident that this argument does not ultimately beg some very crucial questions in so far as it is not clear that Danto's philosophy of art history is really independent of his philosophy of art.
Danto's argument about the end of art depends on the notion that art ends once it gets the question “What is the nature of art?” in its proper philosophical form. It does this by creating artworks like Fountain which are indiscernible from its mere real-object counterparts. At that point, the developmental history of art is over and philosophers like Danto step in and start theorizing. However, if this philosophy of art history is to be compelling, it must be reasonable at the very least to suppose that the question “What is the nature of art?” has been appropriately posed exactly when we confront the indiscernibles that pressure us to differentiate them theoretically.
Danto, of course, is convinced of the appropriateness of this way of framing the question because he holds the metaphilosophical view that it is definitive of philosophical problems that they treat issues of indiscernibility. The philosophy of art only begins when the indiscernibility problem becomes live. Thus, in so far as the theoretical aspirations of reflexive art – whose history is that of art's coming to consciousness of itself – are philosophical, a climactic juncture is reached when artists discover the indiscernibility problem.
But agreement about this philosophical history of art presupposes Danto's metaphilosophical claim about the distinguishing marks of philosophical problems in general and of the philosophy of art in particular. Yet, do issues of indiscernibility truly epitomize philosophical activity in general? Such a view seems too exclusive: the problem of the existence of universals, the existence of God and the nature of justice do not appear to be straightforwardly generated by issues of indiscernibility. And yet the view is also too inclusive: whether a slip of the tongue and its indiscernible counterpart is a psychoanalytic parapraxis or a cognitive malfunction is a medical question, not a philosophical one. That is, in principle, we have no reason to believe that philosophy correlates with indiscernibility in the way that either Danto's philosophy of philosophy or his related philosophy of art history requires.
For example, with respect to both the philosophy of art and the philosophy of art history, as noted earlier, there are currently many neo-Marxists, semiologists and poststructuralist artists, art critics, and art theorists who would not agree that the question “What is the nature of art?” has been put into its proper form when the problem of indiscernibles is broached. For they believe that the proper theory of art can only be developed once we have gone past the narrow confines of philosophy/theory that Danto inhabits, and the socio-ideological nature of art is foregrounded. Art, for such theorists, is not at an end yet – there is some breathing space left as artists, theorists, and artist/theorists attempt to compel the philosophical acknowledgment of the socio-ideological nature of art. I am not endorsing such a view. I raise it only to make the logical point that Danto's philosophy of art history depends on his views of both philosophy in general and the philosophy of art in particular where such views are hotly contested, especially in the artworld environs that Danto is discussing.
Moreover, this disagreement about the nature of the philosophy of art should alert us to a certain circularity in Danto's defense of his philosophy of art by means of his philosophy of art history. Danto presents us with a developmental history of art – one where art has an end. This story unavoidably relies on the notion that the proper philosophical form of the question “What is the nature of art?” can only be framed in a philosophically appropriate way in terms of indiscernibles. And once framed that way, art history ends and its discovery is explored by the essentialist. But doesn't this mean that Danto's view of the nature of the philosophy of art is material to generating his philosophy of art history?
Yet other views of the philosophy of art – anti-essentialist views such as the ones alluded to previously – are also possible. On those views, the philosophy of art history that Danto advances would be suspect. So the question that presents itself is whether Danto can tell the story of the end of art without simply presuming his own controversial conception of the philosophy of art in the teeth of legitimate or, at least, living alternatives. And, of course, if Danto's philosophy of art is material to establishing his philosophy of art history, then it is difficult to see how his philosophy of art history can serve as a defense of his philosophy of art without begging the question.
Danto's argument appears to be this:
1. Once the question “What is the nature of art?” is framed in terms of indiscernibles, then no further theoretical breakthroughs can issue from the artworld.
