After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History

by Arthur C. Danto, Lydia Goehr (Foreword)

Over a decade ago, Arthur Danto announced that art ended in the sixties. Ever since this declaration, he has been at the forefront of a radical critique of the nature of art in our time. After the End of Art presents Danto's first full-scale reformulation of his original insight, showing how, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art has deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vasari helped define for it in the Renaissance. Moreover, he leads the way to a new type of criticism that can help us understand art in a posthistorical age where, for example, an artist can produce a work in the style of Rembrandt to create a visual pun, and where traditional theories cannot explain the difference between Andy Warhol's Brillo Box and the product found in the grocery store. Here we are engaged in a series of insightful and entertaining conversations on the most relevant aesthetic and philosophical issues of art, conducted by an especially acute observer of the art scene today.



Originally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts, these writings cover art history, pop art, people's art, the future role of museums, and the critical contributions of Clement Greenberg--who helped make sense of modernism for viewers over two generations ago through an aesthetics-based criticism. Tracing art history from a mimetic tradition (the idea that art was a progressively more adequate representation of reality) through the modern era of manifestos (when art was defined by the artist's philosophy), Danto shows that it wasn't until the invention of Pop art that the historical understanding of the means and ends of art was nullified. Even modernist art, which tried to break with the past by questioning the ways of producing art, hinged on a narrative.

Traditional notions of aesthetics can no longer apply to contemporary art, argues Danto. Instead he focuses on a philosophy of art criticism that can deal with perhaps the most perplexing feature of contemporary art: that everything is possible.

Genres: Art, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Art History, History, Essays

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Arthur C. Danto was Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and art critic for The Nation. He was the author of numerous books, including Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life, After the End of Art, and Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective.

Reviews

[David Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophers tend to make the worst art theorist and artists tend to make terrible philosophers (or at least when they try to put it into language). Danto on the other hand has actually read art theory and criticism, so does actually know what he is talking about.



This book had been sitting on my shelf for quite awhile, as I had grown sick of art theory and especially art/aesthetics philosophy. After being encouraged to read this however, I have taken a great interest in Danto’s work on art and philosophy (even if he is influenced by Hegel!) and do wish I had read this while at University, as I tend to agree with the majority of it. Danto’s book would have given me more confidence to stand my ground against art tutors (as they can be quite mean at Goldsmiths!), as well as validating my own theory of each new art medium (film, video, installation, computer, internet) tending to imitate the Modernist doctrine, before being institutional accepted (ie by the Museums), as in the tedious art video’s in the 80s and 90s discarding narrative or anything cinematic for themes and scenario on time, space and light, etc. All in the name to be taken seriously!



This book will also answer most people’s queries on why art is like it is, why it has any value and why it will never return to its old values, or at least not in its former guise of painting landscapes and pretty flowers.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know about art, but I know when it’s dead. That’s not exactly what painter turned philosopher turned art critic Arthur C. Danto means in AFTER THE END OF ART: CONTEMPORARY ART AND THE PALE OF HISTORY. Art isn’t dead, but the historic narrative that we know of as art, what progressed over the last six hundred years or more, has come to an end.

What’s next, according to Danto, is a philosophic art, more about ideas than materials. Just as the art before art, when it served a religious purpose, wasn’t art because it was defined as a means of faith. The art narrative that followed the sacred one ended, in Danto’s opinion, with the 1964 exhibition of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. Art was no longer visual in the sense that a trained eye could determine its value. There was no difference between Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and the boxes of Brillo lining the supermarket shelf. Art became about the question what is art? Even Duchamp, whose Fountain, a urinal signed and mounted on a museum wall, and considered a precursor to art as idea, is really more about aesthetics.

The Pop artists and those that followed were untethered from the history of art and therefore no longer had to abide by the rules. Maybe that’s why some have such a hard time understanding contemporary art. It’s often cerebral or just chaotic, a movement without a center, coming at you from every direction and just as you think you’ve got a bead on it, another piece flies by from a different angle. It’s art, yes, but it’s not fully processed by the senses, as art in the past had been.

Danto isn’t dismissive. He’s a fan of Warhol, and he highlights some artists who successfully make art after the end of art. A lot of them are making interesting work. Maybe I’m a traditionalist or conservative or just old-fashioned but I’m suspect of philosophy and its playground of the mind. While I can appreciate much contemporary art, it’s always the material-based works that rely less on ideas than lines that I follow. Ideas are great, but are they art? I don’t know. Ideas come and they go, but mostly they hide behind something, even words, and feel removed and distant.

I’m not against ideas, but I think of art as more, as creative expression beyond ideas. Art is failure, while ideas tend to serve a purpose or an agenda. Not always, but more often than not. I prefer an expression beyond the artist’s reach than ends in defeat, not an idea that is obscured by its execution. Who is that speaking to? Museums, mostly, and collectors, galleries, the so-called “blue-chip” artists.

