Arthur Danto

Arthur Coleman Danto (born 1924) is an American art critic, and professor of philosophy.

Background and education

Danto was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1924, and grew up in Detroit. After spending two years in the Army, Danto studied art and history at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) and then pursued graduate study in philosophy at Columbia University. From 1949 to 1950, Danto studied in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship under Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in 1951 returned to teach at Columbia, where he is currently Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy Emeritus.

Philosophy

He is best known for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he has contributed significantly to a number of fields. His interests span thought, feeling, philosophy of art, theories of representation, philosophical psychology, Hegel's aesthetics, and the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Arthur Schopenhauer.

Art criticism

Arthur Danto was an art critic for The Nation from 1984 to 2009, and has also published numerous articles in other journals. In addition, he is an editor of the Journal of Philosophy and a contributing editor of the Naked Punch Review and Artforum. In art criticism, he has published several collected essays, including Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), which won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism in 1990; Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992); Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (University of California, 1995); and The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000) and Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life.

References

Books by Arthur C. Danto

Danto is the author of numerous books on philosophy and art, including:

• Nietzsche as Philosopher (1965)
• Analytical Philosophy of Action (1973)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1975)
• The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981)
• Narration and Knowledge (1985) - Including earlier book Analytical Philosophy of History (1965)
• Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy (1987)
• Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy (1997)
• After the End of Art (1997)
• The Abuse of Beauty (2003)
• "Red Grooms" (2004)
• Andy Warhol (2009)

Selected Essays

• The State of the Art (1987)
• Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (1990)
• Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective (1992)
• Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (1995)
• The Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste (1998)
• The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (2000)
• Philosophizing Art: Selected Essays (2001)
• The Body/Body Problem: Selected Essays (2001)
• The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (2004)
• Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life (2007)

Books on Arthur C. Danto

• Action, Art, History: Engagements with Arthur C. Danto: A collection of essays edited by Daniel Herwitz and Michael Kelly, including contributions by Frank Ankersmit, Hans Belting, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, Lydia Goehr, Gregg Horowitz, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Immerwahr, Daniel Herwitz and Michael Kelly and replies by Danto himself.
• Danto and his Critics (1993). A collection of essays including contributions by David Carrier, Richard Wollheim, Jerry Fodor, and George Dickie.
• Danto and His Critics: Art History, Historiography and After the End of Art. An issue of History and Theory Journal where philosophers David Carrier, Frank Ankersmit, Noël Carroll, Michael Kelly, Brigitte Hilmer, Robert Kudielka, Martin Seeland Jacob Steinbrenner address his work; includes a final reply by the author.

External links

• KultureFlash interview (03/2006)
• "Is it art?" - an interview with Alan Saunders of ABC Radio National (03/2006)
• Biography Arthur C. Danto's Biography on Columbia University Website.