2. If no theoretical breakthroughs can issue from the artworld, then an essentialist theory of art is possible.
3. The question “What is the nature of art?” has been framed in terms of indiscernibles.
4. Therefore, an essentialist theory of art is (now) possible.
Premises (1) and (3) yield the end of art thesis. This conclusion, along with premise (2), shows that essentialist theorizing is possible. Premise (3) is factual. Premise (1) rests on at least two presumptions: (a) that art can't work out the theory of art without becoming philosophy – art is not a vehicle suited for theorizing; and (b) once the question is framed in terms of indiscernibles, it has its proper philosophical form – one which is superior to any other theoretical formulation.
Though many artists are likely to disagree that artworks cannot make greater contributions to theory than raising questions (rather than delivering answers), I tend to agree with this view.25 But the claim that the issue of indiscernibles marks the proper formulation of theoretical questions remains unsettling, especially in the context of this argument. For the method of indiscernibles is nothing but an exquisitely economical way for focusing attention upon making essential distinctions. It is, so to speak, a tool inextricably linked with essentialist theorizing. It has been designed expressly for that purpose. But then to suppose that the advent of the indiscernible issue is the decisive moment in the reflexive artworld conversation about “What is the nature of art?” is to prejudge any debate in favor of essentialist theory. Moreover, to invoke indiscernibility in a characterization of a philosophy of art history that is meant to defend the possibility of essentialist theory is circular; for it supposes the viability of essentialist theory – by dint of its assumptions about indiscernibility – in the course of an argument whose very conclusion is ostensibly that essentialist theory is viable.
Thus, for all its elaborateness, Danto's philosophy of art history cannot deliver the goods. It cannot serve as an independent defense of the viability of essentialist art theorizing because it already presumes the viability of essentialist art theorizing. Thus, whether Danto's philosophy of art is adequate must be evaluated separately from his philosophy of art history.
Likewise, to maintain that, once the method of indiscernibles has arrived, no further theoretical breakthroughs are possible in the artworld seems to beg the question in the debate between essentialist and anti-essentialist theorists, where anti-essentialist theorists might argue that art indeed still has a developmental history, namely the overcoming of the error of essentialism both in theory as well as in practice, which, in turn, may produce counterexamples in virtue of non-manifest properties that Danto's theory cannot countenance. The point here is not that Danto's philosophy of art proper will not be able to withstand counterexamples, but rather that his philosophy of art history may not be able to protect it from counterexamples without begging the question.26
Danto has recently replied to this sort of criticism27 by asserting that his philosophy of art has no historical implications in the way that past philosophies of art, which were nothing but covert advocacy criticism, did. Danto's own theory, he contends, is abstract and historically neutral with respect to preference for any specific style or set of styles. I am not sure that I understand how this answers the charge of circularity in his defense of his philosophy of art by means of a philosophy of art history. For the charge of circularity does not rest on any stylistic preferences Danto might have, but on his conception of the significance of the indiscernibility method.
But, in any case, as already indicated, Danto himself can easily be reinterpreted in the light of the kind of debunking strategy that he employs against past theories. For the Weitzian can say with some force that Danto is really the critic par excellence of art in the age of theory. That is, by focusing on theory, Danto has battened on a salient feature of contemporary art and projected it backwards on all art history. In this, he differs in no way from Clive Bell who homed in on significant form as the relevant property of neo-impressionist art and then reconfigured the history of art in the light of it. It will do no good for Danto to say that his approach differs from Bell's in so far as his theory privileges no specific historical style whereas Bell's does. For Bell accepts as wide a body of historical achievement as does Danto, ranging from neo-impressionist painting, to Byzantine icons, to tribal masks, and so on. Thus, Danto's ad hominem dismissal of past theories can be met by a hearty tu quoque. Whether Danto's philosophy of art is adequate cannot be adjudicated by an exchange of debunking arguments. Rather Danto's philosophy of art needs to be assessed on the basis of its own strengths and weaknesses apart from the philosophy of art history and related histories of the philosophy of art.