Art has been a marketplace for a long time, but now ideas are making that market even more exclusive. I’m not rejecting contemporary art. That would be impossible. It’s too eclectic. There’s something for everyone. Perhaps it’s best to give up narratives, which like history are just a construct that has little to do with reality.

The end of art is only just a little over 50 years old. We’re likely in a transitional period or we’ve landed somewhere else as yet undiscovered. Who knows, until the insightful mind of a future Danto comes to map it, because art appears closer in the rearview mirror.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't say I "liked it," but it merits 3 stars because the ideas (though dated) are relevant for artists (as a record of what kind of muck we've since climbed out of). I continue to have difficulty with this sort of application of theory because it lends itself so easily to the purposes of those who spout fundamentalist dogma... what with the Puritanical fear of "pleasure" and a long list of dos and don'ts for artists. I saw so many artists stifled because they came to art through theory (rather than applying theory to art), which turned me off all theory for a time. That, and this sort of thinking was paralyzing my own art practice.

[Andrew]

As someone born long after Danto's "end of art," it's hard for me to think of this as anything other than common sense -- the big "project" of art history, first in its attempts to distill reality, and then in its attempts to explore the limits of the form (which probably reached its apotheosis with Fluxus et al in the '60s). Fortunately, Danto can actually write a lucid argument, unlike many other writers on aesthetics, postmodernity, and especially the aesthetics of postmodernity, and he's a charming enough tour guide in the world of art after the end of a big, Clement Greenberg-style goal.

[Ruthie Akuchie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t understand how anyone can make it though this book. It’s garbage. I can’t read the context of what Danto is trying to say because of all his pretentious vocabulary. He’s extremely long winded and never gets to the point. He wants to impress us with big words and fancy writing. But it just comes across as narcissistic douche bagery. All the while reading this book I just want to say to Danto, “what do you want to say! What do you want to say! Just say it, not spray it” so annoying.

[JabJo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was like having an enjoyable late night coffee with a friend, back-and-forthing about art till the wee hours. Mind you, a friend with a pretty elevated philosophical vocabulary; but still, it didn’t feel didactic, dogmatic, or even argumentative. The author offers his opinions and explains his reasoning, the idea being that it’s not really art that’s dead, but that there’s been a big change in how we see and what we define as art. Context and the historical/cultural point of view make all the difference. A good example would be the chapter on ‘monochrome’ art: various artists who have painted a square canvas in one solid colour--and there have been quite a few over different periods in art. But because they’ve done it for very different reasons, you can’t define the square monochromes as one single style, any more than a skinny-man Giacometti sculpture isn’t in the same category as a skinny-man tribal African sculpture.

The first couple of chapters are a bit of a slog and often a bit repetitious—he explains his idea, then keeps rephrasing it (Ok, I got it the first time!) and I didn’t know if I’d keep on, but he warms up as he goes, illustrating his ideas with examples and interesting personal speculations. It always felt as though he would be interested to hear other people's ideas. In the end, I really did feel as if I’d had a good conversation with an art-loving friend.

[Maximus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Epitome of modern academia... too much classification and long-winded 'intellectual' bloviation, not enough critical, artistic insight.

Also virtually every hypothesis is either wrong, or treated in the wrong light.

[Gastjäle · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I read about Hegel's brilliant though cruelly rigid aesthetic philosophy, I was convinced that art needs to be defined somehow - otherwise it would be an empty concept for lazy thinkers. But now that I've read this fabulous work by Danto, I hesitate in my thoughts. Obviously, I still think that there's no use of a concept that's not exclusive, yet there are other things to be taken into consideration here: what is to be excluded and based on which criteria?

Like other works on aesthetics (I think the term applies in this case as well, even though Danto preferred the term "art criticism" in its stead), After the End of Art is ultimately based on the author's feeling of what is art. What's striking about Danto is that the work is not based on the feeling of what art is not. In contradistinction to, for instance, Hegel's sweeping systematicism, Ruskin's poetry and Bell's somewhat fanatic manifestos, Danto appears as a thoughtful, critical and considerate philosopher/art critic, who manages to temper his emotional appreciation of art with careful analysis. And like a post-modern philosopher, he no longer sees that he is working alone, but rather he's but part of the great canon of the history of thinking, and he is not loth to have recourse to other's help and ideas. It is an unqualified pleasure to read something that feels so genuinely open-minded yet calculating - a rara avis in sooth!

But the great problem here is that Danto doesn't provide any satisfactory definition for art; he merely wants to enfranchise it and let it thrive as multiform as possible. By proclaiming the end of master narratives and manifestos in art and thus letting it branch out where it list, he definitely appears more of an appreciator of art than the likes of Bell, but at the same time I see another problem incoming: another problem of discernment. That is: how to differentiate between a dishonest parody and a bona fide work of art? Danto himself would probably have recourse to art criticism, which would in turn sleuth into the life of the artist in question and bring the required information to light, but in this there are at least two difficulties: 1) what is the kind of information that is required in order to pronounce something art and 2) even the fact that the eye of the most refined dilettante cannot discern the genuineness of an artwork is bound to diminish the importance/credibility of art in the eyes of the public. Contemporary art becomes a joke, it becomes something so obviously ludicrous that it either gives rise to wry smiles of amusement (a mere superficial reaction) or incredulous snorts of derision - derision that hasn't got one ounce of profundity in it; it is simply disillusionment mixed with boredom.

