Art and Posthistory: Conversations on the End of Aesthetics

Extract

Art and Posthistory: Conversations on the End of Aesthetics is composed of four conversations between Arthur Danto and Demetrio Paparoni, conducted between 1992–2012, supplemented with three anterior essays on Danto’s work. The conversations feature occasional appearances by philosopher Mario Perniola and the Italian sculptor Mimmo Paladino. As Danto was both an artist and a philosopher of art, the former granting him prudent insights into the latter, it should come as no surprise that he held close kinships with contemporaneous artists, including Paladino, Sean Scully, and Mike Bidlo—the latter of whom Danto also collected.

Given that the book is bereft of a primer on Danto, those who enter Art and Posthistory should come armed with a working understanding of Danto’s theses on the ‘end of art’ and the ‘artworld’. Furthermore, readers ought to already have an understanding of Danto’s conception of artworks as carrying ‘aboutness’ (viz. that artworks are about something) and ‘embodied meanings’—namely, the notion that something is an artwork only if 1) it presents a content that 2) is embodied in an appropriate form. Much of the writing in the book draws from Danto’s concerns regarding the ontological status of artworks that, otherwise, would be perceptually indiscernible from their real-world identical counterparts. Those who enter Art and Posthistory with little to no knowledge of the aforementioned may be left malcontent, as references to Danto’s theories abound, often with sparse elucidation. Thus, this book is for those already initiated in Danto’s philosophy of art. Notably, these conversations preclude Danto’s work on the history of analytic philosophy and the philosophy of history. But for those who, as I and countless others do, consider Danto’s philosophical contributions and art criticism to be of invaluable import, this book will be recognized as not only a posthumous wrinkle but as a text laden with late-in-life reflections from a groundbreaking scholar.