In summary, then, Danto's philosophy of art history, though intriguing, especially in its account of modernism, falls as a defense of his philosophy of art proper. Whether his philosophy of art is acceptable depends on a review of it apart from historical considerations.
3 A Critical Examination of Danto's Philosophy of Art
Stated compactly, Danto's philosophy of art maintains that x is an artwork if and only if (1) x has a subject (x is about something) (2) about which it projects a point-of-view (3) by means of rhetorical/metaphorical ellipses (4) which have or require interpretations (5) where x and interpretations thereof depend on historically situated theories. Let us examine this theory piece by piece.
Aboutness is said to be a necessary feature of all works of art. But surely this is too exclusive. There may be art that is not about anything, for example, art that is simply a matter of design or decoration or patterning. Kant alludes to this sort of art when he speaks of musical fantasias.28 Or consider the patterning on archaic vases.29 Some ballets by Balanchine – perhaps Concerto Barocco – have the character of exercises in abstract form.30 Such art may be intended or designed for the purpose of stimulating old-fashioned experiences of beauty. Pre-theoretically, I see no reason to deny these examples art status.
One might, following Goodman, attempt to argue that such works involve exemplification and, as such, at least refer to or are about themselves.31 But it seems to me that exemplification requires more than the mere possession of a certain property or pattern.32 Exemplification also requires some indication – conventional or otherwise – that the candidate in question is functioning as a sample of something, if only as a sample of itself. Whether or not something is a sample cannot simply be a matter of the possession of a property. It must also be presented as a symbol by means of some framing device or indexical structure. Otherwise everything is a symbol, which is absurd. Moreover, there is no reason to think that with the examples in the preceding paragraph, we can find any grounds for attributing symbolic, self-reference to them.
Moreover, Danto's argument that artworks possess aboutness fails to block the kinds of artworks I have introduced. For what Danto's argument shows is that it is not possible for a contemporary modernist (or postmodernist) artist to make an artwork that says nothing. Given the lay of the recent artworld, any attempt that the artist Danto calls J33 makes will have theoretical implications about J's conception of art and, therefore, will count as a statement about art. But at best this argument pertains to contemporary art. It does not foreclose the possibility of pre-contemporary art that has no semantic component but that is simply in the service of producing non-cognitive, aesthetic experiences. Perhaps most art is not like this; but it seems draconian to assert that no art is.
Here Danto might attempt to mobilize another piece of his philosophy of art. He maintains that all art is connected to theories. Perhaps artworks dedicated to prompting old-fashioned aesthetic experiences are really connected to theories – theories like Bell's notion of significant form. In that case, might we not say that artworks produced under the aegis of such theories also signify whatever theory supports them?
Now it is not certain that all the kinds of artworks I have invoked are connected to such theories. But even if they are, there is no reason to suppose that in implementing a theory, the artwork is about that theory or a sign of the theory. Nor is it plausible to say that such an artwork exemplifies a theory, unless there are internal or external, semantical, or contextual or conventional grounds for thinking that the artwork refers to the theory that generates it. Artworks made in the spirit of Bell's theory of significant form need not be taken to refer to that theory.
Moreover, these problems with the aboutness condition of Danto's philosophy of art have significant implications for his interpretation condition. It may be true that most artworks have or require interpretations. However, if it is possible that there is some art that is not about anything – art that is designed simply in order to elicit a sensuous experience – then why suppose that all art requires interpretation? Some art might be beneath interpretation. Simple, abstract musical airs and dance figures may be produced solely to be enjoyed sensuously. Such works may require no interpretation, in any rigorous sense of the word, but may be art nevertheless. Therefore, Danto's interpretation condition, like his aboutness condition, appears overly exclusive.
Similarly, Danto's claim that artworks always involve a form of rhetorical ellipsis, notably metaphorical ellipsis, is too restrictive. For there are what we might call “plain-speaking” artworks. These are artworks that are about something, but which state what they are about directly. Here I have in mind something like the last engraving in Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress. This has a subject and may even warrant a bit of interpretation, but not in virtue of having left anything out. Nor is its didactic address metaphorical. The moral of the picture is quite literally presented.