The public perspective crept into my review quite insidiously, but it was also treated at length in Danto's book. It was pointed out that, following the ideas of Warhol, anyone could be an artist and anything could be art - with the emphasis on the modal auxiliary verb. I think there's a slight discrepancy between Danto's idea of enfranchisement and his espousing of art criticism as the main means to understand contemporary art: the moment the underlying ideas of such a theory on art are revealed, the less an interesting thing it becomes to figure out the extra-perceptual matters of artworks - in fact, it becomes merely the pastime of the dilettantes. In addition, I think that underscoring the philosophical dimensions of contemporary art (i.e. it concentrating on commenting on what art is) seems to treat the topic as an endless well of fascination instead of a philosophical problem to be solved - many is the time when I've heard gallery-goers smile and go: "Oh yeah, that could be art too! Very interesting." That's simply novelty, it has nothing to do with philosophical inquiry.

Now, I really like the idea that art is much more variegated than it was back in the age of narratives. But I abhor the idea of art becoming a hazy commentary on itself, or something that actually insists on fixing the experiencer's attention to extra-artistic things instead of the work in question. That kind of setting, in my opinion, inevitably leads to an endless series of

ARTIST: "What ho! Here's some art, as well!"
CRITICS: "Righto!"
PUBLIC: "Righto!"
ARTIST: "Righto!",

with plenty of works that seek to address different political issues, without figuring out whether such things could also be done in print instead.

But! plenty of what Danto points out here is endlessly fascinating and inspiring. Though I dislike the intimation that art criticism would be a way to figure out whether something is art or not (in fact, it's preposterous and, like the institutional theory on art seems to do, merely hedges the actual definition of art), the way he laid out the purpose of art criticism is eye-opening: the critics can point out things which the eye cannot see, in addition to the things an inexperienced peeper probably cannot zoom in on. If any of this information manages to personally deepen my understanding of a work of art, I'll gladly accept it. Before reading this work, I kind of thought art criticism a nice extra at best, an unholy intrusion on my perceptive abilities at worst, but now I'm glad to accept, that there are some extra-perceptual dimension to art that are very valuable. After all, like Danto often points out, there is no art without history and thus the historical context which has the use of the artistic expression, not simply the manner that can be employed post facto.

The idea of the Artworld is something I'm willing to underwrite without hesitation. Works of art are always connected to each other, and modify each other in turn. This seems like a truism in terms of chronological perspective, but what really struck me was the fact that newer works also, legitimately, affect the older. I wasn't quite sure how I should react when reading older works and thinking in terms of the new ones; I felt like it was wrong - yet this ingenious idea of the Artworld actually gave me courage to open the gates and let the modern spirit in, to see what kind of havoc/pleasure it yields. Another good point of the Artworld is that each work of art does not modify the others in a fixed manner: classics, for example, do so with more power than fresh works. This, of course, leads to another set of questions, but in principle is rings true to me. Ultimately, the fineness of the idea comes from the vertiginous realisation of the interconnectedness of human artistry - with no permission asked from the artist. (The whole concept has a whiff of Hegelian idealism in it, but I'm glad to accept it as a poetic idea, not as an idea proper.)

Another great point was how Danto pointed out the importance of the place and theme of exhibition. It truly does affect the way anything is viewed or experienced. The theme of the exhibition, the concert setlist, the bands in the bill... they all intimate how the organisers want you to think of certain works of art or at least how they think about them. This might not be a grand revelation for many, but I feel I've always left that avenue of discovery untrodden.

***

So, in the end, this book was an eye-opener. In a more profound way than I could express in a GR review at the moment - or ever. It was intellectually frustrating and awe-inspiring at the same time, and it raised some essential points in aesthetics like no other word has done in my personal experience. And not least of all, it offered countless anecdotes and examples about art (especially contemporary art), which were a thrill to read.

You got my fiver in a flash, D!

