What Art Is – Arthur C. Danto

I picked this book up at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra as kind of a joke. I was there for a philosophy conference, and since I have a long standing interest in the philosophy of art, defining art had been one of the main topics of conversation for me and the other philosophy postgrads. It was a joke, because we had been unable to find any satisfactory definition. Danto’s book had an appropriate title and I had the cash to make everyone’s drive home all the more pleasant the next day.

It’s not a philosophy book in the strictest sense. It doesn’t advance any new or groundbreaking theory, and it doesn’t interact with much modern scholarship (which isn’t to say that it is not written with a thorough background and grounding in academic philosophy). What it is, rather, is a nice introduction to the discussion of philosophy of art for a, perhaps, non-philosophical audience. Danto introduces the topic with wonderful clarity and language, drawing from a number of sources. He engages very thoroughly with the history of art, and with some of the most important philosophers who had engaged with art (Kant and Hegel in particular).

So what is art according to Arthur Danto? Well.. he’s too smart to attempt to give a definition. Instead the crux of the book is to point to some universal features of art. They can perhaps be best summarized when he says on page 128 of the book that “today art can be made of anything, put together with anything, in the service of presenting any ideas whatsover. (…) The embodiment of ideas or, I would say, of meanings is perhaps all we require as a philosophical theory of what art is.”

I don’t particularly want to critique him here, I do intend to keep these reviews short. What I can say though, is that Danto provides a neat and concise introduction to thinking seriously about art, and he does so in wonderful style. I’d recommend this book if you’re curious about art, but don’t yet know much about it. Certainly a great introduction, but not much more.

If you’re so inclined, pick up a copy from Amazon or from Book Depository