In Danto's writings on aesthetics, he has at times invoked the notion of the is of artistic identification. Parallel to many accounts of the is of metaphor, the is of artistic identification may function acceptably in contexts where it would be literally false if it were taken to be the is of predication or the is of identity. An example of the is of artistic identification occurs when I look at the Hogarth engraving and say “There's a dead harlot.” This is literally false, but it is also an acceptable way of speaking, given our pictorial conventions. Now if one were to assimilate the is of artistic identification to the is of metaphor, one might claim that the Hogarth engraving is a metaphor. But I see no grounds for such an assimilation. The use of is that is warranted by our pictorial conventions is not an instance of the is of metaphor. Nor is the existence of the relevant pictorial convention evidence of ellipticality of any sort in the engraving, rhetorical or otherwise. To take the is of pictorial representation as evidence for either ellipticality or metaphor would be an equivocation.
Danto contends that artworks necessarily possess points-of-view. Artworks necessarily have a style in the sense of a style of seeing or being-in the world. Perhaps we can capture this by saying that, for Danto, artworks have existential points-of-view. This commitment fundamentally amounts to a variant of expressionism, and I cannot see how it manages to avoid most of the standard objections to expression theories of art.
Whether all artworks express points-of-view is at least debatable. They may lack points-of-view either because they are not the sorts of things that points-of-view are intelligible for them to possess – again, examples of certain abstract designs are relevant here – or because the artist has no or is too inept to project it. That is, artworks may lack points-of-view in so far as they lack aboutness, which implies that they have no subject about which a might be expressed. Or, artworks may be without points-of-view because the artist in question is incapable of formulating one in his medium.
But even in cases of artworks that have points-of-view, the points-of-view in question need not be existential points-of-view. There is no reason to suppose that an artist cannot be commissioned to make a work of art that expresses a or way of seeing the world that is not her own. The artist can be adept at manipulating the forms of a certain genre, a genre whose very forms portray a way of being-in the world, but which forms do not reflect the author's own way of being-in the world. A skillful film director can make a classic suspense thriller of the paranoid persuasion bereft of anxieties herself. For the forms of a genre may be expressive of certain ways of being-in or seeing the world – for example, be paranoid expressions – while, at the same time, this does not entail that the relevant forms are expressions of the paranoid texture of the director's consciousness.34
One might be tempted to argue that “beneath” the commissioned points-of-view in such films, the artist's genuine is always detectable. I doubt that this could be shown empirically on a case-by-case basis. Nor does it follow from any deeper philosophical premise – such as: everyone has a unique – for even if that is true in some non-trivial sense, it would not entail that that view is always expressed. It might not be expressed because the artist simply deploys the routine expressive devices of her genre, which diverge from her own way of seeing things. Or an artist might try to efface her own. For example, she might embrace the sorts of aleatoric procedures alluded to earlier in order to encourage her audience to explore its own way of seeing. And, of course, the artist may just lack the talent to articulate his. The claim that there is always a detectable in artworks seems either overly romantic or overly programmatic.
It should also be noted that the case on which Danto builds his hypothesis about the incarnation of points-of-view in artworks is not well suited to his purpose. For by his own account of Lichtenstein's Portrait of Madame Cézanne, it is not Lichtenstein's way of seeing that is portrayed, but Cézanne's. Lichtenstein is commenting on Cézanne's diagrammatical way of seeing; Lichtenstein is not articulating his own way of seeing. Thus the case, given Danto's own exposition, does not support the hypothesis that artworks always project the points-of-view of their producers. There is no reason to think that Lichtenstein's comments on Cézanne's vision applies to Lichtenstein, nor is it clear in any determinate way what making such a comment about Cézanne indicates about Lichtenstein's way of seeing or being-in the world.