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

前現代：再現現實

透過繪畫真實呈現眼睛所見的一切，以模仿現實為主要目標。

現代：攝影術的發明與自我意識覺醒

攝影術的出現，使單純再現現實的繪畫逐漸失去優勢，藝術轉向新的方向。強調「自我意識」，藝術開始探索媒材、形式與創作語言。

藝術評論家格林伯格認為，現代藝術應專注於自身的媒材特質，例如強調繪畫的「平面性」，而非敘事或象徵意義。他主張排除不符合此標準的藝術風格，使現代藝術趨於抽象與形式主義，但也因此過於狹隘，忽略了其他可能性。

當代：藝術的多元與概念化

現代主義到最後越來越純粹性，反之當代藝術則拉回現實世界、模糊藝術與日常生活的界線，如安迪·沃荷的《布里洛盒子》。當代藝術不再拘泥於風格或傳統與政治、女性主義、全球化、環境等社會議題結合。亞瑟·丹托指出，當代藝術可以引用過去的藝術形式，但不必承襲其原始精神。

此外，當代藝術不僅重視作品本身，更強調其背後的概念與脈絡，藝術的價值在於如何啟發觀者對世界的理解與反思。


Pre-Modern: Representation of Reality

Through painting, artists aim to faithfully present everything seen by the eye, with the primary goal of imitating reality.

Modern: The Invention of Photography and the Awakening of Self-Awareness

The emergence of photography gradually diminished the advantage of painting as a mere representation of reality, prompting art to shift in new directions. Emphasizing "self-awareness," modern art began to explore materials, forms, and creative language.

Art critic Clement Greenberg argued that modern art should focus on the characteristics of its own medium, such as emphasizing the "flatness" of painting rather than narrative or symbolic meaning. He advocated for the exclusion of art styles that did not conform to this standard, leading modern art toward abstraction and formalism. However, this approach was also overly narrow, overlooking other possibilities.

Contemporary: Diversity and Conceptualization in Art

While modernism ultimately pursued increasing purity, contemporary art instead reconnects with the real world, blurring the boundaries between art and everyday life—such as Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes. Contemporary art no longer adheres strictly to specific styles or traditions but engages with social issues like politics, feminism, globalization, and the environment. Arthur Danto pointed out that contemporary art can reference past artistic forms without inheriting their original spirit.

Moreover, contemporary art values not only the work itself but also the concepts and context behind it. The significance of art lies in how it inspires viewers to understand and reflect on the world.


前近代：現実の再現

絵画を通じて、目に見えるものをありのままに表現し、現実を模倣することを主要な目的とする。

近代：写真術の発明と自己意識の覚醒

写真術の登場により、単なる現実の再現としての絵画の優位性は次第に失われ、美術は新たな方向へと進んだ。「自己意識」を強調し、芸術は素材、形式、創作言語を探求し始めた。

美術評論家クレメント・グリーンバーグは、近代美術は自身のメディウムの特性、例えば絵画の「平面性」を重視すべきであり、物語性や象徴性を排除すべきだと主張した。彼の考えにより、近代美術は抽象的かつフォーマリズム（形式主義）的な傾向を強めたが、その一方で、この見解はあまりにも狭義であり、他の可能性を無視してしまった。

現代：芸術の多様性と概念化

モダニズムが純粋性を極める方向へと向かったのに対し、現代美術は再び現実世界とのつながりを重視し、芸術と日常生活の境界を曖昧にした。例えば、アンディ・ウォーホルの《ブリロ・ボックス》のような作品がある。現代美術は特定のスタイルや伝統にこだわらず、政治、フェミニズム、グローバリゼーション、環境問題など、社会的なテーマと結びついている。アーサー・ダントは、現代美術は過去の芸術形式を引用できるが、その元の精神を継承する必要はないと指摘した。

さらに、現代美術では作品そのものだけでなく、その背後にある概念や文脈が重視される。芸術の価値は、観る者に世界への理解や考察を促すことにある。

[Kristján Hannesson]

Danto returns to the question that started the business of art history in the first place: now what? Vasari's Lives of the Artists is usually regarded as the starting point of art history as a discipline, one that attempts to organize art as a kind of a reasoned progress. This first humongous essay on the topic is an attempt to understand where art can go after the death of Michelangelo, who, in the opinion of Vasari, perfected what the Renaissance was aiming for. Danto responds to a similar sense in the 20th century that art history has exhausted itself (see for example the famous essay by Hans Belting's "The end of the history of art?"), but instead of despairing, he revels in the playfulness that is enabled when artists stop obsessing over history. Art and art history are not the same thing, and they do not owe one another anything.
Excellent book.

[Pal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este ensayo traza líneas y análisis muy interesantes sobre las diferencias entre el arte en la época clásica (Entendido como aquel que va desde 1400 hasta las vanguardias) el arte moderno y el arte contemporáneo.

El punto fuerte de este análisis pasa por la propuesta de que el arte contemporáneo se caracteriza por situarse tras el fin del arte, en una época post histórica, en el sentido de que, en los años 60, muere el relato del arte que imperaba hasta entonces, y pasamos a un periodo en el que -todo- puede ser artístico: el criterio de demarcación para el arte se vuelve difuso, y esto antes que actuar en detrimiento del arte, abre un nuevo abanico de posibilidades que merece la pena explorar filosóficamente.

