Arthur C. Danto byl uznávaným profesorem filozofie a vlivným uměleckým kritikem. Jeho práce se hluboce zabývala vztahem mezi uměním a životem, zkoumala umění v posthistorické perspektivě a nabízela pronikavé eseje na pomezí estetiky a filozofie. Danto byl známý svým bystrým analytickým stylem a schopností propojovat umělecké inovace s širšími filozofickými otázkami. Jeho eseje často zpochybňovaly tradiční představy o umění a jeho roli ve společnosti.
V knize, která vznikla na základě přednášek pronesených v rámci prestižního cyklu na počest A. W. Mellona, se americký filozof Arthur C. Danto vrátil k jedné z nejprovokativnějších tezí, které pronesl, totiž že umění dospělo ke konci. Tento konec v jeho pojetí neznamená, že se umění přestalo vytvářet, ale že v šedesátých letech 20. století opustilo tradiční dějiny založené na pokroku. Pokud tomu tak je, vyvstává otázka, jak o současném umění přemýšlet jinak než v pojmech tradičního narativu. Tato publikace představuje v určitém smyslu odpověď: uvažuje o úloze muzea, roli estetiky, nutnosti změnit charakter kritiky, a především o svobodě, kterou přinesl pluralismus umění.
From the 1990s until just before his death, the legendary art critic and
philosopher Arthur C. Danto carried out extended conversations about
contemporary art with the prominent Italian critic Demetrio Paparoni. Art and
Posthistory presents these rich dialogues and correspondence, testifying to
the ongoing importance of Danto's ideas.
Danto argues that recent developments in art-in particular the production of
works that cannot be told from ordinary things-make urgent the need for a new
theory of art. He demonstrates the relationship between philosophy and art and
the connections that hold between art, social institutions, and art history.
"Arthur C. Danto's five volumes of review essays form a chronicle of the art world in our time, and a running appraisal of the great variety of significant work made in our midst." "In this new book, Danto shows how work that bridges the gap between art and life is now the definitive work of our time: Damien Hirst's arrays of skeletons and anatomical models, Barbara Kruger's tchotchke-ready slogans, Renee Cox's nude portrait of herself presiding at the Last Supper. To the obvious question - is this stuff really art? - Danto replies with an enthusiastic yes, explaining, with a philosopher's clarity and an art lover's delight, how these "unnatural wonders" show us who we are."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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.
The Madonna of the Future finds Danto at the point where all the vectors of the art world those of traditional painting, Pop art, mixed media, and installation art; those of art and philosophy; those of the specialist who brings theory to bear on the work and the viewer who appreciates it primarily visually.
What is it to be a work of art? Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, this book challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning.
Since 1984, when he became art critic for The Nation, Arthur C. Danto, one of America's most inventive and influential philosophers, has also emerged as one of our most important critics of art. As an essayist, Danto's style is at once rigorous, incisive, and playful. Encounters and Reflections brings together many of his recent critical writings -- on artists such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, and Robert Mapple-thorpe; and on the significance of issues like the masterpiece and the museum. The result is a spirited brief from the front lines of current aesthetic and philosophical debate