The last condition in Danto's theory is that artworks and interpretations thereof require a background of historically situated theory. I suppose that the relevant theories may be as broad as the imitation theory for artworks prior to modernism and perhaps the “theory” of didacticism for artworks in the Catholic Middle Ages. Construed widely enough, one can readily agree that most of the artworks of the canonical tradition of the West and of the great imperial cultures of the East are underwritten by actual, historical theories.
Nevertheless, it does seem too exclusive to maintain that all art is connected, enfranchised, or generated by theories. The sublime tap-dancing of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and John Bubbles is, on any unprejudiced view, art, but it strains credulity to think that anything like a theory, even under a generous construal of that term, could be thought of as a condition for the existence of this dancing. There were no theories of tap-dancing then – indeed, there probably aren't really any now. But even if there is a theory of tap-dancing now, it was not something that Robinson and Bubbles had access to and, therefore, it could not be attributed to them given Danto's own constraints on interpretation.
Of course, there were existing theories of dance, but we have no reason to think that Robinson or Bubbles subscribed to them; indeed, we may have some reason to think that they would not have subscribed to them, if they knew about them. And the same might be said about their relation to existing theories of art.
At this point, Danto may wish to relax his emphasis on theory. He may claim that all that is required by his philosophy of art is that the artworks in question be constituted against a background of knowledge of the history of art. This certainly applies to the tap-dancing of Robinson and Bubbles who undoubtedly knew who their predecessors and teachers were, and who had a sense of the history of their medium. Understanding the historicity requirement in Danto's philosophy of art in this way allows it to cover a great deal more territory than does the emphasis on theory and, in this broadened sense, the historicity requirement may indeed be a plausible necessary condition for art. However, stated in Danto's preferred idiom – that is, in terms of historically situated theories – the historicity requirement is inadmissible.
So far we have explored the ways in which Danto's theory is too exclusive. Are all the conditions, considered in tandem, too inclusive?
One counterexample that comes to mind is a racist tirade. It has a subject – some ethnic group – about which a is projected, which is revelatory of the speaker's rather sordid way of seeing and being-in the world. Its very crudity shows the thuggish style of the man. It is conceivable that his rant is elliptical; that it contains metaphors and even a central organizing metaphor; that it invites listeners to fill in its rhetorical questions for themselves; indeed, that it leaves its main point to be discovered through the low-level interpretive activity of the audience. Moreover, the polemic is made possible by racialist theories of a certain historical vintage.
One way of shortcircuiting this kind of counterexample would be to say that, though the tirade is made possible by historically situated theories, they are not the right kind of theories. They are not art theories. This seems the correct move to make as well as one that corresponds to Danto's intentions. However, it does point to another area of potential circularity in Danto philosophy of art. Namely, how are we to identify art theories?
Danto cannot say that they are the theories that enable us to enfranchise artworks. For to mobilize that conception would require a way of identifying artworks which is independent of any reliance on the notion of art theory. But unfortunately, Danto has given us no other way to identify art theories. Moreover, similar potential problems of circularity would arise were an attempt made to block the audience's interpretation of the point of the racist tirade on the grounds that they are not making art interpretations. For how are art interpretations to be defined without essential reference to artworks?
However, even if we suppose that Danto will be able to negotiate these potential problems of circularity, the threat of over-inclusiveness still threatens his theory. For imagine that our counterexample is not a racist tirade, but an artistic manifesto by an artist on behalf of a movement which manifesto bespeaks the theory of art that is espoused by the artworks the movement produces. Such manifestos may range from outrageous cases like Tzara's “Unpretentious Proclamation”35 to Joseph Kosuth's more soberly reasoned “Art After Philosophy, I and II.”36
Like the racist tirade, these manifestos seem to meet all of Danto's conditions. And, unlike the racist tirade, they also may be said to depend upon a background of art theories and a knowledge of the history of art. But some artistic manifestos are not art. Even if one is willing to bite the bullet in the case of Tzara, the Kosuth example seems less palatable. But why?