[Ostap · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected it to be something in a vein of contemporary French philosophy, but was pleasantly surprised. It is nothing like (as far as I can say) Foucault, Derrida or Baudrillard. Danto isn't trying to invent concepts with new names, he's trying to explain what has obviously happened to art using common sense, without conservative or progressive bias. Some explanations are deep and insightful, others ― not as much, but I've found here several very useful ideas. I would give the book 5 stars if it weren't so verbose and repetitive. Danto, as it often happens to non-fiction writers, keeps saying the same things over and over again, often in the exactly same words. If the book had 120 pages instead of 280, it would be much better.

[Alberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro que se intuye importante, que presenta una tesis fuerte y muy sugerente pero que posee un desarrollo irregular sustentado en escasos ejemplos.

[Jason Friedlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book about the state of contemporary art— that so many of its points written 30 years ago (with seeds starting as far back as over 50) still resonate strongly today kind of proves its point. Danto argues that art after pop art exists “outside the pale of history,” not anymore bound to distinct styles and periods of historical art and instead floats more freely without directional anchor. Art today has left the semi-linear path of historical development (as understood as progressive mimesis) that has long defined it and can only meaningfully engage with its history through comedy, irony, and wit. Art still has meaning relative to the context of its creation but is not anymore meaningful as part of art history as such. Aesthetics alone do not anymore define our understanding of art. I find all of this really interesting to consider outside of the art world too, such as in music or film, where it seems like moving towards historic-aesthetic meaninglessness has already been reached as well, especially given how much of what we today praise as “new” are really just genre revivals or exercises in genre evocation like neo-classisism or neo-expressionism were in the art world. What is taken as making a good film or song today (outside the stuffy halls of academia) is often unrelated to its aesthetic concerns. A caveat to Danto’s point of view is that it’s mostly talking about how art has been narrativized by the Western world, and so a lot of this analysis may not cleanly apply to scenes or other frameworks of considering art history elsewhere. But it’s also hard to imagine an art scene or framework somewhere else that has ignored the importance of aesthetics— but I guess it’s possible.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I recall, a great book despite my predilection to not really give a crap about some deep, brooding, probing interrogation about a freakin' Rothko painting or, God forbid, yet another Calder sculpture. Perhaps my disinterest is due to my status as redneck...or perhaps, as Danto's writing speculates, it's because of the destruction of some type of "master narrative" that essentially provides(ed) certain, unnamed boundaries within which to evaluate "art". Interestingly, he eschews a common formula of Warhol+Brillo Boxes = end of art tradition (nor even Duchamp's urinal), by personally choosing some Lichenstein comic strip-cum-painting published in a mid-fifties art journal. Whatever the case, he makes a compelling "narrative" for how art is now basically in a vacuum, only occasionally grounded by whatever socio-politico statement it may wish to proffer or, more often, a work simply relies on the Clement Greenburg criticized "far-out" aspect. My enthusiasm likely rests with the fact that most art, say, post-cubism or post-mid-Mondrian has usually failed to elicit in me anything beyond museum fatigue, and here, Danto constructs an argument that appeared to parallel and/or support my nausea with all of this flag-in-the-toilet and paper-mached-sidewalk-cow jazz. But, then again, I'm just a redneck...

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is where Danto discusses his version of Hegel's "end of art" thesis. He first enunciated the thesis in a 1984 essay called "The End of Art", and developed it more recently in this work. To explain this thesis it may help first to say what Danto does not mean by it. He is not claiming that no-one is making art anymore; nor is he claiming that no good art is being made any more. But he thinks that a certain history of western art has come to an end, in about the way that Hegel suggested it would. He summarizes that history as follows:

"...the master narrative of the history of art--in the West but by the end not in the West alone--is that there is an era of imitation, followed by an era of ideology, followed by our post-historical era in which, with qualification, anything goes.
. . .In our narrative, at first only mimesis [imitation] was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became apparent that there were no stylistic or philosophical constraints. There is no special way works of art have to be. And that is the present and, I should say, the final moment in the master narrative. It is the end of the story" (AEA p.47).

[E. C. Koch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first ran into Danto when writing my thesis on post-modern film and have returned to him as a supplement to Gaddis' JR and The Recogniitons in hopes of finding answers to some of the questions Gaddis raises about art in those novels. And that search has been both successful and not. Danto's grand concept here is that art (he means paintings mostly) follows an historical narrative which is carried along by culture, and that, with the advent of Warhol, art reached the end of that narrative. So we're now (now being 1995) in what he calls the post-historical art period (what I would have called post-modernism) but that all that's left to arise is the next grand narrative. What constitutes art is a far trickier nut to crack (and is the crux on my current line of questioning about art which got me here in the first place), and the answer Danto provides is that it depends on context and the intentions of the artist (with a lot of clarification in between). Overall, I thought this was insightful and illuminating (if the slightest bit dated, and even if he very infrequently mentioned lit. or film) and makes a great follow-up to The Recognitions.

[Stefani B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Danto was insightful and in many cases quite humorous which made the book far from boring but rather undeniably enjoyable.

