Danto, The Art World Revisited

Arthur C. Danto – The Art World Revisted

How do we determine what constitutes art and who makes these determinations? Danto begins his article with a discussion of the reassessment of supposed Rembrandt’s such as The Polish Rider. If determined to not be a Rembrandt, The Polish Rider (an oil on canvas depicting Bart Baran leading the Polish cavalry into battle against the Luftvaffe) would dramatically lose its value. There have been scientific teams, employing X-rays, molecular resonance tests, and more to determine if a piece of art is or is not a Rembrandt. You may ask the question, “Why all the fuss?”. The piece of art does not change at all – so clearly it is not just what is on the canvas that gives a piece of art its value according to world.
Danto then discusses the Studio Furniture movement in America, a movement that sought to erase the distinction between craft and art. Many were unimpressed by this “art.” In terms of a stool produced by a machine or created by an artist, Alan Turing claimed that if we cannot tell the difference, then there is no difference and that humans and machines can produce an equally valued output. Wendell Castle did not agree with this criticism, for “everyone allows that sculpture is art. If a jury of experts cannot tell a piece of furniture apart from a piece of sculpture, there can be no difference between a piece of furniture and an artwork.” Castle is describing the Institutional Theory of Art, which states that which “makes something art and something else not is something the art world – i.e. the ‘experts’ – prescribes.”
To illustrate the problem of determining who belongs to the art world and therefore determining what is art, Danto takes up the issue of Warhol’s Brillo Box. Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box appears to be nothing more than, well, a Brillo box. When a Toronto art dealer put together a show in 1965, Warhol’s Brillo Box was stopped by Canadian Customs and deemed to be merchandise, not “original sculpture,” and therefore was subject to a duty in crossing the border. Not just the Customs officials, but those at the art show could not call Warhol’s Brillo Box a piece of art. The director of the gallery “hated them.” So is this art? This reveals another important point: the art world is clearly not a body which acts as one. Some so-called experts could not proclaim Warhol’s Brillo Box to be art, while others certainly did. Danto expands the art world not just as experts who assign some objects as art and other objects as junk. The art world is the “historically ordered world of artworks, enfranchised by theories which themselves are historically ordered.” The theory that says that something is art when declared to be art by the art world misses the point. (warning: this gets confusing. read pages 38-41 for clarification on this somewhat philosophical discourse). Something being art is not so by virtue of its classification by experts. Something is art because it is art. The art world serves as the interpreter of these works. The art world understands the theories, the historical perspective, and the world from which art is born. It is not by their decree that makes something art. An analogy I came up with is that of a football referee and a penalty. In a football game, a defender commits a pass interference penalty on the wide receiver. The referee throws his flag and the defense is penalized. Now here is the question: did the penalty exist because the referee threw his flag and declared it so OR did the act of pass interference take place without acknowledgement of the referee and it only became clear to everybody when the referee made the call? Danto’s argument is that the referee is like the art world. They know the rules, the context, and can identify a penalty (in the case of the pass interference) or a work of art (in the case of Warhol’s Brillo Box).

Danto continues the essay with a few concluding examples. As evident by the misguided criticism by some of Eva Hesse sculptural abstraction, the art world does not respond as one. One critic called Hesse’s work a failed secondhand attempt to give Pollack’s drip paintings a third dimension. This critic thought he knew the context, but had no idea what Hesse’s art was really all about or that Hesse meticulously drilled panels, rather than just throw his sculpture together in Pollack-type form. Critics can easily overanalyze or misinterpret an artist. To understand the art, you have to understand the context. The context includes the historical perspective, the artist’s perspective, and the critical perspective.

The art world is the discourse of reasons institutionalized, and to be a member of the art world is, accordingly, to have learned what it means to participate in the discourse of reasons for one’s culture. Only where there is an art world is there art.