Danto's theory seems to provide no way in which to differentiate artworks proper from rhetorically elliptical, metaphorical, personal art manifestos that enunciate a theory of art which theory is also precisely the same one that concerns the artworks the manifesto advocates, that is, the manifestos promote exactly the same view of art that the pertinent artworks have. Such manifestos may require interpretation, perhaps even art interpretations. Nevertheless, it seems fair to presuppose that, for example, Kosuth's “Art after Philosophy” is not art. The question is whether Danto's theory of art has the conceptual resources to deny it the status of an artwork?37
It is the nature of essays in this genre that one pays honor to one's subject by criticizing him. In this essay, I have raised what I think are deep problems with Danto's attempt to defend his philosophy art by means of his philosophy of art history. I have also suggested problems with each of the major components of Danto's philosophy of art as well as with the package as a whole. Whether these problems are minor or insurmountable remains to be seen. However, amidst all this criticism, I should remind the reader that I have agreed that Danto's emphasis on the dependence of the work of art on a historical background or context is an authentic insight. Though I am wont to carp about a narrow construal of this background in terms of art theory, the broader interpretation, which encompasses a requisite knowledge of art history, is compelling. Admittedly, identifying artworks with respect to an artist's background knowledge of the history of art raises the specter of circularity, but I am not sure that this is an insuperable difficulty.38
Arthur Danto's emphasis on the necessity of an appreciation of art history for the philosophy of art is one of the major achievements of philosophical aesthetics in the second half of the twentieth century. It has reoriented the philosophy of art in exciting new directions. It has already profoundly influenced several generations of aestheticians. I count myself fortunate to have been among them.
Notes
1. Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, MA, 1981).
2. Such as: Arthur C. Danto, “The Artworld,” Journal of Philosophy, 61, 1964, 571–84; “Artworks and Real Things,” Theoria, 39, 1973, 1–17; “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 33, 1974, 139–48.
3. This is a position popularized by Morris Weitz in his “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 15, 1956, 27–35.
4. Transfiguration, p. 44.
5. Ibid., ch. 6.
6. Ibid., ch. 7.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 172.
9. Ibid., ch. 7.
10. Arthur C. Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (New York, 1990), p. 211.
11. Transfiguration, pp. 197–8.
12. See ibid., p. 207; and Arthur C. Danto, “Moving Pictures,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Winter, 1979, 20–1.
13. See, for example, Francis Sparshott, The Theory of the Arts (Princeton, NJ, 1982), pp. 85–8.
14. Transfiguration, p. 33.
15. Ibid., p. 130.
16. Ibid., p. 135.
17. Here I have in mind Danto's article “The Artworld,” which was published in 1964.
18. Weitz, “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics.”
19. Danto's philosophy of art history is developed in: “The End of Art,” and “Art, Evolution and the Consciousness of History,” in Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York, 1986); “Approaching the End of Art,” in Arthur C. Danto, The State of the Art (New York, 1987); “Bad Aesthetic Times,” and “Narratives of the End of Art,” in Arthur C. Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (New York, 1990); and “Learning to Live with Pluralism,” in Arthur C. Danto, Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective (New York, 1992).
20. Danto, “Art, Evolution and the Consciousness of History,” in Philosophical Disenfranchisement, p. 209.
21. Philosophical Disenfranchisement, p. 88.
22. For a fuller account of Danto's philosophy of art history, see Noël Carroll, review essay of Danto's recent books on art, in History and Theory, 29(1), 1990, 111–24.
23. Note that the argument as stated above is more limited in scope than Danto presumes. First of all, it only seems relevant to visual art such as painting. It would not show that literature has reached the same impasse as visual art, though putatively Danto's philosophy of art is meant to track literature. But, furthermore, it is not clear that the argument even applies generally to the fine arts. There are artists and art movements that do not traffic solely in the medium of manifest properties. Joseph Kossuth and Arakawa are examples of the former. Conceptual art and language art are examples of the latter.