Favorite quote: “I do not think it possible to convey the moral energy that went into this division between abstraction and realism, from both sides, in those years. It had an almost theological intensity, and in another stage of civilization there would certainly have been burnings at stake.”

[Melek]

DNF at somewhere around page 200.

The use of language makes the book hard to understand and boring and the information in it basically useless, because trying to read it makes you all sleepy. I might finish it some other day.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changed entirely how I think about art. It started me thinking for myself.

[Rita do Monte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe I put too many expectations on that book. Maybe it's a little overrated, and Danto wasted too much time with Greenberg. But still, it is a good book.

[Frederic De meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Het einde van de kunst’, het werd wel al meer aangekondigd doorheen de kunstgeschiedenis, in verschillende vormen en om verschillende redenen. Maar zelden werd deze uitspraak zo nauwgezet onderbouwd en geïllustreerd als in het werk van de tien jaar geleden overleden schrijver Arthur C. Danto. Het helpt dat hij oorspronkelijk filosoof was voordat hij zijn aandacht vestigde op kunst, en zich ontpopte tot fulltime kunstcriticus.

De uitspraak is klinkt dramatisch, maar na het lezen van zijn reeks essays is het beeld wat genuanceerder. Dat kunst dood zou zijn, betekent namelijk niet dat er geen kunst meer gemaakt wordt of kan worden. Wat wordt bedoeld is dat de grote narratieve structuur van de kunstgeschiedenis tot een eind is gekomen, “What came to an end is the narrative but not the subject of the narrative,” schrijft Danto.

Het kantelmoment, wanneer hij tot dit inzicht kwam, was bij het zien van Warhols ‘Brillo Boxes’ in 1964. De zeepdozen zetten hem aan het denken: wanneer zowat alles kunst kan zijn, en kunst alle vormen kan aannemen, wat betekent kunst dan nog precies? Voor alle duidelijkheid velde hij geen waarde-oordeel, de Brillo-box vormt voor hem in menig opzicht een hoogtepunt, zij het wel een dit een fundamentele breuk betekende met het verleden.

In zijn argumentatie duikt Danto de ‘Grote kunstgeschiedenis’ in. Grofweg: tot het modernisme werd kunst gedomineerd door de drang naar imitatie, de mimesis. Het modernisme bracht daar een eind aan door kunst als een ideologisch instrument te zien. De opeenvolgende kunststromingen werden steevast van manifesten voorzien die hun beweging zagen als de finale staat van de historische (maatschappelijke) evolutie die zich materialiseerde in hun kunst.

In 1964 kwam ook aan het modernisme een einde. Wat in de plaats kwam is een diffuus begrip: “Artists, liberated from the burden of history, were free to make whatever art they want in whatever way they want, for whatever purpose, or with no purpose at all.” Wat dit post-historische tijdperk kenmerkte was dat het geen kenmerken meer heeft, of in kunsttheoretische termen: geen dominerende stijl. Warhol verwoorde het treffend, wanneer hij stelde dat het onmogelijk is een waarde toe te kennen aan een werk, wanneer je de ene dag in een bepaalde stijl kan schilderen en de volgende dag in een ander, zonder de indruk te hebben iets te verliezen.

Danto legt een een relatie tussen deze drie bewegingen en de rol van de kunstcriticus. In het ‘mimesis-tijdperk’ werd deze rol bepaald door de waarheidsgetrouwheid van kunst te waarderen, wat hij de ‘Vasari-periode’ noemt, naar de Italiaanse schrijver die het leven en werk van de grote Renaissancekunstenaars beschreef. In het modernisme kwam het er voor de kunstcriticus op aan om de authenticiteit van kunstenaars te waarderen: in welke mate kwam hun kunst overeen met de ideologie, en draagden ze deze over? Dit tijdperk werd vogens Danto gedomineerd door de kunsthistoricus en schrijver Clement Greenberg, die in het abstract expressionisme van de jaren 60 het hoogtepunt zag van de evolutie in de kunst, en de betekenis van pop art volledig aan zich voorbij liet gaan.

Welke rol heeft de kunstcriticus nog in het ‘post-historisch’ tijdperk, waarin elke richting of elk gestructureerd naratief ontbreekt? Volgens Danto stelt zich sinds de komst van pop-art een nieuwe, wezenlijke vraag over wat kunst precies is: ‘If you wanted to find out what art was, you had to turn from experience to thought. You had, in brief, to turn to philosophy.’

De hedendaagse kunst, met haar gebrek aan gestructureerd narratief, stijl of bedoeling, waarin alles mogelijk is of lijkt, vormt een bevrijding voor de kunstenaar die niet meer in een keurslijf wordt geduwd en ook niet meer of afgemeten kenmerken kan worden afgerekend, maar het legt des te meer druk op de kunstcriticus, die in de chaos een antwoord moet zien te vinden op de filosofische vraag bij uitstek: wat betekent dit precies?