24. One possible line of criticism of Danto's philosophy of art history that I do not explore in this essay concerns the question of the historical adequacy of Danto's narrative of art history. I do not deny that there may be deep problems here, but I leave it to the art historians to find them.
25. For my defense of this position, see Noël Carroll, “Contemporary Avant-Garde Art and the Problem of Theory,” in The Adventures of the Avant-Garde: From Dandyism to Postmodernism, ed. Pellegrino D'Acierno and Barbara Lekatsas (Westport, CN, 1991).
26. Another objection to Danto's philosophy of art history is that it contradicts his own analytical philosophy of history. According to Danto, genuine historical enquiry involves characterizing the significance of events and states of affairs from the past in the light of events that lay in the future of the said events which are nevertheless in the past of the historian. That is, a historian today discloses the significance of the Treaty of Versailles by connecting it to the rise of Nazism, an event in the future of Treaty of Versailles, but in the past of today's historian. This is the basic structure of historical narration and knowledge. But grand philosophies of history of the Hegelian or substantive or speculative variety fail to respect this structure. For they aspire to tell the whole story of history, including that of the future events about which the speculative philosopher has no genuine knowledge. They, for example, attempt to chart the significance of the past in the light of the end of history. But such philosophers really have no knowledge of endtimes that could only be identified from a vantage point in the distant future. Such philosophers presume knowledge they have not got of the future in order to narrate events about the past and the present. Their philosophies of history are, therefore, spurious historical narratives and ersatz historical knowledge. But if this is Danto's view of the substantive philosophy of history, how can his own substantive philosophy of art history be salvaged? It contradicts his own strictures on what constitutes a genuine historical narrative. See Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge (New York, 1985), pp. 8–9, 342–63.
27. Danto, Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 229–30.
28. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford, 1982), p. 72.
29. For an example, one might turn to the Shipibo Indian “beer barrel” from the upper reaches of the Amazon River which is illustrated in William Justema, Pattern: A Historical Panorama (Boston, 1976), p. 128.
30. Of Concerto Barocco, George Balanchine writes:
The only preparation possible for this ballet is a knowledge of its music, for Concerto Barocco has no “subject matter” beyond the score to which it is danced and the particular dancers who execute it. Set to Bach's Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, the ballet tries to interest the audience only by its dancing, its treatment of the music, just as Baroque art and architecture interested people not because of their subjects but because of the decorative treatment that embellished those subjects. (Balanchine's New Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, ed. Francis Mason, New York, 1968, p. 93)
31. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1968), pp. 52–61.
32. For criticisms of Goodman's theory of exemplification, see Monroe Beardsley, “Semiotic Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 9(3), 1975, 5–26.
33. Transfiguration, p. 3.
34. The distinction between paranoid expressions and expressions of paranoia derives from Alan Tormey, The Concept of Expression (Princeton, NJ, 1971), p. 107.
35. Tristan Tzara, “Unpretentious Proclamation,” in Seven Dada Manifestos (London, 1977), pp. 15–18.
36. Joseph Kosuth, “Art after Philosophy, I and II,” in Idea Art, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York, 1973), pp. 70–101.
37. That Danto's philosophy of art may not have the conceptual resources to differentiate manifestos from artworks is perhaps suggested by Danto's own essay “The Last Work of Art: Artworks and Real Things,” reprinted in Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, ed. G. Dickie and R. Sclafani (London, 1989), p. 561. For in that essay, Danto seems tempted to consider his own essay to be an artwork.
38. I try to propose one way of avoiding this problem in Noël Carroll, “Identifying Art,” in Institutions of Art: Reconsiderations of George Dickie's Philosophy, ed. Robert Yanal (University Park, PA, 1993); and Noel Carroll, “Historical Narratives and the Philosophy of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52(3), 1993, 313–26.