[Camila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok. El libro va de cómo el arte “termina” y del arte, que en realidad ya no sería arte porque esto ya terminó, que empieza cuando termina el arte. Se entendió? Personalmente creo que esta teoría es muy cierta, pero los términos usados son un tanto fatalistas, o no son los mas adecuados. Bien podría decirse que el relato del arte terminó, mas no el arte en sí. O que el arte cambio su forma de moverse dentro del discurso histórico, dejo de ser lineal para convertirse en espontáneo.

Pero volviendo a la teoría. Si, creo que esta teoría es muy cierta. El arte ya no puede entenderse como se entendía en la antigüedad según nos lo explicaba Vasari, a pesar que esa línea que llevaba el arte sirvió durante mucho tiempo, aún después de la muerte de Vasari, pero hubo algo que de repente rompió con esta historia lineal y consecuente del arte para volverse un cereal de Lucky Charms de diferentes formas y colores. Que fue lo que pasó?
Los impresionistas son ese parte aguas que desemboco en el plato de cereal. Comenzaron sacrificando la pintura mimética por la no mimética. La pincelada que antes se escondía se hizo obvia para que se viera que se hablaba de un pintura como tal, no una representación de la realidad, si no un objeto (un lienzo con capas de pintura sobre el) con una intensión.
Entonces viene el modernismo, que es identificado por este nuevo nivel de consciencia que adquieren los artistas, eso hace que el relato histórico pierda su continuidad. Ya no solamente copian si no que lo hacen intencionalmente, desde un punto de vista subjetivo y desde una intensión precisa.
Esta subjetividad hizo que cada artista o grupo de artistas tomara su propio rumbo; por otro lado, se buscaba dar un sentido a cada discurso artístico, y estamos hablando de un tiempo problemático en la historia del mundo, estos artistas habían vivido la guerra, si no en primera persona como un espectador, y esta experiencia afecta a cualquiera, aún mas a estos personajes cargados de sentimientos e ideas. Aquí es cuando aparecen las vanguardias, el expresionismo abstracto, que termino alrededor de 1962, el dada, que critica el punto de vista del mundo, el pop y su nueva felicidad espontánea, el cubismo que quiere abarcar todo, el futurismo con su grito de guerra, etc. Todas estas vanguardias tiene un punto de vista diferente del mundo, y todos estos artistas quieren expresarlo.
Ya van viendo los Lucky Charms?
Se rompieron todos los limites, en la época de los sesentas los artista llevaron cada estilo artístico a su limite, y estos limites fueron cediendo hasta el punto de seguir creyendo que lo que se hacia, seguía siendo arte. Entonces es cuando entra la filosofía en el arte. Lo visual dio paso a lo filosófico al grado de ya no ser necesario un objeto para ser arte, el mero concepto filosófico hace el arte posible. Es entonces cuando los artistas se liberan y pueden hacer lo que quieran, aquí comienza el todo se vale. Nace el neoexpresonismo, el performance, arte objeto, arte sin objeto también, landart, arte abyecto, arte porno, etc. etc. etc…

Si se quiere saber que es arte, uno no debe de buscar en la experiencia sensible si no en el pensamiento.
Y es aquí donde Danto dice que muere el arte.
Porque ya no hay una línea en la historia. Antes se podía pensar que se paso de la mera representación iconográfica a una representación mas real para después dar paso a la perspectiva, entonces inicia la ilustración y el hombre siente que es el centro del mundo y nace el Renacimiento y en la época de la Revolución Francesa los artistas empiezan a pintar la añoranza de otros tiempos, etc. etc.
A lo que voy es que con cada paso que el mundo daba, esto se veía reflejado en el arte, como quien dice, era consecuente, iban de la mano, y entonces se pierde esta idea lineal y es como si muriera el arte (según Danto). Por eso digo que si, si creo que hubo un cambio radical de cómo se veía y entendía el arte antes a ahora, pero lo que murió fue este relato, mas no el arte.
Según mi punto de vista, se accedió a un nuevo arte.

Y bueno el libro también habla del papel que toman los museos dentro de esta trágica muerte, de la política dentro del arte y de cómo hacer una crítica a las obras en la era después del fin del arte.

Me gusta la forma en la que esta escrito, es mas un dialogo con el autor que un ensayo filosófico, hace muy accesible la lectura a pesar de los términos e ideas filosóficas que se tratan dentro.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was read simultaneously with Irving Babbitt's "Rousseau and Romanticism", in which the author maintained a similar position to that of Danto, namely, that art and thought both collapsed as bankrupt human enterprises after Descartes. In this book Mr. Danto relates to his reader more as an academic editorialist rather than as a philosopher, and I am curious as to the contents of his other books, desiring to see if they are more philosophical in their approach; he does a lot of hand-holding in this book for the non-academic peruser of his pages, which were based on the A.W. Mellon series of lectures he was asked to give in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, I did get some clues as to the historical forces that make up the constricted position of art in the postmodern age, which used to be one of my favorite things to think through and philosophize about. After reading this book, my bottom down concluding opinion is that, if art no longer exists, if the working artist no longer a tenable occupation because of the breakdown of the ideological consciousness of the bicameral mind, this is because power has become decentralized in the current state of world affairs, as well as the fact that the status of art history has shifted from what was traditionally an archeology of the past into a machine-like apparatus for forecasting future probabilities due to the politics of money, entertainment and the philosophy of the self, which places importance on the present moment to such a degree that the fact that consciousness restricts itself to a fluctuating state is lost sight of. Danto frequently quotes from Heidegger, Nietzsche and Clement Greenberg in these pages; I found myself wishing he would allow his own voice, like that of an American Baudrillard, to rise to the surface and adumbrate his text with philosophical apostrophes of his own. Three stars.

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is officially a complementary sequel to Arthur Danto's book The Transfiguration of the Ordinary. If we accept these two works as a whole, in the first book of the series, we not only criticize the criticism that they are a movement that today's understanding of art is quite inadequate by bringing art and philosophy together, but also shows the way of a new art movement and philosophy in its form.

Especially in terms of pop art, social philosophy of art and history, there are very qualified evaluations. By addressing the art understanding and spaces of the changing world, our author actually touched on the most accurate point. Because I think that art is a rule in the absence of rules, places that are limited (and ruled) as art spaces should not be mere places of artistic activity and performance. When you isolate art in a certain part of life and living space, it will sometimes succumb, production will stop, and man will be lost. Art is actually life itself. We know how when man limits himself, he breaks out. Therefore, it is very, very important that the performing areas of art are the very living spaces of the people. At this point, Danto; In order for art not to succumb to time and industrialization and to continue on its way by giving birth to a new movement, it must go beyond the areas left to it.

At this point, it was quite nice that he wrote his work with a very philosophical approach.

[Stanimir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arthur Danto’s 'After the End of Art' is a postscript to a ghost. Art, once a grand historical narrative, now wanders in a conceptual afterlife, its every move no longer a step forward but a sideways shuffle in a boundless white cube. Danto, like a philosophical forensic scientist, examines the corpse of historical progression, only to find it strangely animated — decomposed yet prolific, theoretically undead.

This is not a lament but a liberation. If art is no longer a progressive unfolding of movements and styles, it is free to be anything. But with this freedom comes a kind of crisis: without history’s teleology, what guides us? The art world, Danto suggests, is now a playground of pluralism, where Warhol’s Brillo Box and Renaissance masters coexist without contradiction, bound only by the philosophy that enshrines them.

Yet, beneath his cool Hegelian gaze, one senses nostalgia — for an era when art mattered as a historical force, not just as an object of contemplation. After history, there is theory. After theory, perhaps, silence. Danto may have declared art’s historical arc complete, but his writing suggests another possibility: that we are still waiting for what comes after the end of art.

[Milan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Řečeno jest. Psaní o postmodernizmu je jako postmodernizmus sám - klubko nití, které zvenčí vypadá komplexne a heterogénně, ale když ho rozmotáte, je každa nit stejně dlouhá a říká to samé. V Dantově případě říká to samé o výtvarném umění: modernizmus je redukce na elementy, ergo je to konec, protože nic menší než elementy už není a dál se jít nedá. Dá se už jenom měnit perspektiva, a těch je hodně, takže po konci tu přece máme nějaké pokračování, jenom už není dostředivé, směřujúcí k jednomu bodu, ale odstředivé, je to mnohost, je to vše. Danto, ačkoli hojně cituje Hegla a opatrně našlapuje kolem otázky, co se vší tou svobodou, kterou mnohost implikuje, se do konstruktivnějších úvah nepouští, zato donekonečna básní o Warholových krabicích Brillo, z dnešního pohledu irelevantních. Pro začátečníka v oboru "co je to ten postmodernizmus?" by to šlo, překlad, byť těžkopádný a nemyslící, se také dá zkousnout. My ostatní pojďme jinam.

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got this for free from a library give away at work and actually enjoyed it, Danto is thinking very heavily about the ears of art and trying to situate the era of art he was writing in. The break between abstract expressionism and Pop art, his grievances about the definitions and art movements, and his concept of the end of art. This is a collection of lectures he gave after his famous writing on the end of art, so it is very much a reflection and furtherance of that core idea. Towards the end there is a great definition of how art tends to work in this era o the end, as an ellipses waiting for the viewer to kind of fill it in - as opposed to a pictorial window or pure abstraction. Anyway been a bit since I've read him and it was good to get back into it.

[Valeria Rossitto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Studiato all’Università di Bologna (Arti Visive). La fine dell’arte è un periodo definito da Danto come quello che viene dopo il termine di un certo periodo storico e quindi artistico e cioè gli anni Sessanta. Dopo di ciò, tutto è possibile.

Sbaglia forse? Che ne penserebbe Warhol?

[John Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some understandable, some over my head. He gets into philosophy (Hegel). It was worthwhile to read.